Coalition defends hearing at Palisades, with help from allies
Terry Lodge, Toledo-based legal counsel for the environmental coalition (Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste MI, MI Safe Energy Future, and Nuclear Energy Information Service) intervening against Entergy Nuclear's Palisades License Amendment Request (LAR), has filed a brief in defense of the coalition's hard-won hearing. The LAR, if approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), would allow Palisades to continue operating, despite loss of fracture toughness in its thermally stressed, neutron embrittled, age-degraded reactor pressure vessel (RPV) below safety screening criteria by Dec. 2016.
The coalition intervened on the matter on March 9, 2015. The NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (ASLBP) ruled in the coalition's favor on June 18, 2015, granting an evidentiary hearing on the contention. Entergy appealed the ASLBP's ruling to the full NRC Commission on July 13, 2015. The coalition's rebuttal was filed on August 7, 2015.
On July 30, 2015, the Mayor Grand Rapids, MI -- George K. Heartwell -- wrote a letter to NRC's Chairman, Stephen Burns, urging that the hearing be allowed to proceed, and that physical safety tests be required to be conducted on the status of dangerous embrittlement of Palisades' age-degraded RPV. The southwestern section of Grand Rapids -- the biggest city in west MI -- is located within the 50-mile Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ) downwind of Palisades.
Entergy's Palisades atomic reactor in Covert, MI on the Lake Michigan shoreline, is immediately adjacent to the Palisades Park Country Club to the south, and Van Buren State Park to the north.On August 4, 2015, Brian Huffine, President of the Board of Directors of the Palisades Park Country Club, wrote to NRC Chairman Burns on behalf of the Board and members of the community. The more than century-old Palisades Park represents Entergy Palisades nuclear power plant's nearest neighbors, with 205 cottages located immediately next door to the south (just to the right of the mechanincal draft cooling towers shown in this photo on the left). He urged that physical tests of RPV capsule samples be conducted, in order to assure the safety integrity of the worst embrittled RPV in the U.S. The June 18 ASLBP ruling held in favor of considering the need for additional capsule tests at Palisades, before the next scheduled one in 2019.
On August 7, 2015, Wallace Taylor, an attorney representing the Sierra Club, filed a friend of the court brief in support of the ASLBP ruling granting the environmental coalition a hearing. The Sierra Club's Nuclear-Free Michigan, founded and chaired by Mark Muhich, has taken a very active interest in safety risks at Palisades.
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On August 10th, Rosemary Parker reported on this story in the Kalamazoo Gazette.
Parker provided a link to the letter by Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell, and quoted Mark Muhich, founder and chairman of Sierra Club Michigan Chapter's Nuclear-Free Committee:
"We felt compelled to weigh in on this case because a rupture of the Palisades pressure vessel due to embrittlement could kill thousands of western Michigan residents, ruin thousands of square miles of the best agricultural land in the state, and poison Lake Michigan, the source of drinking water for millions of people," Muchich wrote in a news release announcing the club's filing of an amicus brief last week.
WSJM Radio of St. Joe, MI has also reported on this story, including a short clip of an interview with Sierra Club Michigan Chapter Nuclear-Free Committee Chairman Mark Muhich.
The Sierra Club press release, including a link to the amicus brief, is posted online here.