Comments by Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps re: Holtec at Palisades [Decommissioning] Community Advisory Panel

The following comments (designed to meet the PCAP's strict three-minute time limit) were made verbally by Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear, and board of directors member, Don't Waste Michigan, at the April 13, 2022 Palisades [Decommissioning] Community Advisory Panel, held at Lake Michigan College in South Haven, MI:

Holtec CEO Krishna Singh has floated the trial balloon of building one or more so-called Small Modular Nuclear Reactors at Palisades, according to an article by Ben Weiss dated April 8 in ExchangeMonitor. We had long feared this, since Holtec had already pulled this bait and switch at Oyster Creek, New Jersey.

Here is the relevant passage from the end of the article. And I quote:

Meanwhile, Holtec would also consider similar SMR projects at some of its other decommissioning sites such as the Palisades plant in Michigan, Singh said Tuesday.

However, he said the company would not propose advanced reactors for some decommissioning sites — particularly New York’s Indian Point and Massachusetts’s Pilgrim plant — because of local resistance. “They would burn us in effigy if we even said that, never mind build one,” Singh said.

End quote.

So I suppose if Palisades is fair game, so too then is Big Rock Point, also on the Lake Michigan shore, near Charlevoix in northern Michigan? Holtec has also applied to take it over from Entergy.

My response? Over my dead body.

If Krishna Singh thinks the Lake Michigan shore in West Michigan is easy prey for targeting his SMRs, he has revealed his profound ignorance of the proud and effective history of the anti-nuclear movement in Michigan dating back 65 years, when Leo Goodman of the UAW presciently sued the Atomic Energy Commission to prevent the construction of the now infamous “We Almost Lost Detroit” Fermi 1 reactor.

This history includes: Don’t Waste Michigan’s blocking of an 8-state so-called “low-level” radioactive waste dump targeted at us; stopping the Midland Nuclear Power Plant, and other proposed reactors like Fermi 3, dead in their tracks; a groundswell of resistance, including Eternal General Frank Kelley, against Palisades’ dangerous Lakeside dry cask storage in the first place; the shutdown for good of Big Rock Point, and fending off a state park there, due to the lingering, hazardous radioactive contamination of soil, groundwater, and Lake Michigan sediments.

It may have taken us more than 50 years, but the very high risk Palisades atomic reactor itself is now shutting down for good by May 31st. Some local resisters have fought Palisades from pre-construction right up to the present. This includes friends of mine in Kalamazoo, who gathered petition signatures against Palisades before it was built. This also includes Maynard Kaufman of Bangor, founder of the Michigan Organic Food and Farm Alliance, who passed on last summer. In fact, he and his recently departed wife, Barb Geisler, as members and supporters provided Beyond Nuclear with legal standing in our intervention against Holtec’s takeover of Palisades and Big Rock Point, in Feb. 2021, regarding which, 14 months later, we are still waiting on NRC to give us our day in court.

Krishna Singh suggested a burning in effigy. Actually, our forté has been street theater featuring the tarring and feathering of Springfield Nuclear Power Plant owner Mr. Burns from The Simpson’s, but we can be flexible.

Don’t even think about it, Holtec.