Watchdogs continue to hound Entergy Pilgrim

Mother endangered Right Whale near PNPS on 1/15/13, calf is out-of-view. Images acquired under authorization of NOAA/NMFS. Credit: Rachel Karasik.Watchdog groups such as Pilgrim Watch, Cape Downwinders, Pilgrim Coalition and Cape Cod Bay Watch keep up the good fight against Entergy's Pilgrim atomic reactor in Plymouth, MA. Pilgrim is a four decade old General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactor, the same age, or older, and design as the Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4 reactors. 

Pilgrim Watch spearheaded a six year long intervention against the reactor's 20-year license extension, a record of resistance. But, just as it has done 72 other times across the U.S. since 2000, NRC rubberstamped the license extension in the end.

Member of Cape Downwinders, who have carried out non-violent civil disobedience actions in opposition to Pilgrim's ongoing risks, networked with Beyond Nuclear staff at a Clamshell Alliance reunion in New Hampshire last July. A key risk is that there is "No Escape from the Cap" should the worst happen at Pilgrim, as recently affirmed by the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency itself. 

Wicked Local Plymouth reported: “There are no plans to evacuate us from danger,” Pilgrim Coalition wrote in a release quoting Falmouth resident and Cape Downwinders member Bill Maurer, “but there are plans to control us during that danger, which essentially insures that we will be exposed to that danger.”

Pilgrim Coalition is plugging Pilgrim's shutdown:

"Plug-In to Unplug Pilgrim: this is an opportunity to find your place in a growing movement to remove the risk from Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in your community.

Join us on February 6, 2013 in the Otto Fehlow Room of the Plymouth Public Library and kick off the new year by learning about the issue and ways you can help. Snacks and refreshments will be served.

For more information, contact Karen Vale at info@capecodbaywatch.org or (508) 951-4723."

And Cape Cod Bay Watch points out that "Plymouth Is Where NO NUKES Meets SAVE THE WHALES" (see photo, above left). It has just today published a piece in the Wicked Local Plymouth about Pilgrim's harmful tritium and nitrogen pollution into the underlying Plymouth-Carver Sole Source Aquifer, recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protetion Agency as “the principal source of drinking water for the residents of the area."

As reported by the Patriot Ledger, Pilgrim just resumed operations after a one week shutdown, caused by an electrical relay failure at the 41 year old reactor which blocked the operation of two water recirculation pumps.

Entergy Palisades' critics grill NRC about "recent through-wall leaks"

The long-term grassroots resistance to Palisades continued last Saturday. This photo shows a protest at Palisades in August 2000, at the Nuclear-Free Great Lakes Action Camp. Michael Keegan, Alice Hirt, and Kevin Kamps of Don't Waste MI called for the reactor's shutdown, as its steam generators belched into the Lake Michigan sky behind.At a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) webinar on Sat., Jan. 12, another large turnout of local residents and environmental group representatives critical of the problem-plagued Palisades atomic reactor grilled agency staff with questions regarding "recent through-wall leaks" (NRC's title for the webinar). Early in the meeting, NRC staff admitted that critics' questions were "overloading the system."

Palisades suffered a through-wall leak on safety-critical control rod drive mechanism (CRDM) housing, revealed on Aug. 12. Palisades had experienced an earlier CRDM through-wall leak in 2001, as well as a uniquely bad 40 years worth of CRDM seal leaks, as documented by David Lochbaum of Union of Concerned Scientists. Lochbaum also explained that the Aug. 12 leak had been ongoing for over a month, even though NRC regulations require that reactor pressure boundary leakage lead to reactor shutdown within 6 hours. Lochbaum calculated that, at $130,000 per day, Entergy should have been fined $3 to $4 million for the violation. Instead, NRC did not fine Entergy one penny.

Most recently, Palisades suffered a through-wall leak on a valve in the service water system, also safety-significant. The service water system had also experienced previous breakdowns in recent years, which played a part in NRC designating Palisades one of the four worst run reactors in the country in Feb., 2012.

