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Relicensing

The U.S. nuclear reactor fleet is aging but owners are applying to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for license extensions to operate reactors an additional 20 years beyond their licensed lifetimes. Beyond Nuclear is challenging and opposing relicensing efforts.

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Wednesday
Oct032012

Chris Williams (VCAN, VYDA), "Entergy Watch: Resisting Palisades Atomic Reactor," WMU's Bernhard Ctr., Kzoo, MI, Thurs., Oct. 11, 4-5:30 PM

Entergy Nuclear: Resisting a Rogue Corporation, and its Radioactive Risks

A presentation by Chris Williams of Vermont Citizen Action Network (VCAN) and Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance (VYDA)

4:00 to 5:30 PM, Thursday, October 11th, 2012

Western Michigan University, Bernhard Center, Brown and Gold Room (2nd Floor, Room #242), 1903 W. Michigan Ave.,

Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5408 (click here for directions to campus, location of parking, etc.)

Come learn about Entergy Nuclear’s dirty dozen atomic reactors, including the problem-plagued Palisades near South Haven. Chris Williams is a leader of the ongoing, highly successful grassroots campaign to shutdown Entergy's dangerously degraded Vermont Yankee atomic reactor (a Fukushima Daiichi twin design). Having stopped proposed new reactors in Indiana during his 25 years of service as Executive Director of Citizen Action Coalition, he will show how community organizing can stop dirty, dangerous, and expensive atomic reactors, and replace them with efficiency and renewables like wind and solar. 

Co-sponsored by Beyond Nuclear (www.beyondnuclear.org)  and the Kalamazoo Peace Center (www.kzoopeacecenter.org)

Contact: Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear, kevin@beyondnuclear.org(240) 462-3216

For more info. on Palisades, click here.

For more background on Chris Williams, click here.

Wednesday
Oct032012

Background on Chris Williams, presenting on "Entergy Nuclear: Resisting a Rogue Corporation, and its Radioactive Risks" at WMU in Kalamazoo, MI on Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012

Chris Williams is a lead community organizer in the campaign to shut down Entergy Nuclear's Vermont Yankee atomic reactor. From the Governor to State Legislature, Attorney General to U.S. Congressional delegation, as well as citizens of all political stripes in Vermont, the State is unified in calling for the shutdown of Entergy's Vermont Yankee atomic reactor. This is due, in no small part, to community organizing that dates back not just years, but decades. Grassroots groups like Vermont Citizens Action Network (VCAN), and Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance (VYDA), both of which Chris helps lead, have been at it for decades.

Chris thought he was retiring to Vermont in 2003. Instead, he landed smack dab in the middle of the most intense anti-nuclear campaign in the country, with perhaps the best shot of anywhere in the U.S. at actually forcing the shutdown of a dangerous old reactor, which happens to be a Fukushima Daiichi twin design (a General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactor). Chris brought immense anti-nuclear grassroots campaign organizing experience with him.

Chris served as executive director of Citizens Action Coalition (CAC) of Indiana for 25 years. In the mid-1980s, CAC led the successful campaign to block two nuclear power plants in the Hoosier State -- Bailey, in Gary, and Marble Hill, in southern Indiana, on the Ohio River. It did so by beating Indiana's would be nuclear utilities in court, after a years long grassroots educational campaign, going door to door. The utilities had illegally charged ratepayers advance "investments" on their electricity bills (for which they would not share in projected future profits) in order to build the new nuclear power plants. The courts ruled that the plants had to be "used and useful," thereby making such "Construction Work in Progress" (CWIP) charges by the utilities an illegal subsidy or surcharge. The court ordered that $300 million be returned to the “unwilling investors” (also known as ratepayers) of Indiana. Families received $1,000 rebate checks in the mail (in 2010 dollars, that is around $2,000). The court ruling also effectively blocked the (largely constructed) Marble Hill and (partially begun) Bailey (on the Lake Michigan shore) nuclear power plants from ever being completed or operated, a huge grassroots victory for the planet and middle class pocketbooks.

Chris was very active in anti-nuclear campaigns in southwest Michigan as well. He brought an army of 100 door-to-door CAC canvassers to Kalamazoo's World Tree Peace Center in the late 1990s to protest U.S. Congressman Fred Upton's "Mobile Chernobyl" bill. Chris and his team from CAC were also instrumental organizers and participants, in 1999 and 2000, at the Nuclear-Free Great Lakes Action Camps, which were targeted at the problem-plagued, risky Cook (in Bridgman, south of St. Joe) and Palisades (in Covert, south of South Haven) nuclear power plants on the Lake Michigan shore. These events brought together hundreds of anti-nuclear activists from across the Midwest, U.S., and even other countries. These events were co-sponsored by Kalamazoo's World Tree Peace Center, as well as Don’t Waste Michigan, the statewide anti-nuclear watchdog. Chris went on to serve on the board of directors of the national anti-nuclear watchdog group Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), where he still serves.

A part of VCAN's and VYDA's success in Vermont came in the aftermath of Entergy Nuclear executives lying under oath to the Vermont State Legislature about radioactive leaks into groundwater at the Vermont Yankee atomic reactor. The Governor and Legislative leaders of Vermont openly call Entergy a "rogue corporation." Entergy had agreed to shutdown Vermont Yankee if the State of Vermont did not approve of its 20-year license extension. But Entergy lied. Despite a 26 to 4 vote in Vermont's State Senate in Feb., 2010 to block the 20 year license extension, Entergy instead sued the State of Vermont in federal court. A federal judge then ruled in early 2012 that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) -- which rubber-stamped Vermont Yankee's 20 year license extension just days after the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe had begun -- pre-empts the State of Vermont over nuclear matters. Vermont has appealed that ruling. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals (New York City) decision is expected in November.

