Poetry Meets Nuclear Power: Author Linda Pentz Gunter Talks

Linda Pentz Gunter is an environmental advocate who founded her nonprofit ‘Beyond Nuclear’ in 2007. Now, the activist is going on to promote, “No To Nuclear: Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress and Provokes War.” 

Gunter was in conversation with the former Environmental Director for Hudson River Sloop Clearwater Inc., Manna Jo Greene and the Ulster County Legislator at Elting Memorial Library, to delve deeper into her craft, and to deliver the imminent dangers nuclear plants pose to residents here in New York State. 

After many years of advocating against nuclear power plants and warfare, Gunter decided “to write something eminently readable,” and ultimately, “to put a human face on the story [because] that often is missing.” 

Gunter recognized that nuclear plants and war are heavy topics, so part of her goal was to introduce the topic to the public with conviction without scaring audiences off with heavy language. 

Oftentimes readers aren’t able to fully grasp the gravity of political and environmental situations until they’re related back to their community and the familiar world around them. Recognizing this, she began the conversation by explaining what exactly nuclear energy was.

“Uranium [nuclear fuel] has to be mined out of the earth…and leaves 80% of the radioactivity behind on the mine site for the communities to inhale, where those communities tend to be around the world are Indigenous communities,” she said. 

Not only does the mining affect the communities around it, but when millions of dollars go into bills that propose building nuclear plants in otherwise residential areas, the life around them is threatened in these contexts too; Gunter stresses that residents are paying for it. 

Greene pointed out a Harvard study conducted that linked the proximity to nuclear plants to increased cancer mortality and birth defects. When plants are proposed, Harvard explained that what’s being proposed to people is the sullying of their water, soil and air. 

Greene sees nuclear plants as having a direct impact on Indigenous communities specifically, citing the 94 million US gallons of uranium released into the Puerco River in New Mexico (1979) as the first red flag that made her realize this was something she couldn’t stay silent about. When asked what made her realize that this was such a prevailing issue in Indigenous communities, she said, “getting to know them.”

“Very naively, when I first got into this, I thought, this is it. This is the key to the door to get this country completely on board with opposing nuclear power,” she said. “I started to talk to Native American colleagues about this, and they said, you know, forget it, no one cares. That won’t go anywhere, and they were right. No one cares about that. It’s out of sight, out of mind.” 

This turned into the process of humanizing the fight against nuclear energy as a whole, she explained. She found herself “departing into the bigger picture ideas about whether we’ve lost a sense of who we are, and where we belong on this planet.” 

She quotes Marshallese poet Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner:

“Sometimes I wonder if Marshallese women are the chosen ones. I wonder if someone selected us from a stack. Drew us out. Slow. Methodical. Then issued the order: give birth to nightmares. Show the world what happens when the sun explodes inside of you. How many stories of nuclear war are hidden in our bodies?” 

Gunter says there’s a tsunami of propaganda now circulating about nuclear energy. But it isn’t as if there aren’t people sharing their experiences; Gunter’s book is only a call for others to just go find it. She strove to shine a new light on what people may believe is a dystopian inconvenience, something that was just part of historical warfare. 

She cites the ongoing war with Iran as her inspiration for the book and not being a passive observer when it came to the longstanding issues still proliferating – issues she’s been fighting for the past 30 years. “It’s even clearer now because of what we’re seeing, ” she said. “You become vulnerable.” 

Greene further explains that at some point Indian Point Nuclear Center was discharging radioactive water, and that currently the Save the Hudson Bill is pending to prohibit this action. As the federal government continues to propose bills to build power plants freely in New York State, the alternatives lose their voice. 

No To Nuclear proposes a different approach to the alternatives: renewable energy, in the eyes of Gunter, could save lives. If it’s happening here, it’s happening to everyone.