Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Jun. 3, 2013

PERRY BEEMAN AND WILLIAM PETROSKI
DesMoines Register

MidAmerican Energy says design plan isn’t approved; environmentalists celebrate

MidAmerican Energy has scrapped plans for Iowa’s second nuclear plant and will refund $8.8 million ratepayers paid for a now-finished feasibility study, utility officials said Monday.

The utility has decided against building any major power plant. That’s because there is no approved design for the modular nuclear plant it envisioned, and there are too many questions about limits on carbon emissions from a natural gas plant, the company said.

"We opted for what was in the best interest of our customers," MidAmerican vice president for regulatory affairs Dean Crist told The Des Moines Register.

The decision ends, for now, a three-year controversy over the future of nuclear energy in Iowa and how to pay for a possible nuclear plant. Iowa has one nuclear power plant, the Duane Arnold plant near Palo.

Crist said a feasibility study started in 2010 found that two 700-acre sites near Thurman in southwest Iowa and Wilton in southeast Iowa would work for a modular nuclear plant, which was expected to cost around $1 billion and to be built in phases.

The MidAmerican study, finished several months early, also noted that the type of modular nuclear plant envisioned could be cost-effective, would be safer than earlier plants and would be a $135 million annual boon to the Iowa economy for 40 to 60 years.

In addition, the 11-year construction would bring another $1.2 billion in spending, a peak of $75 million in payroll, and 1,880 jobs.

But MidAmerican said those modular plants have not been designed and approved yet. And carbon regulations continue to make fossil-fuel plants a tougher proposition, Crist said.

Muscatine County Supervisor Scott Sauer said he had opposed any power plant at the Wilton-area site, preferring that the utility build on the sites of decommissioned coal plants instead.

James Larew, an Iowa City lawyer, had been critical of MidAmerican’s financial proposal for the plant because ratepayers, rather than investors, would have borne the risk. He credited AARP and other organizations for killing the legislation.

MidAmerican became part of a national wave of nuclear plant proposals in the United States, which last year approved its first new reactors since 1978. More than 100 proposals turned up as utilities looked for ways to sidestep almost certain limits on carbon emissions linked to climate change and largely from coal and natural gas.

Plans softened after earthquakes and tsunamis caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March 2011. Now, with natural gas cheaper and plentiful, there is more talk about gas plants, and less about nuclear.

Mike Crecelius, Fremont County emergency management director, said he wasn’t surprised by MidAmerican’s move. One of the sites was in the county, and there has been widespread, unfounded concerns about groundwater contamination, he said.

The Japan disaster didn’t help MidAmerican’s plan, said Crecelius, but he noted that the Iowa plant would have used modular designs that would use far more modern technology.

Iowa environmental groups that had objected to MidAmerican’s attempt to charge ratepayers in advance for the nuclear plant praised the move to scrap the project.

"Yay!" exclaimed Neila Seaman, director of the Iowa Chapter of Sierra Club. "We are glad to hear that they are planning to expand their wind power. We think that is a better option than nuclear power," Seaman said.

"Nuclear power is dangerous and then there is the waste issue," Seaman added. "It is expensive and we just think there are better options."

Others saw it as a victory for clean energy.

"I think our perspective is that the right mix of clean energy, whether wind energy, or conservation, or both, can meet Iowa’s demand for energy," said Nathaniel Baer, who follows energy issues for the nonprofit Iowa Environmental Council. "This is welcome news."

The lack of an approved design for the new plants is another major reason few reactors are expected to be built in the next decade.

MidAmerican will ask the Iowa Utilities Board to approve a refund and cancel on July 1 the special charge ratepayers paid for the study. The utility collected $14.2 million over several years, and it will return the $8.8 million it didn’t spend on the site and market analysis, tests, and the like.

The money would be refunded over a year, beginning in August.

MidAmerican plans to let its land options expire, and will sell a couple of Muscatine County properties it bought for soil tests.

