NRC No-Brainer

If you thought extending Vermont Yankee’s operating license was a bad idea, wait until you hear what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has authorized the Tennessee Valley Authority to do!  

Nuclear energy expert Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates believes you have a right to know:

Yesterday the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and Fairewinds Associates issued a report to the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority regarding numerous concerns with the Bellefonte Unit 1 nuclear project. First designed with slide rules back in 1968, Bellefonte Unit 1 is America’s oldest nuclear power plant that has yet to generate any electricity. TVA began construction in 1974, mothballed the plant in 1988, and cannibalized the plant for scrap metal between 2006 and 2008. Alarmingly, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently allowed construction of Bellefonte Unit 1 by TVA to start again with its 1968 design and its 40-year old weakened foundation and containment. In the video and in its report, Fairewinds identifies seven areas of substantial risk for TVA if it continues to construct this aged facility

You can’t make this stuff up.  Here’s the video:

Fairewinds Report for Southern Alliance for Clean Energy on TVA Bellefonte Plant from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

About Sue Prent

Artist/Writer/Activist living in St. Albans, Vermont with my husband since 1983. I was born in Chicago; moved to Montreal in 1969; lived there and in Berlin, W. Germany until we finally settled in St. Albans.

4 thoughts on “NRC No-Brainer

  1. They have the idea that since this is a nuclear plant, nothing can ever go wrong.  The NRC has no reasonable argument to extend licenses beyond the designed lifespan of ancient and decrepit plants like VY, but they always rubber-stamp everything that crosses their desk.

    I tried to tell a fellow Vermonter that the NRC is NOT a real regulatory agency, but he said, if the NRC says it’s safe, then it is safe and no facts will change my mind.

  2. It’s probably time for this one again

    Nuclear Energy Advocates Insist U.S. Reactors Completely Safe Unless Something Bad Happens

    WASHINGTON-Responding to the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan, officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sought Thursday to reassure nervous Americans that U.S. reactors were 100 percent safe and posed absolutely no threat to the public health as long as no unforeseeable system failure or sudden accident were to occur.

    And this…

    “When you consider all of our backup cooling processes, containment vessels, and contingency plans, you realize that, barring the fact that all of those safety measures could be wiped away in an instant by a natural disaster or electrical error, our reactors are indestructible.” Jaczko added that U.S. nuclear power plants were also completely guarded against any and all terrorist attacks, except those no one could have predicted.

    http://www.theonion.com/articl

  3. “First designed with slide rules back in 1968, Bellefonte Unit 1 is America’s oldest nuclear power plant that has yet to generate any electricity.”

    The NRC has never met a nuclear plant it didn’t love, no matter how poorly planned. The plant at Shoreham, NY is a perfect example. Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was situated at the mouth of a small tidal creek on Long Island Sound, on top of an Artesian well which had to be capped before construction could “safely” proceed. It was plagued by years (1973-84) of delay and cost overruns, along with continual reports of substandard materials and construction. The plant was built without an evacuation plan for Long Island residents in the event of an accident. After Three Mile Island, the NRC required operators of nuclear plants to work out evacuation plans in cooperation with state and local governments. Local officials voiced opposition and refused to cooperate, noting that 3 1/2 million people could not be evacuated quickly or safely 30-120 miles west over the most congested expressways in the state to NYC bridges.

    The operator, Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) then developed an Emergency Evacuation Plan which depended solely on LILCO personnel for implementation, with no input or cooperation from local entities, in defiance of the NRC’s directives. Nevertheless, the NRC granted a full operating license claiming that, in the unlikely event of a “real” emergency, it could be reasonably expected that state and county personnel would step up and respond accordingly, taking over the roles LILCO had assigned to its own personnel. NY State refused to sign off on the plan. Protests, civic actions and civil disobedience intensified. In 1989, as part of a complicated deal with NY State, LILCO was allowed to run the plant at 5% power for about 48 hrs. and offload the costs of construction & decommissioning from shareholders to ratepayers ($6 billion.) LILCO was taken over by a public power authority and its CEO, Wm. Catacosinos, rewarded with a golden parachute of $43 million. The plant was fully decommissioned in 1994 without producing a kilowatt of commercial power.

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