NRC licensing board blocks Massachusetts from challenging Pilgrim license extension

NRC file photo of Pilgrim, located 38 miles southeast of Boston; its 40 year operating license expires June 8, 2012The New York Times reports that a panel of three administrative law judges at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has rejected a bid by the State of Massachusetts to challenge the Pilgrim nuclear power plant's license extension by requiring "lessons learned" from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe to be applied. Both Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4 and Pilgrim share the same reactor design, the General Electric Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactor. Beyond Nuclear's "Freeze Our Fukushimas" emergency enforcement petition to NRC calls for the immediate shut down of Pilgrim and 22 additional Mark 1s operating across the U.S. NRC has rubberstamped 71 reactor license extensions in the past 12 years. Mary Lampert at Pilgrim Watch has led the grassroots effort challenging the 20 year license extension at Pilgrim, keeping the proceeding alive for 6 years, a record.

Beyond Nuclear's "Freeze Our Fukushimas" emergency enforcement petition, joined by over 8,000 groups and individuals, also pointed out that Mark 1 pools are vulnerable to gradual boil downs or sudden drain downs which could result in catastrophic high-level radioactive waste fires, which very well may have occurred at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4, prompting NRC to order Americans to flee at least 50 miles away in the earliest days of the catastrophe. Pilgrim's pool contains all the high-level radioactive waste ever generated there over the past several decades, more than Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 to 4's pools combined.

TransCanada Pipelines also a large-scale radioactive waste generator!

Bruce nuclear power plant, part owned by TransCanada PipelinesCongratulations to environmental allies who have successfully pressured the Obama administration to postpone -- and hopefully ultimately cancel -- TransCanada Pipelines' proposed Keystone XL Pipeline for Canadian tar sands crude oil. But tar sands crude oil isn't the only "dirty, dangerous, and expensive" energy source TransCanada dabbles with. According to its website, it also owns 48.8% of the 3,000 Megawatt-electric (MW-e) Bruce A nuclear power plant, and 31.6% of the 3,200 MW-e Bruce B nuclear power plant. Bruce -- a 9 reactor and radioactive waste complex located in Ontario on the shore of Lake Huron just 50 miles from Michigan -- is the largest nuclear power plant in the Western Hemisphere, and the second biggest in the world. TransCanada entered the nuclear power business despite warnings by NIRS in late 2002 about serious financial and environmental risks.

A primary bone of contention over the Keystone XL pipeline is its proposed route over the irreplacable Ogallala Aquifer; the Waste Control Specialists radioactive waste dump in Texas also threatens the Ogallala. For its part, TransCanada's Bruce nuclear complex already comprises one of the biggest concentrations of radioactive waste in the world. Bruce proposes an incredible 2,000 dry casks for storing high-level radioactive waste on-site, generated by its own multiple reactors. It is embroiled in a raging controversy over proposed radioactive waste shipments on the Great Lakes. And it is targeted to become a permanent burial dump for "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes from a whopping 20 reactors across Ontario -- the "Deep Underground Dump," or DUD, as Greenpeace Canada's Dave Martin dubbed it. The DUD would be located just a half mile from the Lake Huron shoreline. The Great Lakes provide drinking water for 40 million people in the U.S., Canada, and numerous Native American First Nations.