Subject: GRACE Alert: Indian Point and Yucca Mountain Move Forward With Controversial Plans to Store Radioactive Waste
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 16:04:53 -0500
From: GRACE alerts@gracelinks.org
Indian Point and Yucca Mountain Move Forward With Controversial Plans to Store Radioactive Waste
In a Dec. 29 letter, Entergy notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it intends to move spent nuclear fuel from the Indian Point Unit 2 reactor into casks outside the plant beginning in July 2005. Spent fuel rods from Indian Point units 1 and 3 will follow in future years, company officials said.
What Entergy is trying to ignore, is the fact that a high-level storage site 30 miles north of New York City could become a terrorist target. The cask system, designed by Holtec International, has drawn criticism from a former utility auditor for possible safety flaws. Those casks are just like aluminum, just like a Pepsi [can]," Oscar Shirani, a former quality assurance auditor for Exelon who was fired from the company, said. "They could shatter."
Entergy's plan reflects a trend among utilities to build temporary storage sites for spent nuclear fuel in anticipation that the government's planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain will not open on schedule around 2010. According to NRC, 26 reactors around the country are storing nuclear waste in dry casks until Yucca Mountain is complete.
In a critical hearing before the US Court of Appeals held on January 14th, a three-judge panel heard oral arguments on the government's long-term plan to bury hazardous radioactive waste at the Yucca Mountain Repository in the Nevada desert. The hearings consolidated a half-dozen different lawsuits, whose major challenges to the government included it's ability to meet radiation release standards now in effect, the length of time required for suitably safeguarding that waste, and the EPA's discretion in setting public health standards.
Opponents argued that the government's plan is based on political expediency and not a prudent analysis of the long-term public health effects of siting the repository near aquifers and farmlands that would be irrevocably contaminated by potential leakage. They also objected to a regulatory compliance period set at 10,000 years, where studies have shown that radiation lasts hundreds of thousands of years.
To read more about the issues, see:
http://riverkeeper.org/campaign.php/indian_point/we_are_doing/824
For a statement by plaintiffs in the court case, see:
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/nuclear_waste/hi-level/yucca/articles.cfm?ID=10882 , and http://www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=1624
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For more action alerts, see:
http://www.gracepublicfund.org/
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