County would back suit against NRC

[rusty charly]

With the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rejecting requests for a public hearing dedicated to security at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, Ocean County officials are ready to join if state officials take the NRC to court, Freeholder John P. Kelly said Wednesday. At a meeting of the freeholder board, Kelly said the county had received notification from the NRC that no special hearing would be held to listen to security concerns about the plant. Along with plant critics, county officials contend there are issues related to terrorism and security that deserve an airing of their own. But NRC officials maintain security matters have been adequately addressed as part of their review of Oyster Creek, Kelly said.

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070412/NEWS02/704120465/1070/

Plant operators are seeking a renewal of the reactor's license, a document that could allow the Lacey reactor to be the first U.S. commercial nuclear generator to exceed 40 years of operational life. It's possible the state Department of Environmental Protection could challenge the NRC's position in the Third U.S. District Court, Kelly said, and he's waiting to hear back from the state agency.

[NNadir]

1. Oyster Creek saves lives. It would be monumentally stupid to shut this plant.

It will be replaced by fossil fuels if shut.

[rusty charly]

2. The price of a melt-down or terror attack

The price of a melt-down or terror attack at an American nuke is beyond calculation. In most cases, reactors built in areas once far from population centers have now been surrounded by development, some of it bumping right up to the plant perimeters. Had the jets that hit the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 instead hit Indian Point Units Two and Three, 45 miles north, the human and financial costs would have been unimaginable. Imagine the entire metropolitan New York area being made permanently uninhabitable, and then calculate out what happens to the US economy.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7129

There remains no way to protect any of the roughly 450 commercial reactors on this planet from either terror attack or an error on the part of plant operators.

Those advocating more nukes ignore the myriad good reasons why no private insurance company has stepped forward to insure them against catastrophe. Those who say future accidents are impossible forget that exactly the same was said of TMI and Chernobyl.

The commercial fuel cycle DOES emit global warming in the uranium enrichment process. Uranium mining kills miners. Milling leaves billions of tons of tailings that emit immeasurable quantities of radioactive radon. Regular reactor operations spew direct heat in to the air and water. They also pump fallout into the increasingly populated surroundings, with impacts on the infant death rate that have already been measured and proven. And, of course, there is no solution for the management of high-level waste, a problem the industry promised would be solved a half-century ago.

Economically, early forays into a "new generation" of reactors have already been plagued by huge cost overruns and construction delays. At best they would take ten to fifteen years to build, by which time renewable sources and efficiency---which are already cheaper than new nukes---will have totally outstripped this failed technology. Small wonder Wall Street wants no part of this radioactive hype, which is essentially just another corporate campaign for taxpayer handouts.

This past Earth Day was an orgy of corporate greenwashing, aided by the always-compliant major media, tried to portray nukes as "green" energy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[rusty charly]

3. Hearing in September re: Oyster Creek

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a hearing in September on the controversial drywell shell at Oyster Creek Generating Station, officials said yesterday.

http://www.ocobserver.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070621/NEWS/706210331

Although the hearings, set for Sept. 24-25, are open to the public, the only testimony that will be heard is by regulators, plant officials and members of a six-group coalition that had asked for the additional public hearing. The group had cited safety concerns with the 38-year-old power plant's drywell shell, an important part of the plant's cooling system.

[rusty charly]

4. Nuclear Power No Panacea

The nuclear mishap caused by Monday’s earthquake in Japan has unleashed another wave of environmental concerns about the use of nuclear technology to meet the world’s energy needs. “Nuclear power is hardly the safe panacea its supporters claim it to be,” said Norman Dean of Friends of the Earth (FoE), a network of hundreds of environmental groups around the world.

Raising similar concerns, the environmental group Greenpeace International’s Jan Beranek described the Kashiwazaki nuclear site incident as another “reminder” that nuclear power “is not safe”. Both Dean and Beranek warned of “far more serious nuclear accidents” and “real risks” posed by earthquakes and industrial disasters, as well as possible terrorist attacks in the future.

Monday’s earthquake killed nine and wounded more than 1,000 people, in addition to causing a radioactive leak and fire at the world’s largest nuclear-power producing plant. Japan’s energy officials have acknowledged that the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant leaked hundreds of gallons of water that was contaminated with radioactive waste.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/18/2614/print/

[rusty charly]

5. Exelon Corp.

Apparently nervous that their case for license renewal is looking shaky, the owners of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey have turned to two well-connected hired guns to help bolster it. Two lobbyists with lengthy resumes in New Jersey government set up a conference call with the media last week to announce the formation of a coalition to advocate for nuclear energy and, more specifically, a 20-year license extension for the aging Oyster Creek plant. The lobbyists neglected to point out they are being paid by Exelon Corp., Oyster Creek's owner. There also was no mention of that fact on the coalition's Web site until a news story about their being front men for Exelon appeared in Friday's Asbury Park Press.

http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070823/OPINION/708230438/1029