50th Anniversary of FERMI 1 Nuclear Core Partial Meltdown,

Monroe, MI. On a bright sunny day fifty years ago where the River Raisin flows into Lake Erie, Detroit Edison’s new FERMI1 suffered a near catastrophic melt down of its fuel core. Of course the residents of Monroe knew nothing about the nuclear accident as DTE had asked the local police to keep the potentially lethal mishap secret from the public in order to avoid a panic.

What is not secret is that if FERMI 1’s core had completely melted down hundreds of thousands of people would have been killed or seriously injured. No one knows how much radiation was released during the FERMI 1 meltdown. And to this day, no one knows how to deal with the highly radioactive sodium coolant that was trucked to the Idaho National Laboratory, where it sits today.

Fifty years later, on an equally bright sunny day, Michael Keegan and Alliance to Halt FERMI 3, ATHF3, organized the commemoration of the meltdown at FERMI 1, which featured David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists USA, Paul Gunter, Nuclear Information Research Services, Ethyl Riviera, director of  “Got KI?” campaign in Monroe, tireless environmental attorney Terry Lodge, and Wyandot Nation’s Chantel Gros-Louis.

Speakers called for halting the construction of FERMI 3, to be built on the site of the FERMI 1 meltdown, at a cost of $20 Billion, the end of the poisoning of Lake Erie by DTE’s FERMI 2 and Monroe Coal-fired plant, which contributes more mercury pollution to adjacent waters than any other plant in the US, and strengthening of a “moribund” Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Sierra Club Nuclear Free Michigan                                                                               October 5, 2016

Mark Muhich, Chairman

Markmuhich0@gmail.com