PHOTO OP:
AIRPLANE BANNER FLYING OVERHEAD (“NUCLEAR FOOLS DAY DON’T COOK THE GREAT LAKES”) & DEMONSTRATORS DRESSED AS CLOWNS & JESTERS WITH PLACARDS OUTSIDE COOK PLANT MAIN ENTRANCE
Bridgman, MI — At 12:00 p.m. noon on Saturday, April 1st, 2000 an airplane banner will fly over the Cook Nuclear Power Plant along the Lake Michigan Shoreline south of St. Joseph, Michigan to protest its upcoming re-start after a two and a half year government-forced shut down for safety violations. Demonstrators dressed as jesters and clowns with placards will protest at the Cook Nuclear Plant’s main entrance at the same time.
The airplane banner will read “NUCLEAR FOOLS DAY — DON’T COOK THE GREAT LAKES.”
In September, 1997 the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission shut down the two Cook reactors due to dozens of safety violations. The plants have remained shut down ever since. The watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) had exposed the problems at Cook, thanks to tips from inside whistleblowers at other nuclear reactors with the same ice condenser emergency containment systems. UCS nuclear safety engineer David Lochbaum has testified that for numerous years, the inoperable safety systems at Cook could have led to the deaths and injuries of hundreds and even thousands of persons living downwind, for the radioactivity from an accident would not have been contained.
In August, 1999 the first annual Nuclear-Free Great Lakes Action Camp sought to keep the Cook reactors shut down for good. Over 250 concerned citizens representing dozens of environmental, safe energy, and public interest groups from 8 Great Lakes States and Canada held a week-long educational encampment in southwest Michigan, culminating in a non-violent civil disobedience direct action at the Cook plant. 17 protestors were arrested on charges of trespassing. Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS) in Washington D.C., Citizen Action Coalition of Indiana in South Bend, and the state-wide group Don’t Waste Michigan are members of the Nuclear-Free Great Lakes Campaign.
American Electric Power Company (AEP), based in Columbus, Ohio plans to re-start the Unit Two Reactor at Cook later this month. AEP plans to re-start Cook Unit One Reactor in September.
“If there had been an accident at Cook, we could have had our very own Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe right here in the Great Lakes region, ” said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist at Nuclear Information & Resource Service (NIRS) in Washington, D.C. Kamps, a native and life-long resident of Kalamazoo, Michigan before joining NIRS a few months ago, has been a long-time critic of nuclear power and advocate for safe, renewable energy sources such as energy efficiency, wind and solar power. As director of the Chernobyl Children’s Project, Kamps has brought a dozen visually-impaired children from the Chernobyl region of the former Soviet Union to Michigan for medical treatment over the past two summers.
“AEP considered simply closing down their highly troubled reactors after they were caught endangering our region from 1988 to 1997. But they’ve decided to re-start Cook, at huge cost to ratepayers of many hundreds of millions of dollars. For that foolish decision, April Fool’s Day would have been a more appropriate date upon which to re-start the Cook nuclear plant. Cook’s currently projected re-start date of April 22nd, on Earth Day, is most ironic. Once Cook re-starts, it will once again be releasing harmful radioactive gases into the air we breath and into the waters of Lake Michigan. Cook would also resume generating forever-deadly radioactive wastes, which AEP wants to dump on Native American lands out West, namely the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians near Salt Lake City, Utah. And of course, we again risk suffering a nuclear accident.”
Plans are already under way for the second annual Nuclear-Free Great Lakes Action Camp to take place this August. For more information, contact Kevin Kamps at NIRS in Washington at 301-270-6477.