Also on today’s menu:
Mermaids Will Gather At Cummings Beach
Challenging The Heat In Death Valley
Arrest Made In ‘Lost Girls’ Murder Case
Nuclear power is being touted as a form of “green” energy that can help to replace the use of fossil fuels, but many environmentalists who remember the Three-Mile Island catastrophe near Middletown, Pennsylvania, in which the Unit 2 reactor partially melted down on March 28, 1979 — not to mention Chernobyl and Fukushima — remain opposed. While Three-Mile Island — the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history — has led to sweeping changes in emergency response planning, reactor operator training, human factors engineering, radiation protection, and many other areas of nuclear power plant operations to enhance U.S. reactor safety, many believe nuclear power remains too dangerous to implement, and scientists still have not found a reliable way to deal with the spent fuel.
In New Hampshire, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission report on NextEra Energy Seabrook nuclear power plant, while saying its overall performance has “preserved public health and safety,” noted the problem of alkali-silica reaction (ASR), which has led to the degradation of the concrete. The NRC said that NextEra will have to work on a continual basis to address ASR as Seabrook Station ages. A 2023 report shows concrete degradation has expanded from seven to 10 structures at the Seabrook plant.
Meanwhile, Waynesboro, Georgia, is home to the first new nuclear reactor built in the United States in more than 40 years. Plant Vogtle Unit Three, the first of two new reactors at the site, started producing power at full capacity in May. Once viewed as the future of U.S. nuclear plants, Vogtle’s construction stretched to more than a decade as costs rose. The total price tag has more than doubled — to more than $30 billion. Georgia Power ratepayers are billed a monthly Nuclear Construction Cost Recovery fee, with the monthly charge increasing as each of new unit comes online.
University of British Columbia physicist and nuclear skeptic M.V. Ramana commented, “In a rational world, this would be the last nuclear power project that would be built in the United States.”
Mermaids Will Gather At Cummings Beach
Bristol’s Minot-Sleeper Library will sponsor a Mermaid Storytime at Cummings Beach on West Shore Road on Wednesday, July 26, at 11 a.m. Five mermaids will swim to shore and read a story, pose for pictures, and answer questions.
Mermaid Beach passes will be available for pick-up at the library prior to the event for those who do not already have a Bristol Beach Pass to allow parking at the town-owned beach.
The Minot-Sleeper Library opened in 1885, after Josiah Minot and Solomon Sleeper offered the building to the town and voters accepted it on January 16, 1884. It was the first building in the Lake Region that was erected specifically to house a public library. A groundbreaking ceremony on August 15, 2012, marked an expansion of the library to allow it to offer space as a cultural center and meeting place that offers a selection of books, magazines, and DVDs, as well as computers, Wi-Fi connectivity, downloadable audio and eBooks, and adult and children’s programming.
Challenging The Heat In Death Valley
Even with temperatures reaching record highs, tourists are continuing to visit Death Valley National Park on the California-Nevada border. Daniel Jusehus, a runner visiting from Germany, took a photograph of the thermometer at Furnace Creek Visitor Center showing a reading of 120 degrees Fahrenheit after he finished a run in the sweltering heat.
“I was really noticing, you know, I didn’t feel so hot, but my body was working really hard to cool myself,” Jusehus said.
Temperatures at Death Valley, which bills itself as the lowest, hottest, and driest place on earth, could climb past 130°F this weekend.
Arrest Made In ‘Lost Girls’ Murder Case
A law enforcement official without the authority to speak publicly about an investigation into a long-unsolved series of killings in Long Island known as the Gilgo Beach murders spoke anonymously to the Associated Press to report that a suspect has been taken into custody.
The case that became the subject of a 2020 Netflix film, “Lost Girls,” involves 11 people whose remains were found in 2010 and 2011 along a beach highway. Most of the victims were young women who had been sex workers, and several of the bodies were found near the town of Gilgo Beach. The suspect reportedly was taken into custody in Massapequa on July 13, and investigators were at a home connected with the case today.
Determining who killed the victims, and why, has stumped homicide detectives through several changes in police leadership. Last year, officials formed an interagency task force with investigators from the FBI as well as state and local police departments in hopes of solving the case.
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