Crist said it probably will be toward the end of this decade before the utility takes another hard look at a major power plant project.

In the meantime, Mid­American will focus on its plan to build up to 656 wind turbines in a $1.9 billion project across Iowa, which also will trim power bills by saving fuel costs.

Ratepayers will see a slight dip in bills because of the nuclear-study refund, Crist noted.

MidAmerican President William Fehrman has a background in nuclear energy. Over several years, he suggested the nuclear facility was the best choice for a major plant needed for Iowa’s economic growth, as well as to replace power from coal plants that would be mothballed as federal regulations limiting carbon emissions ramp up.

But a controversial bill MidAmerican backed in the Iowa Legislature led to a political brouhaha. On Monday, Crist said that fight didn’t doom the plant, noting that Mid­American could have petitioned the utilities board to allow the financing.

The legislation would have allowed MidAmerican to charge customers for planning and construction of the plant before it was built, and even if it wasn’t, to a point.

In February 2012, an Iowa Poll found that 77 percent of Iowans polled opposed the arrangement allowing the utility to charge customers up front for the planning and construction. Eighteen percent favored the approach.

Timeline of nuclear proposal 2010: Iowa Legislature passes a bill allowing MidAmerican to recover up to $15 million to pay for the feasibility study on the nuclear plant. Gov. Chet Culver signs the bill. MidAmerican eyes $1 billion plant project. 2011: MidAmerican donates $70,000 to a political committee with ties to Senate Majority Leader Michael Gronstal and $20,000 to Gov. Terry Branstad’s committee. MidAmerican’s committees also donated $250 or more to dozens of state legislators from both parties seeking re-election last year. MARCH 2011: Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan draws huge debate over future of nuclear power. FEBRUARY 2012: In an Iowa Poll, 77 percent of Iowans opposed MidAmerican’s proposal to charge customers in advance for the planning and construction of the nuclear plant. SEPTEMBER 2012: MidAmerican meets with landowners and residents in Fremont and Muscatine counties in invitation-only sessions. OCTOBER 2012: MidAmerican gets approval for rate increase to offset a drop in its rate of return and to cover spending on environmental compliance and coal transportation. JUNE 2013: MidAmerican announces it won’t proceed with developing any power plant, nuclear or gas.

June 7, 2013

by Citizen Carol
Texas VOX

Earlier today, Southern California Edison (SCE) announced that they will retire Units 2 and 3 of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), essentially closing the troubled nuclear power plant which is located between San Diego and Los Angeles.

SONGS, which has been in operation for 45 years, may be a harbinger for the future of our aging nuclear fleet, many of which are near the end their original license period and are applying for extensions.

• Unit 1 began commercial operation on January 1, 1968 and ceased operation on November 30, 1992. Since then it has been dismantled and is used as a storage site for spent fuel for Units 2 and 3,
• Units 2 and 3 were both licensed in 1982 and by license amendments in March, 2000 are currently licensed until 2022. However, unit 3 has been shut down since the detection of a leak in one of the steam generator tubes on January 31 and Unit 2 is off line, for routine inspections which found that design flaws appeared to be the cause of excessive wear in tubing that carries radioactive water at San Onofre.

SCE cited continuing questions about when or if the remaining SONGS units might return to service as the cause for their decision, concluding that the uncertainty was not good for customers or investors.

In a statement Friday, California Public Utility Commission’s President Michael R. Peevey called the decision “understandable,” and that the closure of the nuclear power generating station “will require even greater emphasis on energy efficiency and demand response programs.” Utility companies will also need to add transmission upgrade and find new generation resources.

Concerns in Texas

In Texas, both nuclear plants (Comanche Peak outside of Fort Worth, and South Texas Nuclear Generating Station (STP), between Houston and Corpus Christi on the Texas Gulf Coast) are nearing the end of their life expectancies as reflected in their original licenses which are due to expire in 2027 and 2028, and have filed for a license extension. STNP’s unit two has experienced nine months of outage during 2 prolonged shutdowns in 2 years. The second outage was triggered by a fire that occurred only days before the public hearing on the license extension application.

