San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace accuses the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of playing a “shell game” with safety issues in its proposal to streamline license renewals for aging nuclear plants
On January 12, 2010, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace (SLOMFP) filed comments on a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) proposal to “simplify and streamline” utility applications for nuclear power plant license extensions. The NRC’s intent is to cut costs and time in the review process.
The NRC, in its Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) for License Renewal of Nuclear Plants proposes to lump together numerous issues as “generic”, meaning the standard would be the same for all nuclear plants. Some other issues would have to be examined at each specific site.
The NRC also identifies some problems that it will not address in considering applications for relicensing. In a shell game of regulation, the NRC excludes from its consideration a number of issues that have major impacts on public safety.
The NRC says it “is confident that there will eventually be a licensed high-level waste repository”. It continues to promote the myth that Yucca Mountain will be available to accept high-level waste from nuclear facilities. SLOMFP counters that, “Optimistic assumptions are not an acceptable basis for allowing the continued generation of high-level wastes that will need to be stored in isolation from the biosphere for many thousands of years. No known human civilization has remained intact for even a fraction of the length of time radioactive wastes will remain toxic. A more realistic assumption is that there is no way to assure adequate safeguarding of nuclear wastes.”
The effects of terrorist attacks have also been excluded, even though all nuclear facilities are identified as targets of terrorists by the NRC, Homeland Security and other federal agencies. The obvious fact that a successful terrorist attack has the potential for catastrophic consequences for the environment, land use and human health is ignored.
The NRC gives little attention to seismology in its proposal except to reassure the public that the two California plants “have been designed to safely withstand the seismic effects associated with earthquakes…” and it classifies the issue as generic. SLOMFP contends that the geology throughout the country is too diverse to legitimately review this issue generically. The recent discovery of the Shoreline Fault, less than one mile offshore of the Diablo Canyon plant, clearly demonstrates the NRC’s faulty reasoning.
The NRC does not propose to hold these reactors, built four or more decades ago, to the same safety standards as those that it proposes for new plants. SLOMFP asserts that “If the new reactor standards are deemed necessary to protect human health and the environment, then such standards should be applied to any reactor given permission to operate beyond its original license.”
BACKGROUND
Of the 104 nuclear plants currently operating in the U.S., 32 have completed the application process for license renewals and 12 more, including Diablo Canyon, have applications under review. Many plants, like Diablo Canyon, have more than one reactor. No application for license renewal has been turned down by the NRC.
The San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace 9-page comments filed Jan. 12, 2010, are included in this press release as an attachment, and will soon be posted on the Mothers for Peace website, www.mothersforpeace.org
Access to the draft EIS can be found on the NRC website at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1437/r1/v1/sr1437r1v1.pdf
“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” Gandhi
“No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make safe and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for historical or even geological ages. To do such a thing is a transgression against life itself, a transgression infinitely more serious than any crime perpetrated by man. The idea that a civilization could sustain itself on such a transgression is an ethical, spiritual, and metaphysical monstrosity. It means conducting the economical affairs of man as if people did not matter at all.” — E. F. Schumacher “Small is Beautiful”
Molly P Johnson
DonateNow Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility www.a4nr.org
H.O.M.E. (Healing Ourselves & Mother Earth) www.h-o-m-e.org
Grandmothers for Peace www.grandmothersforepeace.org
