Beyond Nuclear Bulletin
July 11, 2024
|
|
|
ZOMBIE REACTOR
Environmental scoping action alert
On Thursday, July 11 from 6-10pm Eastern, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), accompanied by the Department of Energy, will hold a public comment session regarding environmental scoping for the Palisades atomic reactor restart scheme. (The unprecedented restart is already being emulated at other closed reactors.) The location is Grand Upton Hall at Mendel Center, 1100 Yore Ave. in Benton Harbor, Michigan. In-person attendees will be given priority to deliver verbal comments. However, virtual/telephonic participation, from anywhere, is another option for providing verbal comments for the official record. See NRC’s June 27 press release, its public meeting announcement, and the Federal Register Notice. Beyond Nuclear has prepared sample talking points you can use to compose your own comments.
|
|
|
BIDEN SIGNS ADVANCE ACT
Launches next nuclear fiasco
Congress and the White House have launched their fool’s errand chasing more nuclear power mirages. US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm acknowledged it in her “victory lap” around the two Westinghouse AP1000 units that finally connected to the electric grid in Georgia. “‘It’s not a given that this buildout of nuclear is going to happen,’ she said at the American Nuclear Society Society’s annual conference. ‘So here’s the hard ask. Who here is going to announce plans to build the next AP1000?’”
Only 2 of 12 Westinghouse AP1000 units signing up for the “nuclear renaissance” in 2007 managed to finish. Thirty-two+ new reactor units never finished. See Power Magazine’s July 8, 2024 commentary, “Cost Makes Adding New Nuclear Power Plants Unthinkable.”
|
|
|
ASKING FOR MORE TROUBLE
Restarting Three Mile Island
Constellation Energy, subsumed by Exelon Generation and spun off in charge of its nuclear power operations, has jumped on the bandwagon for federal funds to look at “recommissioning” the decommissioning Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear power station in Middletown, PA. TMI, along with the radioactive wreck of Unit 2, was certified to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as permanently closed, defueled and slated for decontamination, dismantlement and radioactive site cleanup.There are 14 “permanently” closed US reactors awaiting decommissioning according to the NRC Information Digest’s Appendix C in “SAFSTOR” status ostensibly considered “restartable.” Some have been idled “cold and dark” for decades. The pro-nuclear Washington Post recently ran its slant on what is another dangerous and exorbitantly expensive boondoggle.
|
|
|
SCOTUS V. NUKES?!
Silver lining in recent rulings?!
But as Evergreen Collaborative has arguedin the context of climate, the opposite may well be true. Beyond Nuclear and our allies in the fight against the nuclear industry have often been ruled against, as judges have invoked Chevron to allow largely pro-nuclear agencies like NRC, DOE, EPA, etc. to aid and abet the industry.
But now, we can more readily challenge agency hubris in court. Similarly, SCOTUS's ruling in West Virginia versus EPA has boomeranged into a lower court victory against two radioactive waste dumps in the Permian.
|
|
|
|
|
