Transition to Cheaper, Safer, Decentralized Renewable Energy 

Protect our Children, Environment, Water, Food and Health

Recent leaks at the reactor pose serious threats to the public and to the Mississippi River and its ecosystem, including the wildlife and people that depend on it for drinking water, food, and for irrigation of crops.

Danger! Tritium

In November 2022 the aging 54-year-old, Monticello nuclear reactor, one of the oldest in the country, spilled 829,000 gallons of tritium-contaminated cooling water which then leaked into the Mississippi River, a drinking water source for 20 million Americans. Tritium is a danger to health if taken internally by drinking or breathing; it moves like water to every part of the body, and can cross a placenta where it endangers the fetus and causes birth abnormalities and problem pregnancies.  

Danger! Radioactivity

Radioactivity in the form of over 100 cancer-causing gases and metallic particles is routinely released from the Monticello nuclear reactor into the environment. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s public health data, cancer deaths exceed expected rates by three people every two months in the areas surrounding the Monticello reactor.

We are at the beginning of a developing severe climate crisis worldwide that affects us: It is the responsibility of the State of Minnesota and Xcel Energy to invest customers’ electricity payments in safe, cost-efficient renewable energy rather than in a dangerous and outdated nuclear reactor that leaks toxic radioactivity and tritium into the environment, causing cancer and other health issues and is prone to further age-related problems. 

The Monticello nuclear reactor generates $1.5 million for Xcel Energy managers and shareholders every DAY it operates: an incentive for Xcel to keep it operating.

Let’s put our energy into the future, with clean renewables, especially sun (solar panels) and wind (the large white windmills). The old mega-sized nuclear reactors poison people with cancer as they produce energy and continue toxic emissions while the radioactivity slowly decays. Renewables are increasingly cheaper, smarter, healthier, cleaner and decentralized. For example, with Biomass we burn municipal solid waste, agriculture waste and wood for heat and electricity. Geothermals heat and cool in an air exchange process reducing power costs.

Joseph Mangano and Ernest Sternglass conducted a follow-up study on eight downwind U.S. communities in the two years after a nuclear reactor closure.  The results were a remarkable 17.4 percent drop in infant mortality! “We finally have peer-reviewed accurate data that show nuclear power reactors cause death and injury in the host communities,” New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky said of the 2002 report in the Archives of Environmental Health.

Lives hang in the balance. Transition now to cheaper, safer, decentralized renewable energy with the immediate safe shutdown of the Monticello Nuclear Generating Station.

For more info go to www.nuclearfreemississippi.wordpress.com