In an action heavily influenced by the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, last Thursday more than 1,000 people marched three miles to the Brattleboro offices of Entergy, owners of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in nearby Vernon, Vt.
The event took place the day after the plant’s previous license expired, a day protesters said marked the beginning of illegal operations at the reactor because the state of Vermont earlier refused to issue the certificate required under state law for the plant to continue producing power (a federal judge recently ruled that law invalid in this case).
More than 130 were arrested during the protest, including two nationally known peace activists: 93-year-old Frances Crowe of Northampton, longtime leader of the Northampton area chapter of the American Friends Service Committee, and war tax resister Randy Kehler of Colrain.
The action extended beyond Vermont as affinity groups, including some Vermont residents, demonstrated at Entergy offices in White Plains, N.Y. and at its corporate headquarters in New Orleans. Five were arrested in White Plains; in New Orleans seven activists were arrested for occupying the Entergy building and refusing to leave it.
A day earlier, seven were arrested on the grounds of Vermont Yankee. The Thursday action climaxed a month of marches and demonstrations protesting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s relicensing of the 40-year-old plant, which in 2006 was “uprated” to generate 20 percent more power than it was built to produce. Opponents of the relicensing say the reactor, now being pushed to generate power in excess of its design specs, will become more dangerous as it ages.
