Resisting bailouts, reactors, and rad. waste across the Great Lakes!
Beyond Nuclear has been busy in the Great Lakes region (photo, left) of late. The Great Lakes are the drinking water supply for 40 million North Americans in 8 U.S. states, 2 Canadian provinces, and a large number of Native American First Nations.
Here are some summaries, alphabetically by state:
Nuclear Illinois map, prepared by NEIIllinois: Beyond Nuclear just met with David Kraft, executive director, and Linda Lewison, board member, of Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS) in Chicago. From them, he learned that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has introduced a resolution to the Chicago City Council opposing the Ontario Power Generation Deep Geologic Repository for burial of so-called "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes from 20 reactors across the province, on the Lake Huron shore at Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Kincardine, Ontario. See Beyond Nuclear's Canada website section, for posts on this issue going back in time.
Chicago is the biggest city on the entire Great Lakes. If passed, its resolution would add tremendous momentum to a groundswell of other resolutions from municipalities across the Great Lakes Basin, as chronicled and mapped at the website of Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump. For example, on Oct. 9th, Cook County -- Chicago's host county -- passed just such a resolution.
In 2012, Beyond Nuclear co-organized a major conference with NEIS in Chicago -- "A Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High" -- to mark the 70th year since Enrico Fermi fired up the first atomic reactor in history, on Dec. 2, 1942, at the University of Chicago, as part of the Manhattan Project, that led to the atomic bombings of Japan in August, 1945.
NEIS has been busy recently speaking out against a massive money grab being attempted by Exelon, the largest U.S. nuclear utility, headquartered in Chicago. (Ironically enough, Exelon was formed by a merger coordinated by Rahm Emanuel, while he worked as an investment banker, after having served in Congress and before becoming Mayor). Exelon is seeking a whopping $580 million/year to prop up five uncompetitive reactors in Illinois. However, state agency reports, that Exelon's lobbyists pressured the state legislature to order, have now shown that Illinois's economy can withstand those job losses.
The conservative Chicago Sun-Times editorial board opposes Exelon's requested bailout, as does former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford, in an op-ed published by Crain's Chicago Business.
Kraft of NEIS sent a letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times supporting its editorial.
Chris Williams speaks to anti-nuclear bloc at Peoples Climate March in New York City, Sept. 2014Indiana: Beyond Nuclear recently met with the former executive director of Citizens Action Coalition (CAC) of Indiana (and current NIRS board chairman), Chris Williams (photo, left). In decades past, CAC blocked proposed new nuclear power plants at Marble Hill on the Ohio River, as well as at Bailly on Lake Michigan. CAC did so by successfully challenging, in court, illegal Construction Work in Progress ("CWIP") charges on ratepayer electricity bills (see Beyond Nuclear's CWIP web site section for recent devleopments). Michael Mullett served as CAC's legal counsel.
A full length 2012 documentary film ("Marlbe Hill: Unsafe at Any Price") chronicled the epic battle. Marble Hill is now a billion dollar ghost town; Bailly was never more than a $200 million hole in the sand dunes.
CAC also worked with allies in the Great Lakes basin, in years past, to call for the shutdown of the Cook nuclear power plant in Michigan. Williams and CAC canvassers took part in multiple direct actions of non-violent civil disobedience at the twin reactors' front gate, resulting in scores of arrests, and even week-long jail sentences.
Cook, unfortunately still operating, recently leaked an estimatd 2,000 gallons of oil into Lake Michigan over the course of two months.
Michigan: Beyond Nuclear is fighting old and new reactors on both sides of the state.
At Palisades in southwest MI, on the Lake Michigan shore, Entergy Nuclear, through inexcusable mismanagement, and perhaps even intentionally, exposed 192 of its own workers to significant, hazardous radioactivity doses last year on a single job, the Feb. to March, 2014 replacement of its problem-plagued Control Rod Drive Mechanisms. Beyond Nuclear, NEIS board member Linda Lewison, and Beyond Nuclear and NEIS's expert witness, Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer of Fairewinds Associates, Inc., testified against Entergy's radiological abuse of its own workers, at an NRC/Entergy regulatory conference held at NRC Region 3 HQ in Lisle, IL on Jan. 13th.
