TransCanada's other dirty, dangerous, and expensive energy scheme: Bruce Nuclear and the proposed Great Lakes radioactive waste dump

TransCanada Pipeline's radioactive wastes from its Bruce Nuclear Generating Station are targeted to be buried less than a mile from the Lake Huron shoreline.TransCanada Pipelines, infamous for its Keystone XL tar sands pipeline scheme, is also a nuclear power utility and generator of radioactive wastes.

TransCanada is a major partner in Bruce Nuclear, which leases and operates Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Kincardine, Ontario (photo, left). Bruce is one of the world's single largest nuclear power plants, with a total of nine reactors on one site: one long-shuttered early prototype reactor (Douglass Point), and eight operable commercial CANDUs (Canadian Deuterium-Uranium reactors) at the adjacent Bruce A and Bruce B nuclear power plants.

Bruce Nuclear is located on the Great Lakes shoreline, 50 miles across Lake Huron from Michigan. OPG proposes to bury all of the province's so-called "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes, including those generated by TransCanada Pipeline's, in a "Deep Geologic Repository" (DGR) at Bruce. This, despite the risk to the drinking water for 40 million people in 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations. Learn more, and take action!

Coalition presses challenge against Palisades' dangerously embrittled RPV

Entergy's Palisades atomic reactor is located on the Lake Michigan shoreline in Covert, MI. The Great Lakes serve as drinking water for 40 million North Americans in 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations.An environmental coalition, including Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste MI, Michigan Safe Energy Future, and Nuclear Energy Information Service of IL, has pressed its legal challenge against Entergy Nuclear's Palisades atomic reactor (photo, left). The coalition, represented by Toledo-based attorney Terry Lodge, and Vermont-based expert witness Arnie Gundersen (Chief Engineer, Fairewinds Associates, Inc.), filed a Combined Reply on Jan. 20, to Answers filed by Entergy and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff on Jan. 12.

Entergy submitted a License Amendment Request to NRC on July 29, seeking -- yet again -- to weaken safety standards against Pressurized Thermal Shock (PTS). Palisades has the worst embrittled reactor pressure vessel (RPV) in the U.S., an affliction suffered by all U.S. pressurized water reactors, to a greater or lesser extent. The coalition intervened against the regulatory rollback on Dec. 1.

On Dec. 23, Fairewinds Energy Education published a video about PTS risks at Palisades, entitled "Nuclear Crack Down?", featuring Arnie Gundersen.

From 2005 to 2007, a broad Great Lakes environmental coalition resisted the 20-year license extension at Palisades. Its top safety concern was PTS. NRC rubberstamped the extension nonetheless, approving operations till 2031. Palisades has violated NRC PTS safety standards for decades, but each time, NRC simply weakens its regulations to accommodate Palisades, and enable its ongoing, catastrophically risky operations.

Like a hot glass under cold water (albeit a hot glass under a ton of pressure per square inch!), Palisades' neutron-embrittled RPV could fracture if the Emergency Core Cooling System ever pumps cold water onto the hot metal. This would lead to a Loss of Coolant Accident, and likely core meltdown. If containment were to be breached, as at Fukushima Daiichi, a catastrophic release of hazardous radioactivity would follow.

"Exelon's Proposed Acquisition of Pepco: Corporate Strategy at Ratepayer Expense"

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis has released a new report, Exelon's Proposed Acquisition of Pepco: Corporate Strategy at Ratepayer Expense.

Here’s an overview, and here's a snapshot:

• The deal, if it goes through, would expose customers to rate increases aimed at supporting Exelon’s struggling business model;
• it would undermine the District of Columbia’s renewable-energy initiatives;
• and it would expose ratepayers to long-term risks that are significantly larger than the short-term protections and public benefits claimed by Exelon.

Exelon's "struggling business model"? Dirty, dangerous, expensive, age-degrading, and ever less competitive nuclear power plants, most of which are nearly a thousand miles away from Pepco's service area in D.C. and Maryland!

The full report is posted here.

Japan closing 5 reactors but U.S. still running its Fukushimas

The Japanese nuclear industry has announced it will permanently close five more of its remaining 48 "operable" nuclear reactors by March 2015, leaving the country with 43 reactors "operable" but still not actually "operating." Two of the plants to be decommissioned are the same GE Mark I boiling water reactors identical to Fukushima. Despite the political landscape in Japan still promoting nuclear power, the anti-nuclear movement there continues to campaign to keep all of Japan's reactors closed indefinitely.

Public, political and economic pressure in the U.S. contributed to the recent permanent shutdown of Vermont Yankee, a Mark I, but the U.S. continues to operate 22 more of these Fukushima-style reactors (and eight similar Mark IIs.) Beyond Nuclear campaigns for the prompt and permanent closure of all the world's "Fukushimas." More

Arnie Gundersen speaks out against Entergy and NRC for radiation over-exposures to 192 workers at Palisades

Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds was a regular expert commentator on CNN and other major news media nationally and globally after the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe began.On Jan. 13th, Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Associates, Inc. in Burlington, VT, published a prepared statement regarding the Feb. to March, 2014 control rod drive mechanism replacement project at Entergy's Palisades atomic reactor in Covert, MI. It is now known that 192 workers on the project implementation team were exposed to a whopping 2.8 Rem each, on average, during the short, month-long project.

Gundersen serves as an expert witness for Beyond Nuclear in its intervention against Palisades' unsafe operations.

Gundersen prepared the statement to read into the record of a regulatory conference between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Entergy Palisades management. The regulatory conference took place on Jan. 13 at NRC Region 3 HQ in Lisle, IL. Gundersen attended by phone, as did many others. (Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps attended in person.)

After listening in to the 3.5 hour long regulatory conference (which was only scheduled to last 1.5 hours), Gundersen finally had his chance to read his statement. Only, NRC would not let him. NRC officials suddenly announced, at that moment, that only questions would be allowed, but no comments -- an arbritary rule that had not been communicated in the days and weeks leading up to this public meeting.

In fact, three years earlier, in Jan. 2012, at a very similar regulatory conference between NRC Region 3 and Entergy Palisades management held in the exact same room, members of the public had been allowed to make comments as well as ask questions. Despite such precedents, NRC blocked Arnie's testimony.

Arnie nonetheless formulated a sharp question on the spur of the moment given him to do so: why isn't NRC citing Entergy for a significantly higher level violation, given the severity of this incident?

Gundersen's statement reveals that the entire radiological over-exposures very likely had to do with Entergy's drive to return Palisades to full power operations as quickly as possible, worker health be damned. Gundersen holds NRC equally responsible for its complicity and collusion in this "profits over health and safety" mentality.

For its part, Entergy and NRC hold that 2.8 Rem doses, on average, to 192 workers, do not represent "over-expsorures," since NRC regulations allow workers to receive 5 Rem per year. Kevin asked how and why NRC allows such large doses to nuclear workers, when a country like Germany, for example, only allows 2 Rem per year to nuclear workers. NRC ignored and refused to answer such questions.

Update on February 23, 2015 by admin

On Feb. 23, 2015, NRC officially concluded that the Feb.-March, 2014 over-exposure of 192 workers at Palisades to an average dose of 2.8 Rem constituted a White Finding. See the NRC's Final Significance Determination, here.