Beyond Nuclear's 25th set of public comments, re: Docket ID NRC-2016-0231, and report number NUREG-2239, NRC's ISP/WCS CISF DEIS, re: Our objections to NRC's outrageous conduct of this ISP/WCS CISF public comment proceeding
Submitted via: <WCS_CISF_EIS@nrc.gov>
The following subject matter has gotten little to no attention in NRC's ISP/WCS CISF DEIS, a far cry from NEPA's legally binding "hard look" requirement:
We object to NRC's outrageous conduct of this ISP/WCS CISF public comment proceeding.
On Wednesday, Oct. 26th, 2016, Beyond Nuclear and allies (Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Public Citizen, and SEED Coalition) sent a letter (linked here) to NRC, urging it stop reviewing a license application by Waste Control Specialists, LLC (WCS) to construct and operate a CISF, a de facto permanent parking lot dump for commercial irradiated nuclear fuel in Andrews County, west Texas. This was required, Beyond Nuclear et al.'s legal counsel argued, because the application, and its review, are illegal, in several regards. (WCS's CISF has since been renamed ISP, for Interim Storage Partners.)
On Thursday, Oct. 27th, 2016, the environmental coalition issued a press release.
Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste Specialist, Kevin Kamps, was quoted:
“By requiring a permanent deep geological repository to be operating before centralized interim storage could be opened, Congress wanted to prevent the very real danger of a de facto permanent parking lot dump – a nuclear waste storage site that would be designed for the short-term but be there forever," said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist, Beyond Nuclear. He added: “WCS is a cynical shell game and taxpayers are sure to lose. Congress was right that liability for the costs of storing commercial irradiated nuclear fuel belongs with the generators and should not be shifted onto the backs of the American public.”
On all of these high-level radioactive waste regulatory and legal matters, Beyond Nuclear is served by legal counsel Diane Curran of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg + Eisenberg, LLP of Washington, D.C., as well as Mindy Goldstein of Turner Environmental Law Clinic at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.
But NRC did not stop processing the Holtec/ELEA, nor the ISP/WCS, CISF license applications. Beyond Nuclear et al. have continued to object, for the past 4+ years, at every twist and turn of both licensing proceedings, as well as during environmental scoping, and now the DEIS phase, in both CISF proceedings; we have continued to argue that NRC should cease and desist processing them, as they are illegal. Beyond Nuclear's, and others', appeals have now gone to the second highest court in the land, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, vis-a-vis the Holtec CISF case. If and when the NRC Commissioners reject Beyond Nuclear's et al.'s appeals in the ISP/WCS CISF case, then those rulings will likewise be appealed to the second highest court in the land, as well, by CISF opponents.
NRC has continued to ram its ISP/WCS CISF DEIS public comment process through, despite the national pandemic emergency.
For example, making November 3rd -- Election Day -- the deadline for public comments is a form of voter suppression. It's also a thinly veiled attempt by NRC to suppress media coverage of the widespread public resistance to ISP/WCS, as shown by the large number of quality comments submitted in opposition to the CISF.
There has also been an inappropriate disparity between the two very closely related NRC NEPA proceedings, when comparing and contrasting the Holtec/ELEA proposal in NM, and the ISP/WCS proposal in TX.
At the environmental scoping stages some years ago, NRC held only three in-person public comment meetings. Only one of those, remarkably, was held in Texas, the state targeted for the CISF. All three were held on very short notice, making it very difficult for concerned members of the public to show up. The very worst of these short notices was for the public comment in-person meeting held at NRC HQ in Rockville, MD. The meeting notice appeared on the NRC's website a mere two days before the meeting took place. NRC supposedly strives to provide ten days' notice to the public regarding even minor meetings. This was a major meeting, of great significance, and NRC provided a mere two days' notice.
By contrast, NRC held six in-person public comment meetings re: environmental scoping on Holtec/ELEA's CISF scheme. All were held in NM. A seventh public comment meeting was held at NRC HQ in Rockville, MD. Yet again, NRC provided so little and so ineffective public notice, that a single member of the public actually attended the meeting in person (Diane D'Arrigo of NIRS). However, scores of concerned citizens, environmental group representatives, etc. attended by phone, and provide public comment from afar.
Why the disparity? Why did Holtec get seven comment meetings, while ISP got only three?
But as documented in the following press release, below (which includes links to the letter to the NRC, as well as to news updates re: NRC's rejection of the requests), during the Yucca Mountain, Nevada environmental scoping stage, decades ago, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) held some two-dozen in-person public comment meetings, not only at several locations across Nevada (as well as a number nearly in California, including downstream of Yucca Mountain, but also on transport routes that would be impacted), but in a dozen states outside Nevada, on Mobile Chernobyl high-level radioactive waste and irradiated nuclear fuel road, rail, and waterway transport routes that would be impacted.
[Opponents Request Comment Period Extension re: Holtec/ELEA Highly Radioactive Waste Centralized Interim Storage Site in New Mexico
NEWS FROM BEYOND NUCLEAR
For immediate release: May 9, 2018
Contact:
Terry Lodge, environmental coalition attorney, (419) 205-7084, tjlodge50@yahoo.com
Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist, Beyond Nuclear, (240) 462-3216, kevin@beyondnuclear.org
Opponents Request Comment Period Extension
re: Holtec/ELEA Highly Radioactive Waste
Centralized Interim Storage Site in New Mexico
Environmental Coalition Cites Need for Additional Meetings in Cities Hard Hit by High-Risk Road, Rail, and/or Barge Shipments of Irradiated Nuclear Fuel
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A coalition of 52 environmental, social justice, and public interest organizations, has requested that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) extend the public comment period on environmental scoping by 180 days, in the proceeding considering Holtec International/ELEA’s (Eddy-Lea Counties Energy Alliance) application to construct and operate a centralized interim storage facility, for 100,000 to 173,600 metric tons of highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel, in southeast New Mexico. The coalition’s petition to NRC (posted online at this link) also requests 18 additional public comment meetings across the country, in cities that would serve as transport hubs for the 10,000 or more high-risk shipments of irradiated nuclear fuel, by road, rail, and/or waterway, over the course of decades, from commercial atomic reactors, to the site in southeast NM located halfway between Hobbs and Carlsbad.
Thus far, NRC has held only four meetings: one at its agency headquarters in Rockville, MD, which had the added opportunity to call- or webinar-in; and three in southeast NM (Roswell, Hobbs, and Carlsbad), relatively near the Holtec/ELEA targeted site. Just today, NRC announced two more public comment meetings, apparently in direct response to a demand made by NM’s two Democratic U.S. Senators, Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich: Monday, May 21 from 6 to 9 pm Mountain Time, at Gallup Downtown Conference Center, 204 W. Coal Ave., Gallup, NM 87301; and Tuesday, May 22 from 6 to 9 pm MTN, at Crown Plaza, 1901 University Blvd., Albuquerque, NM 87102.
