Environmental coalition defends contentions against Fermi 3 proposed new reactor, challenges adequacy of NRC FEIS

Environmental coalition attorney Terry LodgeTerry Lodge (photo, left), Toledo-based attorney representing an environmental coalition opposing the proposed new Fermi 3 atomic reactor targeted at the Lake Erie shore in Monroe County, MI, has filed a reply to challenges from Detroit Edison (DTE) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff.

The coalition's reply re-asserted "no confidence" in DTE's ability to safely stored Class B and C "low-level" radioactive wastes on-site at Fermi 3 into the indefinite future, due to the lack of sure access to a disposal facility. it also again emphasized the lack of documented need for the 1,550 Megawatts of electricity Fermi 3 would generate. And the coalition alleged that NRC has failed to fulfill its federal responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), as by the illegal "segmentation" of the needed transmission line corridor from the rest of the Fermi 3 reactor construction and operation proposal.

This legal filing follows by a week upon the submission of public comments about NRC's Fermi 3 Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS). The comments, commissioned by Don't Waste Michigan and prepared by Jessie Pauline Collins, were endorsed by a broad coalition of individuals and environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear. The FEIS comments included satellite images of harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie in 2012, and in 2011 to 2012, attributable in significant part to thermal electric power plants such as Detroit Edison's Monroe (coal burning) Power Plant, at 3,300 Megawatts-electric the second largest coal burner in the U.S. Fermi 3's thermal discharge into Lake Erie will worsen this already very serious ecological problem.

In the very near future, the environmental coalition intervening against the Fermi 3 combined Construction and Operating License Application (COLA) will submit additional filings on its contentions challenging the lack of adequate quality assurance (QA) on the project, as well as its defense of the threatened Eastern Fox Snake and its critical wetlands habitat. The State of Michigan has stated that Fermi 3's construction would represent the largest impact on Great Lakes coastal wetlands in the history of state wetlands preservation law. 

On the 38th anniversary of the Browns Ferry near-disaster, another look at "Fire When NOT Ready" -- unaddressed fire risks at U.S. atomic reactors

A current discussion of fire risks at the Palisades atomic reactor in Michigan prompted Dave Lochbaum at UCS to share his 2008 report "Fire When NOT Ready," co-authored by Jim Warren of NC WARN and Beyond Nuclear's Paul Gunter.

Palisades' previous owner, Consumers Energy, admitted in 2006 that fire protection upgrades -- and many other major safety repairs -- were an expense too many, prompting it to sell the reactor to Entergy in 2007. However, over the past 6 six, Entergy has not carried out those fire protection upgrades (nor most of those other needed repairs).

Dave Lochbaum, who will speak about safety risks at Palisades during presentations in west Michigan on April 11th, wrote the following note today, accompanying the report:

"I've attached a report from 2008 that I co-authored with Paul Gunter and Jim Warren.

About the only thing that would have to be revised to bring this report up to today would be its date.

50 of the nation's 103 nuclear power reactors are KNOWN to violate federal fire protection regulations.

As the report states, the NRC estimates that fire represents about 50 percent of the risk of core meltdown at the average nuclear power reactor -- meaning it equals the threat from ALL OTHER HAZARDS combined. And that assumes compliance with the regulations -- violating the regulations drives the risk up.

Of the 50 reactors that violate the fire protection regulations today are the three at Browns Ferry. That's right (or wrong, actually), the plant whose near-catastrophic fire on March 22, 1975 prompted the NRC to adopt fire protection regulations does not meet those regulations today. And today marks the 38th anniversary of that near-miss.

An industry and regulator constantly asserting that safety is the top priority cannot achieve compliance with very important safety regulations despite decades of time to do so.

If actions speak louder than words, inactions speak the loudest. NRC's inactions on this topic are deafening.

Thanks,

Dave Lochbaum

UCS"

"70 Years of Radioactive Risks in America and Japan"

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps presented a power point entitled "70 Years of Radioactive Risks in America and Japan" at the Helen Caldicott Foundation's symposium on "Fukushima: The Medical and Ecological Consequences," held at the New York Academy of Medicine on March 11-12, 2013. The previous link is the power point presentation in its original form, retaining the notes.

