Coalition challenges RPV regulatory rollbacks at Entergy's age-degraded Palisades atomic reactor on Great Lakes shore

Entergy Nuclear's Palisades atomic reactor, located 4 miles south of South Haven, in Covert, MI on the Lake Michigan shoreline.An environmental coalition, represented by Toledo-based attorney Terry Lodge, as well as expert witness Arnie Gundersen (Chief Engineer, Fairewinds Associates, Inc.), has filed another challenge to proposed safety regulation rollbacks regarding the age-degraded reactor pressure vessel (RPV) at Entergy Nuclear's 44-year-old Palisades atomic reactor located in Covert, MI on the Lake Michigan shoreline (see photo, left).

Lodge filed the intervention petition opposing Entergy's License Amendment Request (LAR), regarding RPV plates and welds decreasing below "Charpy V-Notch Upper-Shelf Energy" values of 50 ft.-lbs, by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) deadline. He also refiled Gundersen's expert witness declaration, which accompanied the coalition's parallel, Dec. 1, 2014 intervention petition opposing Entergy's LAR for "alternate" (that is, weakened) RPV pressurized thermal shock (PTS) regulatory treatment, as well as a Feb. 15, 2015 Greenpeace International report warning that RPV cracking in Belgian reactors could indicate a worldwide danger, including at Palisades.

Under direct questioning by watchdogs, NRC has been forced to admit, multiple times, that Palisades has the single worst embrittled RPV in the U.S. Palisades' RPV is at serious risk of PTS fracture. A loss-of-coolant-accident (LOCA) would result, and almost certain reactor core meltdown. If containment were breached, a catastrophic release of hazardous radioactivity would occur on the very edge of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes serve as the drinking water supply for 40 million people in eight U.S. states, two Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations.

The coalition includes Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste Michigan, Michigan Safe Energy Future--Shoreline Chapter, and Nuclear Energy Information Service of Chicago.

"Experts warned of nuke work overruns"

As reported by Matt Kempner in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the two new atomic reactors under construction at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Georgia are "more than three years behind schedule," and costs for just one partner, Georgia Power (a subsidiary of Southern Nuclear) "is at least $1.4 billion, or 23 percent, over original projections." More.

"PG&E overlooked key seismic test at Diablo Canyon nuclear plant"

As reported by David R. Baker in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Pacific Gas and Electric Co. replaced $842 million of equipment at the heart of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant without first making sure the new gear could pass a vital seismic safety test required in the facility’s license, The Chronicle has learned." (See full text of article here.)

The systems, structures and components in question include new lids, as well as replacement steam generators, for the twin unit nuclear power plant. The revelation comes in the aftermath of the permanent shutdown of California's other operating nuclear power plant, San Onofre Units 2 and 3, due to widepsread damage from defective replacement steam generators. That fiasco has turned into a multi-billion dollar boondoggle. More.

Areva requests NRC to suspend US EPR design certification review

The French-owned AREVA nuclear corporation has requested that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission suspend indefinitely its design certification review of the US Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR). The February 25, 2015 letter to the NRC was followed by news of AREVA posting a $5.4 billion loss in 2014 due in large part to extensive delays, enormous cost overruns in its EPR construction projects in France and Finland. AREVA further acknowledged the move is prompted by the weakening global business climate for nuclear power. Standard & Poor's has downgraded AREVA's credit rating to non-investment grade junk.

AREVA orginally submitted its EPR design to the NRC for generic approval in 2007. Several US nuclear utilities have submitted applications for combined construction and operation licensing to the federal agency.

Constellation Energy and Electricite de France (EdF) had formed the UniStar Nuclear Energy Corporation to build and operate Calvert Cliffs 3  in Lusby, MD as the lead US pilot project and the Nine Mile Point 3 project in upstate New York. The Calvert Cliffs 3 project was to be a "reference reactor" application for several more EPRs to follow in a significantly streamlined generic licensing process.

Despite receiving roughly $8 billion in federal loan guarantees from the US Department of Energy, Constellation bailed out of the financially dubious project in 2012 leaving EdF, France's state-run nuclear corporation as the sole entity in UniStar and in clear violation of the US Atomic Energy Act which prohibits foreign ownership, control and domination of US nuclear projects. Not one US utility stepped in to fill the vacant partnership with EdF. Instead, the NRC and US nuclear industry have gone into discussions to take a "fresh look" at the foreign ownership prohibition.  

