Today, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) called on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to reconsider its plans to hold a private meeting regarding NRC oversight of Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee (ENVY), ENVY’s tritium releases, and other issues questions from attendees.  The closed meeting for invitees the NRC deemed to be stakeholders is scheduled for April 14 at the Keene Country Club in Keene, NH.

March 30, 2010

The Honorable Gregory B. Jaczko

Chairman

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Washington, D.C. 20555-0001

Dear Chairman Jaczko:

We write to follow up on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s invitation to participate in a closed-door “Government-to-Government” meeting on April 14 in Keene, New Hampshire.

We are committed to open and transparent government and to honoring both the letter and spirit of Vermont’s open meeting laws.  Avoiding Vermont’s open meeting laws by holding this meeting in New Hampshire will only add to the growing public skepticism about the handling of oversight at Vermont Yankee, and could curtail participation from Vermont officials.

While we recognize that the discussion of information relating to security considerations often requires confidential briefings, the discussion of broader issues surrounding this facility is of great interest to Vermonters and is a discussion that should be conducted in a public setting.

We urge you to reconsider, and to hold the April 14 meeting in Vermont so that Vermont’s federal, state and local officials can fully participate. We look forward to hearing from you regarding this request.

Sincerely,

Patrick Leahy              Bernard Sanders                     Peter Welch

U.S. Senator                U.S. Senator                            U.S. Representative

I deeply appreciate this letter from our Congressional Delegation.  Safe and reliable nuclear power are not issues to be discussed behind closed doors.  Entergy has not met its burden of proof on ENVY’s reliability to the State of Vermont or its burden of proof on safety issues to the NRC, now matter what public claims are made by NRC spokespersons.  

More on this and on Secretary of State Deb Markowitz’s comments will be added below the fold.

By the way, government-to-government secret meetings do not exist in any statute.  I have always found the NRC to be unique, in that it writes it own rules and regulations.  While Congress gave it the authority to promulgate its own regulations, that was done in order to support itself in meeting its primary statutory authority to protect public health and safety.

I delve into this process in my book.  Here is an excerpt:

“Congress considered the concept of protecting “public health and safety” so critical that it

stated “public health and safety” 80 times in its original 1974 enabling legislation that disbanded the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and created the NRC. Furthermore,in the second paragraph of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 entitled Declaration of Purpose it is stated,

The Congress hereby declares that the general welfare and the common defense and security require effective action to develop, and increase the efficiency and reliability of use of, all energy sources to meet the needs of present and future generations, to increase the productivity of the national economy and strengthen its position in regard to international trade, to make the Nation self-sufficient in energy, to advance the goals of restoring, protecting, and enhancing environmental quality, and to assure public health and safety.

In fact, Congress had determined that “public health and safety” were so critical and that a clear separation must be established between the  nuclear industry, its government proponents, and those who regulated the industry that it took the critical step of disbanding the AEC, which had originally been created as part of the Atoms for Peace program in 1954.

It took only 20 years for the American people and their elected Congressional representatives to realize the impossibility of the AEC charter to simultaneously promote and regulate nuclear power. Unfortunately, simply changing the name over the door did not alter the culture or nomenclature created by the NRC.

In 1976 when I was first employed in the nuclear industry, because I was a writer, part of my job grew to include writing nuclear technical information for the local American Nuclear Society (ANS) Chapter in lay terminology so that non-nuclear engineers could understand its statewide newsletter. As an engineering aide in Reload Core Design [analyzing and calculating the optimum configuration for fuel reloads] for Combustion Engineering (CE), I was good at explaining nuclear technical facts in plain English, so good in fact that I was asked to be a member of an organizing team for a nuclear advocacy grassroots training workshop, and I was encouraged by my supervisor and CE’s management team to apply for three positions as a nuclear information specialist with three nuclear utilities that were CE clients.

I was hired by NYSE&G (New York State Electric and Gas) as the public information specialist at a proposed nuclear power plant site in upstate New York. I was the friendly feminine face of the utility in contrast to the nuclear suits NYSE&G had been sending out into the community.  When I joined NYSE&G in 1977, I honestly did not realize that the games played by the industry and the NRC were part and parcel of the obfuscation we see continued by the industry today.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, UCS, said it best in its 1985 report Safety Second: A Critical Evaluation of the NRC’s First Decade,

“In the change from the AEC to the NRC, has the agency transformed from a promoter of nuclear power to a tough regulator of the industry? … Given the unique legacy of the AEC, the NRC should have taken extraordinary measures to separate itself from the taint of industry dominance.

