Anti-nuclear activists who rallied on Sunday for Charlie Hebdo understood the connection

As many of our anti-nuclear colleagues rallied on Sunday to pay tribute to their fallen comdrades at Charlie Hebdo, their protest against the silencing of dissenting voices was brought close to home once again. The group Coordination Anti-nucléaire Sud-Est learned one day before the Hebdo assassinations that Areva was suing them for defamation. Areva objects to the group reporting on the infiltration of elected officials by the nuclear lobby. This comes on the heels of a similar law suit brought against the French anti-nuclear activist Stéphane Lhomme of l’Observatoire du Nucléaire, who revealed that Areva made a multi-million dollar payment to Niger (where the company mines uranium), part of which was used to buy the Niger president a jet. The verdict in the Lhomme case will be announced on January 21st. Both groups and the French anti-nuclear movement broadly, contend that the state will continue to protect Areva in the on-going colonial war to plunder uranium resources from Niger, Mali and elsewhere in Africa. The Coordination Anti-nucléaire Sud-Est also released a statement condemning the assassinations at Charlie Hebdo and making the connection between colonialism and the suppression of freedom of expression. Read a translation of their statement here. (Caption on the cartoon, by Tignous, one of those killed at the Charlie Hebdo offices, reads: "Everything is fine at the Arlit uranium mine. If Areva says so."

Davis-Besse: Economic powerhouse, or house of cards?

"Nuclear power burning money" image, created by Gene Case of Avenging Angels, was featured on the cover of The Nation magazine. Used with permission of the artist.As reported by FierceEnergy, First Energy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) commissioned the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI, of which it is a leading member utility) to publish a report on the economic benefits brought by the problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor to the Ohio economy.

Apparently, unlike in Illinois, where Exelon pressured th state legislature to order state agencies to write the report, FENOC had to turn to its own trade association and lobbying arm to do it. So much for even the pretense of objectivity. (But even the IL state agency reports showed the sky would not fall if Exelon's five reactors closed!)

See what Tim Judson, Executive Director of NIRS, had to say about this FENOC/NEI report.

Beyond Nuclear on "Vermont Yankee: Post-Mortem," on Ch. 17/Town Meeting T.V. in Burlinton, VT

On Jan. 9th, Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps joined Fairewinds Energy Education's Chief Engineer, Arnie Gundersen, on the program "Nuclear Free Future" hosted by Margaret Harrington Tamulonis on Channel 17/Town Hall Meeting Television in Burlington, Vermont. The program was shown repeatedly throughout the month across Vermont.

The title for the installment is "Vermont Yankee: Post-Mortem," referring to the permanent shutdown of Entergy Nuclear's controversial Vermont Yankee atomic reactor at 12:12pm on Dec. 29, 2014.

Fairewinds Energy Education has posted the full video, as well as the audio-only, and the full transcript.

Channel 17/Town Hall TV has also posted the program.

The Vermont Yankee shutdown means the plant carcass must be safely decommissioned as quickly as possible. With full spent fuel pools, we hope Vermont Yankee rests in peace, not in pieces like Fukushima Daiichi. In this video, CCTV Nuclear Free Future Host Margaret Harrington discusses the economic, environmental, health and safety implications that the recent closing of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant will have on New England with Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps and  Arnie Gundersen, chief engineer of Fairewinds Energy Education. - See more at: http://www.fairewinds.org/vermont-yankee-shutdown/#sthash.mHAU2bNH.dpuf

The discussion is wide ranging, with a focus on the upcoming challenges of decommissioning at Vermont Yankee, including clean-up of the radioactively contaminated site, as well as management of the forever deadly high-level radioactive waste stored there.

192 Entergy Palisades workers exposed to 2.8 R in month-long job

Workers pictured at Palisades last spring doing repair work on top of the reactor vessel head. Entergy provided this and other photos of the work to the NRC.As reported by Lindsey Smith at Michigan Radio, around 185 workers (later confirmed to be 192) at Entergy's Palisades atomic reactor in Michigan were exposed to 2.8 Rem of radioactivity exposure on a single project last year. From Feb. to March, 2014, the Control Rod Drive Mechanisms at Palisades were replaced, due to chronic seal and through-wall leakage that dates back to 1972.

