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Beyond Nuclear Bulletin
October 5, 2023
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ZOMBIE NUKE?!
Holtec launches Palisades restart
On October 3, Holtec met with Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff for the fourth time in six months (view recording), regarding the unprecedented, controversial, expensive, and risky restart of its closed Palisades atomic reactor on Lake Michigan's shore in Covert, Michigan (pictured). Representatives from an environmental coalition that included Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste Michigan, MSEF, NEIS, and NIRS -- bore witness and spoke truth to power. It was revealed Holtec submitted the first of many License Amendment Requests to come with NRC last week, likely starting the clock on opponents' legal intervention deadline in a unique, labyrinthine process. Holtec has requested $3.3 billion from federal and state taxpayers: each of only 280 restored jobs would cost nearly $12 million.
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MEET THE WINNERS!
Nuclear-Free Future Awards event
In 2022, three extraordinary activists were honored with a Nuclear-Free Future Award. However, at the end of 2022, the Awards transited out of their former home at the Nuclear Free Future Foundation and there was no official ceremony. Until now!
Beyond Nuclear invites you to meet the 2022 winners at a special online awards ceremony on Friday, October 13 at 1pm U.S. ET. Please register at the link below to hear from uranium mining activist, Anthony Lyamunda, Resistance (Tanzania); Nuclear Hotseat podcaster, Libbe HaLevy, Education (USA); and nuclear policy researcher, Malte Göttsche, Solution (Germany) as they are interviewed about their work. A special announcement about the 2023 Awards event and winners will be made during the event.
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HOLTEC CISF
Second federal appeal filed
On October 2, Fasken Land and Minerals and Permian Basin Land and Royalty Owners filed their Initial Brief with the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans, opposing Holtec International's high-level radioactive waste consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on May 9. Holtec's CISF is targeted at southeastern New Mexico. On September 1, Fasken/PBLRO also filed their Initial Brief opposing Holtec in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, as did an environmental coalition including Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste Michigan et al. (six grassroots groups across the U.S.), and Sierra Club. On September 8 the State of New Mexico, and the City of Fort Worth, Texas filed Friend of the Court briefs opposing Holtec as well.
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BRITTLE DIABLO
NRC Commissioners punt to staff
San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace and Friends of the Earth -- long-time watch-dogs on the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on central California's Pacific coast (pictured) -- responded to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Commissioners' ruling on the environmental coalition's demand Unit 1 be immediately shut down. The groups are urging the reactor pressure vessel's (RPV) neutron radiation embrittlement level be tested. Pressurized thermal shock can fracture an RPV through-wall, causing core meltdown, and large-scale release of radioactivity. Diablo's Unit 1 is the third most brittle in the U.S., after only Palisades (see related entry) and Point Beach Unit 2 in Wisconsin, wedging Lake Michigan. The commissioners punted the issue back to their staff, which has neglected the risks for many decades.
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