NRC announces dates, locations, and times for dozen public meetings on Nuclear Waste Con from Oct. 1 to Nov. 14

To see the full listing of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) public comment meetings on its court-ordered Nuclear Waste Confidence Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS), please click this link.

With VY shutdown announcement, will Entergy "circle the wagons" at Indian Point?

As reported by Reuters, now that Entergy has announced it will permanently shutdown its Vermont Yankee atomic reactor by the end of next year, the focus is shifting to the struggle between the nuclear utility and the State of New York, and a broad coalition of environmental groups and area residents concerned about the safety, health, and security risks for 21 million people within 50 miles of the twin Indian Point Unit 2 and 3 reactors in Westchester County near New York City (photo, left).

Update on August 28, 2013 by admin

As reported by USA Today, Entergy says it has no plans to shutdown Indian Point Units 2 & 3, despite their 40-year operating license expirations in Sept., 2013 and 2015, respectively. However, as reported, groups like Riverkeeper -- which has intervened against the license extensions, raising numerous contentions -- beg to differ.

Roger Witherspoon has reported in The Huffington Post that Indian Point 2 will be the first atomic reactor to operate with an expired license, compliments of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which has rubber-stamped an exemption.

During his final press conference as NRC Chairman in summer 2012, Greg Jaczko, in response to a reporter's question, said there is plenty of wiggle room in NRC regulations for Indian Point 2 to continue operating despite its license expiration. Such a mockery of rule of law and regulation flies in the face of something Jaczko told a coalition of concerned local residents and environmental group representatives, including from Beyond Nuclear, during a May 25, 2012 meeting near the problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor in southwest MI (also owned by Entergy, by the way). Jaczko said once a 40-year license or a 20-year license extension is granted to a nuclear utility for constructing and/or operating an atomic reactor, there is little to nothing NRC can do to force its premature shutdown. Which is exactly why watchdogs were so upset with him for joining with 5 to 0 NRC Commission votes to extend the operating licenses by 20 years at Palisades, as well as Entergy's Vermont Yankee, as but two examples.

OPG radioactive waste dump a "declaration of war against the Great Lakes"

As reported in last week's Beyond Nuclear email bulletin, resistance is mounting on both sides of the Great Lakes international border to Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) plan to bury radioactive wastes on the Lake Huron shoreline.

On Aug. 19, Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste Watchdog, Kevin Kamps, was honored to be invited to speak at the ‘Save the Great Lakes from Nuclear Waste’ town hall meeting at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. Michigan State Sen. Hoon-Yung Hopgood, D-Taylor, and State Rep. Sarah Roberts, D-St. Clair Shores, organized the event. In May, Hopgood introduced a resolution, which passed the Michigan State Senate unanimously, urging the U.S. House and Senate to oppose the plan. Roberts is poised to introduce a similar resolution once the Michigan State House legislative session resumes.

Hopgood and Roberts, along with a panel of experts, which included Ed McArdle of the Sierra Club's South East Michigan Group, as well as Beverly Fernandez of the Ontario-based group Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump, provided information about OPG's proposed deep geological repository at the Bruce Nuclear Power Plant on the Lake Huron shoreline, and the impact it could have on Michigan’s water, economy, fishing, tourism, health and future.

Those opposed to the DUD plan are urged to sign Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump's online petition.

As reported by the Detroit Free Press:

'Opponents of a proposal to build an underground nuclear waste dump less than a mile from the shores of Lake Huron railed tonight in Detroit against a project they called a declaration of war against the Great Lakes...

Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist for Takoma Park, Md.-based Beyond Nuclear, said the project would be unprecedented because nuclear waste has not been stored underground in the Great Lakes region and could be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.

“This proposal is insane. It’s a declaration of war against the Great Lakes,” Kamps said...'.

The Macomb Daily Tribune also reported on this story.

On August 12th, the Macomb Daily Tribune ran another comprehensive article about the proposed Canadian radioactive waste dump, and opposition to it downstream in eastern Michigan.

Ontario's Lucknow Sentinel also reported on the town hall meeting.

Joseph Mangano/RPHP report on radioactivity releases from Palisades and increased death rates in the surrounding area

Entergy's problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor in Covert, MI, on the Lake Michigan shorelineJoseph Mangano, Executive Director of Radiation and Public Health Project, has published a report, commissioned and endorsed by Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste Michigan, Michigan Safe Energy Future, and Nuclear Energy Information Service. Based on government data and documentation on radioactivity releases from Palisades, as well as area health statistics, the report's major findings raise serious questions about the connections between radioactivity releases and increased overall death and cancer mortality rates.

Press release

Full report: NUCLEAR CONTAMINATION AND HEALTH RISKS FROM THE ENTERGY PALISADES NUCLEAR REACTOR.

Beyond Nuclear pamphlet "Routine Radiation Releases from U.S. Atomic Reators: What Are The Dangers?" Note that the water discharge pathway photo was taken (by Gabriela Bulisova) at the Palisades atomic reactor, discharging into Lake Michigan. Although the atmospheric discharge pathway was photographed at the Callaway atomic reactor in Missouri, Palisades has a very similar vent attached to its containment building for aerial discharges of radioactive gases and vapors).