Gundersen, who attempted to read his prepared statement for the record, was arbitrarily cut off by NRC staff, who suddenly announced the public comment session was for questions only. Gundersen had waited through 3.5 hours of Entergy and NRC back and forth to read his three-minute prepared statement. Alas, he waited in vain -- he was not allowed to!
Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, who attended the regulatory conference in person, refused to yield the microphone until he asked many of his prepared questions on the record, despite pressure by NRC staff to just sit down and shut up.
Also at Palisades, Entergy Nuclear and NRC staff responded, on Jan. 12th, to an intervention by Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste MI, Michigan Safe Energy Future--Shoreline Chapter, and NEIS, filed Dec. 1st.
At Fermi nuclear power plant in southeast Michigan, on the Lake Erie shore, Beyond Nuclear is resisting both an old reactor, as well as a proposed new reactor.
Fermi Unit 2 has applied for a 20-year license extension. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLBP) overseeing interventions by environmental groups (Beyond Nuclear, Citizen Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, and Don't Waste MI, as well as a parallel intervention by Citizens Resistance at Fermi Two) recently granted itself additional time to consider the numerous submitted contentions. Fermi 2 is the last of 22 remaining Fukushima-twin design reactors (GE Mark I BWR) in the U.S. to not yet have been granted a 20-year license extension rubberstamp by NRC.
Fermi Unit 3 is a proposed new General Electric-Hitachi, so-called "Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor" (ESBWR). Beyond Nuclear, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, CEA, Don't Waste MI, and Sierra Club, Michigan Chapter, have been intervening against the Fermi 3 combined Construction and Operating License Application (COLA) since March 9, 2009.
On Jan. 13th, the NRC Commission, by a unanimous 4-0 vote, rejected a request from the ASLBP overseeing the Fermi 3 COLA proceeding. The ASLBP had requested permission to review NRC staff's apparent violation of NEPA (the National Environmental Policy Act), for not having included Fermi 3's proposed new transmission lines in its Environmental Impact Statement. The environmental coalition called this NEPA violation to the attention of the ASLBP in Jan., 2012. The coalition plans to appeal this NEPA violation, and perhaps other violations of law and regulation (such as the gutting of QA, Quality Assurance, requirements), to the federal courts at the earliest opportunity. The coalition also has submitted a Nuclear Waste Confidence contention, which is growing ever more ripe for judicial review.
A 2012 environmental/state coalition Nuclear Waste Confidence legal victory at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit led to a more than two-year delay in the granting of any NRC reactor licenses, or license extensions. Attorneys Diane Curran of Washington, D.C. and Mindy Goldstein of Atlanta, GA serve as legal counsel for the environmental coalition, including Beyond Nuclear, on Nuclear Waste Confidence.
"Burning Money" image, featured on the cover of The Nation Magazine, by Gene Case, Avenging Angels.Ohio: Beyond Nuclear testified at PUCO (Public Utilities Commission of Ohio) public comment hearings in Akron -- FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company's (FENOC) hometown -- on Jan. 12, in opposition to FENOC's requested ratepayer bailout of $172 million per year to prop up its dirty, dangerous, and uncompetitive Davis-Besse atomic reactor on Lake Erie, and Sammis coal plant on the Ohio River. Opponents testifying against the bailout outnumbered proponents at the microphone 75% to 25%! The Akron Beacon Journal has reported on this hearing.
Beyond Nuclear will also testify at the Toledo PUCO hearings on Jan. 15th, just 20 miles from Davis-Besse.
As reported by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, FENOC's attempted money grab could top $3 billion over coming decades!
