S.E.E. Expo 2005

August 30, 2005

According to all observers this year’s Expo, an annual event designed to showcase renewable energy and sustainable economics at the Western NC Agricultural Center in Fletcher, was bigger and better than ever. The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League participated with an information booth, two workshops, and a parking lot-sized educational display. The League’s focus this year was nuclear power and nuclear waste transportation.

If you missed the 2005 S.E.E. Expo (www.seeexpo.com) and you want to find out more about nuclear issues in the southeast, please contact the League. The workshops we developed for the Expo are now available for presentation at community meetings in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia. E-mail Lou Zeller at BREDL@skybest.com or call 336-982-2691 to find out more.

Workshop 1: Stopping New Nuclear Power Plants

In 2003 Virginia Power company applied for the first new nuclear power plant since the Three Mile Island meltdown.

Because it was the first of a new wave of nukes in the US, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League launched a campaign opposing nuclear power. The League organized a local group, filed a legal intervention and brought in technical experts.

This workshop explores the critical issues surrounding new nuclear plant siting, construction and operating permits.

Find out how to stop new nukes in your backyard!

Workshop 2: The Problems with Nuclear Power

Negative health impacts, deceptive claims, and toxic pollutants are the hallmarks of the nuclear power industry.

Nuclear power is not clean energy. Nuclear reactors release radioactive poisons in to the air and water during normal operation. Also, large volumes of air pollution—carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides—are released in mining of uranium ore. It takes ten years or more to make up for the fossil fuel used in processing uranium fuel at an average nuclear power plant.

Learn the facts, not the spin!

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Display: Mock Nuclear Waste Cask This twenty-foot long full-size replica of an actual high-level nuclear waste transport cask provides a riveting centerpiece for community meetings, press conferences, and anti-nuclear rallies. At the 2005 S.E.E. Expo the League’s Mock Nuclear Waste Cask provided the backdrop for an anti-nuclear tableau on the politics of nuclear waste. (Photo above left)

S.E.E. Expo Booth: Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League Hundreds dropped by the League’s information booth to talk with BREDL staffers David Mickey and Lou Zeller about the resurgence of nuclear power proposals in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, the downside of the NC Green Power program, and the League‘s wind energy project. A highlight was a video about the atomic weapons plant at Savannah River in South Carolina which features League staffer Charles Utley. The video, produced for the League by The RadioActivist Campaign (www.radioactivist.org), detailed the finding of radioactive contamination outside the 310 square mile Department of Energy weapons site. (Photo above right: Utley seen in video, Mickey seated at table)