Here is the presentation in PDF format (images only, without the notes).

"Entergy's Power Struggle"

In his March 15th article entitled "Entergy's Power Struggle" (which appeared in The Street's "Real Money"), Glenn Williams -- despite a clear pro-nuclear industry bias -- lays bare the many challenges faced by Entergy at multiple atomic reactors operating in multiple states. In fact, Williams concludes "Entergy faces every challenge imaginable. Simultaneously, it faces outdated federal regulations, hostile states and declining power markets." 

For example, the Palisades atomic reactor's impending violation, in 2017, of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) already-weakened reactor pressure vessel (RPV) embrittlement/pressurized thermal shock (PTS) safety regulations, could force the plant's permanent shutdown. Williams portrays NRC as to blame, that its regulations are outdated and obsolete in the face of new technical understandings. He goes so far as to imply that "there is no [safety] issue at all." Palisades watchdogs would hotly contest that claim. For, as Hiromitsu Ino has written in the very introduction to his Citizens Nuclear Information Center-Tokyo newsletter article on pressurized thermal shock risks in pressurized water reactors, "Destruction of a reactor pressure vessel due to neutron irradiation embrittlement should be called an extreme severe accident. If the pressure vessel breaks, there is almost no way of preventing a runaway chain reaction. Such extreme damage must be avoided at all costs."

On Feb. 29, 2012, environmental watchdogs forced NRC to admit, at a public meeting nearby the reactor, that Palisades has the worst embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the U.S., an admission NRC repeated on its March 19 Webinar about Palisades RPV embrittlement.

However, Williams points out, Entergy could simply pay NRC the needed funds to carry out yet another rollback of the regulations, in order to allow Palisades to continue operating till 2031 -- the end of its NRC rubber-stamped 20-year license extension. Williams also points out that such a regulatory rollback would also help out other pressurized water reactors that are beginning to bump up against NRC's PTS safety regulation limit -- so the rest of the nuclear power industry could be looked to, to help foot the bill for NRC's regulatory rollback work.

Williams goes on to describe Entergy's struggles with the States of Vermont, New York, and Massachusetts, at Vermont Yankee, Indian Point, and Pilgrim, respectively. Williams seems baffled as to why states would feel "hostility" towards Entergy, and would strive to shutown its atomic reactors within their borders. He needn't have looked far for answers: Entergy officials lied to State of Vermont officials under oath about underground pipes leaking radioactivity into soil, groundwater, and the Connecticut River. As Richard Watts documented in his book Public Meltdown: The Story of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, Vermont Yankee went from being considered a valued asset to a pariah almost overnight, due to Entergy's "rogue corporation" behavior.

And Indian Point must be ranked as one of the top homeland security vulnerabilities in the entire country, located so close to New York City (21 million people live within 50 miles), and eyed by Al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks as a potential future target. As Ed Lyman at UCS documented in 2004, a successful terrorist attack at Indian Point could cause 44,000 acute radiation poisoning deaths, as well as 518,000 latent cancer fatalities, just within a 50 mile radius. It could also cause $1 to $2 trillion in property damage, just within a 100 mile radius.

Although he complains about "the state rigged...deal to favor wind at the expense of nuclear," Williams did admit that Cape Wind was likely to outcompete Entergy's Pilgrim atomic reactor in Massachusetts in the near future. Williams failed to mention, however, the half century of subsidies provided by ratepayers and taxpayers to the nuclear power industry, as documented by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2011.

Williams seems to applaud Entergy's belligerence toward the state governments (not to mention the populations) which host its reactors, writing "When it comes to its merchant fleet, Entergy has a history of aggressiveness." After describing the ongoing struggles between Entergy and Vermont and New York, Williams writes "Like the Vermont case, Entergy refuses to roll over for New York."

As if any more evidence were needed to document Entergy's "aggressiveness," The Courthouse News Service has reported on Entergy's latest legal attack on New York State, in an article entitled "Entergy Tells New York to Butt Out of Nuke Plant." Entergy has retained multiple law firms to argue its numerous legal battles in both federal and state courts, as well as state regulatory agency administration courts, in both New York and Vermont.

