Archive for the ‘News’ Category

June 10, 2010

Karen Hadden, LOCAL CONTRIBUTOR
Austin American Statesman

Texas is at risk of becoming the nation’s radioactive waste dumping ground. The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission is pushing forward a rule that essentially invites 36 states to dump radioactive waste in Texas, and possibly international sources as well. The commission should instead limit waste to that generated by the two compact states Texas and Vermont. Financial and safety risks are being ignored in the rush to approve the rule, which has no volume or curie limits for waste.

Everything except the fuel rods of nuclear reactors could go to Waste Controls Specialists’ Andrews County dump. Nuclear reactors vessels, “poison curtains” that absorb reactor core radioactivity, and sludges and resins could all go to West Texas. In fact, there is not a single radionuclide that cannot go to a so-called low-level radioactive waste dump.

Exposure to radioactive materials can cause cancer, radiation poisoning, genetic defects and even death, depending on the type of radioactive material and the level of exposure. Tritium, found in reactor waste, remains hazardous for up to 240 years. Strontium-90 remains hazardous for up to 560 years, and Iodine-129 remains hazardous for 320 million years. How can we ensure that these materials will not contaminate water and soil during vast stretches of time?

Existing radioactive waste dumps across the country have leaked, and billions of dollars are needed for cleanup. Radioactive waste going to the compact site would be disposed of in trenches and covered with dirt.

The Andrews County site is geologically inadequate. In a rare move, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality staff recommended denying the radioactive waste dump license. When it became clear that the license would be approved, three long-term employees resigned in protest. An August 2007 TCEQ staff memo says “groundwater is likely to intrude into the proposed disposal units and contact the waste from either or both of two water tables near the proposed facility.” State law requires that groundwater "not intrude into the waste." The water table may be closer than 14 feet from the bottom of trenches. How many and which aquifers could become contaminated if there were leaks? Can we afford to find out the hard way? What liabilities could Texas incur?

Radioactive waste could travel by rail and on interstate highways throughout Texas. No one has analyzed whether Texas’ emergency responders are fully trained and equipped to handle accidents involving radioactive waste. Some Texas counties have no full-time professional fire departments, including Andrews County, where the dump is located, and Somervell and Matagorda counties, where Comanche Peak and South Texas Project nuclear reactors are located.

There is no room at the planned dump for radioactive waste from across the country. The Waste Control Specialists’ compact site is licensed for 2.3 million cubic-feet of waste. Texas and Vermont will need three times this amount of space to dispose of five existing reactors when they’re decommissioned. Vermont Yankee’s cooling tower collapse and recent tritium leaks led to a decision not to renew the nuclear reactor’s license. Decommissioning may come sooner than expected.

Is the commission trying to create a "volume discount" rate for dumping radioactive waste on Texas? Who would profit? Only a private company headed by a billionaire, while taxpayers would bear financial and safety risks. Other compacts have excluded “out of compact” waste. There is no legal reason that the commission cannot close the gate and no excuse for not doing so. The commission should switch gears and limit the Andrews County site to only Texas and Vermont waste.

Fifteen state representatives have asked the commission to delay the radioactive waste import rule vote. They want time to analyze the increased financial risks for taxpayers and the health and safety risks of transporting radioactive waste from across the country through major cities and small Texas towns.

It’s not too late. Citizens can urge elected officials to insist on limiting the site to the compact states, Texas and Vermont. The Commission’s Import Rule vote should be halted until waste limits are assured and the Legislature has a chance to analyze financial, health and safety risks to Texans.

If you don’t want Texas to become the nation’s radioactive waste dump, the time to speak up is now.

Hadden is executive director of the SEED Coalition.

6/2/10

By REBECCA SMITH
Wall Street Journal

Three months after the U.S. cancelled a plan to build a vast nuclear- waste repository in Nevada, the country’s ad hoc atomic-storage policy is becoming clear in places like Wiscasset, Maine.

Wiscasset doesn’t even have a nuclear-energy plant anymore. The Maine Yankee facility was shuttered back in 1996 after developing problems too costly to fix, and the reactor was dismantled early this decade. What’s left is a bare field of 167 acres cleared and ready for development—except for one thing.

