"Michigan lawmakers step up fight against nuke dump"

As reported by John Flesher of the Associated Press, a group of Michigan State Senators has introduced a slate of bills intended to turn up the heat against a proposal by Ontario Power Generation to bury all of the province's so-called "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Kincardine, Ontario, less than a mile from the shoreline of Lake Huron.

The Times Herald has posted a video of the State Senators' news conference announcing their proposed legislation.

State Senator Pavlov (Republican, 25th District), Vice Chairman, Senate Committee on Natural Resources, Environment and Great Lakes, has launched an online petition opposing the Great Lakes nuclear dump.

Update on June 11, 2014 by admin

The package of bills and resolutions was passed unanimously by the Michgian State Senate on June 11th.

"Scientist sheds new light on proposed nuclear waste site on Lake Huron"

Michigan Radio's host of Stateside, Cynthia Canty, interviews Frank Greening, a nuclear scientist who has worked for Ontario Power Generation (OPG) at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station. When Greening checked the figures for how much radioactivity OPG proposes to bury in a Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) at Bruce in Kincardine, Ontario, less than a mile from the Lake Huron shore, he found that OPG had underestimated some radionuclides by a factor of two or three, while others were low-balled by a factor of 100 or even 1,000.

[Note, Bruce Nuclear is 110 miles northeast of Port Huron, MI -- not 11 miles, as Cynthia Canty reported.]

Greening also found that OPG had depended on calculated values, rather than a vast data base of actual measurements -- many of which he himself had made.

OPG's error -- which Greening has called to the attention of the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO, which OPG dominates), the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency CEAA), and the Canadian federal Joint Review Panel (JRP) overseeing the DGR's environmental assessment -- has caused him to call for an "extent of condition," to see if additional errors have been made elsewhere on the project.

Despite OPG, NWMO and CNSC's admission that Greening is correct, they have nonetheless stood by the "safety case" of OPG's DGR proposal. Greening, however, doesn't take "trust us, we're experts" as good enough, given their admitted error on radioactivity levels.

Greening questions the wisdom of burying radioactive waste on the Great Lakes shoreline. "Why tempt fate?" he asks.

"Senators Markey, Boxer and Sanders Introduce Legislation to Increase Safety at Nuclear Plants"

U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works CommitteeU.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA, photo at left), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Senator Edward J. Markey (D-MA) introduced three bills today aimed at improving the safety and security of decommissioning reactors and the storage of spent nuclear fuel at nuclear plants across the nation. 

The three bills address safety of spent fuel storage and decommissioning plans. They are entitled: Safe and Secure Decommissioning Act of 2014; Nuclear Plant Decommissioning Act of 2014 (see the bill, Sen. Sanders' press release, and a one-page summary); Dry Cask Storage Act of 2014. To learn more, see the press release at Sen. Markey's website.

The EPW Committee will hold and webcast a hearing entitled “Nuclear Reactor Decommissioning: Stakeholder Views” on Wed., May 14th, at 10 AM Eastern. Witnesses include CA and VT officials, and spokespeople from NRDC and NEI.

Please urge your two U.S. Senators to support these three bills. You can contact your Senators via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Update on May 15, 2014 by admin

An archive of the hearing webcast, as well as the witness statements, are posted at the EPW website.

Sens. Boxer, Markey, and Sanders have also issued a press release, making a public a letter they've written to NRC Chairwoman Macfarlane, citing wildfires near the San Onofre nuclear power plant in southern CA. The fires erupted on the same day as the hearing. Southern California Edison evacuated a dozen workers from San Onofre. As the Senators mentioned in their letter, San Onofre's storage pools were designed for 1,600 irradiated nuclear fuel assemblies, but now contain 2,600. The Senators cite a report NRC Chairwoman Macfarlane herself co-authored in 2003, documenting the potentially catastrophic risks of pool fires. They urge that NRC cease and desist from exempting decommissioning reactors from emergency preparedness and security requirements, due to ongoing high-level radioactive waste storage risks.

Updated "Southeast MI in the Radioactive Cross Hairs" backgrounder

At the urging of environmental allies in southeast Michigan, Beyond Nuclear in March 2012 prepared a backgrounder on reactor, radioactive waste, and other nuclear risks in the region. The backgrounder has been updated for use at a presentation by Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste Watchdog, Kevin Kamps, to be held at the Huron Valley Sierra Club Chapter meeting in Ann Arbor, MI on May 20th. The backgrounder complements the "Great Lakes Region Nuclear Hot Spots" map, prepared by Anna Tilman at International Coalition of Concern for Public Health last year.

NRC grants years-long delays on urgent "Fukushima lessons learned" earthquake risk safety upgrades

Looking at the overlap of U.S. nuclear reactors (both power and research facilities) and earthquake zones is pretty alarming.In a press release entitled "NRC Prioritizes Detailed Earthquake Risk Analysis For Central and Eastern U.S. Reactors," the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has given nuclear utilities an extraordinarily long period of time to upgrade safety in light of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.

(A map posted at www.publicintegrity.org, left, superimposes the locations of U.S. atomic reactors onto a USGS map of seismic hazards.)

NRC speaks of having "set a priority list for 21 of 59 nuclear power plant sites in the central and eastern United States to conduct in-depth analyses of the plants’ updated earthquake risk," in recognition that seismic hazards could well be greater than the atomic reactors were originally designed and built to withstand.

And what are NRC's deadlines for the nuclear utilities to take "Fukushima lessons learned" urgent action by? Preliminary analysis, to determine if reinforcements to systems, structures, or components may be needed, is not due till Dec. 31, 2014 -- nearly four years after the Fukushima catastrophe began. If any such upgrades are needed, they need not be installed until Dec. 31, 2016 -- nearly six years post-Fukushima.

Perhaps more astounding, the "detailed," "in-depth risk" analyses described in the press release headline are not due until June 30, 2017 (over six years post-Fukushima) for 10 "priority" sites, and not till June 30, 2019 (more than eight years post-Fukushima) for another 11 "priority" sites.

At another 23 sites, NRC is still yet to decide whether or not they need to do the "in-depth risk analysis." If NRC decides they do, they have until Dec. 31, 2020 (almost a decade post-Fukushima) to get it done.

Apparently, we must simply hope earthquakes stronger than originally designed and constructed against many decades ago won't strike before NRC requires these actions to be taken.