"Just trust us!" wears thin at Davis-Besse

An NRC inspector examines recently revealed cracks in the Davis-Besse concrete shield buildingTom Henry, editorial writer and columnist at the Toledo Blade, has published commentary entitled "Safety of Davis-Besse comes down to a question of faith." Henry, a board member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and reporter of record on the 2002 Davis-Besse hole-in-the-head fiasco -- the nearest miss to a major nuclear accident in the U.S. since the 1979 Three Mile Island meltdown -- attended a standing room only January 5th U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) public meeting, successfully demanded by U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (Democrat-Ohio), about recently revealed cracks in Davis-Besse's radiological containment concrete shield building. Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps also testified at the NRC meeting, and then, on behalf of an environmental coalition, spearheaded a 60 page contention about the cracking in opposition to FirstEnergy's application for a 20 year license extension at the problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor.

Fox News Toledo's Jennifer Steck covered Beyond Nuclear's street theater skit at Davis-Besse atomic reactor before the Jan. 5th NRC meeting, as did Northwest Ohio's WNWO and the Toledo Blade. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported on the NRC meeting, as did the Sandusky Register, Port Clinton News Herald, Cleveland Fox 8, NPR station WKSU, Toledo ABC, and WTOL.

On January 25th, NRC announced a major delay in the publication of its Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Davis-Besse license extension. This was due to FirstEnergy Nuclear revising its Severe Accident Mitigation Alternatives (SAMA) analyses in its 20 year license extension application. Beyond Nuclear and an environmental coalition including Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, and the Green Party of Ohio successfully intervened against the license extension by raising SAMA concerns over a year ago, and has defended its contentions ever since.

Palisades: "It's an accident waiting to happen"

In August 2000, Don't Waste Michigan board member Michael Keegan, Alice Hirt, and Kevin Kamps called for the permanent shut down of Palisades, with its cooling tower steam and Lake Michigan visible in the backgroundOn January 15th, Tina Lam of the Detroit Free Press published an exposé on the long problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor in Covert, Michigan on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Owned by Entergy Nuclear (which operates such other controversial reactors as Vermont Yankee, and Indian Point near New York City), Palisades suffered 5 "un-planned shutdowns" in 2011 alone, the most serious of which involved a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) "Yellow finding" of "substantial safety significance" regarding an "electrical fault." Translated from euphemisticly misleading Nukespeak, this meant the near electrocution of a worker, and the loss of half of the control room's functions, figuratively leaving operators half-blinded, half-deaf, and half-paralyzed as they raced to adequately cool the hot reactor core. Both the pressurizer and the steam generators were a mere 9 minutes away from "going solid" -- filling completely with liquid water -- and thus losing their ability to cool the hot reactor core. One more mistake, or break down in systems, structures, or components, could have spelled disaster. Incredibly, as reported by the Freep, "It began with a light bulb...". Lam also broke the story on Palisades' five year overdue replacement of its severely corroded reactor lid.

The article quoted Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, 20-year watchdog on Palisades, as saying: "If all these failings and accidents line up in just the right way, we could have a very bad day at Palisades," said Kevin Kamps, a Kalamazoo native and staff member at Beyond Nuclear near Washington, D.C. ...Kamps said opponents of the plant wanted it shut down instead of winning a 20-year extension. "It's an accident waiting to happen," he said.

A large coalition of Michigan and Great Lakes environmental groups, led by Don't Waste Michigan and Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), opposed the Palisades 20 year license extension. It was rubberstamped nonetheless by NRC in 2007, despite Palisades having the worst embrittled reactor pressure vessel in the United States, at risk of a pressurized thermal shock "hot glass under cold water" fracture and consequent loss of coolant accident.

In addition to the front page article, the Freep linked to a 101 page long NRC inspection report on the "electrical fault"; an NRC "White finding" of "low to moderate risk significance" involving "the improper greasing of a knife edge on the overspeed trip mechanism which contributed to a failure of the turbine driven auxiliary feedwater pump (pump P-8B) during surveillance testing on May 10, 2011"; yet another NRC "White finding" regarding the August 9, 2011 failure of "a safety-related service water pump (P-7C)," a repeat of a 2009 incident; a listing of "Recent problems at the Palisades nuclear plant," including one in which "A supervisor walks off the job in the control room without permission, apparently after an argument, which leads to a violation notice"; and finally, an article about new proposed reactors, including Fermi 3 in Michigan (Beyond Nuclear has helped lead an environmental coalition in opposition to that plan).

Vermont Yankee case shows states not allowed to look out for their citizens' safety

The decision on January 19 by federal judge Garvan Murtha, ruled that the state of Vermont cannot order the closure of its reactor, Vermont Yankee, on March 21, 2012 when its current license expires. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission had already re-licensed the plant for another 20 years (doing so 10 days after the inception of the Fukushima-Daiichi reactor meltdowns that are the same design as Vermont Yankee.) Murtha said federal law pre-empts the state's ability to determine the licensing of a nuclear power plant because the reasoning was "radiological safety" concerns which the judge said the state is not authorized to regulate. The decision effectively deprives the state of the ability to protect its own citizens even though the regulator, NRC, clearly did not have the safety of Vermonters in mind when extending the plant's operating license. The decision is all the more alarming given the numerous safety problems at the plant and the deception by its owners, Entergy, who denied the existence of buried pipes that had in fact leaked tritium.