Left behind are 64 enormous steel-and-concrete casks that hold 542 metric tons of radioactive waste. Seventeen feet tall and 150 tons apiece, the casks are protected by razor wire, cameras and a security force.

Spent nuclear fuel being stored at the San Onofre plant in San Clemente, Calif.
Southern California Edison

Casks like these are the power industry’s biggest hot potatoes. Their presence at a defunct reactor site like Wiscasset’s underscores the intractability of the nuclear-waste problem confronting the power sector and the failure of U.S. policymakers to find a permanent solution. Meant for temporary storage next to energy plants, these containers are now serving as de facto indefinite repositories around America.

The Energy Department has been legally obligated to relieve nuclear plants of radioactive spent fuel since February 1998, but hasn’t lived up to that requirement, because, quite simply, the government hasn’t found a permanent place to put it.

Any hope of an end to this impasse evaporated in March when the Energy Department notified the federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that it wanted to drop plans for a federal repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.

That meant that after three decades and more than $10 billion in expenditures, the Energy Department was giving up on its only candidate for permanent storage.

The department said it was time for a complete reassessment of the waste problem, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu pointed out that Yucca Mountain wasn’t big enough to meet current and future needs.

Stephanie Mueller, Department of Energy spokeswoman, said in April that nuclear energy has "an important role to play…to cut carbon pol lution and create new clean-energy jobs." She says the president and the energy secretary are looking to a new blue ribbon commission to recommend "a safe, long-term solution" to the waste problem within 18 months.

Instead of moving waste to a geologic vault, such as a mountain enclosure like Yucca capable of locking it away for thousands of years, the foreseeable future now belongs to temporary holding vessels such as the steel-and-concrete casks at Maine Yankee. Each is licensed to contain waste for 20 years.

Power companies are likely to rely on casks even more in coming years. About 80% of reactor sites in the U.S. intend to move used fuel to casks because their storage pools are filling up.

In New Jersey, Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. has built dry storage in Lower Alloways Creek. The utility this week started filling four casks there with waste from its power plant in Hope Creek; in September, the Lower Alloways site will begin receiving waste from a nearby Salem plant. PSEG wants enough storage "to last us 60 years," says Joe Delmar, a spokesman.

Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co.
Wiscasset, Maine.

Utilities have filed more than 70 lawsuits against the government accusing it of breach of contract because it hasn’t taken the waste. So far, $1.3 billion has been paid out. The Department of Justice estimates the liability will top $12 billion if a waste facility is not opened by 2020.

The current state of affairs "does not bolster the credibility of our government to handle this matter competently," says Dale Klein, a former Republican chairman of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Meanwhile, utilities continue to contribute $770 million a year to a Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for a permanent repository that now isn’t even on the drawing board.

In April, a group of utilities sued the federal government, demanding that these storage fees be suspended. Ellen Ginsberg, general counsel of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a trade group, says, "We don’t want to pay any more fees until the government has a waste plan."

So far, more than 800 casks have been filled and they sit tucked away behind fences on reactor sites. They hold 14,000 metric tons of waste, an amount that is steadily growing. There is an additional 49,000 metric tons being held in spent-fuel pools, used fuel’s first stop after it leaves reactors. Each year, another 2,000 metric tons of nuclear reactor waste is created.

This waste mostly consists of fuel rods that are used to make the heat that’s converted into electricity in nuclear power plants. It’s highly radioactive and must be handled carefully by robotic machines when it isn’t stored in special radiation-blocking containers.

PSEG Nuclear
Lower Alloways Creek, N.J.

When fuel is removed from the reactor core, it’s stored in pools for several years to allow it to become cooler and slightly less radioactive. After five years or so, it’s able to be moved to dry casks that are filled with inert gas. Sensors keep track of their temperature and watch for radioactive leaks.

But casks, originally intended for transporting waste and not permanently storing it, aren’t an ideal solution, say industry experts and advocacy groups. One major concern is the adequacy of security to protect them from potential attacks.

"For most people, it’s out of sight, out of mind," says Ray Shadis, spokesman for the New England Coalition. His group fears casks could become terrorism targets. The group is calling for security changes at reactor sites, including burying casks or camouflaging them so they aren’t "open to line-of-sight targeting by anyone with a shoulder-mounted rocket," says Mr. Shadis.

