Declaration of Independence from proposed Fermi 3 new atomic reactor: "No indoctrination without representation!" regarding Fermi 1 meltdown history
July 3, 2012 
A cover of John G. Fuller's 1975 non-fiction book "We Almost Lost Detroit," about the 1966 meltdown at the Fermi 1 experimental plutonium breeder reactor in Monroe, MichiganBeyond Nuclear and its allies in the intervention against the proposed new Fermi 3 atomic reactor in Monroe, Michigan have filed their 25th contention opposing the proposed new atomic reactor, citing a violation of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). NRC, Detroit Edison and the State of Michigan have finalized a NHPA mitigation Memorandum of Agreement about the demolition of the Fermi 1 containment shell, despite its inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places, in order to make room for the construction of Fermi 3, a General Electric-Hitachi so-called "Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor" (ESBWR) . However, the decisions were made without even notifying -- let alone involving -- the public, a violation of NHPA. The coalition has issued a media release. Read more, including links to the historical documents.
"The story of Fermi 1's nearly catastrophic failure offers a large window into the history of commercial nuclear power, an institutional void of safety culture within the primary regulatory agency, and nuclear power’s inherent weapons connection," said Keith Gunter of Livonia, Michigan, a launch partner of Beyond Nuclear and an official intervenor against Fermi 3. "After all, as John G. Fuller's book and Gil Scott-Heron's song titles put it, 'We Almost Lost Detroit,' not to mention Monroe, Toledo, and beyond," Keith Gunter added. (see image, above left)
Fermi nuclear power plant also hosts Unit 2, the single largest Mark I in the world. It is nearly as big as Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 and 2 put together. Its high-level radioactive waste storage pool holds several times more inventory than do the pools at the four wrecked reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. Unit 4 at Fukushima Daiichi contained the most irradiated nuclear fuel of any pool at Units 1-4 -- 219 metric tons, according to the Japanese Parliament's Independent Investigation of the nuclear catastrophe. By contrast, Fermi 2 likely contains more than 600 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel.
In fact, every single irradiated nuclear fuel assembly ever generated at Fermi 2 is still held in the storage pool, even though Fermi 2 has held an NRC rubberstamp to transfer out irradiated nuclear fuel into dry cask storage for several years now. The problem is, structural welds on various floors of the Fermi 2 reactor building were never installed 40 years ago. The reactor building is not structually sound enough to support a crane, holding 100-ton waste transfer cask loads.
In that sense, Fermi 2 is in a similar predicament to Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4. The hydrogen explosion in March 2011 severely damaged the Unit 4 reactor building, so much so that the building could not support the crane, lifting 91-ton waste transfer casks. It took Tokyo Electric from March 2011 to November 2013 to rebuild the Unit 4 reactor building's infrastructure to the point where it could support the crane, lifting 910-ton loads. Tepco is now slowly removing the irradiated nuclear fuel fron the Unit 4 storage pool, claiming that the project will be finished by the end fo 2014.