Enformable Nuclear News: Entergy battered by wrongful death lawsuit in Arkansas, safety-signficant arrest in New York

Entergy's dirty dozen atomic reactors across the U.S.Entergy is serious facing legal troubles -- a wrongful death lawsuit at its Arkansas Nuclear One plant, and an arrest of a supervisor at its Indian Point nuclear power plant near New York City.

This lawsuit and arrest call into question Entergy's commitment to safety, to put it mildly. But then again, Entergy's unwritten business plan is "buy reactors dirt cheap, and run 'em into the ground -- safety risks be damned!"

But industry profits over public safety is also NRC's top priority, it seems. The Japanese Parliament concluded that the root cause of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe -- the reason the reactors were so vulnerable to the natural disaster to begin with -- was complicity and collusion between the nuclear power industry, its supposed government regulators, and elected officials. Sound familiar? We have that in spades in the U.S., too!

Enformable Nuclear News, run by Lucas W. Hixson, has run a couple recent articles that shed light on the "rogue corporation" that is Entergy Nuclear. (Top elected officials in Vermont -- such as Governor Peter Shumlin, and leaders of the State Legislature -- have long referred to Entergy, in public and explicitly, as a "rogue corporation." This came after multiple top Entergy officials lied to State of Vermont officials, under oath, repeatedly, saying that the Vermont Yankee atomic reactor did not have underground pipes that carry radioactive materials. They made these statements in 2009, some as late as December. In January, 2010, Entergy was forced to admit that indeed there were such pipes -- in fact, they were leaking tritium and other radioactive poisons into the soil, groundwater, and Connecticut River.)

The first Enformable Nuclear News article reports on a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of the worker -- 24-year-old Wade Walters -- who was killed, when a 500-600 ton piece of equipment was dropped on him during transport at Entergy's Arkansas Nuclear One plant last Easter Sunday. 8 additional workers were injured in the fatal accident.

Shamefully, Entergy Palisades' Site Vice President, Tony Vitale, bragged about Entergy's occupational safety during an early April NRC public meeting in South Haven, MI, just days after the fatal accident in Arkansas. Not a word had been mentioned during the meeting, neither by NRC nor Entergy, about the fatal accident, during the public meeting. When Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps had his chance at the microphone during the public comment period, he made sure to mention it, and point out the irony and inappropriateness of Vitale bragging about Entergy's occupational safety record!

The second story Enformable has posted concerns an arrest made in New York, of an Entergy supervisor at Indian Point nuclear power plant (nearby, and upstream from New York City). He is accused of falsifying vital safety records, in order to prevent Indian Point from being shutdown, at the loss of a million dollars per day, or more, in electricity sales (Indian Point has two reactors, of 1,072 Megawatts-electric (MW-e) each). His falsification involved the readiness -- or lack thereof -- of emergency diesel generators (EDGs) -- essential to the cooling of the atomic reactors' cores in the event of a power outage on the primary electric grid. Without the grid or the EDGs, Indian Point could have been quickly plunged into "Station Black Out" (SBO), which is exactly what led to the triple meltdowns and four major explosions at Fukushima Daiichi, Japan, and the catastrophic radioactivity releases there.

WNYC reported on this story.

About a decade ago, Dr. Ed Lyman at Union of Concerned Scientists did a major report about the safety and security risks at Indian Point, entitled "Chernobyl on the Hudson?" Leaving aside radiation deaths and injuries, in the tens and hundreds of thousands that would be possible (21 million people live or work within 50 miles of Indian Point), TRILLIONS of dollars in property damage could result from core meltdown(s) at Indian Point.

States hosting Entergy reactors had better wake up to Entergy's rogue corporation status, as Vermont has. They had better do something about it, before it's too late! Entergy's reactors must be shutdown, before they melt down!