I am grateful to Sam Lovejoy for his 1974 weather-tower-toppling civil disobedience that brought the risks of nuclear power into public awareness in western Massachusetts, and I appreciate the front-page placement of your article about it [“Play it again, Sam,” Gazette, Feb. 13]. It states that there are no nuclear power plants in the Pioneer Valley, implying that we are safe here because of Sam.

Well, it all depends on which way the wind blows, as Sam knew. Because, in fact, there are two nuclear power facilities that have had a direct impact on our part of the Connecticut River Valley — Yankee Rowe in Franklin County and Vermont Yankee, literally a stone’s throw from Northfield.

Yankee Rowe operated from 1961 until 1992. During its lifetime, it routinely dumped radioactive, super-heated water into the Deerfield River, a direct tributary of the Connecticut. There are still 16 casks of extremely radioactive waste there, sitting below two dams, one of the dams big enough to send a wall of water 20 feet high downstream. Woe betide us if those casks are washed downstream and over the Shelburne Falls!

Vermont Yankee operated from 1972 until 2014 and is being decommissioned. It used Connecticut River water to cool the reactor, overheating it for 45 years, and it routinely sent radioactive gases into the air through its stack. Now there are 58 casks of forever-toxic waste with 117 million curies of radioactivity sitting very close the river.

Sorry folks, but we weren’t safe from the dangers of nuclear power then, and we still aren’t.

Ann Darling

Easthampton