Despite adverse rulings at Fermi 3 & Davis-Besse, Beyond Nuclear vows to fight on against NRC's Nuke Waste Con Game

The lethal legacy of the Atomic Age, and we don't even know what to do with the first cupful. It's time to stop making it!In a June 9th MEMORANDUM AND ORDER, the four U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners (NRC; there is a vacancy on the five-member NRC Commission) unanimously ruled against Beyond Nuclear in a Nuclear Waste Confidence-related intervention at FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse atomic reactor on the Great Lakes shoreline in northwest Ohio. Beyond Nuclear has helped lead the intervention against Davis-Besse's proposed 20-year (2017-2037) license extension since 2010.

The NRC Commissioners cited their earlier ruling at the proposed new Fermi 3 reactor in southeast Michigan as the basis for the current Davis-Besse ruling. Beyond Nuclear is a lead intervenor against the Fermi 3 construction and operation license, as well.

The Davis-Besse and Fermi nuclear power plants are visible, one from the other, with the naked eye, across the waters of Lake Erie.

Terry Lodge serves as legal counsel for Beyond Nuclear et al. at both Fermi 3 and Davis-Besse. Attorneys Diane Curran of Washington, D.C. and Mindy Goldstein of Turner Environmental Law Clinic (Emory U., Atlanta) serve as Beyond Nuclear's legal counsel on pending Nuclear Waste Confidence federal court appleas in both proceedings.

Beyond Nuclear, and environmental allies in multiple additional proceedings (including Missouri Coalition for the Environment's challenge to the 20-year license extension at the Callaway atomic reactor), plan federal court appeals against NRC's dereliction of duty -- the agency's failure to protect public health, safety, and the environment against the risks of high-level radioactive waste -- and the associated violation of multiple federal laws (the Atomic Energy Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and Administrative Procedures Act) by NRC's renamed Nuclear Waste Confidence policy (now called Continued Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel).

In 2012, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered NRC to address three clear cut issues: the risk that a permanent geologic repository will never open in the U.S.; the risk of catastrophic radiological fires in irradiated nuclear fuel storage pools; and the risk of radioactivity leaks from pools.

A coalition of three dozen environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear, represented by Curran and Goldstein, and in alliance with Natural Resources Defense Council, several state Attorneys General (including NY and VT), and the Prairie Island Indian Community, brought the original legal challenge against NRC's Nuclear Waste Confidence policy, a case known as New York v. NRC.

Although NRC went through the motions of conducting the court-ordered Environmental Impact Statement, it largely to entirely avoided addressing the court's explicit questions. NRC had to ignore many thousands of public comments in order to do so. NRC's flagrant flouting of the court orders has set the stage for New York v. NRC II, including in the Callaway, Davis-Besse, and Fermi proceedings, as well as numerous others.

See Beyond Nuclear's pamphlet about high-level radioactive waste.