By comparison, a significantly smaller proposal – the Yucca Mountain, Nevada, permanent geological dump-site, limited to 70,000 metric tons, only 63,000 of which is reserved for commercial irradiated nuclear fuel – had two-dozen public comment meetings, convened by the U.S. Department of Energy, in many of the very same transport hub cities cited in the coalition’s request letter to NRC.
“While the two additional New Mexico meetings are welcome, this is still a woefully inadequate number of public meetings, as compared to what NRC should be holding for a proposal of such national significance,” said Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear. “The high-risk shipments of highly radioactive waste would travel through most states in the Lower 48 en route to New Mexico, and so far NRC has held not a single public meeting in the scores of large cities that would be impacted by many thousands of shipments, over the course of several decades,” Kamps added.
The coalition letter requested as many NRC public meetings as possible in the following locations: Atlanta, GA; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Cleveland, OH; Dallas/Forth Worth and San Antonio, TX; Detroit, MI; Kansas City and St. Louis, MO; Los Angeles, CA; Miami and Tampa, FL; Minneapolis/Saint Paul, MN; Nashville, TN; New York City, NY; Newark, NJ; Omaha, NE; Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, PA; and Tampa, FL.
“One of countless concerns we have with the Holtec/ELEA proposal is that DOZENS of shipments from the Fermi nuclear power plant, bound for New Mexico, would have to pass, by rail, through the heart of metro Detroit,” said Terry Lodge, environmental attorney based in Toledo, legal counsel for Don’t Waste Michigan, which intends to legally intervene in opposition to the Holtec/ELEA application.
“And that's only the half of it. There would also be 10,000 shipments nationwide of the highly radioactive waste, decades or a century later, supposedly moving the irradiated nuclear fuel on to an as yet unidentified, permanent repository,” Lodge added. “If, as the NRC holds, present on-site storage arrangements are satisfactory, why should we put Americans at such dangerous risk 20,000 times?" Lodge asked.
“Even routine, incident-free shipments would be like mobile X-ray machines that can’t be turned off, emitting hazardous gamma- and neutron-radiation at close range as they pass by, but there is also the potential for Mobile Chernobyls, catastrophic radioactivity releases, as due to container breaches during severe accidents or intentional attacks,” Lodge added.
The road and rail route maps prepared by Dr. Fred Dilger on behalf of the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, in the context of the Yucca Mountain permanent burial dump proposal, are instructive regarding the Holtec/ELEA, NM centralized interim storage facility (also known as a monitored retrievable storage site, or away from reactor so-called temporary storage facility). The further east, or west for that matter, from NM, the more similar, or identical, would be the routes, by rail or road, between the NV and NM schemes. The Dilger routing analyses show that 44 states, scores of major cities, and 330 of 435 U.S. congressional districts, would “host” road and/or rail routes for highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel truck and/or train transport to NV. Dr. Dilger’s three reports, including route maps, shipment numbers, and congressional districts impacted, are posted online at the State of NV Agency for Nuclear Projects website, here.
“In addition to the high risks of truck and train transports of irradiated nuclear fuel, there is the specter of potential barge shipments,” Kamps of Beyond Nuclear said. “As but one example, barges on Lake Michigan, from Michigan and Wisconsin atomic reactors into the ports of Muskegon and Milwaukee, could put at risk the drinking water supply for 40 million people in several U.S. states, two Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations downstream, if one were to sink by accident, or be sunk by terrorist intent,” Kamps added.
For this reason, two Canadian groups, drawing their drinking water from downstream of such high-risk shipments on the Great Lakes, added their names as signatories to the letter. They are Bruce Peninsula Environment Group in Ontario, and Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility in Quebec. (Examples of national and grassroots U.S. signatory groups are listed below.)
Reactors lacking direct rail access would either ship the 100+ ton Holtec shipping containers by barge (on multiple U.S. surface waterways, in many states), or heavy haul truck, to the nearest rail head, for transfer to train, for shipment to NM.
Despite this, no NRC public meeting has been scheduled anywhere in the Lake Michigan basin, such as Chicago, a city of many millions, the drinking water of which is drawn from Lake Michigan. In addition, the director of the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, Robert Halstead, has stated that 40% of all shipments bound for Yucca Mountain would pass through the Chicagoland area. So too, then, would shipments bound for Holtec/ELEA, NM.
The coalition letter was signed by national, regional, and local grassroots groups representing 17 states. National groups include Beyond Nuclear, Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth (FOE), Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), Public Citizen, and Sierra Club. Grassroots groups include several from New Mexico, the state targeted by Holtec/ELEA, including: Alliance for Environmental Strategies; Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping; Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety; Current-C Energy Systems, Inc., on behalf of Cooperative Catalyst; Los Alamos Study Group; Nuclear Watch New Mexico; and Sisters of Mercy. Significantly, many reactor community groups, fully aware of the risks of on-site storage with which they are burdened, also protested the environmental injustice of this centralized interim storage scheme, by signing on, including: Citizens Awareness Network of the Northeast, with members near the shutdown Connecticut Yankee, Vermont Yankee, and Yankee Rowe (Massachusetts) atomic reactor sites; San Clemente Green, near the San Onofre, CA shutdown nuclear power plant; Nuclear Energy Information Service of Illinois, the state with the most reactors (14) in the U.S., including Zion, the largest nuclear power plant decommissioning in American history, 30 miles north of Chicago; Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination (CACC) and For Love of Water (FLOW), with members living in the shadows of the Big Rock Point decommissioned atomic reactor in Michigan; and San Luis Obispo Mothers and Grandmothers for Peace, near the still operating Diablo Canyon reactors. These reactor community groups, joined by hundreds more groups representing all 50 states, have long called for Hardened On-Site Storage, as close as is safely possible to the point of waste generation, as an interim alternative to such dangerous proposals as the Yucca burial dump, and the Holtec/ELEA de facto permanent, surface storage, “parking lot dump.”
--30—
Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abolish both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic. The Beyond Nuclear team works with diverse partners and allies to provide the public, government officials, and the media with the critical information necessary to move humanity toward a world beyond nuclear. Beyond Nuclear: 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 400, Takoma Park, MD 20912. Info@beyondnuclear.org. www.beyondnuclear.org.
admin On July 19, 2018, another coalition made a second request to NRC to extend the Holtec/ELEA environmental scoping deadine, as documented here:
[38 environmental groups call on NRC to extend comment period till Oct. 30, postpone license intervention deadline for proposed Holtec/ELEA CISF
An environmental coalition of 38 organizations has written the five U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners, as well as the safety and environmental NRC staff leads on the Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance centralized interim storage facility (CISF) license application proceeding, urging a 90-day extension to the environmental scoping public comment deadline. The current deadline is July 30; the coalition is requesting an extension till Oct. 30.
