Concerns Pertaining to Gas Transmission Lines at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of the Inspector General "Event Inquiry" report (Case No. 16-024), here.

'An Insanely Bad Move': Experts Sound Alarm as Trump's Nuclear Safety Agency Weighs Rollback of Plant Inspections

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said one member of Congress, "needs to do more—not less—to ensure nuclear reactor safety."

As reported by CommonDreams.

Update on July 17, 2019 by admin

As reported in the CommonDreams article above:

Before the recommendations were released Tuesday, Democrats from the House Appropriations as well as Energy and Commerce committees expressed concerns about potential rollbacks of safety standards in a letter (pdf) to NRC Chairwoman Kristine Svinicki Monday.

The lawmakers wrote:

To ensure nuclear power provides safe, reliable, emissions-free energy, it is imperative for the NRC to uphold strong regulatory standards. That is why we are disturbed by the consideration of these far-reaching changes to the NRC's regulatory regime without first actively conducting robust public outreach and engagement. It would be a mistake to attempt to make nuclear power more cost competitive by weakening NRC's vital safety oversight. Cutting corners on such critical safety measures may eventually lead to a disaster that could be detrimental to the future of the domestic nuclear industry.

[Beyond Nuclear response: We appreciate House Democratic committee leaders of jurisdiction not allowing Trump's NRC from selling the shop on safety, and doing something about this latest outrageous move by the agency mandated to protect public health, safety, and the environment, but often doing the exact opposite. But we must take exception with some of their stated claims. Nuclear power is inherently unsafe, unreliable, and is not emissions-free, to begin with!

Need examples?

Safe? Fukushima Daiichi shows U.S. reactor designs are not safe. The U.S. still has a large number of operating, age-degraded Fukushima twin designs -- General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors.

Reliable? As the climate crisis worsens, reactors will have to be shutdown, because they are too unsafe to operate under extreme conditions. Already, safety-related shutdowns have led to years-long zero power levels at atomic reactors. After the Hole in the Head Fiasco at Davis-Besse, Ohio, for example, the reactor was idled for two long years, for needed lid replacement.

Emissions-free? What do you call forever deadly high-level radioactive waste, if not an emission?! Each year of reactor operation generates around 20 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel, for which we have no safe, sound solution. Re: carbon emissions, the nuclear fuel/uranium chain certainly has those. What about high-level radioactive waste management forevermore? In that sense, nuclear power has ongoing, countless carbon and greenhouse gas emissions, as high-level radioactive waste management -- the need to isolate the highly hazardous wastes from the environment forevermore -- will continue perpetually into the future.

To provide genuinely safe, reliable, and emissions-free electricity, we should turn to renewables like wind and solar power, not dirty, dangerous, and expensive nuclear power! And efficiency's savings on energy wastage, foregoes the need to generate the wasted, inefficiently-generated and inefficiently-utilized electricity in the first place!]

Environmental Coalition Demands Expedited Release of Documents regarding Public and Nonpublic Meeting Between NRC and FERC: Groups Cite Risks to Ratepayer and Taxpayer Pocketbooks from Massive Proposed Bailouts, and Regulatory Rollback Safety Risks

Terry Lodge of Toledo, OH, legal counsel for Beyond Nuclear and Don't Waste MichiganBeyond Nuclear issued the following press release (see it in PDF format here; in .docx format here; and pasted in below):

News from Beyond Nuclear

For Immediate Release, June 12, 2018 

Contact: Terry Lodge, legal counsel for Beyond Nuclear and Don’t Waste Michigan (photo, left), (419) 205-7084, tjlodge50@yahoo.com

Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist, Beyond Nuclear, (240) 462-3216, kevin@beyondnuclear.org

Michael Keegan, Don’t Waste Michigan, (734) 770-1441, mkeeganj@comcast.net

Environmental Coalition Demands Expedited Release of Documents

regarding Public and Nonpublic Meeting Between NRC and FERC

Groups Cite Risks to Ratepayer and Taxpayer Pocketbooks from Massive Proposed Bailouts,

and Regulatory Rollback Safety Risks

Washington, D.C.—A coalition of environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan, Public Citizen, and the Sierra Club, have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), seeking documents related to its public meeting, as well as its separate, secretive, nonpublic meeting, held with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday, June 7, 2018. The FOIA request letter to NRC is posted online.

