Archive for the ‘Press Releases’ Category

For Immediate Release:
December 10, 2009

Contacts:
Karen Hadden 512-797-8481 Sustainable Energy & Economic Development (SEED) Coalition
Diane D’Arrigo 301-270-6477 Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS)
Cyrus Reed 512-740-4086 Lone Star Sierra Club

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Austin, TX Today the SEED Coalition, Public Citizen, Lone Star Sierra Club, and Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) called for action to prevent West Texas from becoming the nation’s radioactive waste dump. The Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission is holding a stakeholder meeting today. Texas and Vermont are the only two states in the Texas Compact. Prime on the meeting agenda are rules for importing “low-level” radioactive waste from states outside the Compact to the Andrews County site in West Texas owned by Waste Control Specialists (WCS). The draft import/export rule released to the public yesterday essentially invites with open arms radioactive waste from the rest of the country and possibly the world.

“Strong controls must be adopted now that will prevent Texas from becoming the nation’s nuclear dumping ground,” said Texas State Representative Lon Burnam. “Next session, I will sponsor a bill to close the loophole in the Compact Law allowing any state to dump radioactive waste on Texas without approval by the Legislature.”

“Allowing the eight member Texas Compact Commission, six of whom are appointed by Governor Perry, to approve importation of radioactive waste into Texas is undemocratic,” said Representative Burnam. “Turning Texas into the nation’s radioactive dumping ground so that WCS can make millions of dollars is irresponsible, especially since it will endanger public health and vital groundwater resources for thousands of years to come.”

This won’t be the first time WCS has used its influence to benefit from political decisions. WCS, and owner billionaire Harold Simmons, got state law changed to allow a private company to become licensed for the disposal of radioactive waste, as opposed to requiring disposal by the state.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) technical team reviewing the “low-level” radioactive waste disposal license application unanimously recommended denial of the license because the site was unsafe for disposal of “low-level” radioactive waste. In a rare move, the TCEQ team recommended against issuing the license. Profit won out over safety concerns when TCEQ Commissioners issued the license anyway, ignoring its own scientists’ findings.

“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,” said Glenn Lewis, technical editor for the TCEQ team that did a four-year review of WCS’ application. “Groundwater is only fourteen feet below the bottom of the radioactive waste dump trenches. Fourteen feet is not an adequate safety margin for a site that is supposed to isolate radioactive waste for tens of thousands of years, but there was pervasive political pressure throughout the entire process to issue a license to WCS regardless of how unsafe the site was.” Three TCEQ employees quit over the decision to issue the license.

Another of these employees was Encarnacion (Chon) Serna Jr., a chemical engineer reviewing several sections of the application, who resigned after it became apparent that the licenses were going to be granted by TCEQ no matter what. Serna indicated “that even after a third (only two allowed by state rule) notice of technical deficiency was granted to the Applicant WCS, the application was still extremely deficient in what it proposed vs. what was required by state rules, not only in the areas of geology and hydrology, but also in the areas of financial assurance, engineering design, operating procedures and radioactive dose rate assessments.”

“WCS’ own data shows groundwater in and near the proposed site,” said Lewis, “If water intrudes into the landfill radionuclides could escape confinement and permanently contaminate groundwater.”

The leakage possibility is not unique to the West Texas site. “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,” stated 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.'”

The draft import/export rule discusses the so-called “positive fiscal effects” from taking radioactive waste but fails to even acknowledge liability and the possible negative fiscal impacts from clean up costs that would result from radioactive leaks.

“It’s important to understand that when it comes to nuclear power and weapons waste, ‘low-level’ is not ‘low-risk,'” D’Arrigo said. “Much of the waste is dangerous now and stays dangerous for literally millions of years. Unshielded exposure to some radionuclides could kill a person in 20 minutes. Exposure to radiation causes cancer, genetic defects, reduced immunity and other health problems.”

“TCEQ rushed into a risky deal by approving 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’ve done it without giving members of the public who are at risk a chance to prove that the application is faulty. That’s why the Lone Star Sierra Club appealed to the State District Court, asking that a hearing be required.”