In addition, the coalition is requesting the legal intervention deadline in the licensing proceeding be postponed, and that proceeding suspended. Just this past Monday, July 16th, NRC published a Federal Register Notice, announcing September 14, 2018 as the deadline for requesting a hearing, and submitting legal contentions against the proposal. Legal intervenors must also establish legal standing in that short 60-day time frame.
The three main points in today's environmental coalition letter, justifying the requested 90-day extension for public environmental scoping comments, and suspension of the licensing proceeding, are:
1.) Redaction of 25% of the Holtec CISF Environmental Report Limits Public Commenting and Ongoing Preparations To Intervene In Licensing Proceeding;
2.) Serial Unavailability of Regulations.gov and ADAMS (the NRC's Agency-wide Document Access and Management System), making the preparation and submission of public comments unacceptably difficult;
3.) The NRC Is Legally Obligated to Restore Fairness To the Scoping Stage of This Licensing Proceeding.
Regarding the second point, the largely to entirely out-of-order status of Regulations.gov for most of the public comment period thus far, right up to the present: NRC in recent days has responded to a mid-June request, by Beyond Nuclear's legal counsel, Diane Curran of Washington, D.C., for an extension to the comment deadline, due to the dysfunction of the primary comment submission mechanism provided by NRC to the public.
NRC's response essentially blamed the victim, stating that the public should have worked with Regulations.gov itself to make sure the system worked properly. Concerned citizens, and environmental group representatives, have been notifying NRC since at least May 1st that its Regulations.gov site for public comment was not working properly, or at all. NRC's letter rejects the environmental coalition's mid-June request for an extension of the scoping deadline.
"The signers of today's letter suggest that there are 'extremely compelling circumsances' present here that obligate the NRC to extend the public comment scoping period, and further compel the delay of commencement of the intervention petition filing period until after interested parties have obtained relief under the Freedom of Information Act," said Terry Lodge, Toledo-based legal counsel for Don't Waste Michigan. "Fundamental concerns of fairness, coupled with the National Environmental Policy Act's expectation of maximal public participation, and the high significance of the Holtec/ELEA CISF itself, as a policy determination, all militate in favor of altering the present deadlines," Lodge added.
"Not only do we have to do NRC's job for it, in terms of protecting public safety, security, health, and the environment, but now we also have to do the agency's job for it by making sure its computer systems work," said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear. "It makes me wonder why NRC needs to have thousands of employees, and a budget of many hundreds of millions of dollars per year, when the concerned public is constantly forced to do NRC's job for it, because the agency can't be bothered," Kamps said.
"The public demands NRC return the funds provided by ratepayers and taxpayers to the agency, due to its regulatory incompetence -- and worse, complicity and collusion with the hazardous industry it is supposed to regulate," Kamps added.
The Holtec/ELEA CISF is an environmentally unjust proposal, for up to 173,600 metric tons of highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel to be "temporarily stored" in southeastern New Mexico. The Texas/New Mexico borderlands are home to large Hispanic populations; they are already badly polluted by intensive fossil fuel and nuclear industires. If opened, this de facto permanent, surface storage, "parking lot dump" would significantly worsen New Mexico's treatment as a "nuclear sacrifize zone," but would also launch unprecedented thousands of high-risk, highly radioactive waste shipments, by truck, train, and/or barge, on roads, rails, and/or waterways, through most states, many major cities, and the vast majority of U.S. congressional districts, over the course of a half-century. If the highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel ever did leave someday, after 40, 100, 120, or 300 years of "interim storage" (all figures Holtec/ELEA has cited at various times), then the departing shipments would double transport risks, sometimes in the very same communities through which they passed in order to reach New Mexico in the first place.]
NRC again rejected the request, as documented here:
[NRC officially rejects environmental coalition's call for extension of public comment period, postponement of legal intervention deadline, re: Holtec/ELEA CISF
By a letter dated July 30th, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) officially rejected a 38-group environmental coalition's call for an extension of the environmental scoping public comment deadline, as well as a postponement of the legal intervention deadline, re: Holtec International/Eddy-Lea [Counties] Energy Alliance's proposal to construct and operate a centralized interim storage facility for 173,600 metric tons of highly radioactive waste in southeastern New Mexico.
Thus, the July 30th deadline for environmental scoping public comment has now passed (but opponents to Holtec/ELEA's proposal nonetheless met that deadline in a big way, with over 25,000 public comments in opposition to the CISF!)
And groups planning to legally intervene in the NRC's Atomic Safety (sic) and Licensing Board (ASLB) proceeding on the application, face an arbitrarily and capriciously short 60-day deadline, that expires on Sept. 14, to establish legal standing, and to submit quality contentions that the ASLB would allow for hearings on the merits. Beyond Nuclear, as well as a broad coalition of other environmental groups, plan to do just that! Beyond Nuclear's legal counsel are Diane Curran of Washington, D.C., and Mindy Goldstein of Emory University's Turner Environmental Law Clinic in Atlanta, GA.]
Why did DOE hold two-dozen in-person public comment meetings during the Yucca Mountain, Nevada permanent repository environmental scoping phase, while NRC held only a combined total of ten for the NM and TX CISF schemes, and only three for the ISP/WCS CISF scheme? Why, when DOE held numerous environmental scoping in-person public comment meetings in NV and CA, did NRC hold a single, solitary in-person public comment meeting in TX, and even that one on remarkably short notice?
This makes even less sense when you consider the quantities of irradiated nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste involved in the various proposals. Yucca Mountain, Nevada's proposed irradiated nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste dump -- cancelled by the Obama administration in 2010, and its licensing suspended for as long due to a lack of congressional appropriations -- would have been limited by law to a total of 70,000 metric tons uranium (MTU) or metric tons heavy metal (MTHM), at least until a second permanent repository was opened in this country. This was a regional equity provision in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended, to make sure Nevada wasn't the only state in the union to be thus "screwed."
But the amount of irradiated nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste proposed to be "temporarily stored" at the CISFs is much greater than 70,000 MT. The ISP/WCS CISF scheme could store up to 40,000 MT. The Holtec/ELEA CISF scheme could store up to 173,600 MT. The total for both CISFs -- separated by only 39 miles across the TX/NM border -- is 213,600 MT, or more than three times the amount targeted at Nevada for permanent disposal. So why did TX get only one in-person public comment meeting during environmental scoping?! Is it because NRC would like to keep Texans largely to entirely in the dark about this scheme? Most Texans along the transport routes that would be used to haul high-level radioactive waste to Andrews County had not even heard about this scheme, because NRC has helped keep it so quiet. Even those who knew about it then faced the daunting challenge of travelling for many hours, and many hundreds of miles, to reach the single in-person meeting, held in Andrews.
But the DEIS stage has been even worse. After all, NRC has rammed the DEIS public comment periods for both CISFs through, despite the national pandemic emergency raging throughout our country.
