Well first off the Canadians seem to do what they want then answer questions after. I live on this border in question and yes it concerns me that they the Canadians have not informed anyone on this side of the border what’s going on.

In contrast there has been a lot of talking about the proposed LNG for down east Maine that would employee and create a stable economy here, but our cousins across the border have protested this even though there is an LNG in St John New Brunswick. This is no different than when the US was looking into building an oil refinery in the Eastport area in the 70’s but Irving had one in St John so as always we in down eastern Maine go without.

I can only guess, because I am not in Governor Baldacci’s click so I can only guess Irving oil has a hand in this like everything else in Maine. There has been no mention of a problem with the nuclear power plant in the Canadian papers which are all owned by the Irving’s, but I will say one thing. Our government state and federal are spineless when it comes to standing up to the Canadian government, and I am not sure why, but I do know when the people across the border start to cry about the LNG their government listens and responds, maybe we need to clean out Augusta and Washington, and replace them with officials like the Canadians because they seem to care and respond before it’s too late.

If I sound bitter I am, because on this side of the border things never happen or it takes 10 years to many before anything happens, but in Canada things seem to progress much faster, look at the bridge here in Calais, the Canadians have had their hi way built for 10 years now, but we are still building ours, and theirs has been built the right way and ours has a traffic circle that will end up killing someone. Time to clean house both State and Federal, and for Baldacci well I can think of one thing Salem witch hunt sounds like a plan.

I have to agree with Bob. Projects always seem to be on a fast track in New Brunswick. The Canadians howled about LNG on the American side yet they ship freighters full of fertilizer up the St. Croix!! That never really got mentioned in the whole scheme of things. As far as safety at Point Lepreau, I worked in the nuclear field and am aware of how these jobs are conducted. If I remember right, on a re-tubing job the system is isolated at several points and any heavy water has been evacuated from the system. So when I compare the two in the terms of immediate risk I would rather camp in the nuke plant parking lot than watch freighters full of fertilizer steam up the St. Croix. That is just my personal opinion.

Exactly what doesn't worry people from this part of the State? Nuclear plants? LNG Terminals? Without development, this area will never be anything but rural and poor.

Geese in another 20 years diowneast maine will just be a just a drive through section of maine where canadians pass through to get to portland and boston (Bangor was never the same having decided to tear down paul bunyan, taxed hollywood slots into closing, and rejected building a new civic center).

Yes downeast maine where only summer people have homes. No gamblin, smokin, wood burning stoves, development, and no nukes.

Awe yes but when the summer folk come, two weeks out of the year, the state will have spent millions to keep them save from nuke power in canada and millions more on setting aside pristine tracks of land, with million dollar rail-bed walk ways.

Yes, Downeast Maine, 'life as it should be'; home to summer folk, wild birds and wild blueberries. No industry, jobs, low taxes, no municiple services (except to keep the summer folks happy) and no native families

I can see it all now, paradise!

We are also ground zero for a nuclear attack,Cutler Navy base is right there in Cutler,its most powerful in the world.

Absolutely right, Bob. Well said.

Never knew it was even there. I guess I'm not too worried about it.

I live within 15 miles of a Nuke plant now and don't even think about it.

No great loss if Washington County glows in the dark. Just welfare, poverty and Illegal Alien Mexicans here.

Maybe the Canadians are using the Rockweed they steal from us to power the nuke plant?

The fuel for a nuke plant is atomic not fossil.

Nuke plants are the cleanest and safest operating power houses in the world. You get more bang for your buck and the waste is negligible. There is not one ounce of waste that has ever made it off a nuke plant site. It's all still there. People need to get educated.

Gardner is NOT the man we want handling a situation like this. His mouth alone causes most to want to nuke him.

...yep bigfootinheels, and where are you putting your spent fuel and nuclear waste?...

POZOLE

It stays in the spent fuel pools within the reactor. They use it to help control the reaction process. Think about it, nuke plants have been in service for over 40 years and not one iota of waste has ever been shipped off a site.

Whatever is removed from the pools ends up in huge lead casks and stored on site.

