Radioactive leak at Flamanville reactor in France

The EDF-owned Flamanville 1 reactor on France's Normandy coast experienced a radioactive leak late on October 24th. Although downplayed by the French nuclear authority, a French watchdog group based near Flamanville received direct reports from workers, who described a very close call that almost cost three plant workers their lives. The unit had been shut down since the end of July for refueling. Around 42,000 liters of 300°C radioactive water escaped from a primary cooling circuit, contaminating the reactor building. Flamanville has two operating reactors, with the third, an EPR design, still under construction but way behind schedule and over budget.

New French reactor at Calvert Cliffs application review terminated by NRC

Even the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission couldn't green light another nuclear reactor on the Chesapeake Bay waterfront two days after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the East Coast. The combined construction and operatation license application for a  proposed French Evolutionary Power Reactor slated for Calvert Cliffs, MD, is  terminated by Order announced today.

A 60-day reprieve to allow French-owned UniStar to find a US partner for its proposed third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs, MD, expired with no reprieve from the commissioners at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), sounding the death knell for the long troubled project. On August 30, the NRC licensing  board had given UniStar, wholly owned by French governmental electric utility, Électricité de France (EdF), 60 more days to comply with the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) in order to be granted a license for a third reactor at Calvert Cliffs. 

After the original US partner, Constellation Energy, exited the deal in December 2010, EdF was abandoned as the lone applicant. The AEA forbids control and domination of a US reactor by a foreign entity. EdF had hoped to build an Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR), a French Areva design, originally targeted for six US nuclear sites.

“The clock ran out on French nuclear expansion plans in the US,” said Paul Gunter, Director of Reactor Oversight at Beyond Nuclear, one of four groups that filed contentions to the NRC in 2008 to block the Calvert Cliffs EPR. “Electricity companies have lost their appetite for exorbitantly expensive and increasingly risky atomic power,” he said. “The new reactor fiasco is over in Maryland and the termination of the proceeding means that the other EPR projects are as good as dead in the US,” he said.

UniStar's attorneys have petitioned the five NRC Commissioners to review and overturn the licensing board's August 30th Order that denied the construction application because the French-owned corporation's ineligibility and established the 60 day deadline to find a domestic parnter or terminate the proceeding. The termination of the proceeding on November 1, 2012 effectively disbands the licensing board. Any subsequent Commission decision would have to reverse the termination Order, impanel a new board in order to re-open the proceeding. The Commission has not rendered a decision for which there is no time frame. The challenge now likely moves to nuclear industry's lobbying efforts in Congress to amend the Atomic Energy Act to remove the prohibition on foreign domination of US nuclear reactors.

Read the full press release.

Hurricane “Sandy” sends another warning on unreliable nuclear power in a climate changing world

Hurricane Sandy held more lessons and sent a clear warning to humankind on the consequences of climate change and nuclear power in a post-Fukushima world.  Climate change was largely responsible for making Sandy one of the most destructive storms in U.S. history. The “Frankenstorm” swamped much of the Eastern Seaboard in storm surge and flood water with devastating results for New Jersey and New York. And it reiterated the dire need for prompt action to place the interests of the public’s health and safety ahead of those of an inherently dangerous and polluting nuclear power industry. 

The storm caused the emergency shutdown of three nuclear power stations because of electricity failures and the powering down of several more, once again demonstrating that in time of natural catastrophe and national emergency, nuclear power is unreliable and more a dangerous liability than an asset. 

Indian Point Unit 3 (Buchannan, NY), Nine Mile Point Unit 1 (Scriba, NY) and Salem Unit 1 (Artificial Island, NJ) were forced into shutdown and cooling mode due to electrical grid disturbance and high water. The Oyster Creek nuclear power station (Toms River, NJ), already shut down on October 22 for refueling and routine maintenance, went on “ALERT” when storm surge and flooding threatened to overwhelm cooling water pumps to the more than 700 metric tons of nuclear waste in its rooftop storage pond. 

The unprecedented size of this super-storm and its flooding impact has more broadly underscored the environmental threat from the entire nuclear fuel chain beginning with uranium mining to the still unresolved nuclear waste issue.  The radioactive contamination of water resources due to run-off from uranium mine tailings is a particular concern given current industry efforts to repeal the state of Virginia’s ban on uranium mining. The City of Virginia Beach detailed the threat to its drinking water supply from potential flooding of the proposed Cole’s Hill uranium mine in Pittsylvania County, VA in an environmental impact statement published in February 2011. One can only imagine the long term contamination as a consequence of adding radioactivity to the already toxic floodwaters now inundating communities in New Jersey and New York.