NRC did this despite the early April 2020 call, by 14 Democratic U.S. House of Representatives Committee Chairs, and 25 Democratic U.S. Senators (including several who had recently been campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, and one, Kamala Harris, who today stands for election as the first Black, and the first South Asian, vice president in U.S. history), addressed to the Trump administration Office of Management and Budget, to suspend all executive branch public participation processes until the end of the pandemic emergency. This would have included these NRC CISF DEIS public comment proceedings. Both OMB and NRC rejected the requests, and rammed these CISF DEIS public comment periods through regardless.
Large national coalitions also requested suspensions of both CISF NRC DEIS public comment proceedings due to the national pandemic emergency, and also called for in-person public comment meetings, once the pandemic emergency was over, such as when a universally available, safe, effective vaccine exists.
Here is documentation of coalition's request in the Holtec case:
[Press Release -- 50 Groups to NRC: Suspend Holtec High-Level Radioactive Waste CIS Proceeding, Till COVID-19 Emergency Ends; Coalition Calls for DEIS Public Comment Meetings Along Targeted Transport Routes Outside New Mexico
NEWS FROM BEYOND NUCLEAR
For immediate release: April 1, 2020
Contact:
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50 Groups to NRC: Suspend Holtec High-Level Radioactive Waste CIS Proceeding, Till Covid-19 Emergency Ends
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Coalition Calls for DEIS Public Comment Meetings Along Targeted Transport Routes Outside New Mexico |
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EUNICE, NM/WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A coalition of 50 environmental and environmental justice groups has written the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regarding Holtec International and Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance's proposed Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (CISF) for irradiated nuclear fuel targeting New Mexico. See the letter, here.
The coalition urges NRC to: [I]ndefinitely extend, for the duration of the national COVID-19 pandemic emergency, the ongoing public comment period for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Holtec CISF planned for development in Lea County, New Mexico. At the formal termination of the national emergency as declared by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), we request that the public comment period be extended for a period of 199 days. We further request that when in-person hearings again become possible that the NRC conduct plenary-style public hearings in 5 already proposed cities in New Mexico as well as in each of 18 other cities listed later in this letter. The 199-day public comment period (as opposed to NRC's current 60-day public comment period, set to end on May 22, 2020), and 23 public comment meetings in a dozen states, would match the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) public comment proceeding at the DEIS phase of the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada permanent repository scheme, targeted at Western Shoshone Indian lands. Holtec's proposal is actually two-and-a-half times larger than the Yucca scheme: 173,600 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel, versus 70,000. The coalition letter came five days after the entire New Mexico U.S. congressional delegation wrote NRC, also urging public comment meetings across the Land of Enchantment be delayed until after the pandemic emergency ends, and the public comment period be held open until after the in-person meetings are completed. Of the 50 groups on the letter, seven are from NM: Alliance for Environmental Strategies (AFES); Citizen Action New Mexico; Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety; Indigenous Rights Center; Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE); Nuclear Issues Study Group (NISG); and Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter. Of these, AFES, NISG, and Sierra Club have officially intervened against Holtec/ELEA'S CISF in the NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board proceeding. Terry Lodge, an attorney based in Toledo, Ohio, represents seven grassroots environmental groups nationwide (Don't Waste Michigan, et al., including NISG), which have officially intervened in opposition to the CISF as well. Regarding the coalition letter to NRC, Lodge said: "The NRC's official position, that tens of thousands of extremely dangerous radioactive waste shipments are not even worth discussing in a scientific and public manner, is a dramatic red flag. There is zero justification to rush this ill-considered cash cow to licensing. The NRC must not be allowed to take advantage of the pandemic to ramrod a decision in the shadows." Rose Gardner of Alliance for Environmental Strategies in Eunice, NM said: "NRC has set up some hearings in New Mexico for the public to comment on the Holtec DEIS, but unfortunately these dates come at a time when the whole nation, including New Mexico, is under stress and even dangerous conditions which do not allow for the common folk to even go to the grocery store or a doctor. NRC must stand down and postpone these hearings, as well as extend the comment period. The most vulnerable In our communities would be put at risk if these hearings were held now."
Gardner added: "I also admit that I am unable to concentrate on the dangers associated with the storage of high-level radioactive waste 35 miles from my home even though that should be an important thing to discuss as this could possibly impact the futures of all New Mexicans. NRC must take into account that these are not normal times and that regular communities are encountering abnormal situations every day that we never thought we would have to deal with. Living in the oil patch is especially difficult now because jobs are being lost and companies are pulling out of town at an amazing rate. I don’t even know where we will be in two weeks as far as 'shelter at home' has been ordered by the New Mexico governor In order to help mitigate the dangerous contagious coronavirus pandemic."
Coordinator of the NM-based organization Nuclear Issues Study Group, Leona Morgan, remarked: "These are unprecedented times. The coronavirus pandemic has triggered massive disruption to our daily lives. All of us here in New Mexico have been ordered to shelter in place by Gov. Michelle Lujan-Grisham. We at the Nuclear Issues Study Group, a volunteer-grassroots organization in Albuquerque, echo the guidance issued by our governor regarding COVID-19 and support our Congressional delegation's urge to the NRC for an extension of the public comment period. Furthermore, WE DEMAND that the NRC: 1) Postpone all hearings re: CISF applications until it is safe to gather in large groups again, 2) Expand the hearings to include major cities along the likely routes, and 3) Leave the public comment period open until at least 180 days beyond all public hearing dates. These dangerous proposals for CIS facilities merit full participation by all impacted peoples. It would be unconscionable for the NRC to ramrod this process through during this pandemic! Without full public participation, this National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process would lack legitimacy and credibility."
Wally Taylor, an attorney based in Cedar Rapids, IA, represents the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter's intervention opposing the CISF. Taylor said: "The draft environmental impact statement for this project implicates so many issues and requires intense study, and probably expert review and opinions, that 60 days is clearly not enough time to submit the thorough and technically based comments that the NRC will require. Holtec and the NRC want to fast-track this process to prevent genuine public input. We will not allow that to happen."
Molly Johnson, a member of the board of San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace (SLOMPF) in California, said: "The proposal to transport high-level radioactive waste to a poor community of color in southeast New Mexico as a 'temporary' storage solution is dangerous and irrational. San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace advocates for storing waste at or as close as possible to the site of generation until a science based PERMANENT solution can be determined." SLOMFP, a decades-long watchdog on the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, is also an official intervenor against the CISF, a member group of Don't Waste MI, et al.
Barbara Warren, Executive Director of Citizens’ Environmental Coalition (CEC), said: “Multiple New York activists share serious concerns with our friends in New Mexico about the deficient environmental review for the long-term storage of nuclear waste that will be hazardous for millions of years. NRC has not required controls adequate to handle both short-term and long-term hazards for this dangerously radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel. In addition, there has been NO evaluation of the entire hazardous journey high-level nuclear waste will require, the enormous costs to fix transport infrastructure and the potential for disaster along the entire route, where freight and passenger trains must share rail lines. In addition, barge transport poses unique hazards. Hearings are also needed in Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo, New York." CEC is a member group along with Don’t Waste Michigan, et. al, in the intervention against the CISF.
