Where to begin with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission?

Other than to describe it as a can of worms, there is no way to do it justice.

So here, if you missed the individual items, is a brief rundown of some recent developments.

Closest to home, it appears that Vermont’s Public Service Board is prepared to challenge the NRC’s rather hasty relicensing approval for Vermont Yankee, on the grounds that the plant was not in possession of a valid Water Quality Certificate at the time of approval.

“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission violated Clean Water Act (Section) 401 when it granted (an Entergy Corp. subsidiary) a new federal license to operate Vermont Yankee without first obtaining the requisite Vermont-issued ‘401 Certification’ from (the company),” say legal papers filed by the state at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington.

The primary counter argument by the NRC and Entergy is pretty incredible:

New Orleans-based Entergy Corp. and the NRC argue that the state and the NEC did not push hard enough during NRC hearings leading up the new license for the agency to force Vermont Yankee to get a new water quality permit. Entergy maintains that it got a water quality certificate in 1970 and that it remains in effect.

So I guess my driver’s license from 1972 ought to still be valid too?

…Especially so, since I haven’t been leaking tritium or elevating the temperature of the Connecticut River in the inervening years?

                                           

In other news, despite much urging not to do so, President Obama has nominated Kristine L. Svinicki for a new term on the NRC.  Ms. Svinicki, a Republican partisan, is a key figure in the power struggle currently underway within the NRC.

In December, she and other commission members told Congress that (Chairman) Jaczko had created a tense workplace and that women felt especially threatened.

Ms Scinicki is part of a power blok within the NRC, whose intimacy  with the nuclear industry has been an issue for some time now.  Originally a Bush appointee, she has actively advocated for the Yucca Mountain waste repository which Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada opposes.

As such, she has butted heads with Chairman Jaczko, a former Reid staffer; and among other things, urged an expedited relicensing of Vermont Yankee.

So it comes as no surprise that Ms. Scinicki’s re-appointment was opposed not only by Harry Reid, but also by Bernie Sanders, who explained his position thusly:

“The Commissioner has not supported full implementation of all post-Fukushima safety reforms recommended by an NRC task force, and has in fact voted to approve licenses for two new nuclear reactors without requiring them to implement these safety reforms.

                                        ………………………………………

Then, there is the Government Accountability Office study, commissioned by Democrat Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, which found that

“The N.R.C. appears to be inaccurately estimating the costs of decommissioning the nation’s nuclear power plants and inadequately ensuring that owners are financially planning for the eventual shutdown of these plants.”

Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates told the New York Times that costs for BWR reactors, like that at Vermont Yankee, may be especially underestimated:

Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer and frequent critic, evaluated the commission’s decommissioning estimate for Vermont Yankee, a nuclear plant on Vermont’s border with New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He found that the commission’s estimates were sometimes lower for boiling water reactors, a type that will have a larger volume of radioactive debris, than for pressurized water reactors, which keep the radioactive materials in a smaller area.

                                       ………………………………………….

…And finally, one last stupefying demonstration of how the NRC has been systemically compromised by industry interests.  Enformable is carrying an internal NRC letter, stating that the results of radiation measurements collected by the NRC are the property of the plants and the regulatory agency is not at liberty to share them with the states or counties in question!  Here is just a snippet:

Grim.