The NRC says these worries are overblown but, as it doesn’t disclose security plans, it’s hard for outsiders to assess the adequacy. Casks "are very robust containers," says Raymond Lorson, deputy director of the NRC’s Division of Spent Fuel and Transportation.

Nevertheless, if spent fuel were to hit the atmosphere, it would pose a risk for anyone exposed to the radiation. Depending on the dose, it could result in injury or death, scientists say.

Used fuel is placed in helium-filled containers with two- to five- inch thick steel walls, welded shut. Those canisters are then wrapped in two feet or more of steel-reinforced concrete. Mr. Lorson says the NRC has conducted studies of "severe events"—which he won’t describe—and judged the casks hardy.

Cask makers say their products can withstand a direct hit from a commercial jet, so long as they aren’t hit by landing gear. The rest of the plane crumples on impact.

Even so, some utilities have taken steps to address safety. Entergy Corp., the owner of several nuclear plants, has erected an earthen mound to block visibility of its storage area at its Vermont Yankee plant.

Meanwhile, officials are considering extending the working lives of casks.

Nobody really knows how long casks can keep radioactive waste safely isolated, but casks are licensed for 20 years. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission now is considering upping the basic license to 40 years and allowing a 20-year extension. Fearing that 60 years may not be enough, the NRC recently asked staff to think about how utilities could manage waste safely for up to 120 years.

It would have been impossible to predict, 20 years ago, that dry casks would become so important.

In the 1960s, when the first commercial reactors were built, spent fuel pools were small because plant operators thought the federal government soon would relieve utilities of waste. A reprocessing plant that was to have taken used fuel and turned it back into useful fuel opened up in West Valley, N.Y., in 1966.

Then India conducted a nuclear weapons test in 1974, and reprocessing fell out of favor due to fears it could produce weapons- grade plutonium that might fall into dangerous hands.

In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act which proposed the creation of two waste repositories, one in the eastern part of the U.S. and one in the west. The energy department looked at nine sites before culling the list to three, all in the west, a few years later.

By the mid 1980s, utilities started to store waste in casks while they waited for a federal solution.

Yet, by the end of the decade, the political situation had changed and the energy department was focused exclusively on sparsely populated Nevada for a waste repository.

The decision "eliminated a lot of the political opposition" elsewhere, says Mark Holt, a researcher for the Congressional Research Service.

With a storage solution approaching, utilities began paying money into a fund that was expected to cover transportation and storage costs.

Not surprisingly, opposition to Yucca Mountain erupted in Nevada, where politicians and residents complained they didn’t want their state to become the nation’s nuclear dumping ground.

"It reminded us of a painful episode of above-ground weapons testing when they told us it was absolutely safe to drop bombs 60 miles from Las Vegas. Just bring the kids inside and hose down the car, afterward," says Richard H. Bryan, former Democratic governor and U.S. senator for Nevada.

As time passed, utilities began to explore legal alternatives. Meanwhile, the NRC approved several designs for storage casks and the special storage areas that would hold them.

At the defunct Rancho Seco nuclear site in California, 21 casks hold waste that was supposed to have been removed by 2008.

Last December, the operator won a $53 million judgment against the U.S. government for storage costs from 1998 to 2003, although it hasn’t received a dime yet. The Energy Department has challenged the payment on the grounds that Rancho Seco’s operator, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, spent too much on the facility.

Einar Ronningen, superintendent of the Rancho Seco assets, says the utility is tired of the hassle. "We’d really like to be out of the nuclear business," he says, since all that’s left is the waste. "It continues to cost us millions of dollars a year to manage this site."

In March, the Obama administration moved in a direction long sought by Nevada officials. Mr. Chu, the energy secretary, said that, in effect, one of Yucca Mountain’s problems was that it was too small. It was only going to be licensed to hold 70,000 metric tons of waste and the power industry already is storing nearly 65,000 metric tons. In other words, it wouldn’t have been able to meet the needs of the next wave of plants, if they’re built.

At its first meeting, Mr. Chu urged the blue ribbon panel to consider a full array of options, including fuel reprocessing or construction of so-called fast reactors that burn the waste of conventional reactors.

With no hope for imminent relief, utilities are fending for themselves.

