NRC rushing public comment on court-ordered environmental assessment of "Nuke Waste Con Game"

U.S. NRC Chairwoman Allison MacfarlaneThe U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has just announced a single in-person environmental scoping hearing (also viewable online), for November 14th, at its Rockville, Maryland headquarters, as well as two webinar-only scoping hearings (Dec. 5th & 6th), as it seeks to fulfill a court-ordered environmental assessment of its "Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision and Rule." NRC's current deadline for public comments on its environmental scoping is January 2nd, 2013, a remarkably short time period (just over two months long, including the upcoming elections, as well as the holidays). Obviously, NRC is trying to rush the process, and keep public involvement to a bare minimum.

Please contact NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane (photo, left) and request that the environmental scoping period be extended. Also request that additional in-person hearings be held in communities living in the shadows of high-level radioactive waste storage pools and dry casks. Chairwoman Macfarlane can be emailed at Chairman@nrc.gov, phoned at (301) 415-1750, or written at U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Mail Stop O-16G4, Washington, DC 20555-0001.

For decades, NRC has used its "Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision and Rule" to block challenges in its atomic reactor licesning proceedings to the generation of high-level radioactive wastes, even though its is among the most hazardous substances ever created, and no safe, sound solution to its forever hazards has been found anywhere in the world for over half a century. Critics have long referred to this as NRC's "Nuke Waste Con Game."

On June 8, 2012, however, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said "Game Over!", ruling in favor of a coalition of environmentalists and states, that NRC must perform an environmental assessmet (EA) on the risks of long-term irradiated nuclear fuel storage in pools and dry casks at reactor sites. NRC has since acknowledged that the EA will take at least two years to complete, thus postponing any final approval of combined Construction and Operating License Applications (COLAs) -- as at Vogtle, Georgia and Summer, South Carolina -- for at least that long. The same holds true for any final approval of 20-year license extension applications at age-degraded, old reactors. However, NRC is allowing all licensing proceedings to continue, till just shy of the finalization point, at which point they will be suspended pending finalization of the EA.

Environmental groups have used the court ruling to challenge three dozen proposed new, and age-degraded old, reactors seeking licenses. For its part, Beyond Nuclear has cited the court ruling to challenge old reactor license extensions at Davis-Besse, Ohio and Grand Gulf 1, Mississippi, as well as to challenge proposed new reactors at Grand Gulf 2, Mississippi, and Fermi 3, Michigan.

Watch Beyond Nuclear's website for updates, and ideas on public comments you can make about NRC's "Nuke Waste Con Game" environmental scoping. Please spread the word on this important issue!