“We are deeply concerned that at the same time President Trump and Energy Secretary Perry are scheming with nuclear power industry lobbyists to massively bail out dangerously age-degraded atomic reactors at public expense in order to keep them operating for years to come, NRC and FERC may be conspiring behind closed doors to further weaken safety regulations, in order to boost industry profits even more,” stated Terry Lodge, counsel for Beyond Nuclear and Don’t Waste Michigan.

Experts featured on a telephone press conference held on June 6, 2018 – including Tyson Slocum, director of the Energy Program at Public Citizen, a signatory group endorsing today’s FOIA request – warned that the Trump/Perry bailout could cost U.S. federal taxpayers, and American ratepayers, up to $17 billion per year, for old reactor subsidies alone. An additional $17 billion per year electricity surcharge could accrue to the American public from the old coal plant side of the Trump/Perry bailout proposal. The press release, and press conference audio recording, are posted online at NIRS’s website.

The proposed bailout originated with the coal-burning and atom-splitting electricity generator FirstEnergy, headquartered in Akron, Ohio. The utility has attempted for several years to secure multi-billion dollar bailouts at both the state and federal levels, but has not succeeded. However, it seems to have recently gained significant traction with President Trump and Energy Secretary Perry, thanks to the personal lobbying of Jeff Miller on behalf of FirstEnergy. Miller, a longtime close personal friend and colleague of the Energy Secretary, who served as Rick Perry’s campaign manager during his unsuccessful presidential run in 2016, is reportedly paid $110,000 per quarter by FirstEnergy for his lobbying services. After Miller attended a private dinner with Trump in recent weeks, the president began touting the importance of the requested bailout, publicly citing the obscure section 202(c) of the century-old Federal Power Act (FPA)—a bailout pathway also suggested to the Trump administration by the coal magnate Robert Murray.

The Trump administration is also attempting to justify the bailouts under provisions of the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950, as well as the FAST (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation) Act. Such major federal government interventions via the FPA or DPA are rarely undertaken, and usually only for wartime emergencies or natural disasters. No such emergency action has been taken in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, which a recent Harvard University study reported could have resulted in around 5,000 deaths, many due to the widespread power outages, some of which continue still, nearly nine months later. PJM Interconnection, the largest electric grid operator in the U.S. -- serving 65 million people in a 13-state (plus Washington, D.C.) region from Chicago to North Carolina – has consistently reported that there is now, and would be, no reliability or resilience problem whatsoever -- even if FirstEnergy’s four atomic reactors, and several coal plants, in Ohio and Pennsylvania, were to permanently shut down in the next few years, as the company has announced.

“The only so-called ‘emergency’ is FirstEnergy’s bad business decisions, and mismanagement, that extend back not years but decades,” said Michael Keegan of Don’t Waste Michigan in Monroe, Michigan, a longtime watchdog on FirstEnergy’s Lake Erie shore atomic reactors, Davis-Besse east of Toledo and Perry east of Cleveland.

“In addition to the $34 billion per year gouge on ratepayer and taxpayer pocketbooks from Trump and Perry’s absurd proposal to bailout FirstEnergy’s dirty old coal and dangerously old nuclear plants, there are the increasing safety risks,” said Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear, a national industry watchdog group based in Takoma Park, Maryland. “It is outrageous that FERC commissioner, Robert F. Powelson, pressured NRC commissioners during the public portion of their joint meeting last week to decrease safety regulations, in order to save money for uncompetitive old atomic reactors. We can only imagine the outrageous things that were said during the nonpublic portion of the meeting,” Kamps added, “which is why we have made this FOIA request.”

Lodge also served as legal counsel for an environmental coalition, including Beyond Nuclear, Citizens Environment Coalition of Southwestern Ontario, Don’t Waste Michigan, and the Ohio Green Party, which challenged the Davis-Besse atomic reactor’s 2017-2037 license extension. Despite Davis-Besse’s industry record of most close calls with meltdown catastrophes, as well as its severely cracked containment structure (which is currently operating as an experiment; see the NRC document, “Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, Unit 1 - Report of Facility Changes, Tests, and Experiments,” in an “Annual Operating Report Letter” dated May 21, 2018, with the NRC ML # ML18141A502), NRC approved 60 years of operations (1977 to 2037) at the reactor.