Entergy Nuclear's ironic slogan is "The Power of People." Entergy Nuclear may get to know what "The Power of People" is all about, in States like Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Vermont, as chronicled in this week's Beyond Nuclear "Entergy Watch" update!

Entergy Watch: FitzPatrick, Indian Point, Palisades, Pilgrim, Vermont Yankee

FitzPatrick

AGREE New York (Alliance for a Green Economy), working in partnership with Beyond Nuclear, have filed an emergency enforcement petition with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), seeking the immediate shutdown of the Fukushima-twin design FitzPatrick atomic reactor on the Lake Ontario shore in upstate NY. Help AGREE reach its goal of 1,000 signatures in support of its petition by signing on!

AGREE's website also covers a serious radioactive tritium leak at the adjacent Nine Mile Point nuclear power plant. As listed in Beyond Nuclear's "Freeze Our Fukushimas" pamphlet, FitzPatrick and Nine Mile Point Unit 1 are General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors, identical in design to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4. Nine Mile Point Unit 2 is a GE BWR Mark II, very similar in design to the Mark I. Beyond Nuclear's "Freeze Our Fukushimas" campaign seeks to permanently shut these demonstrably dangerous reactors, whose containment structures were known to be too small and too weak by 1972.

Presumably, the NRC Commission's vote this week, to require hardened vents at Mark Is and IIs as a "lesson learned" from the Fukushima catastrophe (but, by a 4 to 1 vote -- with NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane the sole dissent -- to reject radiological filters on those hardened vents) will finally require FitzPatrick to install one. FitzPatrick was the only one of the 23 Mark Is in the U.S. to refuse to "voluntarily" install containment vents in an effort to compenstate for its too small, too weak containment. However, the newly ordered hardened vents are not required to be installed until Jan. 1, 2018 -- an inexplicable, unjustifiable five year delay!

Indian Point

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps was honored to present "The Radioactive Waste Con Game & Reactor Risk Russian Roulette at Indian Point" at the invitation of the Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition (IPSEC) at the Stony Point Center near Indian Point nuclear power plant on March 10, 2013. Featured at the IPSEC event were two U.S. Navy sailors who served aboard the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier, Jaime Plym and Maurice Enis, whose story appeared on the CBS Evening News later that very same evening. Plym and Enis were exposed to Fukushima fallout as they provided rescue and recovery support to Japan in the aftermath of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. They've been seriously sick ever since, and have joined with over 100 fellow crew members in a lawsuit against Tokyo Electric Power Company.

Palisades

Public pressure led to NRC holding a Webinar on March 19 about the embrittlement of Palisades' reactor pressure vessel (RPV) -- the worst at any U.S. atomic reactor -- and its vulnerability to a catastrophic fracture due to pressurized thermal shock. This was the third NRC Webinar about Palisades since October. The first two were about the long list of leaks and breakdowns that have occurred in recent months and years. NRC's next Palisades Webinar is slated for July, and will be about radiological releases. Beyond Nuclear has published a pamphlet about "routine radiation releases" from atomic reactors. Note that the photograph in the pamphlet, by Gabriela Bulisova, of a liquid radiological release pathway, was taken at Palisades itself. Beyond Nuclear's Paul Gunter also devoted an entire chapter of his April 2010 report, Leak First, Fix Later, to tritium leaks into groundwater at Palisades.

Both NRC and Entergy Nuclear have issued defensive statements, standing by the integrity and safety of Palisades' RPV, after a number of media outlets -- such as Reuters, and WOOD TV-8 in Grand Rapids, MI -- reported that Palisades will yet again violate NRC's already weakened PTS safety regulations by 2017, begging the question, will Palisades be forced to permanently shutdown? However, Mr. Hiromitsu Ino of Citizens Nuclear Information Center-Tokyo, in a technical paper, has warned that the Japanese nuclear industry has significantly underestimated embrittlement at its pressurized water reactors, a failure that is almost certainly true of the U.S. nuclear power industry as well.

