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.
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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.