“Now WCS wants to make their nuclear waste dump the nation’s radioactive waste dump,” said D’Arrigo. “The dump was only meant to take waste from five nuclear reactors in Texas and Vermont, but if the Compact Commission adopts a rule allowing ‘out of compact’ waste into Texas, the site could take waste from over 100 nuclear reactors, operating and proposed. WCS stands to profit while Texas is stuck with the long term liability and environmental devastation.”

Disposal of radioactive waste is a national and global problem, and all voices need to be heard. Texans aren’t the only ones that could be affected, as the dump is right on the Texas/New Mexico Border. “The residents of Eunice, New Mexico have been shut out of the TCEQ licensing process,” said Scott Kovac, Operations and Research Director with Nuclear Watch New Mexico. “As the closest community to the WCS site, residents of Eunice must also be included in the process.” Eunice is five miles from the radioactive waste dump.

The two parties in the Compact, Texas and Vermont, have expressed a need to dispose of at least 6 million cubic feet of radioactive waste in the next 50 years. Yet this volume, estimated by the Texas Compact Commission, is nearly three times more than the capacity of the site. The WCS license limits the total volume to be disposed at the Compact Facility to 2.3 million cubic feet. “If there isn’t room for Texas’ and Vermont’s waste, how can we even consider importing waste from out of the Compact?” said Eliza Brown, Clean Energy Advocate for the SEED Coalition. “Why should Texas be at risk of becoming the nation’s nuclear dumping ground? The Compact Commission should develop a ‘Don’t mess with Texas’ approach to radioactive waste dumping.”

WCS sought $75 million in bonds from Andrews County taxpayers, which it says it needs to begin construction of the radioactive waste dump. A lawsuit was brought by local residents, challenging the May 9th vote which was paid for by WCS. Until the questions regarding the validity of 90 ballots are resolved the county money cannot be transferred to WCS to begin construction on waste dump.

“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, the entire reactor itself when it is dismantled (thousands of tons of contaminated concrete and steel) can all be dumped. None of the radioactive elements in high-level waste is prohibited from being included in “low-level” waste. In fact, not a single radionuclide is barred from being dumped at the West Texas site.

“We now know how the original licensing process was rushed, with a multitude of unresolved deficiencies and issues,” said former TCEQ engineer ‘Chon’ Serna. “In light of what is currently being considered by the Texas Compact Commission, it is imperative that the old unresolved issues along with the ones that were resolved as adverse to the granting of the license, be revisited, reconsidered, and resolved by an Agency Team and a Team of Experts without the political pressure of legislators and Agency Directors. If unable to resolve these issues or if further studies and investigations determine the existing site is not suited for its ‘low level radioactive waste disposal purpose,’ waste disposal on the existing site should stop immediately, existing licenses should be revoked, and no more licenses or expansions should be granted for this site.”

Texans and safe energy advocates are calling on the Compact Commission to exercise its power and authority to prohibit ‘out of compact’ waste as other compacts have done. The Commission should not allow Texas to become the nation’s radioactive waste dumping ground.

###

For Immediate Release
October 19, 2009

Groups propose a 10-point alternative plan that would cost less and create local jobs

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(San Antonio) At a press conference today, activists and energy experts called for San Antonio City
Council to vote against nuclear expansion because they have not compared the costs and benefits of a
comprehensive green plan to building additional reactors. The group presented a 10-point plan that could
provide more energy at lower cost and create thousands of local jobs.

“San Antonio could meet its energy needs at less cost through a combination of energy efficiency,
renewable energy with storage, and geothermal energy while putting local people to work,” said Amanda Haas
of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. “The STEP and Mission Verde plans, if enacted, will help us move
towards a sustainable energy future. However, the only plan before the City Council is a plan for more nuclear
reactors. We call on City Council to halt the push for nuclear reactors which would leave a legacy of radioactive
waste and instead pursue a safer, green energy future that will create thousands of local jobs in San Antonio
instead of exporting them to Bay City and Japan.”