On Monday, March 25, concerned local residents and environmental group representatives will meet with NRC Commissioner William Magwood IV in South Haven. Commissioner Magwood will tour the problem-plagued Palisades plant the next morning. This will be the second meeting with an NRC Commissioner by local grassroots watchdogs in 10 months. On May 25, 2012, 25-30 concerned citizens met with NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko just after he had toured Palisades.

On Tuesday, April 2, NRC will hold its annual End-of-Cycle-Review public meeting in South Haven. Concerned citizens are urged to attend. In 2012, citizens consistently packed a large number of NRC meetings, whether regularly scheduled or specially called.

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps will discuss Palisades, and other radioactive risks to Michigan, at a Thursday, April 4 meeting of the South East Michigan Group of the Sierra Club in Bloomfield Hills. On Monday, April 8, he will speak at the Jackson, MI chapter meeting of the Sierra Club.

The Union of Concerned Scientist's Director of the Nuclear Safety Project, David Lochbaum, will speak in west MI about Palisades on Thursday, April 11th.

Pilgrim

As reported by the Plymouth Patch, on March 15th, just an hour after the prosecutor moved to drop trespassing charges and the judge agreed, members of "the Pilgrim 14," and about 50 of their supporters, went back out to Entergy's Pilgrim atomic reactor near Boston, where five were arrested for trespassing again. The protestors had hoped to mount a "necessity defense," and had expert witnesses lined up to testify that Pilgrim's radiological trespasses against residents downwind justified efforts to shutdown the reactor.

One of those expert witnesses, Dr. Helen Caldicott, is scheduled to speak in Plymouth on March 25th.

Learn more about grassroots efforts to permanently shutdown Pilgrim at the websites of Cape Downwinders and Pilgrim Watch. Cape Cod Bay Watch, a member of the Pilgrim Coalition, has announced a "Save Our Bay Flotilla" for June 9th.

Vermont Yankee

March 21st is Vermont Energy Independence Day! It is also the first anniversary of the expiration of Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee's original 40-year operating license, as marked by Richard Watts in his blog "Failure to Navigate." The very next day, the first day of VY's state-contested, NRC-rubberstamped 20-year license extension, 1,500 rallied in Brattleboro, marching to Entergy's Vermont HQ, where over 150 were arrested for non-violent civil disobedience. Additional arrests took place at Entergy's Northeast HQ in Westchester County, NY near Indian Point nuclear power plant, as well as in New Orleans at Entergy's national HQ.

Watts is the author of Public Meltdown: The Story of Vermont Yankee, which chronicles the decline and fall of Entergy Nuclear, and its VY atomic reactor, in the Green Mountain State, from core asset and good neighbor, to rogue corporation and pariah. Watts, with the support of the Linthilac Foundation, has generously donated 50 copies of his book to Beyond Nuclear. They have sold like hotcakes at recent Beyond Nuclear presentations near Palisades and Indian Point. All proceeds have gone towards the grassroots groups, such as Michigan Safe Energy Future and Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition, resisting Entergy on a local level.

The Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance, Safe and Green Campaign, and SAGE Alliance have announced a "Leaks, Lies, and Lawyers" parade and rally in Brattleboro on March 30th, featuring the Bread and Puppet Theater, protesting a year of illegal operations by Entergy's VT Yankee Nuke.

And, as reported by the Rutland Herald, even NRC has begun questioning Vermont Yankee's financial qualifications.

In addition, an accidental over-pressurization, and blow-out panel failure, has raised concerns about increased radiological releases during current re-fueling operations at Vermont Yankee. 

Raymond Shadis, senior technical advisor for the New England Coalition, was quoted by the Rutland Herald:

"This incident is a downtime demonstration of the fact that secondary containment, as well as primary containment, is designed for failure of its ostensible purpose of containing radioactive releases in the event of a reactor accident...In short, even the most obtuse observer should now understand that Vermont Yankee’s containment safety systems have a very high probability of failure."

The Brattleboro Reformer also reported on the failure of VY's exhaust fans, resulting in over-pressurization of the reactor building and the blow-out of the panel. The panel was supposed to be secured with a wire cable, to prevent it from falling to the ground, but it landed on the turbine building roof nonetheless.