Suffolk Closeup: Welcome to Atomic Town

Is Brookhaven National Laboratory the appropriate site for an “Earth Summit?”

No, says Long Island environmental educator and activist Peter Maniscalco. “Holding an ‘Earth Summit’ at Brookhaven Lab is a tragic comedy. The lab has poisoned the Peconic River and is still doing nuclear power research despite the Fukushima nuclear power disaster in Japan. Should we laugh or cry?” asks Mr. Maniscalco.

BNL will soon be getting national attention for its pollution with a documentary that recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, “The Atomic States of America.” It is based on the book “Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town” by Kelly McMasters. The book and film allege widespread cancer in neighboring Shirley because of radioactive releases from BNL.

Nevertheless, on April 17, an “Earth Summit” is scheduled to be held at BNL. BNL has partnered with Citizens Campaign for the Environment, based in Farmingdale, to hold it.

“The Earth Summit will combine good science with good advocacy to advance a 2012 Earth Agenda for Long Island,” they say in a joint statement.

The “Earth Summit” will include a tour of the solar energy installation at BNL, a “Green Vehicle Expo,” and a workshop on energy with Gordian Raccke, executive director of East Hampton-based Renewable Energy Long Island, and Gerald Stokes, associate director for Global and Regional Solutions at BNL.

There will be workshops on “Drinking Water Threats and Solutions” with Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, and on “Smart Planning: Preserving Open Space, Our Natural World, and Growing LI” with Eric Alexander of Vision Long Island and David Calone, chairman of the Suffolk County Planning Commission.

There will be a panel discussion on Long Island’s “greatest environmental challenges” with Messrs. Alexander, Calone, Stokes and also Neal Lewis, executive director of the Sustainability Institute at Molloy College and Peter Scully, regional director of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. And there will be a keynote address by Ellen Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University.

Mr. Maniscalco, of Manorville, scores BNL’s record of contamination and its continuing “culture.” Says Mr. Maniscalco of Renew Community Earth: “The Brookhaven scientific culture still doesn’t understand the interrelationship between humans and the natural world and the lethal consequences their work in nuclear technology imposes on the population and environment of the world. They still don’t understand that nuclear power is a polluting, deadly technology.”

“The Atomic States of America” premiered at Sundance to strong reviews. The review in Variety notes that Ms. McMasters’ hometown of Shirley “was in unhappy proximity” to BNL “around which skyrocketing cancer rates were written off as coincidence or an aberrant gene pool.” It tells of the appearance in the documentary of Alec Baldwin, “a lifelong Long Islander,” who calls BNL scientists “liars and worse.” The review says that “in following McMasters’ work, the film builds a convincing case about cancer and nukes.”

The film returns regularly to BNL while also examining other nuclear issues, including the Fukushima disaster. “Located at the intersection of U.S. nuclear amnesia and the 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima plant in Japan, ‘The Atomic States of America’ takes a fairly objective approach to an emotionally volatile topic, offering an examination of nuclear power that could convince its supporters to think otherwise,” says Variety.

The Hollywood Reporter calls the film “stimulating, well-made.”

After BNL’s two nuclear reactors were closed by the Department of Energy when they were found a decade ago to have been leaking radioactive tritium into the groundwater for years, BNL focused on activities not linked to nuclear power. But in 2010, BNL, established by the federal government in 1947 with a key mission of developing civilian uses of nuclear technology, set up a new Department of Nuclear Science and Technology with an $18 million annual budget.

BNL at the time quoted Mr. Stokes, who will be speaking at the “Earth Summit,” as saying: “BNL’s long involvement and considerable experience in nuclear energy make it a natural place to create such an organization.”