78-Year-Old Texas Shrimper Risks Life in Hunger Strike to Halt Dow’s Experimental Nuclear Reactor Plans
By The Nuclear Skeptic
Diane Wilson, a 78-year old, fourth-generation Texas shrimper, and leader of the San Antonio Bay Estuarine Waterkeeper (SABEW) is approaching her third week of a hunger strike outside Dow Chemical’s Seadrift manufacturing facility along the Texas gulf coast. On March 2nd, Wilson began protesting two simultaneous environmental threats posed by the corporation, the same company responsible for the worst environmental disaster in history: Dow’s Union Carbide India Limited pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. While she is fighting an unprecedented request by Dow to discharge plastic pollution into the San Antonio Bay estuary, Wilson also demands that Dow and partner X-energy immediately withdraw the company’s plans to build unshielded experimental nuclear reactors at the Seadrift facility. Wilson has stated unequivocally that she will not end her strike until her demands are met.
At the center of the growing controversy is Dow’s ambition to construct four “small” nuclear reactors on the Seadrift plastics site. The corporation is advancing this project through its subsidiary, Long Mott Energy LLC. Local activists, including Diane Wilson, are raising alarms due to the deeply experimental nature of the proposed reactors. According to the plans, the company is using a reactor design with no conventional steel-reinforced concrete containment structure, which stands in stark contrast to every existing U.S. nuclear plant. Furthermore, this specific nuclear reactor design has never been tested, licensed or built anywhere in the country.
Beyond the unproven reactor design, the project presents a severe long-term environmental hazard as the reactors would generate high-level nuclear waste. Because there is currently no licensed permanent repository for such dangerous, highly radioactive waste anywhere in the U.S., it would have to be stored on-site at the Seadrift facility indefinitely. For local residents like Diane, adding a permanent nuclear waste dump to an already heavily industrialized coastline is an unacceptable risk. “Dow can’t keep plastic out of our bay,” Wilson said. “Now they want to run reactors that have never been built or licensed in this country, next to our waters near our homes, and that’s just crazy”.
To block the proposed nuclear development, SABEW has taken the fight directly to federal oversight agencies. Represented by the Austin-based law firm Perales, Allmon & Ice, PC, the group has successfully intervened before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. Through this legal intervention, SABEW is actively challenging Dow’s pending construction permit application, the first to be filed for such a reactor design. In conjunction with the hunger strike, Wilson’s demand letter makes clear that Dow must cancel all plans to build nuclear reactors at the site. It additionally requires that the corporation formally withdraw its construction permit application from the NRC.
The protest has already triggered physical confrontations with the chemical giant’s corporate security personnel. On March 9, when SABEW members attempted to deliver their formal demand letter to the facility’s site director, they were intercepted by Dow’s head of security, John Weitz. Weitz informed the group that interim director Thomas Welch had replaced former site director Heather Lyons, and offered to “handle” the letter himself. When SABEW insisted on delivery to a senior official, Weitz ordered them to stop video recording and told them they were on private property. He specifically threatened Wilson with arrest if she set foot on Dow property, citing her history of a 2002 action at the facility where she scaled an 80-foot chemical tower to unfurl a banner regarding the aforementioned deadly Bhopal disaster.
Shortly after this exchange, Calhoun County sheriff’s officers arrived. The authorities presented Wilson and a SABEW member with a formal order to sign, bearing Weitz’s name, stating that they would be arrested if found on Dow property. When the group requested a copy of the order they had been asked to sign, they were told they could not have one. Consequently, the demand letter is being sent directly to Fitterling at Dow’s headquarters in Midland, Michigan.
While the experimental nuclear reactors represent a massive future threat, they compound an existing environmental crisis. Dow’s Seadrift facility currently manufactures nurdles, pre-production plastic pellets used as raw material for consumer goods. Globally, an estimated one billion pounds of nurdles enter the oceans each year. SABEW has collected millions of these pellets around the facility, including millions collected in a single spot in the Victoria Barge Canal on New Year’s Eve 2025. Instead of upgrading pollution controls to meet its existing permit—which limits discharges to “trace amounts” of “floating solids”—Dow is asking the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to rewrite the rules. The company has proposed no replacement limit, seeking an unprecedented permit that would explicitly allow it to discharge plastics into the bay.
Despite the physical toll of her fast and the threat of legal retaliation, Wilson remains encamped. “This bay belongs to the people of Texas, not to Dow Chemical,” she said
HOW TO TAKE ACTION:
Diane and SABEW would like to invite all stakeholders to sign-on to her letter demanding their permit include zero discharge of plastics (pellets, powder, and flakes) from Dow’s Seadrift facility, and cancellation of its plans to build nuclear reactors. The sign-on is open to all organizations globally. There is no current deadline set as they plan to continue to send the letter with updated sign-ons until they receive a response or until the demands are met. Tell Dow to STOP NOW! Read the letter and sign-on here.
