"Relicensing Limerick nuke plant ignores safety risks"

NRC file photo of Exelon's twin GE Mark II BWR Limerick nuclear power plant. While NRC claims everything is coming up flowers, critics beg to differ.Dr. Lewis Cuthbert, President of the Alliance for a Clean Environment, has written an op-ed to the Pottstown (PA) Mercury, opposing the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's rubberstamp of a 20-year license extension at Exelon Nuclear's twin reactor Limerick nuclear power plant, near Philadelphia.

Limerick Units 1 and 2 are General Electric Mark II Boiling Water Reactors, very similar in design to the Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4 Mark Is.

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) intervened against the license extension before an NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board panel. NRDC raised Severe Accident Mitigation Alternatives (SAMA) analyses contentions. But their contentions fell on deaf ears, and NRC rubberstamped the license extension anyway.

As revealed in the 1982 NRC-commissioned CRAC-2 report ("Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences"), Limerick's proximity to the densely populated Philadelphia metro area means a catastrophic radioactivity release there would inflict some of the worst casualties and property damages in the entire country downwind of atomic reactors.