The Power of Energy Education
/Special thanks to those of you who heeded our newsletter entitled: Spring Calls for Your Action! It is your donations that enable Fairewinds Energy Education to continue to do this vital work – thank you!
Each time we write to you during this Fairewinds fundraising campaign, we will talk with you about the work we do, are planning, have done, or the questions you ask us. We hope this gives you more of an idea of why we need your ongoing support.
We told you yesterday that “As the weather warms again, we are reminded how much our health and happiness are impacted by our natural environment…” This is true for each and every member of Fairewinds’ crew.
Spring is slowly returning to Vermont.
Fairewinds Energy Education needs your help to blossom.
Photo from VermontVacation.Com
Surprisingly, spring is also bittersweet for us as people we know are walking new paths. During the past 18-months Fairewinds has had a total of 13 students from the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont (UVM) join us for study or work internships. With graduation from UVM occurring this week, we are well aware of and thankful for those students who have whole-heartedly made a significant contribution to our work and our lives and now are commencing to new endeavors.
Internships are complicated and certainly take lots of focus by members of the Fairewinds Crew and the students involved. In yesterday’s newsletter update, we shared the details of our 2-minute animation Smokescreen that emanated from an energy economics study begun by four UVM students. Their work was so thorough and impressive that we continued it with other interns and crew members in order to create the body of work we have that shows how building new nukes will rob the U.S. economy of $8.2 Trillion USD!
The factual evidence reviewed, not fake or alternate news, proved without a doubt that building new atomic reactors makes global warming worse, takes away American jobs, and leaves our country with a legacy of atomic waste that must be protected for 250,000 years. Did you know that there is no viable method available to store the waste for even 100 years?
You may find that data here or individual links at the bottom of this letter.
We have three more projects that interns have worked on with Fairewinds, and each one will be unveiled during 2017, but to do so, we need your ongoing support.
Right now, let me give a shout-out to our sustaining donors, who either underwrite a major portion of our work, or donate monthly so that we can count on regular funding! Thank you for being a monthly donor or finding it in your heart to donate more for our major projects!
Let me tell you a little bit more about two of our former interns turned employees:
Many of you know Ben Shulman-Reed, and you will see him in today’s Nuclear Free Future video from CCTV. Ben joined us for a whole semester for his UVM capstone project on nuclear power plant decommissioning. Some of Ben’s work has already appeared on our site and more is coming during 2017 including one involving important radiological geo-mapping. You will continue to see much more of Ben’s work with Fairewinds.
Grayson Webb is leaving us at the end of next week. Grayson was a member of a four-person group that studied the energy economics of atomic power resulting in FairewindsSmokescreen animation. After spending six-months with us, Grayson is moving to Alaska to do the environmental science work he originally trained for and to achieve his dream of exploring Alaska’s boreal forest.
Every bit of Fairewinds’ effort takes money.
We need your support now to continue our scientific research.
Please help us financially,
so that we can collect the data, conduct analyses, and produce the newsletters, videos, and podcasts you depend upon!
Thank you!
We will keep you informed.
Keep scrolling for the rest of the Newsletter!
Check out our Smokescreen animation and learn that the true cost of powering less than 20% of the U.S. economy with nukes is $8.2 Trillion USD. These costs don't factor in any decommissioning, disaster cleanup, permanent long-term waste storage, or the environmental devastation of uranium mining!
We have issued a paper, and presented this topic at several major universities and forums, and we wanted to make it more accessible to people throughout the world. Truthout published Arnie Gundersen’s summation of this project in a news analysis entitled: Nuclear Power Is Not “Green Energy”: It Is a Fount of Atomic Waste. We also have a podcast in which we discuss the data and the findings with the research team of University of Vermont Interns.
Fairewinds in The News:
CCTV: Nuclear Sabre Rattling: From North Korea to Yucca Mountain
Fairewinds Energy Education program researcher Ben Shulman-Reed appeared with Margaret Harrington, host of Nuclear Free Future on CCTV, along with Kevin Kamps of the nuclear waste watchdog, Beyond Nuclear via Skype. Rising nuclear tensions with North Korea as well as the continuous nuclear weapons buildup around the world, including nuclear waste, uranium mining, and nuclear weapons testing were key components of the discussion.