UniStar, in the meantime has withdrawn its application to build the Nine Mile Point-3 EPR in upstate New York. Ameren has suspended its NRC application to build an EPR in Missouri. PPL has likewise suspended its NRC application to build an EPR at Bell Bend, Pennsylvania.

The AREVA announcement  suspending the NRC design review process sows more doubt for French reactors in the US ever being constructed, given that a license cannot be issued without the agency approving design safety.

AREVA's EPR project at Olkiluoto-3 in Finland is 9 years behind schedule and construction cost overruns skyrocketing from Euros 3.2 billion to Euros 8 billion. AREVA's EPR project in Flamanville, France is similarly delayed with a significant cost overrun.

Fukushima 4 years on: Will it happen here?

NEWS FROM BEYOND NUCLEAR

For immediate release

Contact: Paul Gunter, 301.523.0201; Cindy Folkers, 240.354.4314; Kevin Kamps, 240.462.3216. 

Higher radiation doses could be ruled “acceptable” after nuclear power disaster

“Fukushima” in the U.S. an ever-present danger

TAKOMA PARK, MD, March 5, 2015 -- Four years after the March 11, 2011 nuclear catastrophe in Japan began, a Fukushima-style disaster could still happen in the U.S., say experts at Beyond Nuclear. And if it does, U.S. authorities could rule that affected populations be forced to accept higher “allowable” doses of radiation to make severe nuclear accidents appear tolerable.

All of Japan’s now 43 reactors remain closed since the disaster at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear site, while 22 reactors with the same controversial General Electric Mark I boiling water reactor design continue to operate in the U.S. out of a total of 99 units. An additional eight similarly controversial GE Mark II reactors also operate in the U.S.

Japanese authorities dramatically raised the allowable radiation dose limit for surrounding populations by twentyfold after the nuclear disaster struck, from 1 milliSievert/year to 20, the same dose considered permissible for nuclear plant workers in Germany. Beyond Nuclear is concerned that U.S. authorities could move similarly in the event of a nuclear disaster here.

“There is every reason to believe the Environmental Protection Agency could simply increase the ‘permissible’ dose of radiation as authorities did in Japan,” said Cindy Folkers, radiation and health specialist at Beyond Nuclear. "You just have to look at the EPA guidelines for state and local governments during a nuclear disaster to see that they are planning on allowing 5-20 times the radiation dose recommended internationally.

"The industry and government shouldn't be allowed to make a nuclear catastrophe appear more survivable than it is by inflating allowable radiation exposure levels, " Folkers continued.

“Exposing babies and pregnant women to the same radiation doses as those considered tolerable for nuclear workers would mean deliberately putting a huge percentage of the population in harm’s way simply to allow the nuclear industry to save face and money,” concluded Folkers. 

The potential for a U.S. nuclear power plant disaster on the scale of Fukushima remains ever-present.

“Fukushima was the convergence of a dangerous technology, a flawed design and a captured regulator whose luck ran out,” said Paul Gunter, Director of Reactor Oversight at Beyond Nuclear. Beyond Nuclear initiated an emergency petition in April 2011 signed by 10,000 co-petitioners, calling on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to suspend the operating licenses of the identical GE reactors here in the United States. 

“Unlike in Japan, where critical safety retrofits are now required before restart of any boiling water reactors, the NRC has dismissed increasing the identical safety margins and costs to keep financially fragile nuclear reactor operators in business,” he said.

Even permanently closed reactors still present a potentially catastrophic risk. “Highly radioactive irradiated fuel has to be stored in reactor pools for five years, even after a reactor ceases operations,” said Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist at Beyond Nuclear. “A pool fire could potentially release significantly more radioactivity than a reactor meltdown. A U.S. Fukushima is an ever-present danger until we shut all of our atomic reactors and transfer the irradiated nuclear fuel from vulnerable pools to Hardened On-Site Storage,” Kamps concluded.

Update on March 5, 2015 by admin

Downloadable PDF of press release here. Feel free to distribute.