“We have developed a 10-point plan that studies show would be cheaper than building the nuclear
reactors,” said Tom “Smitty” Smith of Public Citizen’s Texas office. “These alternatives would include more
weatherization, retrofits, building codes, lighting, solar, wind with storage, geothermal, biomass, natural gas
and combined heat and power. In combination, these resources could more than meet San Antonio’s energy
needs at costs below that of the additional reactors. The demand for electricity is down by 7% nationally from
2008-2009 and many new federal programs may decrease the demand for electricity even further. CPS’s own
projections for electricity demand have fallen. City Council should develop a comprehensive alternative plan
and see which is cheaper before they vote on what could be $6.5 billion dollar mistake.”

Two independent studies on CPS and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission data have shown
that alternatives are far cheaper than a nuclear plant. While CPS is making big commitments to weatherization,
they have been typically spending more money than others to achieve the same result. CPS is spending two to
three times more per saved megawatt than other utilities in Texas or Houston. In Houston the city teamed with
its local utility and did a neighborhood-by-neighborhood retrofit program that saved 14.6% of the energy usage
in each home for $1,000, a fraction of what CPS is spending. A recent study for CPS found the cost of
efficiency was about half the cost of the proposed nuclear reactor. If CPS builds the nuclear plant and the
energy is too expensive to sell it could send the utility into a nuclear death spiral.

As an example of the kinds of energy savings that could be obtained, Bob Spermo of Bullseye Home
Energy Audits reviewed the results of a home energy audit he performed on a local home and found that the
homeowner could save energy in her home through insulation in the attic, solar screens, radiant barriers, and
replacing old air conditioners with more efficient ones. In other newer homes it makes sense to tighten up
leaking ducts and do blower door tests to look for leaks.

“Solar panels are a cost effective way to capture the power of the sun and to save energy. The City has
adopted a goal of installing solar on 50,000 homes and 6,000 businesses by 2020. If they were to do this it
would cut the need for 250 MW of energy and create 1,000 new jobs, according to the City’s Mission Verde
Plan.” said Dustin Aubrey of Nova Star Solar. “The cost of solar panels is declining rapidly. If the city council
would make a large scale solar PV commitment and make CPS do it, we could be one of the nation’s most
solar cities.”

Houston has recently agreed to a 25-year solar power purchase agreement at a price of 8.2 cents per
kilowatt-hour for the first year. Houston’s NRG Energy Inc. (NYSE: NRG) will foot the $40 million bill to
develop, build and own the 10 megawatt solar farm in northwest Houston. This is less than the projected price
of energy from the nuclear plant which is 8.5 cents per KWh.

“One of the cheapest ways to save energy is to pull the energy from underground. Texas is blessed
with steady temperatures in rock below the ground surface that can be captured and circulated through heat
exchangers in our homes and offices, reducing dramatically the energy we need for heating and cooling,” said
Charlie Lonsberry from Southwest Mechanical, who installs geothermal systems. “Many San Antonio homes
use geothermal energy for heating, hot water, and cooling – and they’ve been doing so for years. Geothermal
can also be done on a large scale to produce electricity.”

“City Council hasn’t done a good job of looking at the alternatives. They have relied entirely on CPS’s
cost estimates, which are often old or biased, and as a result they are making a decision without adequate
analysis of alternatives. Our 10-point plant would be cheaper than building new nuclear reactors,” said Peggy
Day of the Alamo Group of the Sierra Club. “The City Council should examine the alternatives before voting to
fund the bonds for further nuclear development. Not only will this decision affect the cost consumers pay, but it
also has grave moral consequences. We will create waste that will be radioactive and can cause cancer or birth
defects for 10,000 years. 60 years after the dawn of the nuclear age we have yet to figure out what to do with
the waste. What right do we have to leave this toxic mess behind?”

For more information on the alternative plan see www.energiamia.org

• Costs of Current and Planned Nuclear Power Plants in Texas; A Consumer Perspective
  Clarence Johnson for Public Citizen, Texas Office, April 2009
• Assessing Nuclear Plant Capital Costs for the Two Proposed NRG Reactors at the South Texas
  Project Site Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D. March 24, 2008

Should not be Issued by Department of Energy

18 Groups From 4 States With Reactors Up for Loan Guarantees Speak Out in Opposition;
DOE Liberalization of Rules Would Expose Taxpayers to Billions of Dollars in New Defaults.

