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This comment is about how NOLA’s disaster history shapes the risk sensibilities in NOLA anthropocene and the effect of it on discourse of Nuclear Energy in the region. What are the possibilities that Mississippi as an anthropocenic river pose for re-inventing radiation contamination as a risk sensibility of anthropocene and thereby to construct memory as nomadic spatialities in the epoch of anthropocene? 

As I have been working on social movements around nuclear energy and ways of knowing, sensing and representing radiation (contamination), I look for spaces of nuclear cultures. After doing a brief research on the anthropocenics of New Orleans, I pushed myself to know about the Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) in NOLA. There are three NPP that lines the Mississippi river as it flows through Louisiana: Waterford and Riverbend nuclear energy generating stations, Grand Gulf Plant (Port Gibson, Mississippi bordering Louisiana). Of these three NPPs, New Orleans falls within 50 miles of Emergency Planning Zone and on the Ingestion Exposure Pathway of the Waterford NPP[refer to image enclosed (or) shorturl.at/cwG05]. It is also important to note that New Orleans is the headquarters of Entergy Corporation, a fortune 500 company and the second largest generator of nuclear power in the US. Entergy's Indian Point Energy Centre, NY, which I am engaged with, is set for decommissioning in 2021 after polluting the Hudson River with multiple safety events that spanned across 4 decades.

The anthropocenics of New Orleans and environmental groups working against (environmental) degradation focuses mainly on the flooding, rising waters, storming, land use. Conversations about NPPs or safety events, based on what I could gather from secondary resources, seems almost absent. As an article written in the aftermath of Fukushima disaster points out (shorturl.at/bdlmn), "there is no independent watchdog group with expertise in nuclear plant safety keeping a close eye on River Bend, Waterford and Grand Gulf." In addition, the safety infrastructure of the Waterford NPP has largely to do with protection against rising water, flooding and hurricane thus making disaster imagination of Waterford NPP more exterior than interior (shifting focus from disasters arising from the functionality of the plant). How should we read the erasure of radiation contamination risk from the toxic history of New Orleans: as an absence, a construct or a lacunae considering its close proximity to Entergy headquarters?

This may open up spaces for future research in many directions. But what seems particularly interesting to me is how disaster memory fraught by water imageries in NOLA (rising water and hurricanes) shapes risk sensibilities of the New Orleans anthropocenics. If risk sensibilities are shaped largely by water imageries playing a key role in constructing what a disaster means in the region, for me the question remains: How Mississippi can be constructed as waters of anthropocene and as Ivan Illich's Waters of forgetfulness (Lethe), for it to embody the nuclear legacies of radiation contamination at St.Louis, Missouri as the river flows/cuts through the Eastern US? Meticulous archiving of toxic and anthropocenic histories and stories around river and water may bring to them the quality of Mnemosyne, river of remembrance in the epoch of anthropocene. It can be regarded as an effort to render the invisible more than visible and more so, a shift from the temporal significance of memory to a spatial significance of memory with water/river as nomadic spatialities.

The wiki page about the powerplants looks so sanitized for a nuclear energy skeptic like me:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Bend_Nuclear_Generating_Station#Safety_record

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterford_Nuclear_Generating_Station

https://www.nola.com/news/business/article_1a47fade-0a81-5ad6-bc57-90ff3d4786b9.html

https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/environment/article_33314570-bdc0-11e8-8cce-8398f362ffbb.html

https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=457013

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0525/ML052510099.pdf

the community as a whole, along with the CSO, can be seen as a resilience due to the fact that the CSO community and many peopole in the community as a whole have helped to improve the system that is currently in use especially since many of the systems  are outdated. granted, there are those who could care less in the community, but there are those that are taking steps toward the end goal of cleaning up our environment.

Hazards/risks are distributed among different groups through geography. for example, areas near the Eastern shoreline like places in New Jersey are in a group because their zone damage is much more than those further away from the Eastern shorline like places in Nevada.

Newark helped to set up the JFK Center as a shelter with the help of the American Red Cross. further more, "Booker also urged residents to check on their neighbors, particularly the elderly, to be sure they have adequate supplies and protection during the hurricane"

many recommendations are also being made by the city of Newark to advize their citizens

as stated in the article two things have been done to help prevent sewage in overflow systems.one is that, "Nearly 65 overflows already have been permanently closed off, according to the Dept. of Environmental Protection." also, many other communities spent millions of dollars to install grates and shields on the overflow pipes. this would help prevent most trash from entering the system.