Environmental coalition challenges NRC on risk of HLRW pool fires yet again

IPS senior scholar Robert AlvarezIt's déjà vu all over again! After announcing a public meeting on August 22nd -- supposedly intended for technical dialogue -- the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) attemped to change the rules, and unabashedly refused to respond to watchdogs' challenges to its biased analysis regarding high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) storage pool fire risks. The strong backlash by representatives of an environmental coalition, inlcuding Beyond Nuclear, has forced NRC to try again. NRC has issued a public notice, as well as slides, for its Sept. 18th public meeting.

The coalition's attorney, Diane Curran, has re-issued talking points first developed for public use in the lead up to the previous meeting. They are more relevant than ever. Curran urges concerned members of the public to register to speak by emailing kevin.witt@nrc.gov. You can phone into the meeting at (888) 324-8193 [enter passcode 4345562], and can watch the webcast at http://video.nrc.gov or https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/984626536.

On August 1st, Curran, and one of the environmental coalition's expert witnesses, Dr. Gordon Thompson of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies (IRSS), submitted a "devastating critique" regarding NRC's "Draft Consequence Study" on the risks of fire in HLRW storage pools. Curran and Thompson called for the study to be withdraw, due to its lack of basic scientific integrity and credibility.

Now Robert Alvarez (photo, above left), senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), has weighed in on the coalition's behalf. Alvarez previously served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy during the Clintion administration. After the 3/11/11 nuclear catastrophe began in Japan, he published a report on the potentially catastrophic risks in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant HLRW storage pools--the largest concentrations of hazardous artificial radioactivity in the entire country.

As U.S. Senator Ed Markey has pointed out in a letter to NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane, a 2003 study written by none other than Macfarlane herself (along with co-authors Alvarez, Thompson, and several others) starkly contradicts NRC's current "Draft Consequence Study" regarding pool fire risks. Astoundingly, and at catastrophic risk, NRC staff is relying on the "Draft Consequence Study" as the basis to recommend that no expedited transfer of irradiated nuclear fuel should be required as a "lesson learned" in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe. Beyond Nuclear and hundreds of environmental groups representing all 50 states have called for pools to be emptied into "Hardened On-Site Storage" (HOSS) for well over a decade, but their calls have fallen on deaf ears at NRC.

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 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:

Last operating reactor in Japan shutdown

For the first time in 14 months, not a single nuclear reactor is operating in Japan. For anti-nuclear activists, it is the development they have been clamoring for.

But those who work in the nuclear industry are far from happy. And then there are entrepreneurs of renewable energy sources who have their own take on the situation.

The last time no nuclear reactors were operating was between May 5 and July 1, 2012.

The No. 4 reactor at Kansai Electric Power Co.'s Oi nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture was taken offline Sept. 15 for routine inspections. Until then, it was the only reactor that was up and running.

Jun Yokoyama braved heavy rains from a typhoon to distribute anti-nuclear fliers in the Nakanoshima district of Osaka on the day the reactor was switched off.

"Power demand was met this summer with only two nuclear reactors (at the Oi plant) online," the 29-year-old Kobe University graduate student said. "There is no need for 50 reactors across Japan." The Ashahi Shimbun

Urgent call for help at Fukushima. Sign petition!

Concern is growing internationally not only at the apparently worsening situation at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors — where hundreds of tons of radioactive water pour into the sea daily — but at the Japanese government’s lack of focus in dealing with the on-going catastrophe.

Internationally, there is an increasingly more urgent call for Japan to invite and accept help from independent experts to deal with the leaking radioactive waste storage tanks at the site, and the complex challenge to divert the flow of ground water around, rather than through, the contaminated complex. (Fukushima workers pictured above).

Environmental groups in Japan have launched a petition directed to Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, Toshimitsu Motegi, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry and Shunichi Tanaka, Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) demanding that they concentrate on the marine calamity and cease all activities related to restarting nuclear power plants in Japan or selling the technology abroad. Please sign this petition today!

In recognizing that the technical challenges at the Fukushima Daiichi site are immense, the environmental groups, supported by many colleagues and activist groups around the world, are asking the Japanese government to “bring together the combined wisdom of independent experts with no vested interests from within Japan and internationally (i.e. domestic and international independent expertise)." 

Meanwhile, while 95% of the Japanese public believe that the situation at Fukushima Daiichi is out of control, Prime Minister Abe focused his recent energies on a final, and successful, push to secure the 2020 Olympic Games for Tokyo. He used the selection of Tokyo as host city for the Games to state that  "that there has not been, is not now and will not be any health problems whatsoever," from the disaster, a position that is unsupportable in medical science. 

Buried in the same news cycle was the decision by the Japanese courts not to prosecute TEPCO executives for their handling of the Fukushima disaster. Residents of Fukushima had filed a criminal complaint, and are insensed at this decision.

In the US, 31 Fukushima-style reactors remain running — the antiquated and dangerous General Electric Mark I and Mark II boiling water reactors (BWRs). This notorious design was flagged in 1972 as too flawed to build, but the warnings were ignored. During Congressional testimony in 1976, three senior GE engineers who had publicly resigned, testified the design was “so dangerous that it now threatens the very existence of life on this planet.” 

Shortly after the Fuksuhima Daiichi disaster began, Beyond Nuclear initiated its Freeze our Fukushimas campaign to call for the shutdown of all this country’s GE Mark I and II BWRs. While Japan now contemplates how it will permanently freeze a wall 90 feet (30 meters) deep into the earth around the Fukushima wreckage to contain radioactivity migrating into water and the ocean, the focus must also be on permanently freezing the operation of all GE Mark I and Mark II reactors. 

Beyond Nuclear continues its work in support of communities threatened by the GE reactors.  Join the actions for closure of dangerous GE reactors with the next live webcast on September 30, 2013 where the public meets the NRC. Contact Paul Gunter at paul@beyondnuclear.org to learn more and visit the Freeze our Fukushimas page on our website. You can also download our Freeze our Fukushimas campaign pamphlet that also lists all the Mark I and II reactor sites in the U.S.

House Republicans likely to grill NRC Chairwoman Macfarlane regarding proposed Yucca dump

NRC Chairwoman Allison MacfarlaneU.S. House Environment and the Economy Chairman John Shimkus (R-IL), and other Republican members of the subcommittee, are likely to grill U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane (photo, left) at a hearing on Tuesday, September 10th regarding her position on the long-moribund proposal to dump the nation's high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The hearing comes after a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ordered NRC to resume the long-suspended Yucca dump licensing proceeding, despite the lack of adequate funding. More.