Activists tell Quebec premier to remember Fukushima and shut their nuke

Watch a video of a Greenpeace Canada action here.

Dr. Gordon Edwards, President of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, and Canadian co-chair of the Great Lakes United Nuclear-Free/Green Energy Task Force, has written up a short backgrounder on how hugely expensive it would be to "refurbish" Gentilly, the atomic reactor in Quebec located on the St. Lawrence River, through which the waters of the Great Lakes ultimately flow into the Atlantic Ocean. A political cartoon in a Quebec newspaper jokes about the Greenpeace occupation of the Quebec premier's office. Dr. Edwards explains and translates: the premier says to the Greenpeace occupiers, "It's gonna be safe! Gentilly-2 will be rebuilt by Quebec engineers using Quebec concrete!" [But] his assistant, aware of all the scandalous infrastructure problems in Montreal, with bridges falling apart and concrete overpasses collapsing -- including a big chunk of concrete that just fell at the garage of the Olympic Stadium -- says "Psst! This might not be the best time...."

Update on defending Great Lakes against risky atomic reactors

Satellite photo of the Great Lakes: 20% of the planet's surface fresh water; drinking water supply for 40 million people in North America; and lifeblood of one of the world's biggest regional economiesThree weeks ago, we reported on Beyond Nuclear's efforts, in conjunction with environmental coalitions and concerned citizens, to shut down two especially risky atomic reactors on the Great Lakes shorelines that have been generating a lot of controversy recently: Palisades in southwest Michigan, and Davis-Besse in northwest Ohio.

A lot has happened since. NRC was forced to admit that Palisades has the most embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the U.S. NRC's repeated regulatory rollbacks have put it at risk of fracturing like a hot glass under cold water due to Pressurized Thermal Shock. And thanks to revelations by Congressman Dennis Kucinich, we've contended that Davis-Besse's containment cracking is so severe that its outer layer of steel reinforcement rebar is no longer performing its safety function. We joined Congressman Kucinich in challenging Davis-Besse's root cause report, which blames the cracking on the Blizzard of 1978, as a "snow job of convenience."

Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario is a coalition member in the intervention against Davis-Besse's license extension, as it is against the proposal to build a new reactor, Fermi 3, in Monroe, Michigan. A number of Canadian groups also joined the resistance to the Palisades' license extension several years ago. Great Lakes United, a coalition of 150 groups in 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American/First Nations, has also passed a resolution against Fermi 3, and also opposed the license extension at Palisades. GLU's Nuclear-Free/Green Energy Task Force helps coordinate anti-nuclear efforts across the border throughout the Great Lakes. Read more.

Bi-national environmental coalition supplements Davis-Besse cracked containment contention: outer rebar no longer functional

NRC file photo of Davis-Besse atomic reactor located on Ohio's Lake Erie shorelineThe environmental coalition opposing the Davis-Besse atomic reactor's 20 year license extension (Beyond Nuclear, Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, and the Green Party of Ohio) has filed a supplement to its cracked containment contention. In a motion filed with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and License Board (ASLB) today, the coalition cited a Feb. 8th revelation by the office of U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH, pictured at left), which broke the news to the public that the NRC considers the outer rebar steel reinforcement layer in the Davis-Besse atomic reactor to have lost its functional effectiveness due to the extensive cracking. Despite this, NRC approved Davis-Besse's restart in early December 2011. The ASLB plans oral pre-hearings near Davis-Besse in the weeks ahead on the cracked containment contention. A copy of today's filing, with the Kucinich Feb. 8th media release, as well as an NRC inspection report dated Jan. 31st, is posted here. The NRC inspection report provides further detail on structural cracking in the upper 20 feet of the containment building. The coalition published a media release on today's filing, posted here.

Entergy Nuclear infamous for "buying reactors cheap, then running them into the ground," owns a number of plants on the U.S.-Canadian border

The Kalamazoo Gazette has quoted Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps responding to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's downgrading of the Palisades nuclear power plant's safety status as one of the worst in the country. The call has gone out from grassroots Vermont Yankee watchdogs for the formation of an "Entergy Watch," to monitor reactor risks at the second biggest corporate nuclear power fleet across the U.S., which includes the following dozen atomic reactors at 10 different nuclear power plants: Arkansas Nuclear One, Units 1 and 2; Cooper Nuclear Station in Nebraska; FitzPatrick in upstate New York; Grand Gulf in Mississippi; Indian Point Units 2 and 3 near New York City; Palisades in Michigan; Pilgrim near Boston; Riverbend in Louisiana;Vermont Yankee; and Waterford in Louisiana. Of these, Cooper, FitzPatrick, Pilgrim, and Vermont Yankee are General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors (GE BWR Mark Is), identical in design to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4, the focus of Beyond Nuclear's "Freeze Our Fukushimas" shutdown campaign. 

As Beyond Nuclear spelled out in a recent backgrounder, GE BWR Mark I storage pools for high-level radioactive waste are especially vulernable to catastrophic radioactivity releases, whether due to natural disaster, accident or attack.

Although a catastrophic radioactivity release from a number of Entergy-owned and operated reactors could impact Canada downwind and downstream, FitzPatrick in upstate New York is especially risky in this regard. Located on the south shore of Lake Ontario, directly across from the province of Ontario, this reactor had claimed to have installed a "hardened vent" in order to compensate for its small, weak containment, but that claim was later proved to be untrue.

U.S.-Canadian coalition presses case against cracked Davis-Besse containment, seeks to block 20 year license extension

The "Red Photo," showing boric acid corrosion on Davis-Besse's reactor vessel head, which came within 3/16ths of an inch of a Loss of Coolant Accident in 2002Yesterday,  the environmental coalition opposing the 20 year extension at the problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor near Toledo defended its contention about the recently revealed severe cracking in the concrete shield building against challenges by FirstEnergy nuclear utility, as well as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff. Terry Lodge of Toledo serves as the coalition's attorney.

One revelation the coalition exposed today is that FirstEnergy, with NRC staff complicity, kept secret from the public, and even from FirstEnergy investors, cracking in the upper 20 feet of the structure for five weeks -- until pressure by U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich (Democrat-Ohio) forced NRC staff to admit the truth to his staff. Kucinich made the information public the very next day, and won NRC Chairman Gregory Jackzo's support for an NRC public meeting near Davis-Besse, where FirstEnergy was forced to admit publicly for the first time the expanded extent of the problem.

The environmental coalition intervening against Davis-Besse's license extension includes Beyond Nuclear, Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, and the Green Party of Ohio. Davis-Besse has had a disproportionately large number of near-misses with disaster in its 35 years of operations, including a Three Mile Island precursor incident 18 months before the infamous meltdown, a very dicey direct hit by a tornado in 1998, and its own infamous "Hole-In-The-Head Fiasco" in 2002.

Update on February 14, 2012 by admin

The environmental coalition issued a media release about its defense of the cracked containment contention.