In response to the expiration of its original 40 year operating license, on the first day of Vermont Yankee's hotly disputed 20 year license extension on March 22, 2012, Chris helped organize a protest by 1,600 people in Brattleboro, Vermont (the town’s population is only 12,000) at Entergy's Vermont HQ. 168 people were arrested for non-violent civil disobedience trespassing, including affinity groups at Entergy's Northeast HQ in New York State, and its national HQ in New Orleans. Creative actions continue -- a flotilla of canoes, kayaks, sail boats and fishing boats descended on Vermont Yankee via the Connecticut River on Sept. 15th, to protest the atomic reactor's massive super heated water discharges, that have devastated the local aquatic ecosystem. A group of women elders, the Shut It Down! affinity group, including 93 year old Frances Crowe, have been arrested two dozen times calling for Vermont Yankee’s shutdown.

Ironically, Chris did battle with Entergy Nuclear's CEO, J. Wayne Leonard, in Indiana a generation ago. Leonard was CFO (Chief Financial Officer) of one of the Indiana nuclear utilities, whose proposed nuclear power plant Chris and CAC successfully blocked in the mid-1980s. As Leonard has made in the ballpark of $20 million or more per year as CEO of Entergy, major safety significant repairs, or even "organ transplants" at its "dirty dozen" atomic reactors -- especially at Palisades -- have gone undone, and are now many years overdue, risking a dangerous break down. In fact, break down after break down in the past two years has earned Palisades the infamy of being considered one of the most risky atomic reactors in the country, as acknowledged even by NRC. Michigan needs to understand what a rogue corporation Entergy is, and the potentially catastrophic radioactivity risks this represents at Palisades. Chris can add the most important part: what YOU can do about it!

Friday
Sep282012

Congressman Kucinich objects to whitewash of Davis-Besse containment cracking

U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)On Thursday, September 20th, U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinch (D-OH, pictured left) sponsored a congressional briefing on Capitol Hill during the Coalition Against Nukes events in Washington, D.C. Rep. Kucinich thanked those gathered for working on an issue "that is bigger than all of us." During his talk, he focused on the whitewash, by FirstEnergy and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, of containment cracking at the Davis-Besse atomic reactor, just upwind of his congressional district on northern Ohio's Lake Erie shoreline, as representative of the dangerous state of decay of the nuclear power industry in the U.S. And he had some kind words for Beyond Nuclear: "...I want to thank my friends at Beyond Nuclear like Kevin Kamps who have been doing a fantastic job at citizen oversight over Davis-Besse."

Later that same night, Rep. Kucinich helped lead the successful effort to block H.R. 5987, which proposed creating a new national park to glorify the Manhattan Project, which culminated with the August 1945 dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.

At an NRC review meeting in Painesville, OH on Sept. 26 regarding FirstEnergy's entire nuclear fleet, Rep. Kucinich lambasted safety lapses at not only Davis-Besse, but also Perry nuclear power plant northeast of Cleveland. He asked: "Why does the NRC think FirstEnergy’s past record justifies an extension of their current operating licenses at their nuclear power plants?” As he had done at a U.S. House hearing in December 2011, Rep. Kucinich submitted for the record a Beyond Nuclear report documenting Davis-Besse's numerous near-disasters.

Wednesday
Sep262012

Entergy & NRC Watchers needed at NRC meeting on Palisades' CRDM through-wall leakage

Entergy Nuclear's problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor, located on the southeastern shore of Lake Michigan, in Covert, MIThe U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has announced a public meeting, to be held on Monday, October 1st from 1-2 PM Central time (2-3 PM Eastern time) at its Lisle, IL Region 3 office near Chicago, regarding the through-wall leakage of radioactive and acidic primary coolant water from the Palisades atomic reactor's Control Rod Drive Mechanism (CRDM). In 2007, NRC rubberstamped Palisades' 20 year license extension (from 2011 to 2031), despite fierce resistance.

If you can attend the meeting in person, please do. However, NRC is making Webinar and even call-in participation possible, for those unable to attend in person. Contact NRC Region 3 Staffer Swetha Shah by Saturday, September 29th for more information on how to participate at (630) 829-9608 or Swetha.Shah@nrc.gov.

You can also "reserve a seat" at the Webinar by signing up at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/977718426. Again, do so by Sat., Sept. 29th.

NRC will then send a confirmation email, giving additional information about the option to "Use Telephone" if you prefer, rather than Webinar. Call-in numbers and access codes will be provided. More.

Monday
Sep172012

NRC "supplemental inspection" begins at Palisades

As reported by the Associated Press, an eight member "supplemental inspection team" from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) began two weeks of work today at Entergy Nuclear's problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor in Covert, Michigan on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Last Valentine's Day, NRC lowered Palisades' safety status to among the four worst-run reactors in the U.S. This came after a September 25, 2011 near-electrocution, caused by short cuts on safety, that plunged half the control room into a power outage, instantly throwing 22 safety related plant systems into chaos. Age-degraded systems, structures, and components were strained to the breaking point, risking multiple potential pathways to loss of coolant accident in the reactor core, as control room operators took hours to bring the situation under control. NRC allowed Entergy to tell it when it was ready for this special inspection. Entergy took over seven months to prepare itself.

Despite Palisades being 45 years old, and deep into its break down phase, NRC rubberstamped its 20 year license extension in 2007, allowing it to operate till 2031. More.