Environmentalists expressed concerns about the plant’s ability to operate safely beyond the original life expectancy of the plant.

"Relicensing should be halted while a serious, in-depth examination occurs," said Karen Hadden, executive director of the Austin-based SEED coalition, which advocates for sustainable energy, and member of the Austin Electric Utility Commission (Austin Energy owns 16% of STP Units 1 and 2). “I think it’s becoming increasingly unreliable, and it’s costing us money to fix it.” She noted that it was difficult to get information about the plant’s problems and she expressed concern that these aging plants will experience problems more often and of greater threat to the safety of the plant and the surrounding communities.

MAY 1, 2013

BY DAVID BARER
StateImpact Texas

Update, May 1, 2013: The Senate has passed SB 791. The bill could allow states around the U.S. to import more of the "hotter" radioactive waste into a West Texas disposal facility and limit contested case hearings. Several amendments to the bill were passed, including ones that would make generators of radioactive waste responsible for the cost of transportation accident cleanup, allow for random audits of shipments of radioactive waste into the site and affect the Compact Commission Executive Director’s ability to modify disposal licenses. The bill now moves to the House Environmental Regulation Committee.

Original story, March 26, 2013: A controversial new bill could encourage states from around the country to send waste with higher levels of radiation to Texas. The legislation prompted some heated debate at a Senate Natural Resources Committee meeting today at the Capitol.

The bill, SB 791, by Sen. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, would allow "hotter" radioactive waste into West Texas’ only radioactive waste disposal site, which started running last year after many years of controversy and debate, which continued in part today.

The disposal site is owned by Waste Control Specialists, a company owned by Dallas billionaire and top Republican donor Harold Simmons.

Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, a member of the committee, is concerned that the overarching goals and purpose of the Waste Control Facility are diverging from their original purpose. Initially, the site was meant to be a safe receptacle for all of Texas’, and other compact members’, dangerous radioactive waste, he said.

Now, "we are going to encourage more importation of higher radioactive waste," Duncan said.

The majority of storage space at the 1,300 acre site is designated for members of the Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission, which only includes Texas and Vermont. The crater-like disposal site is the only one in the nation built to store all three classes of low level waste — A, B and C. Class A waste is the least radioactive and most voluminous, Class C is the most radioactive but has lower volumes.

Texas already imports waste from states around the country that are not part of the compact. Fees for out-of-compact waste are higher than waste from firms within the compact. B and C Class waste brought into the site would have to be compacted by a factor of three, according to the bill.

Companies in Texas will be encouraged to export their Class A waste, with its lower levels of radiation, to cheaper sites outside Texas, such as the disposal site in Clive, Utah.

The bill would also limit the amount of people entitled to a contested case hearing – a way regular citizens can air their grievances to the state about the disposal site – to only people living nearby the far West Texas facility.

State Sen. Duncan was troubled with those portions of the bill. At the meeting, he said that while Seliger had done a fine job authoring legislation related to the waste facility in the past, "this seems to be expanding on that in a direction that I don’t think we ever intended to go when we started on this journey," Duncan said.

The bill would entitle only those living in Andrews County or an adjacent Texas county to a contested case hearing. New Mexicans would be restricted from the hearings, even though thousands of New Mexicans live within 20 miles of the facility. They would have to use federal courts as recourse, Seliger said.

That was the rub for Duncan, who said Texas shouldn’t encourage the involvement of the federal government in disposal site issues.

"They are still Americans, whether they be on the West side, the North side or the East side of the plant. They ought to be allowed the opportunity to be heard on that, shouldn’t they?"

Rod Baltzer, President of Waste Control Specialists, testified in favor of the bill and said it would benefit Andrews County and Texas.