In its letter, the locations along major transport routes where the coalition urges NRC to hold public comment meetings include: Atlanta, GA; Boston, MA; Chicago, IL; Cleveland, OH; Dallas/Fort Worth, TX; Detroit, MI; San Antonio, TX; Kansas City, MO; Miami, FL; Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN; Nashville, TN; New York, NY/Newark, NJ; Omaha, NE; Philadelphia, PA; Pittsburgh, PA; San Luis Obispo, CA; St. Louis, MO; and Tampa, FL.
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Beyond Nuclear is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization. Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abolish both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic. The Beyond Nuclear team works with diverse partners and allies to provide the public, government officials, and the media with the critical information necessary to move humanity toward a world beyond nuclear. Beyond Nuclear: 7304 Carroll Avenue, #182, Takoma Park, MD 20912. Info@beyondnuclear.org. www.beyondnuclear.org.] And here is documentation of the coalition's similar request in the ISP/WCS CISF DEIS public comment proceeding: [Letter from 60 Organizations in 22 states, re: Docket No. 72-1050 (NRC-2016-0231), Interim Storage Partners, LLC/Waste Control Specialists, LLC Consolidated Interim Storage Facility Project (Request for indefinitely prolonged DEIS public comment period and convening of public meetings at multiple sites across Texas, as well as in other states along transport routes) July 8, 2020 Kristine L. Svinicki, Chairman
Jeff Baran, Commissioner
Annie Caputo, Commissioner
David A. Wright, Commissioner
Christopher T. Hanson, Commissioner
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Mail Stop O-4F00
Washington, DC 20555-0001
Via email only to Chairman@nrc.gov, CMRBARAN@nrc.gov, CMRCaputo@nrc.gov, CMRWright@nrc.gov, CMRHanson@nrc.gov
NRC Staff Contacts:
James Park, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Project Manager, James.Park@nrc.gov
Jennifer Borges, Jennifer.Borges@nrc.gov NRC Comments Address: WCS_CISF_EIS@nrc.gov
Cinthya I. Roman-Cuevas, Chief, Environmental Review Materials Branch, Division of Rulemaking, Environmental, and Financial Support, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, cinthya.roman@nrc.gov
Annette Vietti-Cook, Secretary
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Washington, D.C. 20555
Via email to annette.vietti-cook@nrc.gov
SUBJECT: Docket No. 72-1050 (NRC-2016-0231), Interim Storage Partners, LLC/Waste Control Specialists, LLC Consolidated Interim Storage Facility Project (Request for indefinitely prolonged DEIS public comment period and convening of public meetings at multiple sites across Texas, as well as in other states along transport routes)
Dear NRC Commissioners:
The undersigned 60 organizations from 22 states hereby propose a significant restructuring of the present plan for public participation in, and public commenting upon, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) of the Interim Storage Partners/Waste Control Specialists, LLC (ISP/WCS) license application for a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for spent nuclear fuel (SNF, also known as irradiated nuclear fuel, INF -- highly radioactive waste) proposed for Andrews County, Texas. Ten of the undersigned organizations sought leave to intervene in the ISP/WCS CISF adjudicatory licensing proceeding, NRC Docket No. 72-1050 (NRC-2016-0231). Sierra Club was granted intervenor status, as well as a hearing on the merits of admissible contentions, but has since been ruled against by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (ASLBP) presiding over the licensing proceeding, and the proceeding terminated by the ASLB. Beyond Nuclear and the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition of Texas were granted intervenor status, but were denied intervention because of a supposed lack of an admissible contention. Don’t Waste Michigan, Citizens’ Environmental Coalition, Nuclear Energy Information Service, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Leona Morgan, Public Citizen-Texas Office, and Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination were denied standing entirely.
All of the undersigned organizations hereby request that the Commission indefinitely extend, for the duration of the national COVID-19 pandemic emergency, the ongoing public comment period for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the ISP/WCS CISF proposed for development in Andrews County, west Texas. At the formal termination of the national emergency, as via a safe and effective vaccine available to all people regardless of socio-economic status, we request that the public comment period then be extended for a period of 180 days, post-pandemic. We further request that when in-person public comment meetings again become safely possible that the NRC conduct plenary-style, in-person public comment meetings in the following six Texas locations: San Antonio, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, El Paso, Midland, and Andrews. We also request that in-person public comment meetings likewise be held, post-pandemic, in more than a dozen more cities nationwide, on impacted transport corridors in states outside Texas, as listed later in this letter.
The undersigned 60 groups seek these changes in the public participation arrangements because of the serious present public health emergency, during which much of the American public is beset with concerns of maintaining individual and family health, free of the coronavirus. Americans are still facing, in unprecedented numbers, sudden dramatic economic reversals and dislocations associated with global recession or even economic depression. In fact, rather than the hoped for, hot weather, summertime lull in coronavirus cases, Texas, unfortunately, is currently an epicenter of an alarming resurgence of the highly infectious, deadly COVID-19 pandemic. Meaningful public participation in the NRC’s processing of a license for the ISP/WCS CISF, and the implementation of procedures under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), is impossible when people and their governments must address crisis-borne difficulties daily. As COVID-19 ravages major population centers and disrupts the health care continuum, it is increasingly unfair to expect citizens to perform needed research and analysis and consultation of experts in order to comment on the NRC's ISP/WCS DEIS.
Our requests in this letter are echoed by large blocs of U.S. Congress members. We are backed up by 24 Democratic U.S. Senators (including five who were campaigning for the presidency up until recently), who wrote the White House Office of Management and Budget on April 8, 2020, seeking suspensions of any deadlines on executive branch public comment periods, during this pandemic. In addition, 14 Democratic U.S. House of Representatives committee chairmen wrote a similar letter, making a similar call, to OMB on April 1, 2020.
1. The ISP/WCS CISF Project Is Unprecedented And Controversial
ISP/WCS is presently seeking an NRC license for authorization to construct and operate a CISF for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) "interim storage" on a site in Andrews County, Texas . ISP/WCS intends initially to store 500 canisters (containing 5,000 metric tons, or MT) of irradiated nuclear fuel (INF), followed by numerous additional phases of 5,000 MT each. ISP/WCS plans eventually to store 40,000 MT of SNF at the facility. Even at 40,000 MT, the CISF would easily be one of the world’s very largest INF aggregations in one place.
ISP/WCS proposes to accept more than half the total volume of SNF planned for entombment at the proposed U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Yucca Mountain geological repository, targeting Western Shoshone land in Nevada: 40,000 MT of irradiated nuclear fuel at the ISP/WCS CISF, versus 70,000 MT at Yucca Mountain. It follows that ISP/WCS's transport volume, risks, and impacts will be more than half as intense as Yucca's.
