Palisades updates: Wed., Feb. 27 & Sat., March 2 org'l mtgs in Kzoo & South Haven; April 11 David Lochbaum/UCS talks in west MI

Beyond Nuclear hopes you can attend the following meetings and presentations:

1. Wed., Feb. 27 organizing meeting at Kalamazoo Public Library in downtown Kalamazoo, 6-8 PM

2. Sat., March 2 organizing meeting at South Haven Memorial Library, 1-3 PM

3. Thurs., April 11 presentation, 12 Noon to 1:30 PM, at WMU's Bernhard Ctr., Kzoo, "Preventing an American Fukushima," David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists

4. Thurs., April 11 presentation, 7-9 PM, at the Beach Haven Even Ctr. in South Haven, "Preventing an American Fukushima," David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists

Please see below for more information on each of these activities.

We have to permanently shutdown Palisades, before it melts down. Please spread the word, forward this announcement, and post the linked flyers (below) in public places. Thanks.

---Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear, (240) 462-3216

1. Wed., Feb. 27 organizing meeting in Kalamazoo

As the Kalamazoo Gazette has reported, on Wed., Feb. 27, from 6 to 8 PM Eastern, a special town hall meeting about Entergy's Palisades atomic reactor will take place at the Kalamazoo Public Library's downtown location (315 S. Rose St., Kal., MI 49007), on the 3rd floor in the Van Deusen Room. 

Beyond Nuclear, as well as local organizers, invite the public to learn more about the current situation at Palisades, to brainstorm strategies towards the reactor's permanent shutdown, and to address radioactive waste issues. Organizers state that Palisades is old, unsafe and must be shutdown. They also state that this 45-year-old atomic reactor, just south of South Haven in Covert on Lake Michigan, is within the 50-mile radiation zone for areas, including Kalamazoo, to experience health effects from catastrophic radioactivity releases during an accident!  "We want to prevent another Fukushima Daiichi in Japan from occurring here," say organizers. The organizers invite the public to "Join with your neighbors to organize a new group working for a safe, sustainable energy future!"

For more information, please contact Iris Potter at (269) 271-4342, Catherine Sugas at (269) 692-2827, or Kevin Kamps/Beyond Nuclear at (240) 462-3216. 

 
2. Sat., March 2 organizing meeting in South Haven

As described on the flyer posted at Beyond Nuclear's website, "Organizing to Avoid the Next Fukushima," a similar meeting will take place in South Haven on Sat., March 2, from 1 to 3 PM Eastern at the South Haven Memorial Library, 314 Broadway St., South Haven, MI 49090.

For more information about this meeting, please contact Bette Pierman at (269) 369-3993, or Kevin Kamps/Beyond Nuclear at (240) 462-3216.

3. Thurs., April 11 David Lochbaum/Union of Concerned Scientists presentation at WMU in Kzoo

As described on the flyer posted at Beyond Nuclear's website, David Lochbaum, Nuclear Safety Project Director at Union of Concerned Scientists, will present on"Preventing an American Fukushima: Safety Concerns at Palisades" on Thurs., April 11, from 12 Noon to 1:30 PM Eastern, at Western Michigan University's Bernhard Center (Student Union), in Rooms 157-159. Admission is free, and open to the public. Doors will open and refreshments will be served beginning at 11:30 AM.

 Bernhard Center is located in the heart of WMU's campus at 1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008. Directions to Bernhard Center can be found here. An interactive campus map with information about where to park can be found here.

This event is co-sponsored by Beyond Nuclear and Kalamazoo Peace Center. For more info., contact Kevin Kamps/Beyond Nuclear at (240) 462-3216 or kevin@beyondnuclear.org, or Jessica Clark/Kalamazoo Peace Center at (616) 298-9318 or Jessica@kzoopeacecenter.org.

Dave Lochbaum is one of the nation’s top independent nuclear power experts. As director of UCS’s Nuclear Safety Project, he monitors ongoing safety issues at U.S. reactors, testifies before Congress and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and provides informed analysis of nuclear plant conditions and incidents, such as the March 2011 crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi facility in Japan.