The site has so far generated $7.5 million for the state’s general revenue fund, and about $1.5 million for Andrews County. Another $3.2 million is projected to go into Andrews County’s coffers in the next 12 months. The site also provides about 170 non-oil-and-gas jobs for Andrews County, Baltzer said.

All Andrews County revenues for the 2012-13 budget amount to about $24.7 million, according to an Austin American-Statesman report.

The new legislation wouldn’t hurt Waste Control’s bottom line, either.

"Is there an economic motivation? Absolutely, there is," State Sen. Seliger said. "There’s more money in B and C waste. There’s also no other place for it to go."

The committee did not vote on the bill today, leaving it pending in committee.

David Barer is a reporting intern with StateImpact Texas.

For Immediate Release: May 17, 2013
Contacts: Karen Hadden 512-797-8481 Sustainable Energy & Economic Development (SEED) Coalition
Cyrus Reed 512-740-4086 Lone Star Sierra Club
Tom "Smitty" Smith 512-797-8468 Public Citizen’s Texas Office

Download this press release in pdf format for printing.

Austin, TX A bill that would increase the concentration of radioactive waste to be dumped in Texas is set to be heard on the House floor on Monday, May 20th. Waste Control Specialists (WCS) would benefit even more from the hotter radioactive materials going to their radioactive waste dump in West Texas, and would get to bring in the waste sooner, raising the annual cap on imported waste from other states from 120,000 to 275,000 curies. SEED Coalition, Public Citizen, and the Lone Star Sierra Club oppose the bill, which is set to be heard on Monday, May 20th on the House floor. SB 791 is authored by Sen. Seliger and Representative Drew Darby.

"This bill fails to protect the public. It fails to ensure that radioactive waste will not be buried when water is present. It lets trucks continue carrying radioactive waste down any highway in our state, without designated routes. We expect WCS to come back to the legislature numerous times demanding to dump ever more radioactive waste on Texas" said Karen Hadden, of SEED Coalition. "The bill fails to require safety audits by the State Auditor. Instead, TCEQ would do occasional audits, which equates to the fox guarding the henhouse. And it lets TCEQ authorize bringing in additional kinds of radioactive waste, such as depleted uranium, without any public hearing, which should be required for such a major license change."

"Every session for the last 10 years, WCS has exerted its high-dollar political influence to press for their own corporate gain, at the risk of public safety. This time they want to require the wastes to be compacted to a third of the original size, increasing the concentration of its radioactivity and increasing risks in order to increase profits. Next session they’ll be back, saying they have all this extra room at the dump site, and clamoring to put in more radioactive waste, " said Tom "Smitty" Smith of Public Citizen. "The only person who benefits is billionaire Harold Simmons, WCS’ owner, whose private gain comes at the expense of public risk. Simmons is known for political attack ads. He’s Perry’s second largest donor and the second largest donor nationally to the "attack ads" plaguing our elections."

Donations by Simmons and WCS to state legislators in 2012 are documented online at: http://info.tpj.org/Lobby_Watch/pdf/SimmonsContribsSince2000.pdf and http://info.tpj.org/Lobby_Watch/pdf/DarbySimmons.pdf

"In order to protect our water and public safety, the bill should require that the site be dry before waste is buried, but it doesn’t,’ said Karen Hadden, of SEED Coalition. "Radioactive waste shouldn’t be buried when standing water is present at the site, but that’s exactly what a recently approved license amendment now lets WCS do. Over 40% of the monitoring wells have shown the presence of water, but radioactive waste is being buried anyway. Scientists at TCEQ rang the alarm about groundwater contamination risks in 2007 when they recommended denial of WCS’ license."

"All of the TCEQ scientists working on the license determined the geology of the site to be inadequate because of the possibility of radioactive contamination of our aquifers and groundwater. The groundwater lies only 14 feet below the bottom of the radioactive waste dump trenches. However there was clear political pressure throughout the entire process indicating that WCS would receive the license regardless of how inadequate the site was," said Glenn Lewis in a previous statement. He was one of three TCEQ employees that resigned in protest of licensing the site.