Southern California Edison once operated three reactors at the San Onofre site on the Pacific Ocean near San Clemente, Calif. It tore down the oldest in 1992, moved the waste to dry storage, and soon will seek license extensions for the two remaining units.

On a warm spring day, Ross Ridenoure, chief nuclear officer for SoCal Edison, gestures to the casks and notes that the largely empty pad offers "enough room for all the storage we’ll ever need." It’s reassuring, he says, just in case "there isn’t a federal solution for at least 20 years."

Write to Rebecca Smith at rebecca.smith@wsj.com

June 2, 2010

By Julie Patel
Orlando Sun Sentinel

The Public Service Commission voted unanimously Tuesday to require Florida Power & Light Co. to refund $13.9 million, including interest, to customers for costs related to a 2008 outage that left as many as 3 million Floridians without electricity.

That will offset fuel costs for customers next year by about 14 cents a month for those who use about 1,000 kilowatt hours.

About 950,000 Florida homes and businesses, including 596,000 FPL customers, lost power Feb. 26, 2008. The outage lasted several hours and was blamed on an FPL engineer, whose actions accidentally triggered the blackout. The incident tripped off two nuclear units at the Turkey Point plant near Miami, as they are designed to do for safety reasons.

FPL officials had agreed to give customers credit for $2 million in costs for replacement power after the first eight hours of the outage. But they argued that the company should not be responsible for covering millions more for replacement power during the time two nuclear generators were down — 158 hours and 107 hours. They said that would effectively punish the company for investing in nuclear power — a clean, reliable energy supply that does not depend on fossil fuels.

FPL spokesman Mayco Villafana said utility regrets the inconvenience caused to customers by the outage but "singling out nuclear outages … is neither constructive nor appropriate, particularly at a time when state and federal leaders are attempting to remove impediments to the construction of new nuclear plants."

The Office of Public Counsel, the state’s advocate for utility customers, disagreed. It recommended customers receive a $15.9 million refund because they had no control over the outage and they pay for the high cost of nuclear plants, including profits on them.

PSC staffers recommended FPL pay nearly $14 million, including interest and costs accrued when the nuclear generators were down. But they had said FPL should be allowed to charge customers for costs during 27 hours when the utility was making repairs required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on one of the nuclear generators.

Federal regulators announced in October that FPL will have to pay a $25 million fine for the blackout. FPL did not admit any wrongdoing but agreed to pay the fine to resolve the issue. In 2008, the commission ordered FPL to refund customers $6 million for another blackout, which was blamed on a utility contractor.

Julie Patel can be reached at 954-356-4667 or jpatel(at)SunSentinel.com.

Saturday, May. 29, 2010

By ANNA M. TINSLEY
Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Thirty-six states could start shipping loads of radioactive waste through Texas for more than a decade — likely crisscrossing the Metroplex on major highways and train tracks — if they get approval this summer to send their contaminated materials to a West Texas disposal site.

The proposal to allow the states to send low-level waste to a site in Andrews County has prompted concern from some state lawmakers, who worry about the safety of communities along travel routes — including the Interstate 20 corridor through North Texas — and from environmentalists, who worry about radioactive leakage and contamination at the site.

An eight-member commission is expected to take up the issue in coming weeks, considering rules that would govern what materials are accepted and whether dozens of states should be allowed to send radioactive waste to the Waste Control Specialists’ Texas site owned by Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons.

"This could open [Texas] up to not only become the nation’s but potentially the world’s dump site," said Cyrus Reed, conservation director for the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter. "We thought the intent … was to take care of our own."

Waste Control Specialists’ officials say the site is safe and opening the landfill to other states will reduce the cost for all. And many West Texans who live near the disposal site say they support the company.

"We are willing to be the solution for the low-level radioactive waste disposal," said Julia Wallace, executive director of the Andrews Chamber of Commerce. "They need somewhere to put it. This is the perfect place for it."

But others aren’t so sure.

Amanda Villalobos is one of the few in Andrews County speaking out against the company, saying that while it is a great community partner and has a strong working relationship with many in the community, she is worried about leakage or other environmental problems.

"They don’t know what they are getting into," Villalobos, 24, said of her neighbors.