2.8 Rem of exposure violates Entergy's self-imposed ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) limits of 2 Rem/year for workers. 2 Rem/year for nuclear workers is the national standard in Germany, which will completely phase out reactor operations by 2022 as a direct response to the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.

However, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows, or permits, up to 5 Rem/year of exposure to nuclear workers. Members of the general public, by comparison, are only allowed to receive 100 milliRem, or 0.1 Rem, per year of exposure to artificial radioactivity from the nuclear power industry. Thus, in a single month, 185 workers at Palisades were exposed to 28 times the amount of harmful radioactivity allowed for members of the general public in an entire year.

Update on January 13, 2015 by admin

Note that while MI Radio initially reported that 185 workers were involved in the incident, Entergy Nuclear's Site Vice President, Anthony Vitale, confirmed at the Jan. 13th regulatory conference that 192 workers were involved.

Update on February 12, 2015 by admin

NRC has just released it meeting summary of the Jan. 13th regulatory conference. However, a month after the regulatory conference, and a full year after the over-exposure of 192 Palisades' workers, NRC has still not determined the severity level of the violations. NRC preliminarily had determined the violations to be a White Finding, but Entergy Nuclear has urged NRC to lower the violations to a Green Finding.

A White Finding could put Palisades back on NRC's degraded performance, increased oversight, short list, something Entergy would very much like to avoid.

Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Associates, and the expert witness in the reactor pressure vessel embrittlement/pressurized thermal shock intervention filed by a coalition of environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear, at Palisades, prepared a statement for the Jan. 13 regulatory conference. However, after listening in by phone, and waiting through, the 3.5 hour long regulatory conference (which was only supposed to last 1.5 hours), when Arnie went to read his prepared statement out loud, via phone, NRC cut him off. They wouldn't let him.

NRC announced that questions only would be allowed, but no comments (an arbitrary rule they hadn't announced before that very moment!). So Arnie asked, why isn't this violation being elevated to a more serious Yellow Finding? (In increasing order of severity, NRC's color coded violation designations go from Green, to White, to Yellow, to Red.)

The NRC's summary list of questions and NRC's "answers," does not even list Arnie's question, much less address it.

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, who attended the regulatory conference in person, also asked questions not listed there, let alone addressed. Kevin asked, for example, why NRC allowed 192 Palisades' workers to receive 2.8 Rem each, on average, in a month-long job, when Germany's nuclear workers are only allowed to receive 2 Rem in an entire year.

NRC also censored other questions that day. One public listener had emailed questions to the NRC point of contact for the meeting, as instructed, only to be told that Kevin had already asked that question, so it wouldn't be asked again. However, the person's questions had included a number Kevin had not asked.

Another member of the public tried to ask a question by phone, but was never allowed to.

So it seems NRC only acknowledges certain questions, ones it wants to deal with, and ignores the ones it doesn't want to deal with.

In over two decades of interacting with NRC, Kevin has stated this was one of the worst, most disrespectful, most upsetting treatments of the public he has ever experienced, which is really saying something. He considers NRC a rogue agency colluding with the industry it is supposed to be regulating. This entire episode is a real case in point.

But the worst part is, 192 Palisades workers were exposed to large, harmful radiation doses in just this single, month-long job.

As the U.S. National Academy of Science has affirmed, over and over again for decades now, in its seven Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) reports, any exposure to ionizing radiation, no matter how small the dose, carries a health risk for cancer. And these risks accumulate for a lifetime.

(Of course, genetic damage is also a distinct possibility -- and in this incident, workers' reproductive organs were exposed.)

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.

"Has Exelon been crying wolf?"

A map of Nuclear Illinois, prepared by NEISAs reported by Kari Lydersen of Midwest Energy News in an article entitled "Illinois report says Exelon nuclear straits not so dire," a massive bailout of $580 million per year at ratepayer expense may not be justified. Chicago-based Exelon, the country's single largest nuclear utility, has lobbied the Illinois legislature for the hand out, in order to prop up five (of 11 still operating) atomic reactors in the state, at risk of closure due to their inability to economically compete on the open market. This report was mandated by a legislative resolution rammed through over public objections earlier this year due to Exelon lobbyist pressure.

David Kraft, Executive Director of Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS), was quoted. More.