A 1982 report commissioned by NRC, and carried out by Sandia National Lab, calculated that a meltdown at Davis-Besse would cause 1,400 acute radiation poisoning deaths, 73,000 acute radiation injuries, 10,000 latent cancer fatalities, and $84 billion in property damages. But the Associated Press reported in 2011 after the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan had begun, that populations have soared since 1982 around atomic reactors like Davis-Besse, so casualties would be significantly higher today; and when adjusted for inflation to today’s dollar figures, property damages downwind of a Davis-Besse meltdown would significantly surpass $200 billion.

--30--

Update on June 14, 2018 by admin

On June 14, 2018, NRC acknowledged it had met with FERC a week earlier. This is a far cry from the public accountability of what exactly was discussed between the NRC and FERC commissioners, secretively behind closed doors, that is required in a democracy! And hence Beyond Nuclear et al.'s FOIA request!

Update on June 20, 2018 by admin

On June 20, 2018, NRC rejected the environmental coalition's request for expedited processing of the FOIA requst.

Update on June 22, 2018 by admin

On June 22, 2018, attorney Terry Lodge, on behalf of the environmental coalition, appealed NRC's rejection of the request for an expedited FOIA response.

Update on June 25, 2018 by admin

On June 25, 2018, NRC acknowledged receipt of the environmental coalition's appeal of NRC's denial of expedited processing of the FOIA request.

Update on July 2, 2018 by admin

In a letter dated July 2, 2018, NRC rejected the environmental coalition legal counsel, Terry Lodge's, appeal of the agency's initial rejection of the request for an expedited FOIA response.

Congressional action alert reminder: Urge both your U.S. Sens. to block confirmation of Trump's NRC nominees!

There is still time to contact both your Senators, urging they vote against confirmation for President Trump's nominees for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Annie Caputo and David Wright. Both have had long, close ties to the nuclear power industry; their confirmation to the directorship of the NRC will risk the same regulator-industry-government collusion cited by the Japanese Parliament as the root cause of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe. Find your U.S. Senators' contact info. here, by following the links. Or phone them via the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121, by following the instructions.

57 groups send letter to U.S. Senators, urging opposition to Trump's NRC nominees due to dangerous bias and collusion

On Monday, September 11th a coalition of 57 national, regional, and local environmental groups from all across the country, sent a letter all 100 U.S. Senators. The letter urged no votes on the confirmation of President Donald J. Trump's two Republican nominees for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Annie Caputo and David Wright. The Senate floor vote on their confirmation could happen at any time.

You can still take action. Please contact both your U.S. Senators, and urge them to block the confirmation of Caputo and Wright. You can be patched through to your U.S. Senators' Washington, D.C. offices by phoning the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Or, you can find your U.S. Senators' direct contact information, including email/webforms and fax numbers, by following the links. You could also get together with friends and colleagues and request a face to face meeting with your Senators when they are next back home (most weekends), or your Senators' in-district staff during weekdays and normal business hours.

As the letter stated, in part:

The Japanese Parliament concluded in 2012, after a year-long independent investigation into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe, that the root cause was collusion, between regulator, industry, and government officials. Collusion was the root cause for the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant being so very vulnerable to the natural disasters that ruined it on March 11, 2011, resulting in a still ongoing, catastrophic release of hazardous radioactivity into the environment, from the three melted down reactors.

Given their long established closeness to the nuclear power industry’s lobbying agenda, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the NRC, Annie Caputo and David Wright would worsen such dangerous regulator-industry collusion on the NRC Commission. Confirmation of Caputo and Wright would consummate the nuclear power industry’s high-risk domination of the NRC for the next five years.

Caputo previously was a top lobbyist for the largest U.S. nuclear utility, Exelon. For more than a decade, she has served as a top committee staffer for the most pro-nuclear members of congress, including U.S. Reps. Barton and Upton (chairmen of the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee), and U.S. Sens. Inhofe and Barrasso (chairmen of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee).

For a decade, Wright was a leader of the South Carolina Public Service Commisision, as well as the National and Southeastern public service commission associations, with a focus on nuclear power and radioactive waste matters. He approved multiple rate hikes in South Carolina to finance the building of the now-cancelled Summer Units 2 and 3 atomic reactors, representing a loss of billions of dollars of ratepayer money.