West Texas site

The Texas Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission, made up of six Texans and two Vermont residents, will decide whether additional states may apply to send low-level waste to Texas.

State environmental officials already agreed to let Waste Control Specialists accept low-level radioactive waste from Texas — including from Texas’ two nuclear plants, Glen Rose near Fort Worth and the South Texas project in Matagorda County — as well as from Vermont and federal sources.

The site is a sparsely populated area on top of layers of red bed clay about 350 miles west of Fort Worth that has had a hazardous-waste disposal permit since 1997. It’s owned by Simmons, who has given more than $3.5 million to Texas Republican politicians and organizations since 2000.

Shipments would include materials such as beakers, test tubes and hospital equipment, as well as items that have come in contact with radioactive material such as gloves, shoe covers, rags and soil. It would all be sent on trucks or trains, with many of them expected to pass through communities in the Metroplex on a regular basis.

"If an accident occurs, state and local governments will be responsible for the emergency and cleanup services necessary to ensure public health and safety by protecting them from exposure to radioactivity," said a letter written by 15 Democratic state House members, including Lon Burnam and Marc Veasey, both of Fort Worth. "The proposed rule unnecessarily places our constituents and their families at risk."

The commission delayed voting on this proposal this month after logging thousands of concerns and complaints. Members are expected to meet in Andrews County on June 12. They could vote by July, officials said.

More states, more money

Waste Control Specialists is now getting ready to break ground on the disposal facility. It will take workers nearly a year to dig 120 feet into the red clay and install plastic and concrete liners, spokesman Chuck McDonald said.

The company has a 15-year license to collect and dispose of these materials, with options to renew for two more 15-year terms. The facility may accept up to 2.3 million cubic feet of material, McDonald said.

More states shipping their waste means more money for the company, and even for Andrews County, which receives a percentage of the company’s gross receipts from waste disposal each quarter, officials say. Residents in Andrews County also approved a $75 million bond project to help build the site.

The lawmakers’ letter stresses that radioactive waste shipped to West Texas will remain contaminated for tens of thousands of years, and if there’s a leak, "the potential clean-up costs to the state of Texas are exceptionally high."

Last year, Burnam filed a bill that would require the Texas Legislature, not the commission, to sign off on which states can deposit their waste at the site. The bill died.

Vermont consultants urged the commission last month not to approve an expanded contract because there hasn’t been a legal review and Vermont will need all the space available at the dump site for its own nuclear reactor.

Villalobos of Andrews County said there is great support for the company, which has provided scholarships and funded events.

But she’s working for additional protections for the community, such as trying to get the company to fund a full-time Fire Department, pay for a committee to study environmental issues in the area and contribute funds to local hospitals and emergency medical services, "just in case something were to happen."

"It would be great if we could stop it completely," she said. "If not, it would be great to add more protections."

‘The Texas Solution’

McDonald said it is safe to transport items to Andrews County and to store them there.

"The issue is this: The material exists today," McDonald said. "We’re not creating it. It exists … in barrels at hospitals [and] at power plants.

"Instead of having some of it everywhere, it seems we would want to put it in one remote site."

Wallace, of the Andrews Chamber of Commerce, said residents have been supportive of Waste Control Specialists for decades, hoping it could help diversify West Texas’ economy, which has been so deeply rooted in oil.

The chamber recently started a campaign called "The Texas Solution" to support this disposal effort. Members say Andrews County has helped the state and nation through history, such as when the county provided oil needed during World War II.

"I’m not concerned," Wallace said. "I’ve raised my children here, I have my family here. There really is not anything to fear."

May 10, 2010

By Heather Menzies
Bay City Tribune

Matagorda County residents showed overwhelming support for the South Texas Project’s expansion during Thursday’s public meetings to discuss the findings in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) draft environmental impact statement (EIS).

Afternoon and evening sessions were held for public comments to be made on the content of the NRC’s findings in the draft EIS.

About 85 people attended the afternoon session, with 34 making public comments – 30 in support of the combined licenses for units 3 and 4 and three who opposed expansion and challenged findings in the EIS and one who was neutral but encouraged citizens to be interveners.

Jessie Muir, NRC environmental project manager, explained NRC’s process of compiling the EIS and shared their preliminary findings.

