Or… The Millstone around our neck: Dominion’s deadly drive for profits.

Nuclear power was once considered “too cheap to meter.” The “peaceful atom” was a spurious claim spread by nuke proponents, with little public opposition, after the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Dominion Energy, owner of the Millstone nuclear plant, has failed to convince our Connecticut General Assembly that it needs a new deal to ensure long-term profits. The defeat signals another corporate myth that should be debunked, once and for all.

What’s the fuss about Millstone, our fourth and final nuclear plant in Waterford?  The way it works is deceptively simple. Dominion’s plant creates the extremely dangerous process of nuclear fission– to boil water. The steam, in turn, runs a generator to make electricity. This has been compared to using a buzz saw to cut butter.

In the 1950s, Atoms for Peace was a Madison Avenue conceit designed to convince the public that uranium wasn’t just for atomic explosions. The radioactive process could be harnessed as a “giant of limitless power,” General Electric boasted.

Then in the 1970s came the Clamshell Alliance, the first of the grassroots organizations that sprung up around the country to oppose nukes. They used nonviolent direct action and popular education to expose and prevent the imminent dangers posed by commercial nuclear power.

The group also stressed that nuclear power plans and nuclear weapons are inextricably linked, since they employ the same radioactive element that can cause potential disasters. Their predictions were later confirmed by Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima.

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