BELIEVE THE SCIENTISTS! 

RENEWABLE ENERGY IS CHEAPER...not an issue addressed in the discussion

RICK PERRY of DANCING CLOWN FAME, was appointed to the ENERGY COMMITTEE 

by the CLOWN who 'only appoints the best people' ...HUH? 

RICK PERRY was preceded by 2 NUCLEAR PHYSICISTS, one with a NOBEL PRIZE. 

Apparently RICK PERRY thought NUCLEAR PHYSICS was available on CLIFF NOTES. 

For whatever reason, the DANCING CLOWN is recently spewing his DISINFORMATION that you would be cautious to believe....

Rick Perry Is Up To His Neck In Ukraine Scandal

 

Scientists Say Senate Bill Will Endanger People 'Living Downwind' of Nuclear Plants

"This is not about making the reactor licensing process more efficient, but about weakening safety and security oversight across the board, a long-standing industry goal," says one nuclear safety expert.

As U.S. senators prepare to vote on a bipartisan bill proponent say will accelerate the development and commercialization of advanced nuclear reactor technologies, the Union of Concerned Scientists warned Monday that the legislation would increase the chances of a "catastrophic" meltdown by weakening the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—an agency already ridden by conflicts of interest.

Upper chamber lawmakers are expected to vote this week on the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act, introduced last year by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and passed by the House of Representatives in a 365-36 vote on February 28.

Proponents of the legislation argue it will facilitate U.S. nuclear leadership, develop and deploy new reactor technology, preserve existing nuclear energy, and more.

"A compromised NRC could lead to a catastrophic reactor meltdown impacting an entire region for a generation."

However, critics including the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) argue that the bill threatens the independence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), some of whose officials have long been criticized for their dangerously close ties to the industry they regulate. Additionally, NRC advisers have been accused of undisclosed conflicts of interest.

"It's extremely disappointing that, without any meaningful debate, Congress is about to erase 50 years of independent nuclear safety oversight by changing the NRC's mission to not only protect public health and safety but also to protect the financial health of the industry and its investors," UCS director of nuclear power safety Edwin Lyman said in a statement Monday.

"Just as lax regulation by the [Federal Aviation Administration]—an agency already burdened by conflicts of interests—can lead to a catastrophic failure of an aircraft, a compromised NRC could lead to a catastrophic reactor meltdown impacting an entire region for a generation," he continued.

"Make no mistake: This is not about making the reactor licensing process more efficient, but about weakening safety and security oversight across the board, a long-standing industry goal," Lyman contended. "The change to the NRC's mission effectively directs the agency to enforce only the bare minimum level of regulation at every facility it oversees across the United States."

"Passage of this legislation will only increase the danger to people already living downwind of nuclear facilities from a severe accident or terrorist attack, and it will make it even more difficult for communities to prevent risky, experimental reactors from being sited in their midst," he added.

In a February opinion piece published by The Hill, Lyman asserted that the ADVANCE Act would "put the proverbial fox in charge of the henhouse" by eroding the independence of an agency that critics say is already too cozy with the nuclear industry.

"Congress needs to strengthen, rather than weaken, the NRC's science-based safety focus," Lyman stressed.

COMMON DREAMS

 

 

RSN: Harvey Wasserman | "President" Newsom Goes Anti-Solar and Pro-Nuke With a Ticking Clock

 IT'S HERE:

RSN: Harvey Wasserman | "President" Newsom Goes Anti-Solar and Pro-Nuke With a Ticking Clock

 

Special town election set for Tuesday in Eastham

By Denice Coffey

Posted Oct 4, 2020

EASTHAM — Voters will head to the polls on Tuesday for a special town election to decide three ballot questions.

Question 1: Shall the Town of Eastham be allowed to assess an additional $400,000 in real estate and personal property taxes via a Proposition 2 1/2 override in order to provide for permanent funding of the Town’s capital plan?

There is no recurring funding available for the capital plan. Future year revenues from this override will go towards funding the Town capital plan to minimize future borrowing costs and limit the need to continue to ask for one-time capital exclusions.

The $400,000 would be used to purchase new police radio and dispatch equipment. The purchases are necessary because of the state’s conversion to a new 911 system format this year.

It’s been 22 years since the equipment was last upgraded, and the police and fire departments currently do not have compatible systems.

The cost for the first year in additional taxes would be $62.86 for a median home valued at $449,000.

Question 2: Shall the town of Eastham be allowed to assess an additional $490,500 in real estate and personal property taxes via a Proposition 2 1/2 override in order to fund the Family Support Package?

