NRC Denies Modest Post-Fukushima Emergency Response Recommendations

The UN IAEA's official radioactivity hazard warning signDave Kraft, Director of Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS) based in Chicago, wrote the following introduction as he forwarded the NIRS press release entitled "NRC Fails the American People: Denies Petition to Make Modest Improvements in Emergency Planning for Nuclear Reactor Accidents." Beyond Nuclear joined NEIS and three dozen other groups in supporting NIRS' petition.

"As a courtesy to our colleagues at NIRS in Washington, D.C., we forward a press release that reports the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s denial of a request to improve evacuation plans around U.S. nuclear reactors, based on the real-life information and evidence provided by the Fukushima and Chornobyl nuclear disasters.  With Illinois having 14 reactors – four of which are of Fukushima design and vintage -- and 9,000+ tons of high-level radioactive waste in the form of spent fuel in spent fuel pools and dry casks, this is no inconsequential matter.  (DISCLOSURE:  NEIS was a co-signatory of the petition to NRC)

Reality has never been a strong suit at the NRC, which consistently denies even the most common sense requests and recommendations emanating from members of the public they allegedly serve and protect.  The Commission’s interest in safety seems to be in direct proportion to the length of the leash held by Marvin S. Fertel, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry trade and lobbying group.  While NEI representatives are frequently invited by NRC to help write public policy on nuclear power issues, attend meetings and give briefings, public interest groups are routinely refused such opportunities.  This has been a consistent pattern of NRC behavior for decades.

It is for this reason that the public has come to understand that “NRC” actually stands for “not really concerned.”  NRC has yet to learn the lesson that betrayal is a rational justification for distrust."

Beyond Nuclear teamed up with NEIS on many occassions, including to co-sponsor the "Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High" conference in Chicago in Dec. 2012.

Update on April 30, 2014 by admin

Along the same lines, on April 10th, Beyond Nuclear's Reactor Oversight Project Director, Paul Gunter, has submitted public comments to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) "[rejecting] the conclusion of the NRC ISG [Interim Staff Guidance] that nuclear power plant owners can be exempted from emergency planning and preparedness once they have permanently ceased power operations but continue to maintain onsite storage of high-level nuclear waste (irradiated nuclear fuel assemblies) in wet or dry storage configurations."

As but one example that Paul points out:

"Numerous nuclear power plant irradiated fuel storage sites are also located within ten miles of General Aviation airfields where pilot and passenger screening are non-existent and cargo manifests are not supervised nor inspected. Private aircraft(s) malevolently equipped as Improvised Explosive Devices can turn any one of these high-density storage pools (many, such as the GE boiling water reactors are elevated to the upper region of the reactor building without any defensive supersturcture and all outside of any rated radiological containment structure) into a pre-deployed radiological weapon of mass destruction."

Then, on April 30th, NIRS published a press release entitled "NRC Fails to Document Claim Made in Denial of NIRS' Emergency Planning Petition that 'Majority' of Nuclear Emergency Drills Include Natural Disaster Components."

Proposed new reactor at Nine Mile Point in Upstate New York officially cancelled!

NRC file photo of Nine Mile PointNRC file photo of FitzPatrickAs documented in the Federal Register, the French Areva EPR ("Evolutionary Power Reactor") targeted at the Nine Mile Point nuclear power plant site in Upstate New York, on the Lake Ontario shore, has been officially cancelled.

The location is already heavily burdened by the presence of Nine Mile Point Units 1 & 2, as well as the FitzPatrick atomic reactor. Nine Mile Point Unit 1 and FitzPatrick are General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors, identical in design to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4. Nine Mile Point Unit 2 is a Mark II, very similar in design to Fukushima Daiichi. Lake Ontario serves as the drinking water supply for many millions of people in New York, Ontario (including Canada's largest city, Toronto), and a large number of Native American/First Nations.

Karl Grossman -- "Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way"

Karl GrossmanThe March 25, 2014 issue of The Independent, Antioch College's alumni publication, features Beyond Nuclear board member Karl Grossman (Antioch class of 1964). The interview gives a good overview of Karl's distinguished career of investigative journalism, authorship, and teaching.

Karl first entered the field of journalism as a copyboy, during an Antioch College co-op placement at the Cleveland Press. The Press was the first newspaper started by E.W. Scripps, "quite the crusading publisher, highly active during the Muckraking Era," accoring to Karl. At age 18, Karl was inspired by the inscription above the entrance: “Give Light and the People Will Find Their Own Way.”

Karl has gone on to shed much light around the world, with a focus on the issues of nuclear power and weapons, not only on Earth, but in space. His books include Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat to Our Planet and Weapons in Space.

Karl's 1993 EnviroVideo documentary Three Mile Island Revisited serves as an important milestone by which to remember the disaster, now 35 years on, especially considering the still-unfolding health consequences. Karl's investigation of nuclear catastrophes continues to the present day with his work in the aftermath of the triple meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi.

Asked what he's most proud of accomplishing, Karl pointed to "my journalism that helped in stopping the Shoreham nuclear power plant—the first of seven to 11 nuclear plants planned for Long Island—from going into commercial operation. I wrote hundreds of articles, did TV programs, broadcast on radio and wrote a book on this, Power Crazy. And Shoreham, although it was finished and ready to start operating, was stopped. The additional nuclear plants were never built, and Long Island is now nuclear-free."

For that and other investigative journalism, Karl has been named to the Long Island Journalism Hall of Fame. Karl says this "is quite a kick particularly because among the other 22 persons named is Walt Whitman who founded the Long Islander newspaper in Huntington." Karl's wife of 53 years, Janet, is originally from Huntington.