Beyond Nuclear report (published April 2010) by Reactor Oversight Project Director Paul Gunter, "Leak First, Fix Later," with a chapter on Palisades' tritium leaks into groundwater, first reported by Entergy Nuclear in 2007.

Update on August 21, 2013 by admin

WWMT TV 3 Kalamazoo reported on this story -- including a short summary at noon, and a longer story on the evening news -- as have WSBT TV-22 South Bend, Indiana and ABC57 News South Bend, as well as WKZO Radio Kalamazoo. The Detroit News and Holland Sentinel published articles, as has the Kalamazoo Gazette/MLive. WKZO Radio also interviewed Kevin on Lori Moore's morning show on Wed., Aug. 21st.

Nuclear injustice served: three objectionable rulings in three days on Davis-Besse, Yucca Mountain, and Vermont Yankee

So much for separation of powers, checks and balances. As it is with the executive and legislative branches, wooed by the corporate cash of nuclear lobbyists and campaign contributors, it seems the U.S. judicial branch is not immune when it comes to the politically and economically powerful nuclear industry and its armies of high-priced lawyers.

A kangaroo court at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) ruled on August 12th against a petition filed by Toledo-based attorney Terry Lodge on behalf of an environmental coalition, including Beyond Nuclear. The coalition is seeking open, transparent license amendment proceedings on the FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) plan to replace the steam generators at its problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor near Toledo next year.

FENOC is taking the same short cuts on safety that led to the dangerously botched steam generator replacements at San Onofre, CA, which put 8 million southern Californians at risk, and caused the permanent shutdown of two atomic reactors, a $2.5 billion boondoggle. Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Associates, Inc., serves as the environmental coalition's expert witness at Davis-Besse, just as he has for Friends of the Earth at San Onofre. The environmental coalition will not give up, and is currently considering its next steps at Davis-Besse, in its ongoing resistance to the risky steam generator replacements, the atomic reactor's severely cracked concrete containment, as well as FENOC's proposed 20-year license extension. The Toledo Blade has reported on this story.

By a split decision, on August 13th, a panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of the States of Washington and South Carolina et al., ordering the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to resume the Yucca Mountain, Nevada high-level radioactive waste dump license application proceeding. But the ruling amounts to "the doing of a useless act," for NRC has only $11.1 million remaining in its coffers with which to conduct the proceeding.

The dissent was filed by the Circuit's Chief Judge Garland, who argued that what little money NRC has remaining should be used to preserve the existing records from this largest ever licensing proceeding in the agency's history. Garland reasoned:

"In short, given the limited funds that remain available, issuing a writ of mandamus amounts to little more than ordering the Commission to spend part of those funds unpacking its boxes, and the remainder packing them up again."

Garland also pointed out that Yucca's ultimate price tag would require Congress to approve not just over $100 million per year in licensing support, but, if the application is ultimately approved, many tens of billions of dollars to carry out construction and operation (DOE's last estimate for the total cost of Yucca, should it proceed, made several years ago, was nearly $100 billion). Congress has not seen fit to increase NRC's licensing proceeding funding in a number of years.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), the Silver State's bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation, Nevada's state government, and grassroots environmental groups have all vowed to continue their successful resistance against the Yucca dump, despite the absurd, largely meaningless court ruling.

Then, on August 14th, a three-judge panel at the Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City ruled in favor of Entergy Nuclear, and against the State of Vermont, in the marathon battle over the fate of the Vermont Yankee atomic reactor. The appeals court judges agreed with a lower court's Orwellian determination that Vermont state legislators had really meant "safety" when they passed laws regulating energy economics, the need for (or lack thereof) Vermont Yankee going forward, and the atomic reactor's impacts on the Connecticut River from thermal water discharges, impacts on tourism and recreation, etc. 

While radiological safety has been deemed the "sole province" of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission under the Atomic Energy Energy of 1954 (never mind the agency is asleep at the Geiger counter, derelict in its duty to protect public health, safety, and the environment!), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1983 PG&E case that states retain jurisdiction regarding nuclear power in all those other areas.

As documented in the classic 1975 book We Almost Lost Detroit by John G. Fuller (about the Oct. 5, 1966 partial meltdown at the Fermi 1 experimental plutonium breeder reactor in Monroe County, MI), a half-century ago, a strongly worded dissent in the U.S. Supreme Court case United Auto Workers v. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission described the Atomic Energy Act as a dark day for our democracy. Ironically, in spite of yesterday's New York City appeals court ruling, one of the judges pointed out that Congress probably didn't intend to so undermine state's rights when it passed the Atomic Energy Act six decades ago!

The silver lining, however, is that the court did not order Vermont taxpayers to pay for Entergy's multi-million dollar legal bills. Also, the authority of the State of Vermont's Public Service Board to rescind the "rogue corporation" Entergy's Certificate of Public Good, its license to do business in the Green Mountain State, seems to be retained intact. The PSB, which can consider the company's character in its deliberations, is set to rule in late autumn or early winter. Not only Vermont's Governor and Attorney General seem determined to fight on, but so does the grassroots environmental resistance.

To paraphrase U.S. Representative Ed Markey (D-MA), recently elected to the U.S. Senate, Franz Kafka is spinning so fast in his grave, he should be hooked up to a turbo-generator and connected to the electric grid!