"I’m going to try to work with the House sponsor to strip out the most egregious aspects of the bill that literally put radioactive waste a few feet away from contaminating our water supplies. I’m sure no one wants to put our aquifers at risk or spend billions on clean-up," said Representative Lon Burnam, District 90.

The bill would require radioactive waste to be volume reduced by three times, a provision that benefits Studsvik, a radioactive waste processor in Tennessee. The public has seen no studies that show that burying this more concentrated radioactive waste would be safe at the Texas site, and there are questions about whether the material would become too hot to transport safely. Radioactive waste going to the WCS is mainly from nuclear reactors from around the country, and while fuel rods are excluded, very hot materials such as control rod blades are already being shipped to the site. Exposure to radioactivity can lead to cancers, birth defects and even death.

The bill requires the collection of $25 million in funds for perpetual care, but this is not nearly enough. "All six of the so-called ‘low-level’ nuclear dumps in this country have leaked or are leaking, often costing the states in which they are located millions of dollars," said Diane D’Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director at Nuclear Information and Resource Service. "One of the now closed nuclear waste dumps with supposedly ‘impermeable clay’ threatens the water supply downstream and is projected to cost in the range of $5 billion to ‘clean up.’ In fact, if it does get ‘cleaned up’ the waste could end up getting buried again in West Texas at the WCS site."

"TCEQ rushed into a risky deal when they approved a faulty application to dispose of some of the most dangerous radioactive waste known," said Cyrus Reed, Conservation Director of Lone Star Sierra Club. "And they did it without giving members of the public who are at risk a chance to prove that the application is faulty. The Lone Star Sierra Club immediately appealed TCEQ’s decision to deny us a contested case hearing to the State District Court and we won, but the state and WCS immediately appealed the decision to the State Court of Appeals, and we’re still waiting for that hearing to happen."

95% of the radioactive waste being shipped to this site is from nuclear power plants. So-called ‘Low-level’ radioactive waste is defined as everything radioactive in a nuclear power plant except the high-level reactor fuel core. Pipes that carry radioactive water, filters and sludge from the water in the reactor and even the entire reactor itself when it is dismantled – thousands of tons of contaminated concrete and steel can all be dumped in a "low-level" facility. None of the radioactive elements present in high-level waste is prohibited from being included in low-level waste.

June 18, 2012

PRNewswire-USNewswire

24 Groups and Individuals Seek Suspension of Final Agency Decisions on Reactors in States of AL, CA, FL, MD, MI, MS, MO, NH, OH, PA, SC, TN, TX and VA.

WASHINGTON, June 18, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must not make final licensing decisions until it has completed a rulemaking action on the environmental impacts of highly radioactive nuclear waste in the form of spent, or ‘used’, reactor fuel storage and disposal, as required under the landmark Waste Confidence Rule decision of June 8th by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, according to a petition filed today by 22 groups and 2 individuals. This petition is to ensure that the environmental analysis directed by the Court is meaningfully incorporated into the licensing of nearly 35 reactors in a number of states.

The petition is available online at
http://www.cleanenergy.org/images/testimony/PetitiontoSuspendLicensingDecisions_061812.pdf.
The court’s decision is available online at
http://www.cleanenergy.org/images/testimony/WasteConfidenceCourtDecision_USCA11-1045_StateNYetal_vsNRC_060812.pdf.

The groups maintain that the NRC should not finalize its licensing decisions until it satisfies its environmental review obligations under federal law in relation to the following reactors: Callaway Plant , Unit 1, MO; Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, Unit 3, MD; Fermi Nuclear Power Plant, Unit 3, MI; William States Lee III Nuclear Station, Units 1 and 2, SC; Grand Gulf Nuclear Station Unit 1 & 2, MS; Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, Unit 1, OH; Turkey Point, Units 6 and 7, FL; Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant, Units 3 and 4, TX; Seabrook Station , Unit 1, NH; Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, Units 1 and 2, CA; Bell Bend Nuclear Power Plant, PA; Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant, Units 2 and 3, NC; Levy County Nuclear Power Plant, Units 1 and 2, FL; South Texas Project, Units 1, 2, 3 and 4, TX; Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant, Units 3 and 4, AL; Watts Bar, Unit 2, TN; and North Anna, Unit 3, VA.

