Protest at Oak Ridge today

 The protesters gathered at a park in Oak Ridge TN today - to protest the building of more nuclear bombs and a new bomb plant.

 Ralph Hutchinson of OREPA spoke.

 Some of the crowd there - it was a small group.

 The peace walkers spoke also.

 Sign at Y-12 bomb plant.

 Signs saying to stay out of the creek, and that no fishing or swimming is allowed.  Reportedly, there is still nuclear contamination in Oak Ridge.  A friend at the rally today said that they allow people to hunt deer on the grounds of Y-12, but the deer have to be checked for radiation before they are allowed to take the dead deers home to eat.

 The welcoming committee.  They were yelling at us to get out of the street, which was odd because the road was totally blocked by this barrier. 

 Kids made a big sign.

The puppets getting ready to preform.  It was getting a bit chilly at this point.  Below is part of an article about Fukushima nuclear plant, but they also mentioned Oak Ridge and the contamination there.  And they are right in saying that there is a protest every year at Y-12, and the corporate media ignore it.

Pour Evian on your radishes

Helping poisoned soil regain its health will be a very long process. Mycologist Paul Stamets recommends creation of a Nuclear Forest Recovery Zone. There have been some studies on forest processes in controlled exposure areas at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, Los Alamos in New Mexico and a mixed oak-pine forest near Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, but they are more cautionary than encouraging. At Oak Ridge, for instance, pine needles still contain radioactive elements in significant quantities 40 years after exposure.

That is actually the good news. By collecting and deep burying radioactive pine needles and fallen trees, we can gradually cleanse the contaminated soil a Nuclear Forest is rooted in. We have to handle byproducts carefully, and also bury our gloves and tools along with the wood products, but this is the technique.
…….

At Oak Ridge they have also demonstrated ways to reduce waste volume by using a closed venturi incinerator with HEPA filters to dispose of flammable radioactive waste (i.e.: pine needles, Hazmat suits, used HEPA filters). We can only hope the Japanese government will be more scrupulous in regulating their incinerators than US and Tennessee regulators have been. The Oak Ridge incinerator, today the site of annual protest marches that you will never see on television, has contaminated a wide area around itself that is a long-neglected SuperFund site, championed and then abandoned by successive administrations. Also neglected is the facility that vitrifies the ash into glass and ceramic forms for long-term disposal. And so will be most of Oak Ridge, eventually.

Paul Stamets asks, “How long would this remediation effort take? I have no clear idea but suggest this may require decades. However, a forested national park could emerge -The Nuclear Forest Recovery Zone - and eventually benefit future generations with its many ecological and cultural attributes.”