Funding for the package, if approved, would provide funding for education, housing and human services needs in town.

The package has been described as a critical investment in attracting younger individuals and families to Eastham. The package will fund preschool for 3- and 4-year-old residents, provide school lunch and nutrition assistance to all resident children, fund free summer lunch and elementary after school programs and provide additional funding to the Affordable Housing Trust.

The cost for the first year in additional taxes would be $71.84 for a median home valued at $449,000.

Question 3: Shall the people of the town of Eastham direct the local government to request that Gov. Charlie Baker and the state legislature employ all means available to ensure that: (1) spent nuclear fuel is secured in better quality dry casks and hardened, on-site storage; and (2) spent fuel pool and casks are protected with heightened security at the decommissioned Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant?

The nonbinding petition article, which passed by majority vote at town meeting on Sept. 26, cited a host of reasons for the request. The article noted that the casks hold half the radioactive cesium released at Chernobyl; that visitors to the plant can get within line-of-sight of the dry casks; and that Pilgrim owner Holtec was approved for reduced offsite emergency planning, reduced off-site liability insurance and reduced cybersecurity by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Polls will be open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday.

Spent-fuel transfer moves forward despite coronavirus concerns

Spent-fuel transfer moves forward despite coronavirus concerns

By Christine Legere

Posted Apr 2, 2020 

PLYMOUTH — Despite concern over the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus, Holtec is forging ahead with plans to transfer radioactive spent fuel from a large pool above the reactor at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station to steel-lined dry casks.

Workers from other parts of the state as well as from around the country arrived in Plymouth earlier this week.

Some plant employees and area residents say fuel transfer should be delayed until the threat of the virus passes.

Pilgrim permanently shut down in May and was subsequently sold by Entergy Corporation to Holtec International for decommissioning.

The company’s timetable calls for moving 3,000 spent-fuel assemblies now in the pool to dry casks by the end of 2021.

Seventeen previously loaded casks sit on a cement pad outside the reactor building. The transfer this spring will result in 748 assemblies being moved from the pool into 11 more casks. Work is scheduled for April and May.

Thirty new workers arrived at the site and began a two-week training period Monday.

According to a Pilgrim employee who wished to remain anonymous, he and fellow plant workers are extremely concerned about the possibility of contracting the coronavirus from those newly arrived at the Plymouth site.

Holtec spokesman Patrick O’Brien sent an email regarding the measures being taken: “We understand and appreciate the concerns raised by our employees, brought (to) us by local elected officials, and have worked to clarify a number of different rumors and help everyone understand the decisions being made, and the rules they fall under.”

O’Brien said not all the new workers are from out of state. The group includes 16 from Massachusetts; four from Vermont, Rhode Island and New Hampshire; three from Florida; two from Arkansas; and one each from North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Michigan and the state of Washington.

“We did identify one worker from Buffalo, that had previously used a Massachusetts home address, and three individuals (two Massachusetts residents and a North Carolina resident) who had worked a refuel outage in upstate New York within the last 14 days,” O’Brien wrote. “These people were sent home and requested to self-quarantine for two weeks prior to beginning the in-processing to the site.”

O’Brien said the workers will not be allowed on the site until their 14-day quarantine has ended.

Holtec has taken “extra precautions to ensure they are not a risk to our on-site staff, as well as our staff not being a risk to them,” O’Brien said. Workers are required to fill out questionnaires to assess risk and are evaluated by on-site medical staff, he said.

The Pilgrim employee argued he and fellow workers believe the company “is not doing enough.” Nine out-of-state workers were present at Monday’s kickoff training session, he said. “One was from Washington, drove across the country and stayed in New York before coming to Pilgrim,” the employee said.

O’Brien pointed out that Gov. Charlie Baker’s exemption for essential workers “covers both the work and those traveling for essential work.”

“In addition, the governor’s guideline for self-quarantine specifically states that ‘designated essential workers are exempt from this requirement.’”

“We are not taking the concerns of the staff or the community lightly,” O’Brien said. Transfer of spent fuel is essential, he said. Regarding the influx of workers, O’Brien said: “The reality is, if they were not essential, we would not be bringing them to the site.”

Diane Turco, president of Cape Downwinders, was critical of Holtec’s decision to move forward.