Like I said people need to get educated on nuclear power. We'd be paying considerably less for electricity and there would be no greenhouse gas emmissions. France gets 75% of it's power from nuclear reactors. There are over 90 nuclear plants in France, a country the size of Texas.............Fortunately our government has already realized this. I was recently at a nuke plant in the states where my company will be replacing and upgrading all of their steam turbines, hundreds of millions of dollars, all the nukes in the states are being relicensed. Also permits have been issued for new erection of plants.

Does Maine have a emergency plan if a log skidder sets a forest fire in the area? A plan if a oil tanker run aground with a 55 million gallons of crude aboard. A plan if a gas tank explodes in one of our urban settings? A plan if a space heater sets Disgusta or portland abaze? All these scenarios are 1000000 times more probable.

If Washington County is so concerned that they don't have a disaster plan for New Brunswick's NP Plant then maybe the County should write one up. I am sure New Brunswick Emergency Preparedness has one. This is simply a ploy to try and get the Canadians to shut their plant down. Just like Maine Yankee was shut down.

I didn't even know that there was another nuke plant in the State of Maine.

I ahve to agree with Knightcross, I really dont see much of a problem if Washington county glows in the dark either. Might actually make for a cool aurora affect for the rest of the state. though, then again, imagine what that would do to that law they are trying to pass about to much light at night.

nuclear energy is the cleanest and safest in the world........until disaster strikes.......people nuclear energy is very very dangerous........this is not like cleaning up an oil spill.........this renders land uninhabitable................Just say No to nuclear energy!

Say yes to solar...wind.....and tidal power.

KOWALSKI.........have you ever stepped foot inside a nuclear plant??? you're talking out of your a**

Guess how many wind turbines it would take to equal one nuclear reactor?? I want your BEST guess, just to see if you have any idea what you are talking about.

Just ask the people in Russia how safe their nuclear plants are?

Yeh but the Russians can't even boil water and get it right. So why wouldn't they screw up a nuke plant, look at the sub that sank too.

safety practices have increased 100 fold since the russian accident. Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. It was the operators fault.

do we really want to take a chance on a Chernobyl II..........in our area.........i think not.

lets use these awesome tides we have to generate electric..........solar......wind.......think safety ....not stupidity!

kowalski.......................why don't you try to learn something about nuclear power. you can't talk on a subject unless you actually know something about it. that's half the problem in this green state, nobody knows shi** they just listen to what the green newspapers propogate.

get educated

kowalski.......................why don't you try to learn something about nuclear power. you can't talk on a subject unless you actually know something about it. that's half the problem in this green state, nobody knows shi** they just listen to what the green newspapers propogate.

get educated

ok, so the russians were idiots with chernobyl, how about three mile island, anyone remember that one.

Technology has changed. This isnt the mid-sixties. It is alot safer now. Ask the French or the Japanese. Spent Fuel rods I understand are easier to care for. It s a whole different world. As for the Russians 20% of their armored vehicles had to be towed out after the invasion of the Georgian Republic last year.

again operator error...................like I said there are safety systems in place now that weren't in place then that would prevent those kinds of mistakes.

It might be nice to use tides and wind in the area to generate electricity. But the problem here is the reactor belongs to Canada. We don't have a say. Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have only one thng in common, they are both nuclear power plants.

Chernobyl was an explosion. Three Mile Island was a partial meltdown of ONE fuel rod. That was thirty years ago and there is still debate over whether there are any REAL lasting health dangers as a result. Nuclear energy is cheaper and cleaner than fossil fuels and more efficient than tidal or wind production.

If Washington County wants a disaster plan, then write one. This is part of the reason it took so long to build the bridge in Calais. Everybody from the President to the peanut farmer has had some input. We don't a committee to pick a committee to pick a committee. . .

what if operator error at a nuke plant.........causes regional disaster.....you play with fire eventually you will get burned,

Nuclear energy does not make safety sense.

To paraphrase' primarily the winds at Point Lepreau would not normally take anything towards the state of Maine'. i.e. radioactive "anythings'. Well, normally it wouldn't be a problem, but that's not what we're talking about. So would they "normally" blow things out to sea? That doesn't sound too good either. bigfootinheals; The efficiency and "bang for your buck" of nuclear power plants is way overstated. many economists say that the cost of start up, licensing and operating a nuclear power plant is very expensive and there is no real incentive to do so. The fact that you have to store this very toxic nuclear waste, (for what centuries?) also adds to the overall cost and burdens future generations. In the end it uses a finite resource (uranium) which will become increasingly expensive as the resource dwindles. Not to mention the hazards of mining uranium. Maine is a "green state"(proudly so) and the people here do know s##t about things. We've discovered the hard way that nuclear power isn't all it's cracked up to be.