The largely-ignored or under-analyzed transportation effects of the ISP/WCS CISF would be more than half as significant as Yucca's very significant transportation impacts. And in the sense that ISP/WCS plans to transport the INF, post-"interim storage" at the CISF in TX, to the Yucca Mountain, NV dump, the CISF's transport impacts will be greater than Yucca's (40,000 MT of SNF, transported twice, versus 70,000 MT, transported once).
ISP/WCS plans long-term INF storage for up to 60 years, awaiting completion of a deep geological repository for final INF disposal (1). ISP/WCS intends to provide storage services before a repository is built (2), which if approved by the Commission would comprise a conclusive violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act which is likely to continue to be opposed by intervening parties.
It further is very questionable whether the facility will operate for less than 60 years. Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance (Holtec/ELEA) in New Mexico, just 39 miles away from ISP/WCS's proposed CISF, has applied for up to a 120-year license for its CISF (3); Holtec has even asserted that a CIS facility “should have a minimum service life of 300 years.” (4) And in 2019, then-Secretary of Energy Rick Perry – former Texas governor – acknowledged the possibility that the proposed Waste Control Specialists (WCS) INF CISF might de facto become the final repository for SNF, if a geological repository becomes politically or scientifically impossible. In response to questioning by U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) at a U.S. House appropriations subcommittee hearing on March 26, 2019, Perry said he and the political leaders of Andrews County, Texas, where the ISP/ WCS CISF would be located, do not object to the ISP/WCS CISF becoming a de facto permanent INF disposal site. (5) The acknowledged potential for such a momentous perversion of the interim storage concept, alone, is reason enough to extend the public comment period and its geographic reach to allow extended feedback from people and regions which would have to bear the burden of a different, “forever” mission.
2. The Present Public Comment Arrangements Are Grossly Inadequate
The NRC has granted only 120 days for public comment on the ISP/WCS CISF DEIS, (6) which contrasts sharply with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) handling of the DEIS public comment stage on the Yucca Mountain, Nevada INF geologic repository scheme DEIS. DOE accepted comments on the Yucca DEIS for 199 days, and convened 23 different public comment meetings in 2001 and 2002, scattered across the country. But for ISP/WCS's CISF – expected to contain, in less secure circumstances, more than half the SNF volume of Yucca – the NRC has yet to schedule any public comment meetings. (At the WCS CISF environmental scoping stage in 2017, only two in-person public comment meetings were held, one in Hobbs, New Mexico, and one in Andrews, Texas.)
The DOE convened half a dozen Yucca DEIS public comment meetings in Nevada and nearby parts of California, and held others in a dozen more states along transport corridors through which the INF would be shipped. Although deliberately excluded from the ISP/WCS CISF DEIS, the massive nationwide campaign of SNF shipping via barge, Legal Weight Truck (LWT), and rail, over literally millions of shipment miles, will expose most of the Lower 48 states to significant transport risks, identical to those of shipments bound for the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada targeting Western Shoshone land. Besides the in-person public meeting sites at six locations across Texas (San Antonio, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, El Paso, Midland, and Andrews), the undersigned organizations, on behalf of our members and supporters across the United States of America, request that public comment meetings be held at each of these sites, all located along one or more anticipated major INF transport routes: Atlanta; Boston; Chicago; Cleveland; Detroit; Kansas City; Miami; Minneapolis/Saint Paul; Nashville; New York/Newark; Omaha; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; San Luis Obispo, CA; St. Louis; Salt Lake City; Tampa.
The possibility of a spent nuclear fuel leak, explosion, criticality or canister breach in any of these urban areas, not to mention routine (incident-free) X-ray-like gamma and neutron radiation emissions during canister transport, surely warrants the scheduling of public comment plenaries in each location. The licensing decision for ISP/WCS's CISF requires a process that is much more visible and accessible than at present.The NRC’s concept of public involvement so far does not match the scale of policy, operational and environmental concerns raised by the proposal. There were more than 47,000 public comments submitted at the ISP/WCS CISF scoping stage, (7) over 95% of which were opposed to the plan. That degree of public interest will be eclipsed by the sponsorship of public comment meetings in transportation corridors at greater distances from west Texas. The NRC’s restrictive level of public engagement is grossly inadequate for so ambitious a project.
3. NEPA Requires Maximum Public Participation at the DEIS Stage
The NRC’s NEPA regulations at 10 C.F.R. § 51.73 require that at least 45 days be allowed for DEIS public comments. Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regulations at 40 C.F.R. § 1501.8, however, impose nuanced considerations on the structuring of the comment phase. Section 1501.8 does not “prescribe [ ] universal time limits for the entire NEPA process, ”but expects agencies to set time limits that are “appropriate to individual actions” and “are consistent with the purposes of NEPA and other essential considerations of national policy.” Id. The regulation suggests consideration of the following factors when setting time limits in the NEPA process:
---Potential for environmental harm.
---Size of the proposed action.
---State of the art of analytic techniques.
---Degree of public need for the proposed action, including the consequences of delay.
---Number of persons and agencies affected.
---Degree to which relevant information is known and if not known the time required for obtaining it.
---Degree to which the action is controversial.
---Other time limits imposed on the agency by law, regulations, or executive order.
40 C.F.R. § 1501.8(b)(i-viii).
The magnitude of the ISP/WCS CISF project against these factors supports the provision of many public comment meetings across the country. There is very serious accident potential in hauling SNF by the thousands of cargoes to Andrews County, Texas. One of the single largest agglomerations of irradiated nuclear fuel on the planet will have to be perfectly contained when received, handled, stored at the surface, monitored, retrieved, exported, and at the decommissioning of the ISP/WCS CISF. The array of scientific considerations in the DEIS is extensive and may require interested commenters to seek expert interpretation and advice. The development of the ISP/WCS CISF is a national public policy determination for which there are years available to make the best-informed public determination. While the DEIS excludes serious analysis of transportation impacts from long-distance and transcontinental shipments of SNF, over 200,000,000 people live within 50 miles of a barge, truck or rail route on which the waste will travel. (8) Multiple federal and state agencies are affected and will have a role in regulation or implementation, such as the NRC, DOE, the U.S. Department of Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration and its Federal Rail Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, and Department of Homeland Security. Hundreds of state and local utility, transportation, environmental, and emergency preparedness authorities will also be involved, pre-implementation and during the operational and decommissioning phases. Given the controversial nature of the project, the foregoing considerations militate in favor of a more geographically inclusive and lengthy DEIS public comment stage than the NRC has committed to do.
4. NRC Discretion to Limit Public Comments Is Constrained
Congress intended that agency discretion, and not the courts, be used to determine “when extra procedural devices should be employed.” Phillips Petroleum Co. v. U.S. EPA, 803 F.2d545, 559 (10th Cir.1986) (emphasis omitted) (quoting Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Res. Def. Council, 435 U.S. 519, 546 (1978) (internal quotation marks omitted). But a reviewing court can overturn an agency decision for failure to provide additional procedure when there are “extremely compelling circumstances.” Vermont Yankee, 435 U.S. at 543.