“It is extremely irresponsible to do the dangerous work of transferring high-level waste from the pool to dry casks if the workers are at risk to become ill,” Turco said. “At this time, a prudent action would be for Holtec to postpone spent fuel transfer until the threat of contamination and illness has passed. Moving the fuel now is not an urgent action, but we know from past experience that money moves the decisions at Pilgrim.”

Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in an email: “Pilgrim has a plan and procedures for pandemic response and has reported to us that they are implementing them.”

The federal agency also has an on-site inspector at Pilgrim, Sheehan said.

Mary Lampert, director of Pilgrim Watch and a resident of Duxbury, sent a letter to state officials expressing her concern over bringing in outside workers during a pandemic. Lampert said the plan “greatly increases the risk not only to Pilgrim’s current workers but also to their families and the broader Plymouth community. To negatively impact the workers on-site and more broadly the area, all it would take is for one of these contractors to bring the virus with them.”

NRC experts fail to ease concerns over spent fuel

NRC experts fail to ease concerns over spent fuel



By Christine Legere

Posted Feb 25, 2020



Advisory panel, public question safety of storage at Pilgrim site.

PLYMOUTH — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent five experts to Plymouth on Monday to offer assurances that the spent fuel from Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s 46 years of operation would be stored there safely and securely.

Their efforts were unsuccessful, based on questions and comments that followed their presentation to the public and the advisory panel for the plant’s decommissioning.

The federal regulators talked about the composition and durability of the heavy dry casks being used to store the radioactive fuel waste, which must bear a certificate of compliance from the NRC.

Casks are made of steel canisters encased in a little more than 2 feet of concrete. Each is filled with 68 spent fuel assemblies and placed on a cement pad outside the plant. Pilgrim’s spent fuel pad, off Rocky Hill Road, will have 61 canisters once all the radioactive fuel is removed from a pool where much of it is now cooling.

Currently there is no national repository for storing the fuel, so it will remain in Plymouth until interim storage sites or a permanent site open.

In a PowerPoint presentation, the regulators laid out how casks are periodically inspected, with lids removed and samples taken to determine damage or radiation leakage. A device called an inspection crawler, equipped with cameras, travels along the exterior of the metal canister, where it can pick up every irregularity, they said, right down to a wrinkle in the paint.

Jack Priest, the state Department of Public Health’s representative on the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, asked whether every cask was checked or just a sampling and was told a small number are sampled.

Panelists and the public were surprised that the cask certificates of compliance could be renewed and remain valid for up to 80 years.

Duxbury resident James Lampert asked where the oldest casks filled with spent fuel are in the U.S. and was told casks at Surry Power Station in Virginia date back to 1986. “The NRC’s database is 34 years old and, on the basis of that, they’re saying, ‘Let’s go 80,’” Lampert said.

Kevin O’Reilly, vice chairman of the advisory panel, asked whether there was a “prescribed fix for a defective cask.”

John McKirgan, branch chief for Nuclear Safety and Security, said that situation has not yet arisen in the U.S. If there is a problem, the NRC does not tell the plant owner how to fix it, but it does require the plant owner “to bring the cask back into compliance,” he said.

Security was a big concern among panel members and the public. Federal regulators said the casks are “hardened” targets, meaning they are difficult to penetrate.

“It’s not a site you would easily breach or attack,” one NRC member said.

NRC representatives said guards around the fuel storage pad would be equipped with the latest weapons.

Sean Mullin, chairman of the citizens advisory panel, remained unconvinced. “I have a great deal of concern about security,” he said. “No amount of automatic weapons or fences with razor wire is going to work.”

Fellow committee member Daniel Wolf questioned the reason for all the armed guards “if the fuel is so securely stored.”

Darrell Dunn, NRC’s senior materials engineer, said the armed guards were to discourage would-be attackers.

To a second question from Wolf, a former state senator, the NRC conceded there were no limitations on airspace over the site.

A longtime plant watchdog argued that the possibility of a terrorist attack was not being adequately addressed.

“The U.S. government has warned the threat of terrorism is real,” said Mary Lampert, president of Pilgrim Watch. “Military weapons available today can penetrate the canisters and the concrete, and they can be shot from a mile and a half away.”

Lampert said Holtec would win some goodwill from the public by pledging to protect the fuel casks with a gravel and earthen berm, “which is literally dirt cheap,” and to maintain cybersecurity at the site even though the reactor is no longer operating.

Diane Turco, president of the anti-nuclear group Cape Downwinders, was also critical of the NRC’s presentation “that all was going well in the nuclear waste world.”

