Sep 29, 2024: The case against restarting Three Mile Island’s Unit-1

From Wicked Local:

Here’s the good news. The nuclear plant’s equipment did what it was supposed to do and there was no release of radiation or damage to the containment vessel.

“This event had no impact on the health and/or safety of the public,” according to the Licensee Event Report (LER) Entergy filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The report also states, however, that back on May 10, inside the control room at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant – just hours before Entergy officials were scheduled to reassure the community that the plant was safe and that events at the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors in Japan had no special relevance to Plymouth – more than a half dozen highly trained engineers significantly messed up a routine restart of the reactor.

The plant was restarting the reactor after it had been offline for the better part of a month for its bi-annual refueling operation, a process Pilgrim has undertaken perhaps 20 times since the plant first began generating electricity in the early 1970s.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
CONTACT: Giselle Barry 202-225-2836, Eben Burnham-Snyder 202-225-6065
 
Markey: NRC Stands For “No Recommendations Considered”

Washington, D.C. (July 28) - Today, Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee and a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, issued the following statement in response to news that a majority of Commissioners at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has voted to reject Chairman Greg Jaczko’s proposal to act within 90 days on the recommendations of the NRC's Near Term Task Force reviewing Commission processes and regulations in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns.  Instead, Commissioners William Magwood, William Ostendorff, and Kristine Svinicki have voted to direct the NRC staff to endlessly study the NRC staff’s own report before they will consider the recommendations made by the very same NRC staff.

“Commissioners Ostendorff, Magwood and Svinicki have made it all too clear that they believe that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stands for “No Recommendations Considered,” said Rep. Markey.  “They have done this country a tremendous disservice in their collective votes to ensure that the NRC will not lead efforts to ensure the safety of the nuclear industry sector in this country, but will instead actively aid and abet the nuclear industry’s dilatory efforts to ignore, perhaps indefinitely, the recommendations of the Commission’s expert and dedicated staff.”

Last week, Rep. Markey released a letter calling on Commissioners Svinicki and Magwood to reverse their earlier votes to stall action on the Fukushima Task Force recommendations. Today, Commissioner Ostendorff’s vote was released, and with a 3-vote majority, it is now clear that the NRC will not act quickly to even vote on, let alone adopt, the safety upgrades recommended by some of the Commission’s most senior technical staff.

Commissioner Svinicki’s vote can be found at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/cvr/2011/2011-0093vtr-kls.pdf

Commissioner Magwood’s vote can be found at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/cvr/2011/2011-0093vtr-wdm.pdf

Commissioner Ostendorff’s vote can be found at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/cvr/2011/2011-0093vtr-wco.pdf
 

From PressTV:

The nuclear theory 'radiation hormesis' - the hypothesis that low doses of ionizing radiation are beneficial - is "an incredible lie."

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
July 22, 2011 ----------------------------- Contacts: Raymond Shadis, NEC Tech Advisor

BRAIDWOOD STATION, UNITS 1 AND 2; BYRON STATION, UNIT NOS. 1 AND 2; CLINTON POWER STATION, UNIT NO.1; DRESDEN NUCLEAR POWER STATION, UNITS 2 AND 3; LASALLE COUNTY STATION, UNITS 1 AND 2; LIMERICK GENERATING STATION, UNITS 1 AND 2; OYSTER CREEK NUCLEAR GENERATING STATION; PEACH BOTTOM ATOMIC POWER STATION, UNITS 2 AND 3; QUAD CITIES NUCLEAR POWER STATION, UNITS 1 AND 2; AND THREE MILE ISLAND NUCLEAR STATION, UNIT 1 ­ ISSUANCE OF AMENDMENTS REGARDING THE EXELON CYBER SECURITY PLAN (TAC NOS. ME4298, ME4299, ME4300, ME4301, ME4302, ME4303, ME4304, ME4305, ME4306, ME4307, ME4308, ME4309, ME4310, ME4311, ME4312, ME4313, AND ME4314)

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From the Wall Street Journal:

Imagine a football field packed 20 feet high with highly radioactive nuclear waste. That's about the volume of the 65,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel stranded at dozens of nuclear sites across the U.S.

It isn't just a potential public health hazard, as Japan's recent nuclear disaster showed, but a growing burden on the federal government's groaning finances.

A decades-old promise to dispose of the waste has become another unfunded liability, starting with a $25 billion ratepayer fund gone astray and $16 billion or more in estimated legal judgments to compensate utilities for their storage expenses. The costs of the ultimate disposal project also are sure to rise, with no plan in sight to replace the now-canceled plan to entomb the waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

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Three Mile Island Nuclear Station, Unit 1 - Proposed Alternative Regarding Control Rod Drive Housing Examinations

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Lethal Levels of Radiation at Fukushima: What Are the Implications? from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

Three Mile Island

July 20 – The NRC granted requests from TMI operator Exelon for relief and allowed it to use alternative procedures to certain requirements for in-service examination of components and steam pressure tests conducted during 10-year intervals. The requests were part of the fourth 10-year inspection that began on April 20, 2011 and ends no later than April 19, 2022.