For Immediate Release
October 22, 2009

Contact:
Karen Hadden, Executive Director, SEED Coalition,
512-797-8481 or
Eliza Brown, Clean Energy Advocate, SEED Coalition,
512-637-9482

Austin, Texas Taxpayers will be put at significant new risk for billions of dollars in loan defaults if the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) moves ahead with plans to issue its first set of controversial taxpayer-backed conditional loan guarantees for new nuclear reactors, according to 18 national and state-level public interest groups from the four states where utilities are most likely to receive the loan guarantee hand-outs: Maryland, Georgia, Texas and South Carolina.

In a joint statement issued today, the groups charged that “The [DOE] Loan Guarantee Program faces fundamental problems that fatally undermine the program’s integrity as it seeks to bail out the nuclear industry, including a lack of control over the prohibitive and uncontrolled cost of new reactors, excessive and unjustified secrecy, and an inability to properly secure the loan guarantees.” They called on DOE to put the issuance of loan guarantees on hold given the unacceptable financial risks placed on the taxpayer, the poor track record of the DOE with past loan guarantees and the lack of transparency in the loan guarantee decision-making process.

DOE has identified four nuclear utilities as prime candidates for conditional loan guarantees: Unistar Nuclear in Maryland (for one reactor at the Calvert Cliffs site), SCANA in South Carolina (for two reactors at the V.C. Summer site), Southern Company in Georgia (for two reactors at the Vogtle site) and NRG Energy in Texas (for two reactors at the South Texas Project).

“If the DOE issues loan guarantees to NRG for the South Texas Project, the risks placed on the U.S. taxpayer are numerous,” stated Karen Hadden, Executive Director of the SEED Coalition. “One STP site-specific issue that causes us great concern is use of the ABWR rector design. NRG is requesting numerous departures from the pre-approved design which has never been built in the U.S. and has had serious problems in Japan.”

“There is also the increased financial risk of guaranteeing a loan to NRG, which has a bond rating just above “junk” grade according to Moody’s. The company declared bankruptcy in 2003,” Hadden said. “NRG has not found the additional investors it needs for the reactors. San Antonio’s municipal utility, CPS Energy, voted unanimously last week to reduce its 50% stake in the project to between 20-25%. How can the DOE put U.S. taxpayers at risk by guaranteeing a loan to fund reactors when the buyers aren’t firm? There are no buyers for the 810 MW share that CPS no longer wants and can’t afford, and no one will want high dollar nuclear generated energy when cheaper options are available.”

According to the statement from the groups: “Given that DOE has the authority to hand out only $18.5 billion in loan guarantees and that the current estimated price tag for a single reactor is $9-15 billion, it is clear that DOE will not be able to fully back all of the new nuclear reactors currently under consideration.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has stated that it will not approve any new license applications for several years from now.

Eighteen state and national groups have signed on to the statement, including the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth, the South Carolina Chapter of the Sierra Club, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), and the Sustainable Energy & Economic Development (SEED) Coalition (Texas). (A full listing of groups can be seen on the statement itself, at www.NukeFreeTexas.org)

A number of the groups have also raised legal challenges on the state and/or federal level against the reactor projects, charging that they fail to comply with safety and environmental laws. The organizations contend that DOE loan guarantees for the highest-cost energy option, nuclear power, would be a diversion of resources from cleaner, cheaper options that the nation must urgently pursue.

“With five contentions admitted for a hearing by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) Panel and seven more contentions pending, the citizen legal intervention at STP has been the most successful in the country thus far,” said Hadden. The ASLB Panel admitted four water-related contentions, ruling that STP had failed to adequately analyze the environmental impacts of radioactive contaminated water and water availability. The Panel also ruled that STP failed to consider the impacts of a radiological accident at one unit on the operations at the other units.

“It hardly makes sense for the DOE to force the U.S. taxpayer to help fund more nuclear reactors in this country when the NRC recognizes that nuclear plants could become weapons for terrorists and are vulnerable to air attacks with potentially catastrophic effects,” said Hadden. On August 14th, the Intervenors filed seven more contentions regarding STP’s failure to comply with a new NRC fire safety rule which says each licensee must “develop and implement guidance and strategies intended to maintain or restore core cooling, containment, and spent fuel pool cooling capabilities under the circumstances associated with loss of large areas of the plant due to explosions or fire,” including those that would occur from the impact of a large commercial airliner. However, the Intervenors’ contentions that STP has failed to meet the fire and explosion regulatory requirements, STP’s submittal, and related documents are considered classified by the NRC and are not available to the public.

