Also on today’s menu:
Gruesome Discoveries At Waste Facilities
Radioactive Water To Be Dumped In Ocean
The first installment of director Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, adapted from the J.R.R. Tolkien fantasy novels, was released 20 years ago this week.
The New York Times interviewed Elijah Wood, who played the hobbit Frodo, to see how he views his role 20 years later. Wood, now 40, said, “What Frodo was up against seemed insurmountable, and yet he was able to accomplish it largely because of goodness, kindness, a purity of heart and perhaps innocence. Those are the things that hobbits embody, and inherently why they’re able to withstand the corruption of the Ring for longer than humans. But what makes Frodo unique is a way of seeing the world without any kind of cynicism. There’s also courage, maybe even a blind courage, of not necessarily knowing what’s ahead and therefore not allowing himself to be afraid. If I’m to learn one thing from all of that, it’s that there’s fortitude in his outlook that makes it all possible.”
He concludes, “Now that we’re standing on the precipice of 20 years, which is so difficult to comprehend, my reflection is one of such gratitude and such love that I’ll never be upset at being associated with those films or for them being the largest in people’s memories of who I am.”
Gruesome Discoveries At Waste Facilities
Dr. Mitchell Weinberg, New Hampshire’s deputy chief medical examiner, has concluded that a woman whose body was discovered at the Belmont transfer station on September 9 died as a result of being crushed by a trash compactor while intoxicated by fentanyl. Jessica Lurvey, 28, and Matthew Schofield, 29, apparently were involved in a romantic relationship, according to authorities, and it appears that, on the evening of September 8, during a heavy rainstorm, the two sought shelter from the inclement weather in a large trash or recycling bin, which subsequently was mechanically picked up by and loaded into a compacting waste removal vehicle. Lurvey’s body was discovered when the truck’s contents were being removed and separated in Belmont.
Twelve days after Lurvey’s body was discovered, Schofield’s body was found at a solid waste facility in Lewiston, Maine, where waste from the Belmont transfer facility was taken for further processing. The Maine Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was unable to determine a specific cause of death, but determined it was due to either acute polysubstance intoxication or crush injury.
Attorney General John M. Formella, State Police Colonel Nathan Noyes, and Belmont Police Chief Mark Lewandoski said their investigation concluded that the deaths were accidental, with drug intoxication being a factor.
Radioactive Water To Be Dumped In Ocean
The company decommissioning the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it plans to start discharging radioactive water from the plant into Cape Cod Bay sometime within the first three months of 2022.
One week earlier, Holtec International spokesman Patrick O’Brien told a Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel in Plymouth, Massachusetts, that there were other options, including evaporating the million gallons of water from the spent fuel pool and the reactor vessel and other plant components, or trucking it to a facility in Idaho. At that time, he said, “We had broached that [discharging water into the bay] with the state, but we’ve made no decision on that.”
U.S. Rep. William Keating (D-Massachusetts) said that not disclosing their plans at a public forum violated promises of transparency. “It’s troubling that, within a couple of days, it turned into a sure thing,” he said.
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