Entergy opens new emergency ops ctr., assures it's cleaning up its act

As reported by WSBT of South Bend, IN, Entergy Nuclear has opened a new emergency operations center in Benton Harbor, MI, about 15 miles south of its Palisades atomic reactor in Covert, MI, to serve as a command, control, and communications center in the event of an emergeny at Palisades. Entergy Palisades took the opportunity, as it toured reporters through the new facility, to assure them that its problem-plagued performance for the past two years, which has landed it on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's list of the four worst performing reactors in the country, is a thing of the past.

The NRC is holding a public meeting with Entergy at 6 p.m. Eastern, next Wednesday, Sept. 12th, in South Haven near Palisades, to discuss the recently revealed complete collapse of its safety culture. If you are unable to attend in person, you can also phone into the meeting at the following call-in numbers: Phone 1-800-621-9524; Pass code - 5591733. Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps is speaking about "The Catastrophe Waiting to Happen at Palisades, and What You Can Do to Prevent It" in Kalamazoo, at Peace House, on Thurs., Sept. 13th. Learn more here.

Taliban threaten nuclear facilities in Pakistan

The Global Security Newswire conveys a report from Pakistan's Express Tribune  that the Taliban is poised, with up to four car bombs, to attack a military uranium processing complex in Pakistan. The threat comes just weeks after an hours-long gun battle at a Pakistani air force installation, rumored to house nuclear weapons.

'Nuclear Labyrinth on the Great Lakes,' Oct. 4-6, BGSU/Firelands College, Huron, OH

BGSU Firelands Community Enrichment Series Announces

‘Nuclear Labyrinth on the Great Lakes’

October 4th-6th, 2012

on the Lake Erie shoreline at Bowling Green State University's Firelands College,

Cedar Point Center Auditorium, Huron, Ohio

(see the full color flyer for this event here, with graphic design by Kathryn Barnes)

With the keynote presentation by Dr. Gordon Edwards of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, this conference will focus on Lake Erie as a microcosm of Great Lakes nuclear issues, with sessions on uranium mining, reactors, and radioactive waste; skills trainings; music and more. For more information, see the full color flyer link above, or Beyond Nuclear's comprehensive web post on this event. To register early (encouraged), contact the conference organizer Michael Keegan at (734) 770-1441 or mkeeganj@comcast.net. 

NRC's Nuke Waste Confidence EIS will delay reactor licenses for at least two years!

Cover of Beyond Nuclear's pamphlet "A Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High"The five Commissioners who direct the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have just ordered NRC Staff to carry out an expedited, two-year long Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process to revise the agency's Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision (NWCD) and Rule. Critics have charged the NWCD is a confidence game, which for decades has prevented environmental opponents of new reactor construction/operation licenses, as well as old reactor license extensions, from raising high-level radioactive waste generation/storage concerns during NRC licensing proceedings, or even in the federal courts. This EIS process and NWCD revision will thus delay any final NRC approval for new reactor construction/operation licenses, or old reactor license extensions, for at least two years.

The "Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High" conference in Chicago Dec. 1-3 will serve as a launch pad for generating public comments to NRC on this EIS, as well as to push back against proposals to begin "Mobile Chernobyl" irradiated nuclear fuel shipments by road, rail, and waterway to "consolidated interim storage." See Beyond Nuclear's pamphlet on high-level radioactive waste (cover reproduced at left). More.

NRC: loss of offsite power at Catawba Unit 1 last April was potentially of substantial significance to safety

NRC's file photo of the Catawba nuclear power plant in South CarolinaThe U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has just announced that on Sept. 11th, it will conduct a post-incident review with Duke Nuclear to discuss an April 2012 loss of off-site power at Catawba Unit 1 atomic reactor in South Carolina (picture, left). NRC's preliminary review has determined that the incident may be designated a "yellow finding" (in NRC's green, white, yellow, red system of increasingly significant incidents), meaning "of substantial significance to safety." Off-site power is the primary power source for running safety and cooling systems.

While General Electric Mark Is (such as the Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4) and IIs are Boiling Water Reactors with too small, too weak "pressure suppression" containments, ice condenser containments, as at Catawba Unit 1, are a form of "pressure suppression" containment -- again too small and too weak -- at a Pressurized Water Reactor design. The ice condeners in the U.S. include two units at Catawba in SC, two units at McGuire in NC, two units at Sequoyah in TN, one unit at Watts Bar in TN, and two units at Cook in MI.

Ice condensers were originally desiged for floating atomic reactors on barges, where the containment, of necessity, would have to be smaller and lighter, so it wouldn't sink under its own weight. Once licensed by NRC or its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, however, nuclear utilities took advantage of the certified reactor design, by building them on land, in order to save money on the containment structure. 

Thanks to revelations by Tennessee Valley Authority whistleblower Curtis Overall, and nuclear safety advocacy by David Lochbaum at Union of Concerned Scientists, the Cook ice condensers in southwest Michigan were shutdown from 1997 to 2000 for major safety violations, resulting in one of the biggest fines in NRC history up to that point.