FROM PUBLISHED ARTICLES

​Vermont's Nuclear Fallout Jitters, From Chernobyl to Fukushima  (PDF)

(This article appeared April 2011 in The [Montpelier, VT] Bridge)    

The acclaimed historical PBS/SkyUK TV miniseries Chernobyl (aired starting in May 2019) made dramatically topical again arguments for and against nuclear energy. Many don't know that, unofficially, the Federal EPA's first notice of the Chernobyl meltdown came from a vigilant Vermont public health physicist, Paul Clemons, whom I interviewed shortly afterward for a (no longer published) monthly called Vermont News & Views.  This more recent article (above) recounts Vermont's rapid responses to monitor nuclear drift from both Chernobyl and again in 2011 when Japan's better-built Fukushima nuclear power plant still failed to withstand a devastating tsunami following a 9.0 earthquake.