NRC's "recent through-wall leaks" webinar slide show has been posted online. Photos reveal cracks and severe rust on various safety-significant systems, structures, and componets at Palisades. One slide shows a steam leak likely drenchning electrical cords and plugs in condensation, as well as the adjacent wall and floor, begging the question whether this was not a short circuit, fire, and even electrocution hazard.

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps fired a litany of questions at NRC staff, only some of which were addressed during the short one hour long webinar.

Due to intense public concern about Palisades, NRC announced that such webinars will continue every other month. March's webinar will address the risks of pressurized thermal shock (PTS) due to reactor pressure vessel (RPV) embrittlement. On Feb. 29, 2012, NRC staff, under intense grilling by concerned citizens, admitted that Palisades has the worsed embrittled RPV in the U.S. PTS risks were the single most significant safety concern raised by environmental coalition interveners opposed to the 20-year license extension at Palisades, but NRC rubberstamped it anyways. Michael Keegan of Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes reported in 1993 thatPalisades had first violated NRC's PTS safety regulations in 1981, ten short years into operation. But NRC continued to weaken PTS safety regulations, again and again, in order to accommodate Palisades. Jeff Donn of the Associated Press reported in June 2011, in the first installment of his four part series entitled "Aging Nukes," that"US Nuke Regulators Weaken Safety Rules." His top example was PTS.

May's webinar will be about radiological effluents into the environment. Besides "routine" radiological releases into air, soil, and Lake Michigan that are "allowed" by lax federal or state government "permits," Palisades has also suffered radiological leaks, such as tritium into groundwater. In fact, in his April 2010 report "Leak First, Fix Later," Beyond Nuclear's Paul Gunter devoted an entire chapter to Palisades.

Two dozen groups rebut NEI, supplement comments to NRC on Nuke Waste Con Game

Environmental coalition attorney Diane CurranAn environmental coalition comprised of two dozen organizations, including Beyond Nuclear, today submitted supplemental public comments to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regarding the agency's court-vacated Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision and Rule. The supplemental comments constituted a rebuttal to comments submitted by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the nuclear power industry's lobbying arm in Washington, D.C.

The coalition held a press conference today, featuring four speakers: Arjun Makhijani, President of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, one of the coalition's expert witnesses; Diane Curran of the Washington, D.C. law firm Harmon, Curran, Spielberg + Eisenberg, LLP, a lead attorney for the coalition (see photo, left); John Runkle, an attorney with NC WARN (North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network), another coalition member; and Phillip Museegas, an attorney with Riverkeeper, and another expert witness for the coalition, of which Riverkeeper is also a member.

The coalition issued a press release; the full audio recording of the press conference is posted on-line.

The coalition's January 2nd public comments, including expert witness testimonies, are posted on-line. So are the coalition's supplemental comments submitted today, put together in rebuttal to NEI's Jan. 2nd comments.

PFS pulls the plug on parking lot dump targeted at Skull Valley Goshutes in Utah

Margene Bullcreek has led the resistance to the "parking lot dump" for high-level radioactive waste targeted at her community. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova.

NRC may have rubberstamped a construction and operating license, but it's not happening anyway.

As reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, the Private Fuel Storage (PFS) Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) has given up on its plans to turn the tiny Skull Valley Goshutes Inidan Reservation in Utah into a parking lot dump (or "centralized interim storage facility") for commercial high-level radioactive waste. At one time, PFS was comprised of more than a dozen nuclear utilities, led by Xcel Energy of Minnesota, with Dairyland Power Co-Op as a front group.

In 2005-2006, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted PFS a construction and operating license, despite objections by traditionals with the Skull Valley band, nearly 500 environmental and environmental justice organizations, as well as the State of Utah. The plan was for 40,000 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel to be "temporarily stored" (for 20 to 40 years) in 4,000 dry casks on the reservation. However, as the ultimate plan was to transfer the wastes to the Yucca Mountain dump, when that proposal was cancelled in 2009, this would have meant the wastes would have been stuck indefinitely at Skull Valley.

