I hope all of you will turn out for the sole meeting the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will hold for public feedback on the proposed Post Shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report (PSDAR) Entergy hastily submitted to the NRC in December 2014. NRC meeting is February 19, 6 to 9 pm. Address and NRC notice is here: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2015/15-004.i.pdf
Entergy’s report is almost a joke, based on old data that does not reflect the current situation, including findings revealed just last week of Strontium 90 in wells on VY land. State agencies have spoken out strongly and specifically about the report to the NRC in hopes that this federal agency, the sole arbitor of VY’s future, will see fit to expedite cleanup and maintain healthy economic activity at the plant due to VY’s unique circumstances. Contamination of area groundwater (not just CT River) is likely imminent and will increase the longer the spill is left unattended.
Those of us living in the VY Emergency Planning Zone 10 miles around the reactor need to squarely face the new reality of long-term, high level nuclear waste storage at the old Vermont Yankee site and back-up the state to the NRC by speaking out.
The presence of strontium increased the cost of cleanup at another decommissioning reactor by $1 billion, but since that reactor was utility-owned ratepayers paid the extra cost. If Entergy goes bankrupt, not a far-fetched notion in a declining nuclear industry climate, who pays for needed cleanup?
The NRC is in untested territory with these privately owned ‘merchant’ reactors. The government has an obligation to take the waste away, but there is and may never be any place to take it. VY is only the second merchant plant to shut down (Kewaunee in Wisconsin is going through its own process right now). The NRC is guided by antiquated laws that never foresaw the future we are now living, a concern reiterated by outgoing NRC Chair Allison MacFarlane is this recent The New York Times piece: outgoing NRC chair concerns on decommissioning
Here are some points the NRC needs to hear:
1. We want immediate decontamination, no ‘safstor’ since costs will only go up and contamination spread by waiting up to 60 years as is currently (ridiculously) allowed by NRC. Our community is a special case that cannot have a cookie cutter approach — since it is a merchant reactor, has the second smallest land area of any US nuclear plant and is in the middle of a town with a school at the gate to the plant, we are a special situation absolutely UNsuitable for SAFSTOR. Likewise, we used the energy and have the moral obligation to deal with it, not leave it for future generations who did not benefit from it.
2. We want absolute maintenance of emergency planning zone until all fuel is out of spent fuel pool into dry cask — including federal help for emergency personnel that can benefit the community at large, especially Vernon. Outgoing NRC Chair Allison MacFarlane coauthored a study more than 12 years ago calling for immediate action on relieving spent fuel pools of the dangerous and untested radioactive loads they carry. The VY pool is among the worst nationally. Loss of backup electricity for less than a day, or a human error where water levels fall without anyone noticing, as happened at VY just last week, could cause a catastrophe the NRC says could render our area and far beyond uninhabitable.
3. We deserve federal help for being a community that hosts the nation’s high level nuclear waste, a role we never signed on for and are completely unprepared to shoulder. If Entergy can sue the US Department of Energy for millions for not taking the waste away in 1998 as scheduled, why can’t we access the federal nuclear waste fund* to pay for keeping us safe and supporting our emergency personnel, infrastructure etc to do this challenging work of the nation? Big incentives are now promised to communities willing to take nuclear waste, what about towns like ours that have that job thrust upon us with none of these perks?
4. We demand higher quality casks like those used in Europe and Japan, not third-world casks shown to be unreliable. In the absence of any federal repository, or any interim repository, and with DOE saying waste will likely be here for 50 years, we need to plan for forever because NO ONE CAN GUARANTEE US THAT IT WON’T BE.
5. Spent fuel pools relief must not wait until 2019 as Entergy plans (Kewaunee owners Dominion are relieving their fuel pools much faster), it should start sooner since pools now pose catastrophic risk should a loss of power event occur. Fuel just taken out of reactor needs to cool for 5 years, but there is fuel in there that can and should be moved now, keeping lots of jobs and activity humming and sufficient oversight maintained for the process right now.
There are of course many more points to make — the last two points are the only ones not expressly supported by the state – but should be.
It is essential that those who represent the people of this community speak out strongly, NOW. If it is impossible for you to actually be present, I certainly hope each one of you will enter similar feedback to the NRC before the March 23 deadline for comments and make those comments available so others can rally around them. The link to send comments is: http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=NRC-2015-0004-0001, or by mail to Cindy Bladey, Office of Administration, Mail Stop: 3WFN-06-A44M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C., 20555, and reference Docket No. 50-271.
*ratepayers paid into the nuclear waste fund which now has some 32 million for use outlined in 1982 law for central repository, but law must now change due to fed gov push to allow for ‘interim’ sites and this will be our chance to change the law the way we want to support our community.