According to Muir, the NRC quantifies impacts based on three levels – small, moderate and large.

Small means the effect is not detectable, or so minor it will neither destabilize nor noticeably alter any important attribute of the resource; moderate means the effect is sufficient to alter noticeably, but not destabilize, important attributes of the resource; and large means the effect is clearly noticeable and sufficient to destabilize important attributes of the resources.

Muir said the expansion impacts on use and quality for both surface water and groundwater would be small; and impacts for both terrestrial and aquatic species would be small.

The EIS found that radiological impacts would be small in all areas as well.

Radiological doses to the workers, to members of the public through construction and operation, and to wildlife would be small and below regulatory limits and relevant guidelines.

The environmental justice review focused on low-income and minority populations and concluded that this group would not be "unevenly affected" by the expansion.

The socioeconomic review included impacts on taxes, housing, education, traffic and public services.

The EIS found that adverse impacts range from small to moderate while the beneficial impacts range from small to large.

The environmental impacts from the uranium fuel cycle, transportation of fuel and radioactive waste and decommissioning would be small.

NRC officials along with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also studied the cumulative environmental impacts factoring in proposed projects with other past, present and "reasonably foreseeable future actions."

Muir said they considered projects like White Stallion Energy Center, STP Units 1 and 2, and also LCRA-SAWS to name a few.

The cumulative adverse impacts on the environment ranged from small to moderate, while the cumulative tax impacts would be beneficial and range from small to large.

The EIS noted a need for new baseload electric generating capacity in the region and pointed out that no feasible energy alternatives, nor alternative sites or alternative system designs would be environmentally preferable.

"So based on our environmental review, our preliminary recommendation is that the combined licenses for STP units 3 and 4 be issued," said Muir.

When public comments began, Diana Kyle, spokeswoman for U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, was the first to read into record a letter from Paul encouraging NRC to grant the license.

"I am writing in support of the South Texas Project Units 3 and 4 combined license application. This project will provide much needed energy generation capacity in he area and will have a significant positive impact on economic development in Matagorda County, which I represent," Kyle read.

State Representative Randy Weber also read a letter of support from Sen. Glenn Hegar before speaking on his own behalf in support of units 3 and 4.

Matagorda County Judge Nate McDonald, Bay City Mayor Richard Knapik, and former state representative Mike O’Day were other local officials who hailed the benefits of STP’s past record on safety and corporate citizenry.

Each also mentioned the need for the economic boost through the construction phase and the addition of permanent jobs.

Owen Bludau and D.C. Dunham, local economic and community development officials, along with countless local business and real estate owners also spoke of the benefits two new reactors would bring to the community including a boost in sales tax revenues, construction of desired amenities and more jobs.

Tom "Smitty" Smith, of Public Citizen, was the first to speak in opposition of the expansion.

"I don’t think NRC has done an adequate job of analyzing the need for the plant," said Smith.

"And if the plant is not needed then we as tax payers and you as residents of Matagorda County may end up with a plant that is never completed and may end up being and economic albatross because of the federal loan guarantees and dreams unfulfilled."

Karen Hadden, of the SEED Coalition, was the next to detail her concerns with the EIS.

"The EIS does not have adequate scientific analysis on many fronts and it paints a glossy picture while minimizing risks," said Hadden.

"We have concerns with safety, security, radiation risks for the general population and for workers, radioactive waste problems that still have no solution, and the consumption of vast quantities of water."

Susan Dancer, local wildlife rehabilitator, was the third and only local commenter to express concern with STP’s expansion.

Dancer noted that, "underpaid inexperienced staff kill protected species, relocated infectious diseased specimens and kill off honey bee swarms."

She said the construction of units 3 and 4 could, in the long term, contribute to high unemployment rates when construction workers come to town for temporary jobs and then can’t find permanent work.

Dancer also criticized STP for not having enough women and minorities holding upper management positions.

Ed Halpin, STP’s president and chief executive officer; and Mark McBurnett, STP’s vice president of regulatory affairs, spoke of STP’s mission to improved lives through excellence in energy development and expressed their gratitude for community support.

Written public comments on the EIS can be made until June 9 and can be submitted online at
http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/doc-comment/form.html.

A copy of the draft EIS can be viewed at
www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1937.