NRC “accepts” Beyond Nuclear petitioned actions for review at dangerous Fukushima -style reactors

A December 13, 2011 decision by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) safety panel that accepts several key publicly requested actions regarding safety at US General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors, was publicly noticed  in the Federal Register dated January 3, 2012.

On April 13, 2011, one month after the Fukushima nuclear disaster began, Beyond Nuclear – later joined by 8,000 co-petitioners – formally submitted emergency action requests to an NRC safety review panel regarding safety concerns at the 23 US operating Fukushima-style reactors. The petition also included the permanently closed – but nuclear waste laden – Millstone nuclear power plant in Connecticut.

The NRC’s chief safety officer, Eric Leeds, agreed that the NRC will now review  several key publicly requested actions including revoking federal approval of the current failed GE Mark I containment venting system; and ordering all Mark I operators to install backup emergency power systems to ensure cooling in the reactors’ densely packed rooftop irradiated fuel pools.

 

 “We are encouraged that NRC has agreed to look into revoking its prior approval of dangerous venting systems installed on these Fukushima-style reactors,” said Paul Gunter, Director of the Reactor Oversight Project at Beyond Nuclear.  “The nuclear industry is advocating for the status quo, which is unacceptable post-Fukushima. If these reactors can’t meet their original licensed condition for containment as ‘essentially leak tight’ then they shouldn’t be allowed to operate,” he charged.

Beyond Nuclear has launched a national coalition effort to “Freeze Our Fukushimas” which aims to permanently suspend operations at all 23 General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors in the United States similar to the dangerously flawed reactors that melted down and exploded in Japan following the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Leeds dismissed a request from the petitioners for “immediate” enforcement action without which, the petitioners argue, US reactors can remain dangerously vulnerable to failure for decades.

The NRC safety panel also agreed with the public petitioners to review emergency back-up power systems (alternating current from generators and direct current from battery banks) be installed to cool densely-packed high-level radioactive waste cooling ponds that sit six to ten stories up in the Mark I reactor building where, per unit, hundreds of metric tons of highly radioactive and thermally hot spent fuel is being stored.

““Every community living in the shadows of these reactors with a rooftop high-level radioactive waste dump wants the emergency power systems installed now,” said Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist with Beyond Nuclear. “The industry must be able to ensure cooling can be supplied to hundreds of tons of irradiated nuclear fuel when the lights go out,”  “Our recommendation is a significant upgrade over the current NRC task force’s aim to only supply emergency power to ‘makeup water,’ as we call for prevention of boil off in the first place,” he said.  “We’re asking questions about the unintended consequences from that condensation raining down on control room electrical circuits and elsewhere,” he concluded.

A recent scientific study has provided compelling evidence that in fact a high-level radioactive waste fire at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 in Japan did occur, and caused large-scale releases of hazardous, radioactive cesium-137 directly into the environment, as the storage pools are not located within radiological containment structures. Individual GE Mark 1 storage pools in the U.S., as at Vermont Yankee, Pilgrim near Boston, and Fermi 2 near Detroit, hold more high-level radioactive waste than all four failed units at Fukushima Daiichi put together.

What is really behind the "witch hunt" targeted at U.S. NRC Chairman Jaczko?

U.S. NRC Chairman Gregory JackzoRyan Grim of Huffington Post, in an in-depth investigative report, documents that U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner (NRC) William Magwood IV and top Nuclear Energy Institute lobbyist Alex Flint have worked together before to "take down" Democratic political appointees in the nuclear energy field. Andrew Cockburn had also previously reported on this story at Counterpunch, quoting Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps:

“[NRC Chairman Jaczko's] not ‘our guy’ by any means, he has voted to re-license plants that should probably be shut down” says Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear.  “But he does care about safety, in ways that the [other NRC Commissioners] do not.”

One of Jaczko's (pictured, left) greatest "transgressions" against the nuclear power industry and its right wing political supporters -- earning their eternal wrath -- seems to be his carrying out of President Obama's policy decision to phase out the Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste dump. Before becoming an NRC Commissioner, Magwood had advocated for opening the Yucca dump.

Media coverage of this "mutiny" at the highest levels of the NRC began on Friday, December 9th with U.S. Representative Darrell Issa's (Republican-California) public release of a letter from NRC Commissioners Magwood, Svinicki, Ostendorff, and Apostolakis to President Obama that was clearly marked "Not for Public Disclosure," and has continued up to the present, as documented, with links to the articles, at the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Project's What's News page.

The webcast of the 3 hour, 30 minute long hearing on these matters, conducted on Dec. 15, 2011 by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), featuring the five NRC Commissioners as the sole witnesses, is archived online.