Three Mile Island: The People’s Testament

Aileen Mioko Smith, Executive Director of Green Action JapanOn March 27, 1989 (the eve of the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the Three Mile Island nuclear meltdown disaster), Aileen Mioko Smith of Green Action Japan (photo, left) wrote:

"In the summer of 1979, three months after the Three Mile Island accident, a party of five concerned Japanese traveled to Central Pennsylvania to study the incident and its aftermath first hand. It was a personal trip for the two lawyers, a student, a radiation research scientist, and Mitsuru Katagiri, university professor and my husband-to-be. When Mitsuru returned home to Kyoto, he confessed that before he left Japan he thought he had basically understood the accident — a barely averted meltdown catastrophe that quite fortunately had probably released only an insignificant amount of radiation. But as they toured the area, he was surprised by the number of people who reported anomalous occurrences during and after the time of the accident; strange tastes and smells; burning, tingling or reddening of the skin; and changes in the local vegetation, animals and atmosphere. This prompted yet another trip that year.

In August of 1980, l joined my husband on his next trip to the area and have since returned six times, including a 10-month stay in the Middletown area, five miles from the reactor site. These visits are part of a continuing effort to understand the accident and its implications for our common future. I have only just begun.

The passages below are excerpts from home interviews we conducted with approximately 250 TMI area residents over the years, from 1979 to 1988. Our purpose was to learn about the accident directly from the people living nearby. We were especially interested in understanding more about the unusual phenomena they had experienced. 

Now, 10 years after the accident, these widely reported phenomena are still not officially accepted. According to scientists and the government, since the releases were “negligible” the accident’s effects on the environment and the people of the surrounding area should also be negligible. But ten years of cleaning up the damaged Unit 2 reactor has shown that 45 percent of the fuel did indeed melt during the accident and 20 tons of it dropped to the reactor floor. In light of these findings, the accident has been entirely reassessed — reassessed, that is, as to what went on inside the reactor, but not as to what may have happened outside to the surrounding population and environment. Official interest in understanding what really happened at TMI appears to end at the reactor’s perimeter. The government has never even made an effort to reevaluate what the accident may have released to the environment. The interest and effort exerted to learn about the effects to the outside has been virtually non-existent compared to the tremendous interest and effort to learn about and clean up the reactor inside. 

An accurate accounting of what escaped is in many ways impossible. But by listening to the people of the area and by learning from the immediate environment, we can perhaps get a clearer idea of what actually occurred at TMI and how it continues to affect those who live in the area. We have thus chosen to publish our findings in an interview format for several reasons — to counteract the peculiar inattention to local residents’ views and experiences; to reaffirm the original reason for the existence of journalism; and thereby to demonstrate the possibility, indeed the necessity of lay peoples’ participation in the social processes and policies that vitally concern us all."

Thus, Three Mile Island: The People's Testament serves as a powerful, enduring evidence of the true consequences of the atomic reactor meltdown for communities downwind, downstream, up the food chain, and down the generations.

Three Mile Island Alert has posted the interviews at its website.

Beyond Nuclear has included extracts from a few of the interviews in its newsletter devoted to TMI's 35-year mark.

To learn more about TMI Truth, visit Beyond Nuclear's website section devoted to the subject.

RMI: "Nuclear Power's Competitive Landscape and Climate Opportunity Cost"

Amory B. Lovins, Cofounder and Chief Scientist, RMITitiaan Palazzi, Special Aid, RMIAmory B. Lovins, Cofounder and Chief Scientist, and Titiaan Palazzi, Special Aid (photos, left), of the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, CO, presented "Nuclear Power's Competitive Landscape and Climate Opportunity Cost" at "Three Mile Island 35th Anniversary Symposium: The Past, Present, and Future of Nuclear Energy" held at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, on 28 March 2014.

Lovins and Palazzi report that, when compared to nuclear power: (1) Efficiency and renewables are far cheaper; (2) Renewables can deliver similar or better service and reliability; (3) Renewables can scale faster;  and (4) For climate protection, efficiency and renewables are far more effective solutions than new nuclear build, which indeed is counterproductive.

Lovins and Palazzi's economic critique extends not only to proposed new atomic reactors, but even to existing, age-degraded reactors. They state "Reactors are promoted as costly to build but cheap to run. Yet as Daniel Allegretti ably described, many existing, long-paid-for U.S. reactors are now starting to be shut down because just their operating cost can no longer compete with wholesale power prices, typically depressed by gas-fired plants or windpower."

Lovins and Palazzi conclude that "efficiency is clearly cheaper than average nuclear operating costs, which exceed 4¢/kWh [4 cents per kilowatt-hour] at the busbar and 8¢ delivered. Thus overall, for saving coal plants’ carbon emissions, efficiency is about 10–50x more cost-effective than new nuclear build—or about 2–12x more cost-effective than just operating the average U.S. nuclear plant."

Regarding nuclear power's retreat, Lovins and Palazzi report:

"Nuclear power also has to run ever faster to stay in the same place as its 1970s and 1980s growth turns into a bulge  of retirements. After the next few years, retirements will exceed all planned or conceivable global nuclear additions, even with all license extensions as shown here. Power reactors’ terminal decline will be over by about 2060—and in view of both competition and aging, this projection by Mycle Schneider [Mycle Schneider et al., World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2013] is more likely to overstate its longevity than its brevity."

They conclude their presentation by stating "Existing nuclear plants, a future idea whose time has passed, will simply retire; the only choice is how quickly and at what cost to whom. End of story."