In 2006 a very unlikely coalition, involving the likes of Mormon political leaders and wilderness advocates, succeeded in creating the first federal wilderness area in Utah in a generation. This created a "moat" around the Skull Valley reservation, blocking the railway needed to directly deliver the waste. And, after lobbying efforts at the top echelons of Republican Party decision making circles by U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as well as Utah Governor Huntsman, the George W. Bush administration's Department of the Interior refused to approve the lease agreement between PFS and the Skull Valley band, as well as the intermodal transfer facility on Bureau of Land Management property which could have allowed heavy haul trucks to ship the waste containers the final leg of the journey to the reservation.

The Skull Valley Goshutes were first targeted by the nuclear power establishment more than 20 years ago.Altogether, 60-some tribes have been actively targeted for high-level radioactive waste parking lot dumps. All the proposals have been stopped, as through the work of Native American grassroots environmental activists like Grace Thorpe, working in alliance with environmental and environmental justice organizations.

Update on January 7, 2013 by admin

On Jan. 7, the Salt Lake Tribune published a follow-on article about PFS's cancellation, entitled "Money, politics bury plans for Utah fuel-rod cemetery." The article quotes a leader of the broad coalition which opposed the "parking lot dump":

"...Chip Ward remembers an 'amazing' coalition swelled up around the goal of defeating the storage site.

Co-founder of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, he grasped the wariness of Utahns who already had allowed a slew of toxic industries to be established in western Utah — including chemical weapons destruction, bio-weapons testing, a low-level nuclear waste site, a hazardous waste site, a toxic waste incinerator and what was then the nation’s biggest air polluter...

'When you have a really powerful political movement,' Ward said, 'you can look past whatever divides you and what is important is the cause that unites you.'"

NIRS, for one, spearheaded a coalition of nearly 450 organizations nation-wide, which objected to the environmental, or radioactive, racism of the PFS proposal.

States have no confidence in NRC's Nuke Waste Con Game

VT AG William SorrellAs reported by the Rutland Herald, Vermont and New York have filed joint comments with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the agency's Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision and Rule. The Attorneys General of VT and NY, who filed the joint comments, along with the Attorneys General of CT and NJ, were plaintiffs in the original lawsuit, which resulted in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals nullifying NRC's Nuclear Waste Confidence on June 8, 2012. The court then ordered the agency to carry out an environmental impact statement on the risks of long-term storage of high-level radioactive waste at reactor sites, such as Entergy Nuclear's Vermont Yankee and Indian Point near New York City.

The State of Vermont Department of Public Service joined in the VT and NY AG's joint comments. VT's Public Service Board is currently considering whether or not Entergy Nuclear, which has actually sued its three commissioners by name, whether the out-of-state utility deserves a Certificate of Public Good to continue doing business in the Green Mountain State.

State of Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell (pictured, left) stated that "Until the D.C. Circuit’s ruling, the NRC licensed and relicensed nuclear reactors on the assumption that the federal government would take away all of the spent fuel from each reactor site at some defined time, so the NRC never looked at the possibility that the fuel might stay there for years, decades, or even centuries.” He added that NRC has to consider whether licensing new -- and extending the licenses at old -- reactors makes sense in light of the long-term environmental impacts of onsite irradiated nuclear fuel storage, and the uncertainty surrounding the availability of a permanent dumpsite at any point in the future. In the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Energy was eyeing 7 potential sites in Vermont's granite for a national repository, as well as additional sites in neighboring New Hampshire (Hillsboro) and Maine (Sebago Lake).

Sorrell's office will present oral arguments at the Second Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in New York City on January 14th, seeking to overturn a federal district judge's ruling in favor of NRC's rubberstamping Entergy Vermont Yankee's 20-year license extension, despite the laws of the State of Vermont to the contrary.

Both VT and NY are strongly resisting 20-year license extensions at Entergy Nuclear's Vermont Yankee (already rubberstamped by NRC in March 2011, just days after the twin design Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 3 GE BWR Mark Is melted down and exploded in Japan) and Indian Point Units 2 and 3 near New York City.