PHMSA pledges to comply with NEPA in letter to U.S. Senators

The U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has pledged to seven U.S. Senators that it intends to fully comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) before approving a Canadian radioactive steam generator shipment through U.S. territorial waters on the Great Lakes. PHMSA's Administrator, Cynthia L. Quarterman, wrote to U.S. Senator Russ Feingold on November 8, 2010. Feingold led the effort, that included six other Democratic Senators from Great Lakes states (Durbin from IL, Levin and Stabenow from MI, Casey from PA, and Schumer and Gillibrand from NY), to question and express concerns about the proposed shipment of 16 radioactive steam generators from the Bruce nuclear power plant on the Lake Huron shoreline of Ontario, via Lakes Huron, St. Clair, Erie, and Ontario and the rivers and waterways that connect them, across the Atlantic Ocean, to Sweden for "recycling" into consumer products. While PHMSA's pledge to comply with NEPA is welcome, the broad international environmental coalition opposing this shipment and the "recycling" of radioactive waste continues to call for a careful and comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement to be performed, rather than a lesser Environmental Assessment and "Finding of No Significant Impact" (FONSI) rubberstamp. In addition, the PHMSA letter to Sen. Feingold listed 17 instances of "[radioactive] nuclear power plant large components [having] been transported in U.S. waters" -- although some of these shipments were previously known to the public, some of them were not, including a 2001 radioactive steam generator shipment on Lake Michigan from Kewaunee nuclear power plant in northern Wisconsin to Memphis, TN.