TMI Update: Jan 14, 2024

Patriot-News Op-Ed by David Hughes

December 29, 2009

Pennsylvania decision-makers’ poor understanding of the electricity industry led them into a big mistake 13 years ago: Giving up the state’s authority to control electricity-generation prices.

Consumers were promised a competitive retail electricity market that would restrain prices. The warnings that such a market would not develop went unheeded, but they turned out to be correct.

 To read the NRC memo related to the TMI operators license exam, open pdf: 

December 22, 2009

By Susan Smallheer

STAFF WRITER   Rutland Herald

BRATTLEBORO – The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a petition from three Northeast states that sought to have the issue of the safety of spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants considered in any relicensing review.

Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York had all petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to change its rules to include their safety concerns about the spent fuel contained in nuclear power plant's reactor buildings in any re-licensing review.

The NRC had rejected the states' petitions, and the matter landed in front of the 2nd Circuit, which is based in New York City.

EFMR :Radiation Monitoring Stations

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION SEEKS PARTICIPANTS FOR UPCOMING DISCUSSIONS

ON DRAFT SAFETY CULTURE POLICY

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will host several public workshops next year to gather input on the agency’s draft policy statement on “safety culture,” and the staff wants to hear from individuals interested in participating in the workshops’ roundtable discussions.

To read the NRC memo, open pdf: 

By BOB AUDETTE  Brattleboro Reformer

BRATTLEBORO -- If no federal repository for spent nuclear fuel is opened in the next 100 years, the nation’s taxpayers could be on the hook to pay for on-site storage, such as the dry casks at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon.

That cost could run anywhere between $10 billion and $26 billion.

The following is the full content of a report that an "event" at

the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant's Unit 1 reactor had been retracted.

In this case, the "event" refers to three safety relief valves not opening as

they were set to do. "Retraction" does not mean the situation described did not

occur, it means that it will no longer be categorized as an "event."

!!!!! THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RETRACTED. THIS EVENT HAS BEEN RETRACTED !!!!!

Power Reactor Event Number: 45464

Facility: THREE MILE ISLAND

Thomas M. Gerusky, age 74 of Allendale in Lower Allen Twp., died 

Sunday in Select Specialty Hospital, East Pennsboro Twp. 

Mr. Gerusky was born on June 18, 1935 in Fort Edward, near Lake 

George, New York, a son of the late Michael and Marie Varney Gerusky.

December 7, 2009

By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress passed a law instructing the federal government to help states build bigger stocks of a simple, cheap drug to protect people near nuclear power plants in the event of an accident or terrorist attack.

But the 2002 law left a legal loophole allowing the White House to forgo distribution if officials found that there was a better way to prevent cancer than administering the thyroid drug, potassium iodide. And after years of delays, the Bush administration dropped the plan in 2007, saying evacuations would be a better alternative.