U.S. Sen. Markey slams NRC for biased study of HLRW storage pool risks

U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA)On the eve of a public meeting at the agency's HQ in Rockville, Maryland, U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA, photo left), a long-time congressional watchdog on the nuclear power industry and its supposed regulators at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has written a blistering letter to NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane regarding NRC staff's "Draft Consequence Study" of the radiological risks of high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) storage pool fires.

Markey's letter references a "devastating critique" of NRC's "Draft Consequence Study" submitted on August 1st by Dr. Gordon Thompson, expert witness on behalf of an environmental coalition including Beyond Nuclear.

Markey points out the irony of NRC's current flip disregard of pool fire risks, given NRC Chairwoman Macfarlane's co-authorship of a 2003 study, along with several others, including Thompson, as well as IPS Senior scholar Bob Alvarez, that clearly exposed the potentially catastrophic fire risks of pool storage.

NRC "Nuke Waste Con Game" draft GEIS published online, public comments to be accepted from Sept. 13 to Nov. 27

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Nuclear Waste Confidence draft GEIS (Generic Environmental Impact Statement) has been published online. Critics dub it a "Nuke Waste Con Game." The draft GEIS is nearly 600 pages long.

Once the draft GEIS has been officially published in the Federal Register next Friday, September 13th, a 75-day clock starts ticking. NRC will only accept public comments on the draft GEIS until November 27th.

Public comments will be accepted by NRC through various means: electronically, via fax or snail mail, or by way of oral testimony presented at a dozen public comment meetings to be held around the country from October 1st to mid-November.

Beyond Nuclear will provide the ways you can submit public comments to NRC beginning on September 13th. We will also provide sample comments, as well as talking points, to help you prepare your own written comments and/or oral testimony for the public meeting nearest you.

NRC announces dates, locations, and times for dozen public meetings on Nuclear Waste Con from Oct. 1 to Nov. 14

To see the full listing of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) public comment meetings on its court-ordered Nuclear Waste Confidence Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS), please click this link.

Dr. Gordon Thompson's "devastating critique" of NRC's HLRW storage pool fire risk whitewash

Dr. Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies in Cambridge, MAYesterday, to meet the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) arbitrarily short 30-day deadline for public comments on its "Draft Consequence Study of a Beyond-Design-Basis Earthquake Affecting the Spent Fuel Pool for a US Mark I Boiling Water Reactor" (NRC-2013-013), attorney Diane Curran and expert witness Dr. Gordon Thompson filed a blistering response on behalf of an environmental coalition of 26 groups, including Beyond Nuclear.

In her cover letter to NRC, Curran wrote: "...the Draft Consequence Study is not a credible scientific document. While the study purports to be a broad scientific inquiry into pool fire phenomena, in fact it is a very narrow study that ignores basic pool fire phenomena and important pool fire accident contributors. It misleadingly implies that a severe earthquake causing complete draining of a fuel pool is the primary source of risk to a spent fuel pool, and assumes that open-rack low-density pool storage is not advantageous without even examining it. In short, the Consequence Study appears designed to advance the authors’ pre-determined and unsupported conclusion that high-density pool storage is safe."

Thompson makes clear that a partial drain down of a high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) storage pool is an even worse-case scenario than a complete drain down, for air cooling provided by convection currents -- which might otherwise prevent ignition of the irradiated nuclear fuel's combustible zirconium cladding -- is blocked by the layer of water in the bottom of the pool. Thompson points out that any technically-competent analyst who has been paying attention to pool-fire risks since 1979 would have known that, and charges NRC with being deliberately misleading. He also points out the potentially catastrophic consequences of pool fires -- over 4 million people could be displaced, long-term, from their homes, as even NRC acknowledges.

Curran concluded: "We are appalled that after decades of avoiding and obfuscating this urgent safety issue, the NRC now proposes to rely on this biased and unscientific document to justify continued high-density
pool storage of spent fuel, both in its post-Fukushima safety review and in the Draft Waste Confidence Environmental Impact Statement. We join Dr. Thompson in urging you to withdraw the Draft Consequence Study and begin anew with a study of spent fuel pool fire risks that finally complies with basic principles of sound scientific inquiry."

Curran represented a coalition of environmental groups which, along with a coalition of state attorneys general, prevailed against NRC's Nuclear Waste Confidence at the second highest court in the land. The U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that NRC must complete an environmental impact statement on the risks of on-site storage of HLRW at reactors, including in pools. NRC did not appeal the ruling, and quickly acknowledged that the completion of the EIS would prevent finalization of proposed new reactor license approvals, as well as old reactor license extension approvals, for at least two years (NRC had previously admitted that a Nuclear Waste Confidence EIS would take seven years to complete!).

Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, has heralded Dr. Thompson's work as a "devastating critique." Alvarez adds, "Gordon's comments systematically reveal the kinds of scientific malpractice the NRC is resorting to at a time when one of the nation's largest and oldest high-hazard enterprises faces a deepening economic crisis."

Alvarez, formerly a senior advisor to the Energy Secretary during the Clintion administration, knows what he's talking about. Along with Dr. Thompson, now-NRC Chairwoman, Ph.D. geologist Allison Macfarlane, and five more experts, Alvarez published "Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States," in Jan., 2003. This groundbreaking warning about the potentially catastrophic risks of HLRW pool fires was largely affirmed by a congressionally-ordered National Academy of Science study in 2005; NRC unsuccessfully attempted to block the security-redacted public release of NAS's findings. Alvarez also published a May 2011 report on the hazards of high-density pool storage across the U.S., in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. And in June, in a report commissioned by Friends of the Earth, Alvarez focused on the risks of HLRW pool storage at the now permanently shutdown San Onofre nuclear power plant.

NEIS: "SoCal Edison Pulls the Plug on Two Nuke Reactors -- Could Have Serious Implications for Illinois"

PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release                                                   Contact:  Dave Kraft, 773-342-7650, neis@neis.org

June 7, 2013                                                                            630-506-2864 cell

SoCal Edison Pulls the Plug on Two Nuke Reactors – Could Have Serious Implications for Illinois

CHICAGO—The old crumbling nukes continue their non-radioactive decay, it seems, as Southern California Edison (SCE) today announced its decision to permanently close the damaged San Onofre twin nuclear reactors (SONGs).

The two reactors had been idled for over a year after serious steam tube generator leaks forced a shutdown of the facility.  SCE had wanted to restart the reactors at 70% power, hoping it could operate while finishing repairs.  The NRC denied approval of this plan.

“It seems to be a clear case of utility "overreach," in the sense that SCE gambled on NRC allowing them to continue flying with cracked wings --  like NRC IS doing at Palisades, in Michigan -- and lost,” says David Kraft, director of the Illinois nuclear watchdog organization Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS). “I guess this problem was just too egregious for even the NRC's usually accommodating tastes.”

Earlier this week two former NRC Commissioners and the former Prime Minister of Japan participated in a press event in San Diego, where they publicly stated what a hazard SONGs (and other reactors) have become.  This certainly didn't help SONGs’ PR case.

This closure could, unfortunately have serious negative consequences for Illinois moving forward.

Congress is currently drafting legislation that could call for the “temporary” warehousing of the high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) in the form of spent reactor fuel from closed reactors like SONGs, Kewaunee (WI), Crystal River (FL) and Zion (IL) – all closed nuclear reactors.

“If Sen. Wyden's Energy Committee drafts their legislation to include language calling for "centralized interim storage" (CIS) facilities being built, the reactors that get closed are the first priority to move waste; and, Illinois is a prime candidate to host such a facility,” Kraft points out. 

A 2012 study by Oak Ridge National Laboratory¹ states:

“…the consolidated ISFSI [spent fuel storage] site in Illinois is the single optimized site for an ISFSI solution when only [spent nuclear fuel] at orphaned reactors is considered relative to siting a consolidated ISFSI.”

“The CIS sites would allegedly be "temporary," but we've been covering the HLRW issue for 31 years now.  The Federal Government's notion of ‘temporary’ is laughable. Illinois could become the nation’s de facto permanent HLRW dump for decades,” Kraft says.

NEIS has been trying for weeks to get face to face meetings with Senators Durbin, Kirk and Governor Quinn to discuss this impending catastrophe, but without success. An Illinois CIS facility could get well over 6,200 additional tons of HLRW, above and beyond the 8,600 tons it already stores at Illinois reactors run by Exelon, according to the Oak Ridge report.

“Since 2002 NEIS and hundreds of other environmental and safe energy organizations have suggested a method called “hardened onsite storage” (HOSS) as a means of storing HLRW relatively safely at reactor sites until the federal government constructs a permanent disposal facility.  We have been ignored.  It’s time that Illinois’ politicians start paying attention, before the trucks start rolling in,” Kraft warns.

                                                                        --30--

¹ The Oak Ridge NL report, titled "Application of Spatial Data Modeling Systems, Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and Transportation Routing Optimization Methods for Evaluating Integrated Deployment of Interim Spent Fuel Storage Installations and Advanced Nuclear Plants" (http://info.ornl.gov/sites/publications/files/Pub37008.pdf)