Environmental coalition members from the Crabshell Alliance, Sierra Club Nuclear-Free Campaign, NIRS, PSR, NEIS, and Public Citizen "just say NO!" at the NRC HQ nuke waste con game public comment meeting on 11/14 in Rockville, MD. Photo credit David Martin and Erica GreyOn Friday, March 21, 2014, at 1:00 p.m. EDT, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Nuclear Waste Confidence Directorate Staff and invited parties will brief the Commission in a public meeting on the Waste Confidence rulemaking (see the meeting agenda, slides, and backgrounder below).
The Directorate has announced:
"A telephone bridge line has been made available for this Friday’s Commission meeting on Waste Confidence:
Phone Number: 1-888-972-6409
Passcode: 5638944
Alternately, you can view a live Webcast of the meeting here: http://video.nrc.gov/
We suggest accessing the meeting using either the bridge line OR the Webcast. If you attempt to watch the Webcast while listening to the bridge line, the Webcast will lag behind the bridge line audio.
There is no need to pre-register to listen in on the bridge line or view the Webcast. If you have additional questions about the Commission meeting, please contact Rochelle Bavol at (301) 415-1651 or e-mail RidsSecyMailCenter.Resource@nrc.gov. If you have questions specific to Waste Confidence, please call Sarah Lopas at (301) 287-0675."
For those in the D.C. area, please consider attending in person. The meeting will be held in the Commissioners’ Conference Room at NRC Headquarters, One White Flint, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland, 20852. Allow extra time to clear security screening up front.
Presenters will include NRC's Nuclear Waste Confidence Directorate Staff; Ronald Johnson, Tribal Council President, Prairie Island Indian Community; John Sipos, Assistant Attorney General, State of New York; Ellen Ginsberg, Vice President, General Counsel, and Secretary, Nuclear Energy Institute; Michael Callahan, Decommissioning Plant Coalition; and Geoffrey Fettus, Senior Project Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council.
Here are important background documents related to this update meeting:
Slide Show Presentations (links to the webcast archive and transcript will also be available after the meeting at this same link)
Commission Paper (SECY): Waste Confidence—Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel Proposed Rule: Public Feedback on Specific Issues (Feb. 28, 2014)
In June 2012, a landmark federal appeals court decision ordered NRC to undertake an Environmental Impact Statement on commercial high-level radioactive waste generation, storage, and disposal. The Prairie Island Tribe and State of New York Attorney General's Office, in alliance with the AGs of Vermont, Connecticut and New Jersey played a key role in this New York v. NRC ruling. But so too did an environmental coalition of dozens of groups (including Beyond Nuclear), with legal counsel from NRDC, as well as Diane Curran of Washington, D.C., and the Turner Environmental Law Clinic at Emory University.
Last autumn, NRC held about a dozen public comment meetings on the EIS around the country. Many thousands of public comments were submitted, both orally and in writing, by the Dec. 20, 2013 deadline.