“The licensing process is likely to be delayed as a result of additional contentions,” said Hadden. “Delay and construction problems led to the first reactors at STP coming in six times over budget and eight years late.”

In their joint statement, the 18 groups criticized the DOE for weakening the terms of loan guarantees to favor borrowers, at the expense of taxpayers. Recently, for example, DOE proposed “to modify [its] regulations so as to eliminate the taxpayer as the primary claimant to fixed assets after a default, in order to make the loan guarantees more attractive to investors – such as the French and Japanese export-import banks. Thus, what seems to be cooking in DOE’s secret loan guarantee laboratory is a ‘Son of Synfuels’ give-away, where securing loans for private nuclear companies takes precedence over protecting taxpayers. Public interest opponents of the use of the taxpayer-backed loan guarantees to subsidize new nuclear reactors therefore demand that DOE suspend the issuance of conditional loan guarantees as DOE has not demonstrated that it has in place a transparent process for protecting U.S. taxpayer-financed nuclear loan guarantees against default.”

The loan guarantees would put U.S. taxpayers – rather than investors – on the hook to pay back the loans should any of the projects default. According to a May 2003 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, the risk of default on loan guarantees for new nuclear plants is “very high – well above 50 percent.” The shift of liability to taxpayers underscores not only the necessity of public review and scrutiny of the loan guarantee program, but also begs the question of how effectively and to what degree DOE can mitigate financial risk to taxpayers through program administration.

Further, DOE has been criticized by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the DOE Inspector General for not setting up the necessary controls to manage the government’s significant financial risk exposure. The GAO reported in July 2008 that “rather than taking and completing key steps to better ensure that the loan guarantee program would be well managed and accomplish its objectives, DOE focused on soliciting preapplications for proposed projects.” The report concluded that DOE is not “well positioned to manage the loan guarantee program effectively and maintain accountability because it has not completed a number of management and internal control activities key to carrying out the program.”

Imprudent loan guarantee administration is not a new experience for DOE. Failure to properly assess financial risk in a similar loan guarantee program in the late-1970s and early-1980s, forced DOE to cover significant losses on the risky synthetic fuels industry. Loan defaults on these projects led to a $15 billion loss for U.S. taxpayers.

The full text of the joint statement can be found here:

Loan Guarantee Statement 10/22/09

BLUE RIDGE ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE LEAGUE
PO Box 88 ~ Glendale Springs, North Carolina 28629 ~ Phone (336) 982-2691 ~ Fax (336) 982-2954 ~ Email: BREDL@skybest.com

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Download in pdf format for printing.

CONTACT:
Louis Zeller (336) 982-2691 or (336) 977-0852
www.bredl.org

Victory in Landmark Clean Water Act Challenge
League and Lake Residents Overturn Dominion Nuke Permit

Today a Virginia court in Richmond ruled that state agencies violated federal law and that the water quality permit for Dominion-Virginia Power’s North Anna nuclear station is revoked. Judge Spencer ruled that Lake Anna water quality is governed by the federal Clean Water Act and that Virginia’s Attorney General was wrong in supporting the state’s water permit.

This landmark decision favored the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League and co-plaintiffs residing near Lake Anna by determining that the so-called hot side of the lake is “waters of the United States.” The Virginia State Water Control Board must now go back to the drawing board to evaluate the adverse impacts of hot water discharges to Lake Anna from the two nuclear reactors.

Louis Zeller, Science Director of the League, said, “We and lakeside residents have long believed that Dominion is guilty of thermal pollution; however, we believe that the greatest impact of the Richmond court’s decision is that the Commonwealth and the people must reject the permitting of a third reactor at our endangered Lake Anna.”

The League is conducting research to see how many other power plants will be affected by this decision.

