NRC rubber-stamps proposed new Fermi 3 reactor license, Beyond Nuclear vows legal appeals

As documented in a Memorandum and Order, the four U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Commissioners (there has been a vacancy for many months) today approved the Fermi 3 combined Construction and Operating License Application (COLA) submitted by DTE (formerly Detroit Edison) in Sept. 2008. NRC issued a press release.

An environmental coalition (Beyond Nuclear, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, Citizen Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, and Sierra Club Michigan Chapter) officially intervened against the COLA on March 9, 2009 and have vowed to continue to resist the proposed new atomic reactor. The intervention's three dozen filed contentions has likely delayed Fermi 3's groundbreaking by several years.

Fermi 3 is targeted at the Lake Erie shore near Monroe, MI, immediately adjacent to the Fukushima Daiichi twin design Fermi 2 reactor, and on the very spot where the Fermi 1 experimental plutonium breeder reactor had a partial core meltdown on Oct. 5, 1966.

As conveyed in Beyond Nuclear's press release, federal court appeals are being prepared on multiple fronts: Nuclear Waste Confidence; the transmission corridor; and Quality Assurance (QA). The coalition will work with allies to block DTE from obtaining any public subisidies with which to build Fermi 3, as well.

Toledo-based attorney Terry Lodge serves as the environmental coalition's legal counsel. Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Associates, Inc. in Burlington, Vermont serves as the coalition's expert witness on QA.

(See Farouk D. Baxter PE's warnings to NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board about Fermi 3 transmission corridor risks.)

Additional organizations, including the Alliance to Halt Fermi 3 and Citizens Resistance at Fermi 2 (CRAFT), have joined in the resistance to the proposed new General Electric-Hitachi "ESBWR" (so-called Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor).

"Court Challenge Filed to Stop Uranium Mining Next to Grand Canyon National Park"

"A coalition of conservation groups announced today they are appealing a lower court decision that opens the door to new uranium mining at the Canyon uranium mine, located only six miles from Grand Canyon National Park’s South Rim.

Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity and Grand Canyon Trust, along with the Havasupai Tribe, had challenged the U.S. Forest Service’s decision to allow Energy Fuels Inc. to reopen the mine without initiating or completing formal tribal consultations and without updating an obsolete federal environmental review dating to 1986. Earlier this month U.S. District Judge David Campbell ruled in favor of the Forest Service in the case, allowing mine operations to move forward. The Havasupai Tribe has also filed a notice of appeal of the ruling...".

See the coalition's press release.

Both Chicago dailies editorialize against Exelon Nuclear money grab at ratepayer expense

"Burning money" image by Gene Case/Avenging AngelsBoth the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times editorial boards have come out against Exelon Nuclear's attempt to gouge Illinois ratepayers to the tune of hundreds of millions per year, to prop up allegedly failing atomic reactors. "Allegedly," because, as both papers point out, Exelon refuses to open its books to the public.

Both editorial boards come at the problem from the perspective of free market capitalism. Which is fine -- no other energy industry has enjoyed more public subsidization than the nuclear power industry, which makes Exelon's latest bailout demand all the more objectionable.

As the Sun-Times so wisely understands, "Renewable energy is the future, and the state should be making that a priority, not nuclear plants." More.

"Nuclear renaissance ebbs at largest public utility"

As reported by Blake Farmer at Marketplace, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the largest public electric utility in the country, has canceled most of its "Nuclear Relapse" plans. Although the decades-under-construction Watts Bar Unit 2 in Tennessee is limping towards full power operations, other "zombie nukes" have been mothballed yet again, due to lack of demand for electricity.

The head of TVA cited ratepayer efficiency and conservation upgrades, such as switching from incandescent to compact fluorescent light bulbs (of course, LEDs are even more efficient!). A Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman cited the boom in fracked natural gas (although clean, safe, and ever more cost-competitive renewables like wind power and solar photovoltaics are also outcompeting nuclear power). And Don Safer of Nashville, a leader of the grassroots Sierra Club Nuclear-Free Campaign, vowed vigilance against any future efforts by the nuclear power industry to expand.

During his tenure as head of TVA under the Carter administration, Dave Freeman, now a senior advisor to Friends of the Earth, ordered the cancellation of several proposed atomic reactors.

Remembering the Chernobyl nuclear disaster

Twenty nine years ago today, the world's worst nuclear disaster at the time, happened in Ukraine close to the border with Belarus in what was still the Soviet Union. The Chernobyl reactor, just two years into operation, exploded, releasing large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere. The effects are still felt today. A detailed account of the impacts of Chernobyl can be found in this excellent 2011 report by IPPNW -- Health Effects of Chernobyl 25 Years After the Reactor Catastrophe. Today, Strontium 90 levels in potatoes in Gomel, Belarus, are still as high as in 1990, an anomaly that is yet to be fully explained given the isotope's half-life. Strontium 90 has in fact so weakened human immune systems, especially in children, that the effect is now known as "Chernobyl AIDS." Cesium, with a half-life of 30 years, has been equally devastating. At least 80% of the Chernobyl fallout was cesium 137 which stays in biological chain for 300+ years. More