A Lengthy Debate and a Short Post about Mystery Stories

In late March, I debated James Moore of VPIRG at Harwood High School in central Vermont. Thanks to Cavan Stone, the debate is finally up at blipTV so I can embed it in my blog. Thank you, Cavan!

The debate is pretty long, but it was held at an interesting time, right after Fukushima, when the situation was still very unsettled. I talked a lot about Fukushima, because I felt Moore would hammer the industry relentlessly on the subject.

So. A member of the audience came to me after the debate and said I talked too much about Fukushima. She said that people in Vermont care about Vermont, not Japan. You can't please all of the people all of the time, I guess.

I saw several anti-nuclear local heavy hitters in the high school auditorium audience, which surprised me. This was at a high school, part of an "Energy Project" the high school was doing. As I left, Moore was speaking to some of them, perhaps doing a retrospective-lessons learned about debating me. Or perhaps I flatter myself.

I am very grateful that Howard Shaffer was there with me and we drove together. Shaffer gave me emotional and technical support. He answered some of the hard questions! He also had a 7-curie tritium exit sign, which we used as a significant show-and-tell.

People in Vermont have been convinced that the Vermont Yankee tritium leak was pretty close to "the end of the world as we know it." When Howard holds up a sign that contains about three times as much tritium as leaked from the plant, it makes a difference to people's perceptions! Seeing is believing.

Forbes has a good article on tritium exit signs, by the way.

Something Completely Different: Mysteries and Thrillers and Other Light Reading

I have a light-hearted blog post at ANS Nuclear Cafe today: Mysteries and Thrillers and What I learned about Nuclear Communication. My three teachers: Richard Hannay of 39 Stepa, Harry Bosch of the LAPD series by Michael Connolly, and of course, Miss Marple.