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发布时间：2006-07-08 20:24     点击：

    Maine Yankee is now officially closed, and is being dismantled. More than 900 tons of radioactive spent fuel, more than at any other decommissioned nuclear power station in America, are still stored there. (47)A federal report posted on the website of the National Council on Radiation Protection estimates that if a tenth of 1% of the spent fuel's radiation were released into the air it would produce lethal doses over 1,000 square miles. The stuff is dangerous for 10,000 years. Much of it is covered only by a metal shed. According to the Department of Energy, it will be removed in 2020, at the earliest. Others say it will not go until 2038.

    The station's officials used to say the spent fuel was so safe that armed guards were unnecessary. (48.)After September 11th they stepped up security measures, declaring "a heightened state of alert". In October, Stanley Lane, from neighbouring Westport Island, decided to put that claim to the test. Unchallenged, he drove his car around the grounds and past the spent fuel. There are now a few more guards in evidence and a few road barriers; but it is some way from Fort Knox.

    Eric Howes, a company spokesman, says that Maine Yankee will comply with any new federal regulations and would not oppose having the National Guard at the site. Ray Shadis, of Friends of the Coast Opposed to Nuclear Pollution, doubts it. (49)He claims that the company asked for waivers against having to apply stricter security not only before September 11th, but afterwards too.

    The people of Wiscasset are petitioning the federal government to remove the spent fuel. (50)In a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Maine's governor, Angus King, has agreed that cuts in security are "entirely unacceptable", though he has not called in the National Guard.

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