Since Dec. 27, 2010, Beyond Nuclear has co-led an environmental coalition (Citizen Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, Green Party of Ohio) opposing Davis-Besse's 20-year license extension. Since late 2011, the primary focus has been on Davis-Besse's severely cracked (and worsening, a half-inch every time it freezes!) concrete containment Shield Building (see photo, left). Davis-Besse's cracking is not unlike the containment cracking that permanently closed Crystal River, FL in 2013).
NRC's ASLBP overseeing the Davis-Besse license extension proceeding was supposed to have ruled on the environmental coalition's most recent cracking contention by Dec. 26th, but as of Jan. 14th, still had not done so. [See update below: on Jan. 15th, the ASLBP finally released its ruling -- rejecting the environmental intervenors' cracking and rebar contentions.]
Despite being challenged in 2014 by the Sierra Club, Ohio Chapter, Beyond Nuclear, CEA, and Don't Waste MI, as well as Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates, Inc. as expert witness, Davis-Besse has also launched an experimental steam generator replacement (which went badly wrong at San Onofre, CA, leading to the permanent closure of two reactors in 2013).
As made plain by FENOC's attempted ratepayer robbery, Davis-Besse can't compete with such sources of electricity as wind power on the wholesale market. In that regard, it is also like Kewaunee, WI (permanently closed in 2013), and Vermont Yankee (VY, permanently closed on Dec. 29, 2014). This, despite both Kewaunee and VY having recently received 20-year license extension rubberstamps from NRC.
Beyond Nuclear and its coalition allies are hoping to block Davis-Besse's license extension in the first place, so it can "retire as planned" (a slogan from the recently victorious Shut VY! Campaign) on April 22, 2017, if not much sooner, given the health, safety, environmental, and economic risks. What better way to celebrate Earth Day two years from now, than with Davis-Besse's permanent shutdown?!
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On Jan. 15th, three weeks late according to its own regulatorily required deadline of Dec. 26th, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel (Froehlich, Kastenberg, Trikouros) overseeing the Davis-Besse license extension proceeding, released its ruling. It rejected environmntal intervenors' concrete containment Shield Building and rebar contentions.
Ironically enough, however, in Section V of the ruling ("Further Analysis of the Long-Term Impacts of Concrete Cracking at the Davis-Besse Shield Building May Be Warranted," pages 33 to 35, or 35-37 of 41 on PDF counter), the ASLBP essentially said intervenors' dire warnings may in fact be accurate, so the NRC Commission, NRC staff, and FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company should probably take such risks seriously, and get to the bottom of them. However, through hyper-technical legalities, the ASLBP will not allow more light to be shed on the issues by granting intervenors a hearing on the merits!
However, despite the ASLBP's encouragement of NRC staff and the NRC Commissioners to take this cracking issue seriously, a similar request by the ASLBP at Fermi 3 fell on deaf ears. There, the ASLBP urged NRC staff to include transmission corridor impacts in its Environmental Impact Statement. NRC staff did not do so. When the ASLBP attempted to address this issue itself, due to the NRC staff's dereliction of duty, it was blocked from doing so by the NRC Commissioners (see Fermi 3, MI, above).
This leaves only the Nuclear Waste Confidence contention in the Davis-Besse proceeding. Intervenors plan to continue challenging the license extension at every turn, to the bitter end.
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In a Cleveland Plain Dealer article entitled "FirstEnergy rate plan pummelled during PUCO hearing, as 80 demand to testify," John Funk reported on the Jan. 20 PUCO hearing in Cleveland, OH. Public Citizen's Allison Fisher is quoted:
"The market is actually doing what it is supposed to do - push out uncompetitive and inefficient generators," Allison Fisher, outreach director for Public Citizen's Energy and Climate Program, told the PUCO panel. "And now utilities, like FirstEnergy that favor the benefits of the market but want none of the risk, are trying to change the rules by asking regulators to guarantee that their oldest, dirtiest and most uneconomical power plants make a profit."