Such circumstances are present here, where the DEIS for an enormous undertaking has been published in the midst of an unprecedented national and global public health ordeal. Construction and operation of the ISP/WCS CISF demands flawless transportation from locations around the country to the Texas destination. At issue is an expensive and long-duration SNF storage site where extraordinarily deadly substances will have to be contained for many decades, or even centuries, or longer. The continued storage of INF at reactor sites, in hardened on-site or near-site storage, as an alternative to the ISP/WCS CISF, requires further consideration. The risks from even one major cask transport accident or act of sabotage, if accompanied by catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity, would be more than the public is willing to accept just to have the waste concentrated in west Texas.
Perhaps there can be no time when 100% of the interested public can participate at the public comment stage, but that only means that the public’s chance to focus on the ISP/WCS CISF, and participate, must be made as convenient and informed as possible. Accordingly, the ISP/WCS CISF licensing process must yield to this historical virus calamity. We thus request that the DEIS public comment opportunity for the ISP/WCS CISF be indefinitely extended from September 4, 2020, through the formal end of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, as when a safe, effective vaccine is universally available. We further ask that at that time, the NRC allow an additional 180 days for public comment, and that the agency also convene more than a dozen, geographically widespread, in-person public comment meetings, as proposed in this letter, along with the six requested Texas plenaries. The undersigned organizations have previously participated in this licensing proceeding as advocates for public health and safety and the environment. Finally, we ask for an expedited decision from the Commission as to these requests, given the fast-approaching September 4, 2020 deadline.
Thank you very much.
/s/ Terry J. Lodge
Terry J. Lodge, Esq.
316 N. Michigan St., Ste. 520
Toledo, OH 43604-5627
(419) 205-7084
Counsel for Don’t Waste Michigan, Citizens’ Environmental Coalition, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, Nuclear Energy Information Service, Public Citizen, Inc., San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition, and Leona Morgan
/s/ Wallace L. Taylor
Wallace L. Taylor
4403 1st Ave. S.E., Suite 402
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52402
Counsel for Sierra Club
(Additional organizations in alphabetical order by group name)
Alliance for Environmental Strategies
Rose Gardner, Founding Member
Box 514
Eunice, NM 88231
Beyond Nuclear
Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist
7304 Carroll Avenue, #182
Takoma Park, MD 20912
Cape Downwinders
Diane Turco, Director
P.O. Box 303
South Harwich, MA 02664
Citizen Action New Mexico
David B. McCoy, J.D., Executive Director
Albuquerque, NM 87110
Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping (CARD)
Janet Greenwald, Coordinator
112 Highway 580, Box 485
Dixon, NM 87527
Citizens Awareness Network
Deb Katz, Executive Director
P.O. Box 83
Shelburne Falls, MA
Citizens' Environmental Coalition
Barbara Warren, RN, MS, Executive Director
422 Oakland Valley Road
Cuddebackville, NY 12729
Citizen Power, Inc.
David Hughes, President
4037 Ludwick Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15217
Citizens' Resistance at Fermi 2 (CRAFT)
Jessie Pauline Collins, Co-Chair
17397 Five Points Street
Redford, MI 48240
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety
Joni Arends, Co-Founder and Executive Director
P.O. Box 31147
Santa Fe, NM 87594
Don't Waste Arizona
Scott Meyer, President
2934 West Northview Avenue
Phoenix, AZ 85051
Don't Waste Michigan
Michael Keegan, Co-Chair
811 Harrison Street
Monroe, MI 48161
Energía Mía
Alice Canestaro-Garcia, Visual Artist/Pájara/Energía Mía Volunteer
San Antonio, TX
Environmental Justice Task Force of the Western New York Peace Center
Charley Bowman, Chair
1272 Delaware Avenue
Buffalo, NY 14209
Freshwater Future
Kristy Meyer, Associate Director
3890 Charlevoix Avenue, Suite 230
P.O. Box 2479
Petoskey, MI 49770
Friends of Bruce
Eugene Bourgeois, President
2 Alma Street
Tiverton, Ontario, Canada
N0G 2T0
Georgia WAND (Women's Action for New Directions)
Cee'Cee' Anderson
250 Georgia Avenue
Atlanta, GA 30312
Great Lakes Environmental Alliance (GLEA)
Tanya Keefe, Chairperson
525 Court Street
Port Huron, MI 48060
Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice
Bradley Angel, Executive Director
315 Sutter Street, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94108
Green State Solutions
Mike Carberry, Director
2029 Friendship Street
Iowa City, IA 52245
Healthy Environmental Alliance of Utah (HEAL Utah)
Scott Williams, M.D., M.P.H., Executive Director
824 South 400 West, Suite B-111
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Lone Tree Council
Terry Miller, Chairman
P.O. Box 1251
Bay City, MI 48706
Los Angeles Alliance for Survival
Jerry Rubin, Director
2035 4th Street, #103C
Santa Monica, CA 90405
Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment
Susan Gordon, Coordinator
P.O. Box 4524
Albuquerque, NM 87196
Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force
Judy Treichel, Executive Director
4587 Ermine Court
Las Vegas, NV 89147
North American Water Office
George Crocker
PO Box 174
Lake Elmo, MN 55042 Northwatch
Brennain Lloyd, Project Coordinator
Box 282
North Bay, Ontario, Canada
P1B 8H2
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Alice Slater, New York Director
1622 Anacapa Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93101 Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS)
David A. Kraft, Director
Nuclear Free World Committee of the Dallas Peace and Justice Center
Mavis Belisle and Lon Burnham, Co-Chairs
2710 Woodmere
Dallas, Texas 75233
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
Diane D'Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 340
Takoma Park, MD 20912
Nuclear Watch New Mexico
Scott Kovac, Research Director
903 W. Alameda #325
Santa Fe, NM 87501
Nuclear Watch South
Glenn Carroll, Coordinator P.O. Box 8574 Atlanta, GA 31106 Atom.girl@nonukesyall.org Nukewatch
John LaForge, Co-Director
740a Round Lake Road
Luck, WI 54853
Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance
Ralph Hutchison, Coordinator
P.O. Box 5743
Oak Ridge, TN 37831
On Behalf of Planet Earth
Sheila Parks, EdD, Founder
319 Arlington Street
Watertown, MA 02472
Our Developing World
Barby Ulmer
13004 Paseo Presada
Saratoga, CA 95070
The Peace Farm
Cletus Stein, Board Member
5113 SW 16th
Amarillo, TX 79106
Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles
Denise Duffield, Associate Director
617 S. Olive Street, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90014
Physicians for Social Responsibility Nashville, TN Chapter
Karen Cisler
442 Brooksboro Terrace
Nashville, TN 37217
Physicians for Social Responsibility, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter
Robert M. Gould, MD, President
548 Market Street #90725
San Francisco, CA 94104-5401
Physicians for Social Responsibility, Western North Carolina Chapter
Terry Clark, MD, Chairman
10 Chestnut Creek Road
Candler, NC 28715
Proposition One Campaign for a Nuclear-Free Future
Ellen Thomas
Washington, D.C. and Tryon, NC
Public Citizen - Texas
Adrian Shelley, State Director
309 East 11th Street, Suite 2
Austin, TX 78701
Safe Energy Rights Group (SEnRG)
Nancy Vann, President
201 Union Avenue
Peekskill, NY 10566
San Clemente Green
Gary Headrick
San Clemente, CA
San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace
Molly Johnson, Board Member
6290 Hawk Ridge Place
San Miguel, CA 93451
Straits Area Concerned Citizens for Peace, Justice and the Environment (SACCPJE)
David and Anabel Dwyer, Members
8100 Edgewater Beach
Mackinaw City, MI 49701
Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition
Karen Hadden, Executive Director
605 Carismatic Lane
Austin, TX 78748
Three Mile Island Alert, Inc.