That's because the tree huggers make it so hard to get anything to pass.

Business week had a nice article on wave power. They float these turbines out to sea to capture the waves. Other countries are using them. I guess the USA backed out when they tried one off the coast of Wash State and it sank.

it will bring jobs to w.c.

bigfootinheels Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station makes 640 Mega Watts of power. It would take 188 GE wind turbines at 3.4 MW each to produce the same amount of clean power.

As pointed out nuclear power has been proven safe to a degree, but ask the people that live in Eastern Europe how clean it is when the Chernobyl disaster happened. I am not saying this will, but in any case the point was the lack of information from the Canadian side to inform their neighbors to the south.

I can guarantee one thing if this was on the US side of the border there would me more action going on, look at the outrage over the LNG’s that aren’t even built?

So if bigfootinheels will agree, we should build 188 wind turbines along the border with New Brunswick.

In 1990, assistant plant operator Daniel George Maston [2] at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station took a sample of heavy water from the moderator system and loaded it into a drink dispenser (specifically a watercooler in an office block). 8 employees drank some of the contaminated water. The incident was discovered when employees began leaving bioassay urine samples with elevated tritium levels. The quantities involved were well below levels which could induce heavy water toxicity, but several employees received elevated radiation doses from tritium and activated chemicals in the water.

April 10, 2003 — INES Level 3 - Paks, Hungary - Fuel damaged

Partially spent fuel rods undergoing cleaning in a tank of heavy water ruptured and spilled fuel pellets at Paks Nuclear Power Plant. It is suspected that inadequate cooling of the rods during the cleaning process combined with a sudden influx of cold water thermally shocked fuel rods causing them to split. Boric acid was added to the tank to prevent the loose fuel pellets from achieving criticality. Ammonia and hydrazine were also added to absorb iodine-131. [33], [34]

April 19, 2005 — INES Level 3 - Sellafield, England, United Kingdom - Nuclear material leak

Twenty metric tons of uranium and 160 kilograms of plutonium dissolved in 83,000 litres of nitric acid leaked over several months from a cracked pipe into a stainless steel sump chamber at the Thorp nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. The partially processed spent fuel was drained into holding tanks outside the plant. [35].

November 2005 — INES Level needed - Braidwood, Illinois, United States - Nuclear material leak

Tritium contamination of groundwater was discovered at Exelon's Braidwood station. Groundwater off site remains within safe drinking standards though the NRC is requiring the plant to correct any problems related to the release.

March 6, 2006 — INES Level needed - Erwin, Tennessee, United States - Nuclear material leak

Thirty-five liters of a highly enriched uranium solution leaked during transfer into a lab at Nuclear Fuel Services Erwin Plant. The incident caused a seven-month shutdown and a required public hearing on the licensing of the plant.[36] [37]

By the way There are ove 2000 accidents world wide since the very first one.

by the way here is the first one. December 12, 1952 — INES Level 5 - Chalk River, Ontario, Canada - Reactor core damaged

A reactor shutoff rod failure, combined with several operator errors, led to a major power excursion of more than double the reactor's rated output at AECL's NRX reactor. The operators purged the reactor's heavy water moderator, and the reaction stopped in under 30 seconds. A cover gas system failure led to hydrogen explosions, which severely damaged the reactor core. The fission products from approximately 30 kg of uranium were released through the reactor stack. Irradiated light-water coolant leaked from the damaged coolant circuit into the reactor building; some 4,000 cubic meters were pumped via pipeline to a disposal area to avoid contamination of the Ottawa River. Subsequent monitoring of surrounding water sources revealed no contamination. No immediate fatalities or injuries resulted from the incident; a 1982 followup study of exposed workers showed no long-term health effects. Future U.S. President Jimmy Carter, then a nuclear engineer in the US Navy, was among the cleanup crew