The groups also asked the NRC to establish procedures for ensuring that members of the public can comment on the environmental analysis and raise site-specific concerns about the environmental impacts of highly radioactive spent nuclear reactor fuel in individual licensing cases. Importantly, this petition is not a request to halt or suspend all or any licensing proceedings. Petitioners do not demand any change in the schedules for the NRC Staff’s review of reactor license applications in pending reactor licensing cases. This petition seeks the suspension of final licensing decisions only, pending the NRC’s completion of the work directed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.
The groups are still analyzing the implications of the court’s far-reaching decision for recently completed NRC licensing actions such as the proposed Vogtle and V.C. Summer reactors.

Diane Curran, an attorney representing some of the groups in the Court of Appeals case, said: “The groups filing this petition represent neighbors of nuclear reactors around the country. Many of them are currently participating in NRC licensing cases for new or existing reactors. Among the many individual petitioners are neighbors of existing or proposed reactors who would have participated in NRC licensing proceedings had they not been barred from raising their concerns about spent fuel storage and disposal by the Commission rules that were struck down by the court. By joining together, they seek to ensure that the environmental analyses ordered by the U.S. Court of Appeals will be fully applied in each reactor licensing case before operation is permitted, and that they will be given a meaningful opportunity to participate in the decision-making process.”

Former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford said: “By telling the naked emperor to go get dressed, the Court has delivered an overdue rebuke to the NRC’s bad habit of pushing for the nuclear power plants while postponing the problems, as we now know the Japanese to have done at Fukushima. It’s hard to see how federal and state officials can justify putting more taxpayer or customer money at risk on new reactor projects until this situation is resolved.”

“We are part of this important effort to ensure that local communities and the public finally have the ability to raise important concerns about the risks associated with radioactive waste and subsequent storage at nuclear plants across the Southeast,” said Sara Barczak , High Risk Energy Choices program director with Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, one of the petitioners to the Court. “The Court agreed with us that it’s long overdue for these serious impacts to finally be evaluated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and shared with the public. Now we’re just making sure that’ll happen–that communities will have a voice.”

Lou Zeller , Executive Director of Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, another petitioner to the Court, said: “For years we have had no confidence in NRC’s assertions about nuclear waste and we have not been silent about it. Finally, the courts have agreed with us. We look forward to injecting some sanity into the debate on nuclear waste.”

On June 8th, the Court rejected the Waste Confidence Rule, which has been an essential component of all NRC decisions to license new reactors or re-license existing reactors for additional 20-year terms. In vacating the rule, the Court directed that the NRC comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and conduct a thorough environmental analysis of radioactive spent fuel storage and disposal issues.

The groups contend that federal law requires the NRC to suspend its final reactor licensing decisions while it determines what environmental effects could occur if the NRC’s decades-long search for a radioactive nuclear waste repository for spent nuclear reactor fuel never materializes. The impacts of storing highly-radioactive spent fuel at reactors across the country has for decades essentially not been analyzed during individual reactor licensing cases. The recent Court decision would now require the NRC to finally analyze what are likely to be significant impacts.

Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League are joined by the following additional petitioners before the NRC:
Beyond Nuclear, Inc. (intervenor in Fermi COL proceeding, Calvert Cliffs COL proceeding, and Davis-Besse license renewal proceeding; potential intervenor in Grand Gulf COL and Grand Gulf license renewal proceedings);

• Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, Inc. and chapters (“BREDL”) (intervenor in Bellefonte COL proceeding and North Anna COL proceeding; previously sought intervention in W.S. Lee COL proceeding);

• Citizens Allied for Safe Energy, Inc. (former intervenor in Turkey Point COL proceeding);

• Citizens Environmental Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Inc. (intervenor in Fermi COL proceeding and Davis-Besse license renewal proceeding);

• Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination (intervenor in Fermi COL proceeding);

• Don’t Waste Michigan, Inc. (intervenor in Fermi COL proceeding and Davis-Besse license renewal proceeding);

• Ecology Party of Florida (intervenor in Levy COL proceeding);

• Eric Epstein (potential intervenor in Bell Bend COL proceeding);

• Friends of the Earth, Inc. (potential intervenor in reactor licensing proceedings throughout U.S.);

• Friends of the Coast, Inc. (intervenor in Seabrook license renewal proceeding);

• Green Party of Ohio (intervenor in Davis-Besse license renewal proceeding);

• Dan Kipnis (intervenor in Turkey Point proceeding);

• National Parks Conservation Association, Inc. (intervenor in Turkey Point COL proceeding);

• Mark Oncavage (intervenor in Turkey Point COL proceeding);

• Missouri Coalition for the Environment, Inc. (Petitioner in Callaway license renewal proceeding; intervenor in suspended Callaway COL proceeding)

• New England Coalition, Inc. (intervenor in Seabrook license renewal proceeding);

• North Carolina Waste Reduction and Awareness Network, Inc. (admitted as an Intervenor in now-closed Shearon Harris COL proceeding);

• Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Inc. (intervenor in Calvert Cliffs COL proceeding and Levy COL proceeding);

• Public Citizen, Inc. (intervenor in South Texas COL proceeding; admitted as intervenor in now-closed Comanche Peak COL proceeding; potential intervenor in South Texas license renewal proceeding);

• San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Inc. (intervenor in Diablo Canyon license renewal proceeding);

• Sierra Club, Inc. (Michigan Chapter) (intervenor in Fermi COL proceeding);

• Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Inc. (intervenor in Watts Bar Unit 2 OL proceeding, Turkey Point COL proceeding, Bellefonte COL proceeding; former intervenor in Bellefonte CP proceeding);

• Southern Maryland CARES, Inc. (Citizens Alliance for Renewable Energy Solutions) (intervenor in Calvert Cliffs COL proceeding);

• Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (“SEED”) Coalition, Inc. (intervenor in South Texas COL proceeding; admitted as intervenor in now-closed Comanche Peak COL proceeding; potential intervenor in South Texas license renewal proceeding).

The NRC has set a precedent for suspending its final licensing decisions while it reviews spent fuel storage and disposal impacts. In the re-licensing case for the Indian Point reactors near Manhattan, the NRC promised in 2010 that it would not re-license the reactors until it completed its pending waste confidence rulemaking. Now that the Court has vacated the Waste Confidence Rule, the NRC must continue to refrain from final re-licensing decisions until it finishes an expanded environmental analysis.
On June 8th, the Court threw out the NRC rule that permitted licensing and re-licensing of nuclear reactors based on the supposition that (a) the NRC will find a way to dispose of spent reactor fuel to be generated by reactors at some time in the future when it becomes “necessary” and (b) in the mean time, spent fuel can be stored safely at reactor sites.

The Court noted that, after decades of failure to site a repository, including twenty years of working on the now-abandoned Yucca Mountain repository, the NRC “has no long-term plan other than hoping for a geologic repository.” Therefore it is possible that spent fuel will be stored at reactor sites “on a permanent basis.” Under the circumstances, the NRC must examine the environmental consequences of failing to establish a repository when one is needed.

The Court also rejected NRC’s decision minimizing the risks of leaks or fires in spent fuel stored in reactor pools during future storage, because the NRC had not demonstrated that these future impacts would be insignificant. The Court found that past experience with pool leaks was not an adequate predictor of future experience. It also concluded that the NRC had not shown that catastrophic pool fires were so unlikely that their risks could be ignored.

SOURCE Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League