Beyond Nuclear Bulletin
November 21, 2024
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POWER OP-ED
Nuclear relapse recalls boondoggles
Beyond Nuclear’s radioactive waste specialist, Kevin Kamps, has published an opinion-editorial in POWER. It focuses on Holtec’s zombie reactor restart scheme at Palisades, and so-called “Small Modular Reactor” new build proposals there, and at Big Rock Point, both on Michigan’s Lake Michigan shore. This Great Lakes State nuclear "poster child" is a leading edge microcosm of the nuclear power establishment’s money grabs, extreme risk taking, and propaganda push across the country, and planet-wide. The George W. Bush administration attempted a quarter-century ago to pave the way for gigantic new reactors in the U.S. But of three-dozen proposed, only two achieved operational status, seven years behind schedule, and more than double the initial price tag.
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ANTI-NUKE NEWS
Showing up in MSM, trade press, more
Activists, some of whom have dedicated most of their lives to the cause, sometimes break through the Main Stream Media, and even into nuclear power industry trade press publications (see POWER op-ed entry). Eric Epstein, Three Mile Island Alertchair, was quoted on November 17 in the Financial Times regarding zombie nukes like TMI-1 electrifying AI data centers: “We haven’t even cleaned up Three Mile Island unit two, the site of the accident is still highly radioactive...and now we’re going to generate more nuclear waste. It’s disappointing and it’s manifestly unfair.” In the Chicago Tribune on November 16, Nuclear Energy Information Servicedirector, Dave Kraft, was quoted: “We really need to question AI itself. Is all that energy intensity worth it?”
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EX-WESTINGHOUSE VP JAILED
South Carolina customers to pay
On November 20, 2024, ex-Westinghouse Electric Corporation Vice President and head of the company’s AP1000 advanced reactor global marketing, Jeffrey Benjamin was sentenced in the District of South Carolina Federal Court to one year and a day in prison and a $100,000 fine for his role to defraud the South Carolina Public Utility Commission and state electric ratepayers of billions of dollars following the SCANA utility's 2017 abandonment and $9 billion sunk cost in the failed construction of V.C. Summer nuclear plant.
SCANA CEO Kevin Marsh and Chief Operating Officer Stephen Byrne were also convicted of fraud and sentenced to prison.
Another Westinghouse official, Carl Churchman, pled guilty to lying to the FBI and sentenced to six months home detention.
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PALISADES ZOMBIE?!
NRC, FEMA revive emergency plans
Concerned local residents and environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear, spoke out against Holtec's unprecedented, unneeded, insanely expensive for the public, and extremely high-risk restart scheme for the closed for good Palisades atomic reactor on southwest Michigan's Great Lakes shore. This was the third major hybrid public meeting in just the past four months. This time, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Federal Emergency Management Agency, focused on re-establishing Palisades' emergency preparedness plans, which NRC had allowed previous owner Entergy, new owner Holtec, and state, county, and local governments to end, given its supposed permanent closure. Citing highly radioactive waste still stored on-site, Kevin Kamps stated “Emergency preparedness should never have been terminated in the first place."
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