Tom Bailie, a farmer who lived in the shadow of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state and became an advocate for downwinders affected by nuclear radiation, died at age 76, the Spokane Spokesman-Review newspaper reported Sunday.
Born in Pasco, Wash. in 1947, Bailie’s family moved soon afterward to a farm across the Columbia River from what is today DOE’s Hanford Site, according to the Spokesman-Review. Bailie’s mother gave him daily pills, likely potassium iodide, to combat the cancer-causing potential of radiation from the plant, according to the book, “The Hanford Plaintiffs: Voices From The Fight For Atomic Justice,” by Richland native Trisha Pritikin.
Bailie also discussed nuclear safety on an episode of ‘Firing Line,’ the public television program hosted by conservative commentator William Buckley, according to the Spokesman-Review.
In 2011, Bailie signed onto a Northwest Environmental Advocates action seeking to block renewal of the operating license for Energy Northwest’s Columbia Generating Station, located at the Hanford Site.
“I have just visited Fukushima, Japan,” Bailie wrote in a filing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “Based on the accident at the Fukushima reactors [in Japan in March 2011], I no longer believe that nuclear reactors in the United States are safe nor that the emissions from them pose no environmental threat,” he wrote.
A link to Bailie’s obituary can be found here.