Regrettably, it did not do so. In the NRC’s license proceedings the agency’s staff has consistently served as an advocate for the utility. As a result of inadequate NRC review, design and construction defects have often

surfaced so late in the construction process that huge cost overruns, delays or even cancellations have become inevitable.

The NRC’s investigatory practices — which have included sharing drafts with those being investigated, arbitrarily restricting the scope of investigations, and undermining probes by the Department of Justice — sadly reflect the

agency’s lack of independence from the industry it regulates.”

Federal statute enables most government agencies the ability to promulgate their own regulations, and the NRC is no different. While Congress gave the NRC the authority to write all of its own laws and regulations, it never envisioned the NRC would invite the Nuclear Industry in to help.

Consequently, the NRC’s methodology of promoting the industry rather than protecting “public health and safety” has become the NRC’s mantra with its own cleverly disguised Playbook. The NRC, which was created by Congress in order to assure distance from the nuclear industry it is chartered to regulate, instead considers the Nuclear Industry as a stakeholder in the regulatory process. For that matter, the entire regulatory process created by the NRC systematically disenfranchises the very public it was created to protect.

In Profiles in Power, authors Jerry Brown and Rinaldo Brutoco cite members of the President’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island, who

“condemn federal regulators (first in the Atomic Energy Commission and later in the NRC) for consistently permitting the industry to compromise safety in order to cut costs.”

To me, it is incredulous that anyone might believe that the NRC is at all capable of meeting its legal federal contract to protect “public health and safety” when both the industry is not only considered a stakeholder, but given more rights than the public who are the victims of illegal radiation releases, extensive cost overruns, astronomical utility rates, and thousands of tons of carcinogenic material left to rot in the environment. I ask you, when crimes are committed, are police, the offenders, and the victims all equal stakeholders?



Couched in challenging language that the layperson and general public cannot understand

and regulatory meetings and processes unavailable to the public, the NRC uses its terminology and regulations to shroud itself in secrecy.    This portion of my as yet unpublished book was written in 2008.

Now in addition to the no longer secret misnamed government-to-government meeting, the NRC has created an open workshop for interested parties to sit down and speak with members of the NRC staff about any concerns they may have.  You may read the invitation to the public April 12 meeting here http://greenmountaindaily.com/…

Tritium Workshop Meeting Notice.

Lastly, yesterday in an update to my post on this secret government-to-government meeting the gubernatorial candidates were challenged to staff this meeting and bring their notes forward as formal meeting notes.

This meeting must be recorded in accordance with Vermont’s Open Meeting laws. If these four Vermont government officials send their staff, then all records. . . are public documents. . .

I want to see all four elected candidates commit to upholding open government on one of the biggest liabilities the Douglas administration is hoisting on Vermont’s taxpayers and all of us rate payers.

In response, GMD received a press release and accompanying statement from Secretary of State Deb Markowitz’s campaign in which she said,

One way of demonstrating accountability is

conducting public business in public for everyone to see. Entergy has put the safety of Vermonters at risk as well as the jobs of more than 600 in

our community.  I have always taken the position that safety comes first and that is why I have strongly opposed the re-licensing of Vermont Yankee.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Entergy’s

plans for an out-of-state, closed-door meeting only reaffirms Vermonter’s worries about Entergy’s intentions. As Secretary of State, I

have fought to keep Vermont government open and accountable. This move continues to erode the little faith Vermonters have in an aging nuclear plant and the company that operates it until 2012.

Almost two months ago, I led with a vision for

green energy incubators in Windham county to create a “Green Zone” to jumpstart job growth, retrain workers and help the families affected by the plant’s closing. I still await emergency plans from the administration and the legislature to address the impact throughout the state.  I have laid out steps I think should be taken but these steps cannot wait until I become governor in January 2011.

Senator Doug Racine also wrote to GMD and said,

Maggie, thanks for the post and the information. My field director, Amy Shollenberger, will attend the meeting. We sent the RSVP today.

I’m going to cross-post on the other story about this issue, too.

 

Thank you Senator.  I will be curious to see if the NRC actually allows your field director Amy Shollenberger to attend.  

The invitation list I saw seemed to be exclusively select board members, mayors, and Uldis Vanigs from DPS.  The list I saw seemed to leave out all the legislators as well as the Congressional delegation unless an additional list has surfaced belatedly like the new public workshop for April 12.

The other story to which Senator Racine refers is my  original post on GMD about the NRC’s secret government-to government-meeting, which you may read here:  http://greenmountaindaily.com/…