A nuclear engineer by training, Mr. Lochbaum worked at nuclear power plants for 17 years, including many similar to the General Electric reactors at the Fukushima plant. He left the industry in the early 1990s after blowing the whistle on unsafe practices and joined UCS in 1996. He left UCS in 2009 to work for the NRC as a reactor technology instructor and returned to his post at UCS a year later.

Mr. Lochbaum has authored numerous reports, including The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2010, the first in a series of reports he plans to produce annually. Over the years he has been cited thousands of times by a wide range of news organizations, including the Boston Globe, Business Week, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Time, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, CBS, CNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox, Fox Business, MSNBC, NBC and NPR.

4. Thurs., April 11 Lochbaum/UCS presentation in South Haven

As described on the flyer posted at Beyond Nuclear's website, David Lochbaum, Nuclear Safety Project Director at Union of Concerned Scientists, will present on "Preventing an American Fukushima: Safety Concerns at Palisades" on Thurs., April 11, from 7-9 PM Eastern, at the Beach Haven Event Center, located at 10420 M-140, South Haven Charter Township, MI 49090. Admission is free, and open to the public. Doors will open and refreshments will be served beginning at 6:30 PM.

This event is co-sponsored by Union of Concerned Scientists and Beyond Nuclear. Please contact Kevin Kamps for more information, (240) 462-3216.

Please click here for more information about the Beach Haven Event Center, including directions.

David Lochbaum has long watchdogged the Palisades atomic reactor (as well as the Cook nuclear power plant, 30 miles further south in Bridgman, MI, also on the Lake Michigan shoreline). In March 2011, Lochbaum published his annual report, entitled "Living on Borrowed Time: The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2011." In it, he documented the 15 nearest-misses at U.S. atomic reactors during the preceding year. Two of these occurred at Palisades. A total of five -- one-third of those documented nationally -- took place at Entergy Nuclear reactors across the country (two at Palisades; two at Pilgrim near Boston; and one at Cooper in Nebraska; the latter two nuclear power plants are General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors -- twin designs to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4). During his April 11 presentations in west MI, Lochbaum will address findings from his 2013 update on his annual nuclear safety report.

Lochbaum provided commentary in 2012 about the safety significance of a water leak into Palisades' control room, which had been ongoing for over a year. He pointed out that if water can get into the control room, so can air -- which, during a radiological emergency, could contain radioactivity that would put control room operators at risk (and thus further undermine reactor safety).

Last December, Lochbaum compared safety lapses at Palisades in 2012 to the closest call to a major nuclear disaster in the U.S. since the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown, namely the Davis-Besse, Ohio 2002 "Hole-in-the-Head" reactor lid corrosion fiasco. Lochbaum's wry "Fission Stories" comprise a regular contribution to UCS's blog, "All Things Nuclear."  

In 2010, Lochbaum documented 40 years (1972 to 2010) of safety-significant control rod drive mechanism (CRDM) seal leaks at Palisades, a chronic problem uniquely bad at Palisades as compared to the rest of  the nuclear power industry. His report is entitled "Headaches at Palisades: Broken Seals and Failed Heals." His report also documented a 2001 through-wall CRDM leak at Palisades, which was repeated in August, 2012.

Last but certainly not least in terms of safety significance, Palisades has sprung yet another leak, forcing the reactor to shutdown yet again. This time, it's the safety-significant component cooling water system. The leak had been underway for 11 days before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Entergy Nuclear made it known to the public. See Beyond Nuclear's website posting for more information, including links to media coverage. 

Also, a Michigan man has been sentenced by a federal judge in Kalamazoo to five years in prison, after he was convicted of providing false reports to the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service. One bomb plot hoax involved Palisades. The judge stated at sentencing "the false reports required both the FBI and USMS to waste time and resources conducting extensive investigations of what, if true, would have been extremely serious plots." A series of major security breaches have been documented at Palisades for more than a decade. See Beyond Nuclear's website posting for more information, including a link to media coverage.