Eric Epstein, Chairman
315 Peffer Street
Harrisburg, PA 17102 epstein@efmr.org Toledo Coalition for Safe Energy
T. Jonathon Lodge, Convenor
316 N. Michigan Street, Suite 520
Toledo, OH 43604
Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)
Marylia Kelley, Executive Director
4049 First Street, Suite 243
Livermore, CA 94551
Uranium Watch
Sarah Fields, Program Director
140 South Main Street, Suite 12
Monticello, UT 84535
Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance
Deborah Stoleroff, Steering Committee Chairperson
Montpelier, VT
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Detroit Branch
Laura Dewey, Coordinator
1891 Lancaster
Grosse Pointe Woods, MI 48236
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom U.S.
Darien De Lu, President, U.S. Section
Friends House
P.O. Box 13075
Des Moines, IA 50310
References:
(1) From “Environmental Impact Statement for Interim Storage Partners LLC's International’s License Application for a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility for Spent Nuclear Fuel in Andrews County, Texas , Draft Report for Comment,” NUREG-2239 (ISP/WCS DEIS), p. 2-2.
(2) From the ISP/WCS CISF DEIS, Section 2.2.1, Proposed Action, p. 2-2: "By the end of the license term of the proposed CISF, the NRC staff expects that the SNF [spent nuclear fuel] stored at the proposed facility would have been shipped to a permanent geologic repository."
(3) From “Environmental Impact Statement for the Holtec International’s License Application for a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High Level Waste, Draft Report for Comment,” NUREG-2237 (Holtec DEIS), Docket ID NRC-2018-0052, p. 2-2.
(4) Letter, Joy Russell, Holtec Vice-President, to DOE, “Response to RFI on Private Initiatives to3Develop Consolidated SNF Storage Facilities,” 1/27/2017,https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/02/f34/Jan%2027%2C%202017%20-%20Joy%20Russell%20-%20Response%20to%20the%20RFI%20on%20Private%20Initiatives.pdf
(5) See Perry testimony from 23 minutes 30 seconds to 29 minutes 30 seconds at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgtHCsQzffc&feature=youtu.be
(6) Federal Register Notice for WCS' DEIS, FR Doc. 2020-09795, Filed: 5/7/2020 8:45 am; Publication Date: 5/8/2020.
(7) Letter from U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett (35th District, Texas) to NRC Chairman Kristine L. Svinicki, NRC Commissioners Baran, Caputo, Wright, and Hanson, Secretary Vietti-Cook, and Mr. James Park, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, June 16, 2020, posted online at: <http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/356082/28319398/1593466400517/6+16+20+US+Rep+Lloyd+Doggett+Letter+to+NRC.pdf?token=xi5Xnzq7U4qOSXySGHBXzzTRZaY%3D> Also notable, the environmental scoping comment period for ISP/WCS's CISF was limited to a 60-day period, while for Yucca Mountain, the DOE allowed 120 days. “Final Environmental Impact Statement for a Geologic Repository for the Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste at Yucca Mountain, Nye County, Nevada,” DOE/EIS-0250, Vol. 1, pp. 1-23-24.
(8) In the “Final Environmental Impact Statement for a Geologic Repository for the Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste at Yucca Mountain, Nye County, Nevada, Volume I” (February 2002), the U.S. Department of Energy pronounced that the “region of influence for public health and safety along existing transportation routes is 800 meters (0.5 mile) from the center line of the transportation rights-of-way and from the boundary of rail yards for incident-free (non-accident) conditions. The region of influence was extended to 80 kilometers (50 miles) to address potential human health and safety impacts from accident scenarios.” §§ 3.2.1, p. 3-119. The irradiated nuclear fuel bound for the ISP/WCS CISF is identical to the INF targeted for deep repository burial on Western Shoshone land at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The Yucca Region of Influence radius of 0.5 miles for incident-free transports, and 50 miles for accident scenarios, can be logically used in public comments about the several thousands of shipments of INF headed to the ISP/WCS CISF in Texas. Additionally, every single one of the several thousands of canisters delivered to ISP/WCS's CISF would, at a later date, supposedly have to be shipped, yet again, to a geological repository for permanent disposal.]
Along the same lines, in late spring, a coalition of 80+ environmental groups, spearheaded by NIRS, requested that NRC suspend all public participation proceedings, including both CISF DEIS public comment periods, due to the national pandemic emergency.
NRC yet again rejected all such requests, and continued to ram through the public comments proceeding amidst the deadly, highly contagious national pandemic emergency, and corresponding national economic crisis.
Although NRC did allow for 180 days of public comment opportunity in both of the CISF DEIS proceedings, our coalitions had called for the deadlines to be open-ended. Only after the pandemic emergency ended, we requested, would any such 180 day NRC deadline countdown clock start ticking. Instead, NRC simply rammed the deadlines through, amidst the pandemic emergency.
It has been objectionable and outrageous the way that NRC has rammed through this public comment proceeding, admist this deadly, highly contagious national pandemic emergency. NRC has denied our coalition requests for equivalent treatment by NRC, as we got from DOE 20 years ago during the Yucca Mountain permanent repository DEIS stage. Yet again, DOE held around two-dozen in-person public comment meetings, not only across the non-consenting "host state" of NV, but along impacted transport routes in a dozen states outside NV. In the case of NRC's DEIS public comment meetings, none were held in-person -- NRC took advantage of the pandemic in that way. All public comment meetings were held via call-in/webinars. The Holtec CISF call-ins were especially badly run by NRC, particuarly the first ones. Only six were held. But even fewer were held in the ISP proceeding -- only four.
Please address the subject matter above, re: our many objections to NRC's outrageous conduct of this ISP/WCS CISF public comment proceeding. And please acknowledge your receipt of these comments, and confirm their inclusion as official public comments in the record of this docket. Thank you. Sincerely, Kay Drey, President, Board of Directors, Beyond Nuclear and Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist, Beyond Nuclear |
November 3, 2020