-end-

The Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League’s Petition for Appeal was filed in Circuit Court for the City of Richmond on December 28, 2007 pursuant to Virginia Code §§ 62.1-44.29 and 2.2-4026 and Rule 2A:4 of the Rules of the Supreme Court of Virginia. The appeal sought judicial review of the October 29, 2007 decision by the Virginia State Water Control Board to re-issue Virginia Pollution Discharge Elimination System Permit No. VA0052451 to Dominion-Virginia Power’s North Anna nuclear power plant Units 1 and 2.

60-Day Clock For Nuclear Opponents Starts Ticking: Opposition to Expansion of South Texas Project in Place

For Immediate Release
February 20, 2009

Contacts:
Karen Hadden, Director, SEED Coalition, 512-797-8481
Susan Dancer, Director, South Texas Association for Responsible Energy, 361-588-2143
Cindy Wheeler, Consumers’ Energy Coalition, 210-367-8510
Matt Johnson, Public Citizen’s Texas Office, 512-637-9453

AUSTIN, TX The NRC posted notice today on the Federal Register regarding the opportunity to intervene in the application of South Texas Nuclear Operating Company (STPNOC) to build two reactors at the South Texas Project (STP) nuclear plant site, near Bay City. Citizens now have
only 60 days to prepare and present their legal case in opposition to the reactors. Citizen groups are opposing the proposed reactors, including the newly formed Bay City based organization, South Texas Association for Responsible Energy (STARE), Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition, Public Citizen, and others who will intervene in the case.

“New reactors would saddle homeowners and taxpayers with additional debt for infrastructure, more radioactive waste that would sit in our community, and more risk of nuclear accidents, health impacts and radioactive exposure” said Susan Dancer, Director of the South Texas Association for Responsible Energy in Bay City, Texas. “These are among the many reasons we will intervene in opposition to more nuclear reactors.”

“CPS Energy has been stealthily and irresponsibly getting San Antonio deeper and deeper into this nuclear boondoggle, which is already raising our utility rates," said Cindy Weehler of the Consumers’ Energy Coalition. “There are cleaner, more affordable ways to generate electricity. Energy efficiency should be prioritized, not put on a back burner. With the economic downturn, we shouldn’t generate power that’s not needed. San Antonio has reduced energy use by 16% over the past two years. Why should we even consider antiquated reactors that could cost $17.5 billion and would leave radioactive waste for generations to come?”

“The streamlined combined construction and operating license process is designed to cut citizens out and limit public involvement. Safety concerns are taking a backseat to cost-cutting measures and the public doesn’t even know it yet.” said Karen Hadden, Executive Director of the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development (SEED) Coalition.

Nuclear opponents point out the troubled history of existing STP Units 1 & 2, reactors which ran six times over budget and were eight years late coming online. This sordid history includes harassment and illegal firing of employees who lodged safety complaints, theft of materials, subcontractor price-fixing schemes, and falsification of quality assurance/quality control reports. Before either unit was in operation The Austin Light newspaper reported on February 17, 1988, “There are currently more than 650 allegations concerning safety, costs and criminal activities brought by people who have worked on the project.” NRC Region IV became a target for a US Senate committee investigation for “corrupt” oversight of construction practices at STNP and Comanche Peak, another Brown and Root project. Sen. John Glenn said the agency is “more lapdog than watchdog.”

STPNOC includes NRG and CPS Energy, the municipal utility in San Antonio. Austin Energy, a partner in existing reactors at the site, has declined to participate in the proposed expansion. An indefinite suspension of the license hearing was obtained through a petition SEED Coalition filed last year, based on the incomplete nature of the application. That suspension has now ended with the notice issued today by the NRC on the Federal Register regarding the public’s opportunity to request participation in the hearing regarding the South Texas Project COL. The deadline for filing a request to participate is April 21. Citizens must develop their contentions, their legal case, during this extremely short time period, despite the fact that further revisions of the application are still anticipated.

The notice is entitled “South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Company Application for the South Texas Project Units 3 and 4; Notice of Order, Hearing, and Opportunity To Petition for Leave To Intervene”. This federal register notice was published as Volume 74, No. 33, pages 7934-7938.

The federal register notice along with information regarding the history of the existing ST(N)P reactors will also be posted at www.NukeFreeTexas.org.

You can read the notice here.

Read the South Texas Nuclear Project-The Record