“It was more than disturbing to hear the NRC staff sugarcoat their presentation about nuclear waste storage at Pilgrim,” Turco said after the meeting. “They reinforced the NRC’s inability to honestly address real safety issues.”

A written comment from Pilgrim Watch said: “Although the NRC came to Plymouth to assure us that NRC’s regulations and oversight guarantee spent fuel stored in dry casks here is perfectly safe today and will remain so into the distant future, they failed.”

Push for better storage of spent Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station fuel

Push for better storage of spent Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station fuel



By Christine Legere

Posted Feb 23, 2020


Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station was permanently shut down in May, but more than 4,000 radioactive spent fuel assemblies will continue to be stored at the Plymouth site for the foreseeable future.

Citizen activists in Barnstable County communities will ask voters at spring town meetings, or via local election ballots, to support an advisory question that would direct Gov. Charlie Baker and state legislators to require that the radioactive waste is stored in “better quality” dry casks than those planned for use, and that the casks are protected by earthen berms or within enclosures with heightened security.

Diane Turco, a Harwich resident and president of Cape Downwinders, said radioactive spent fuel is a national problem, not just a local issue.

The Cape Downwinders wrote the advisory question.

“Fifty percent of Americans live within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant,” Turco said. “Safety is a right. Our petition is to raise consciousness: educate the public about ongoing issues at Pilgrim.”

The selectmen in Orleans and Brewster voted to put the advisory question on their respective spring election ballots, Turco said. In Bourne, the question will go on the town meeting warrant.

Other Barnstable County communities will be presented with the advisory in the coming weeks.

Entergy Corp., Pilgrim’s longtime owner, sold the plant to Holtec International, a New Jersey-based company that will handle decommissioning, spent fuel management and site cleanup.

Turco and other Pilgrim critics have complained that Holtec has a conflict of interest since the company uses dry casks that it manufactures. The Holtec Hi-Storm 100s the company uses are concrete-encased stainless steel canisters that are a little over a half-inch thick.

“That’s just three-eighths of an inch thicker than a Yeti cup,” Turco said.

There is no way to monitor the steel canisters once they are sealed, critics say, and there is no aging management plan.

Concern also has been expressed over Holtec’s plan to store spent fuel on a concrete pad just a short distance from a well-traveled road. A vanity fence, rather than earth berms or enclosures, will block the view from the street.

“In this day and age, Pilgrim is an open door for any bad actors who want to cause serious damage to our country,” Turco said. “Nuclear waste is a predeployed nuclear weapon. Its safe storage is being ignored.”

Patrick O’Brien, a Holtec spokesman, defended the company’s commitment to safety.

“Holtec is a worldwide leader in used nuclear fuel storage,” O’Brien said via email. “Holtec’s dry cask storage technology is mature in use, safely storing nuclear fuel at over 25% of the world’s 440 nuclear plants. With 1,375 Holtec dry cask systems safely storing used fuel around the world as of February 21, 2020, including 17 at Pilgrim which are visually inspected daily during operator rounds and monthly with a camera, Holtec, and arguably the nuclear industry, is confident in the robust design of Holtec dry storage systems.”

O’Brien said the fuel will be protected by “a highly trained security force and a fortified security perimeter” for as long as it remains onsite.

State Attorney General Maura Healey filed a motion to intervene in the license transfer several months ago, but the motion remains under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Frustrated by the lack of action, Healey sued the NRC last fall in U.S. District Court for approving the transfer of Pilgrim’s license from Entergy Corp. to Holtec International without first listening to what state officials and the public had to say about it. The case is pending.

Healey contends that Holtec is inexperienced in decommissioning and will likely run out of money before the job is done. Holtec will use the plant’s decommissioning trust fund, which contains $1.1 billion in ratepayer money.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, which is made up of local officials, representatives from state agencies and members of the public, has been frustrated by Holtec’s lack of response during monthly meetings regarding decommissioning and spent fuel.

“Holtec’s continuing refusal to answer the advisory panel and the public’s questions about the safety and expected longevity of the company’s dry cask storage technology is not only disturbing, it’s outrageous,” Sean Mullin, chairman of the advisory panel, wrote in an email. “The citizens of the Commonwealth have a right to know how, for example, Holtec can accurately monitor the sealed casks for problems and, if detected, how these can be repaired.”

The NRC director of the Division of Nuclear Materials Safety, a senior health physicist, senior materials engineer and chief of the NRC’s Storage and Transportation Licensing Branch will attend an advisory panel meeting set for 6:30 p.m. Monday in Plymouth Town Hall to discuss the region’s concerns.