"Dangers at Fermi Nuclear Power Plant in Monroe, Michigan"

This YouTube shows Michael J. Keegan, co-chair of Don't Waste Michigan and Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, and U.S. chair of the Great Lakes United Nuclear-Free/Green Energy Task Force, presenting at the U.S.-Canadian Roundtable on Nuclear Threats to the Great Lakes in Dearborn, Michigan on May 14th, 2011. Keegan's invocation of Godzilla -- to battle the many radioactive risks afflicting the Great Lakes -- inspired an article in Detroit's Metro Times.

"Radioactive Russian roulette" at Davis-Besse atomic reactor

The Davis-Besse hole-in-the-head fiasco of 2002 was the nearest-miss Loss of Coolant Accident since the Three Mile Island meltdown of 1979A YouTube recording of Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps presenting a powerpoint about the proposed 20 year license extension and the problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor on the Lake Erie shore near Toledo has just become available. If you weren't able to make out the powerpoint slides in the YouTube, here is a PDF of the presentation. The presentation took place at the International Roundtable on Nuclear Threats to the Great Lakes and the Transition to Safe, Clean Energy, sponsored by the Sierra Club Michigan Chapter, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, and the Henry Ford Community College renewable energy department in Dearborn, Michigan on May 14, 2011.

"U.S. Nuclear Regulators, Westinghouse Spar Over AP1000 Safety Review"

Greenwire reports on an open spat between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Toshiba-Westinghouse over safety concerns with the Advanced-Passive 1000 (AP1000) new reactor design, in line for NRC final certification yet this year. In an October 2009 media release, NRC itself outted major safety concerns with the AP1000's "shield building," a key part of the radiological containment: NRC identified vulnerabilities to earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes; NRC even questioned the structural ability of the shield building to hold aloft an emergency cooling water supply under normal circumstances. Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates in Vermont, working on behalf of a coalition of environmental groups resisting nearly two dozen AP1000s targeted at the southeastern U.S., identified a second major design flaw: the AP1000's "passive" safety feature could actually serve to pump hazardous radioactivity into the environment during an accident. Gundersen prepared a powerpoint highlighting the AP1000's design flaws. Friends of the Earth, which has retained Gundersen as a technical expert, has protested both the flaws of the AP1000 design, as well as NRC's rush to rubberstamp under industry pressure.

Stephen Colbert talks back to Nukespeak

Two months ago, just 12 days into the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, on his "The Word: Over-Reactor," Stephen Colbert agreed with Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky that a nuclear catastrophe is a terrible time to think about or deal with nuclear catastropes...

Entergy Nuclear & NRC break safety promises at Palisades atomic reactor

Beyond Nuclear, in alliance with Don't Waste Michigan, has issued a media release accusing Entergy Nuclear of indefinitely postponing multiple, vital safety repairs -- and NRC of letting them get away with it. The 44 year old atomic reactor, which just began its NRC-approved 20 year license extension on March 24th, needs its reactor lid replaced, its steam generators replaced, its emergency sumps upgraded, and its fire protection regulations upgraded. In addition, Palisades' high-level radioactive waste dry cask storage -- just 100 yards from the water of Lake Michigan -- remains vulnerable to earthquakes; Palisades' indoor pool, storing many hundreds of tons of high-level radioactive waste, remains vulnerable to disruptions of the primary electric grid, as it lacks any backup power. Any one of these risks could lead to Chernobyl- or Fukushima-scale radioactivity releases in the heart of the Great Lakes, source of drinking water for 40 million people in the U.S., Canada, and many Native American First Nations.  (In the photo above, Mike Keegan, Alice Hirt, and Kevin Kamps of Don't Waste Michigan's board of director speak out against the reactor and radioactive waste risks at Palisades during the Aug. 2000 Nuclear-Free Great Lakes Action Camp; Palisades' cooling tower steam is visible in the background; the crosses bear the names of surrounding downwind communities that could be ruined in the event of a catastrophic radioactivity release).