Once the reactor goes on line, nuclear corporations release radioactive waste to the adjacent environment or store waste on site for shipment to contaminate another community. People's concerns about the dangers of long term exposure to low level radiation are denigrated. The focus of concern is manipulated toward the potential for an accident and the industry's ability to create effective safeguards. This radioactive pollution remains widely distributed throughout the biosphere and in the food chain. The community, as the defacto dump for reactor waste, sustains environmental degradation, long term health problems, and suffering.
Communities chosen for nuclear defilement are poor, rural, and often people of color.
The daily routine release of radioactive waste is dispersed into the air in the form of dust, mist, fumes, vapors, or gases and into the water in the form of diluted liquid effluent discharges. Tens of thousands of curies of tritium, a dangerous enviro-toxin, were released from the Rowe reactor into the Deerfield River regularly over a thirty year period. Boiling water reactors like Vermont Yankee were forced to install off gas systems to filter and decrease the contaminated waste released. However Vermont Yankee on average still releases over 3,000 curies a year into the Connecticut River Valley. CT Yankee released over 120,000 curies of tritium into the Connecticut River.