Groups Admonish NRC for Threat to Preempt States on Groundwater Protection

[May 27, 2010]  In a May 25, 2010 joint letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) from Beyond Nuclear, Eastern Environmental Law Center, Greenpeace, Natural Resources Defense Council, Riverkeeper and Union of Concerned Scientists, the environmental groups ask the federal safety regulator “to confirm in writing that the NRC recognizes that it is both legal and appropriate for the States to take legal action against licensees when drinking water is under threat.” 

The groups’ request follows disclosure at the April 20, 2010 NRC public meeting regarding on-going groundwater contamination from nuclear power plants of a July 5, 2006 letter from the NRC Office of General Counsel (OGC) to the State of Illinois. The NRC attorneys threatened federal preemption if the State Attorney General pursued a lawsuit against Exelon Corporation’s for uncontrolled and unmonitored radioactive leaks from its nuclear power plants in the state that had polluted groundwater.  The groups admonished the NRC that since the agency “has chosen not to enforce its mandate to protect human health and safety with respect to multiple groundwater contamination issues, we strongly urge the NRC to cease any attempts to preempt state governments from exercising their authority to protect important economic and environmental resources within their borders.”

The not-so-veiled threat from NRC under former Chairman Dale Klein may have influenced the State of Illinois to settle with Exelon for $1.5 million in damages for violations of state groundwater protection laws originally assessed at $36.5 million that stemmed from radioactive leaks at the Braidwood, Bryon and Dresden nuclear power plants. Braidwood’s radioactive pollution of state regulated groundwater both on and off the reactor site went undisclosed by the company for a decade. Similarly, Exelon is now defying the enforcement authority of the State of New Jersey to order a clean-up of a drinking water aquifer contaminated by radioactive leaks from Exelon’s Oyster Creek nuclear power plant.  The Beyond Nuclear report “Leak First, Fix Later” describes in the chapter “Illegal Trespass and an Industry Above the Law” the legal prowess and arrogance of the nuclear industry now revealed to have included the NRC as an adversary to state rights to regulate and enforce water protection laws.

Vermont Yankee now leaking Sr-90 into soil

Entergy Nuclear has now admitted that the bone-seeking radioisotope Strontium-90 has been discovered in soil near underground leaking pipes at its Vermont Yankee atomic reactor on the bank of the Connecticut River. Several years ago, Sr-90 was also detected leaking from the high-level radioactive waste storage pool at Entergy Nuclear's Indian Point atomic reactors on the bank of the Hudson River in New York State. Nuclear engineer Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates warns that Sr-90, which is highly soluble in water, can concentrate in bones and cause leukemia, and thus is the most hazardous radioisotope yet discovered leaking into the environment at the 38 year old reactor just across the Connecticut River from New Hampshire, and just several miles upstream from Massachusetts. Other leaking elements discovered into the site's groundwater and soil include tritium, cobalt-60, cesium-137, manganese-54 and zinc-65. Raymond Shadis of the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution is very skeptical that Entergy Nuclear's assurances that all Sr-90 contamination at Vermont Yankee has now been accounted for and cleaned up.

Regulator ignoring oversight responsibilities at leaking reactors

A report by Beyond Nuclear - Leak First, Fix Later: Uncontrolled and Unmonitored Radioactive Releases from Nuclear Power Plants - looks at the epidemic of reactors leaking tritium into groundwater. The report finds that the federal regulator – the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission -  is ignoring its oversight and enforcement responsibilities at the nation’s increasingly leaky, uninspected and unmaintained nuclear power plants.  The report shows that despite agency efforts initiated in 1979 to prevent uncontrolled radioactive releases to groundwater, the NRC is capitulating to an industry decision to take almost three more years before announcing an action plan.

Instead of mandating compliance with established license requirements for the control and monitoring of buried pipe systems carrying radioactive effluent, the NRC cedes responsibility to industry voluntary initiatives that will add years onto the resolution of a decades-old environmental and public health issue.

Of further concern, the agency and the industry continue to downplay and trivialize the health risks of prolonged exposure to tritium, a known carcinogen which is shown to cause cancer, genetic mutations and birth defects.

The highly-publicized leaks of radioactive hydrogen – or tritium – from buried pipes at the Braidwood, Oyster Creek and Vermont Yankee nuclear power plants have drawn attention to a more widespread and longstanding problem analyzed by the report. Leaking U.S. reactors are now ubiquitous. There is evidence of 15 radioactive leaks from March 2009 through April 16, 2010 from buried pipe systems at 13 different reactor sites. At least 102 reactor units are now documented to have had recurring radioactive leaks into groundwater from 1963 through February 2009.

The full report, the executive summary and the press release can all be downloaded. We encourage you to reproduce and distribute all three and to forward these documents to others in your community and to send the press release to your media contacts.

UCS files emergency enforcement petition with NRC regarding Davis-Besse lid leaks

The Union of Concerned Scientists' nuclear safety project director Dave Lochbaum has filed an emergency enforcement petition with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission concerning recent revelations of boric acid leakage through the Davis-Besse atomic reactor's lid near Toledo, Ohio. Similar leakage at Davis-Besse led, in 2002, to the nearest-miss to a major accident since Three Mile Island actually suffered a 50% core melt down in 1979. Due to that previous debacle, NRC fined Davis-Besse's owner, FirstEnergy, a record $5.45 million in penalties. However, this most recent leakage of corrosive boric acid appears to have again violated NRC's operating license, risking a fast-breaking breach of the reactor pressure vessel boundary and potential loss-of-coolant accident.

New York Times calls on Entergy to "stop abusing the Hudson River"

In a remarkable editorial, the New York Times has celebrated the State of New York's decision to block Entergy Nuclear's Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant's NPDES (National Pollution Discharge Elimination System) permit, which could force the two reactors to shut down in 2013 and 2015. The Times praised Hudson Riverkeeper, as well as folk singer Pete Seeger, for their watchdogging of the reactors, pointing out that a billion river organisms per year are killed by the plant's obsolete "once through" cooling system. (The Times may have to run a correction, though, as only 15% of the metro NYC area gets electricity from Indian Point -- the 30% figure referred to in the editorial includes nuclear electricity supplied by additional reactors in New York State and New Jersey.)