Nukewatch

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Dismantling San Onofre Reactors to Cost $4.4 Billion

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2014

SAN DIEGO, California — On August 1, Southern California Edison released its plan for dismantling the two reactors at its San Onofre nuclear power facility beginning in 2016. Even with the spent radioactive fuel slated to remain onsite indefinitely, the process is projected to take twenty years and cost $4.4 billion, making it the most expensive decommissioning in the industry’s 70-year history.

According to the Associated Press, as the plan came out Edison CEO Ted Craver reassured investors that the company already has enough money on hand from its customers to pay for the project. A recent settlement negotiated by consumer advocacy group TURN and the Public Utilities Commission’s Office of Ratepayer Advocates relieved Edison’s customers of $1.5 billion of the total $4.7 billion the utility wanted to collect from them.

The decommissioning plan calls for spent nuclear fuel to be transferred from cooling pools to dry storage in steel canisters as early as 2019. Lower-level radioactive waste would be shipped to disposal sites in Texas and Utah. The San Onofre reactors have stood idle since 2012, when a radiation leak led operators to discover extensive damage to newly installed, defective steam generators. Southern California Edison decided in 2013 to permanently shutter the facility.

— AP, Aug. 2; Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2014

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Action Alert: EPA’s Carbon Reduction  Proposal Promotes Nuclear

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2014

WASHINGTON, DC — The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s draft proposal for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, released in early June, treats nuclear reactors as “zero carbon” power sources and includes them in the baseline “clean energy” production statistics above which state reduction targets are set. Effectively, this would force states with aging reactors to keep them open or pay the extra penalty of making up that share of “zero-carbon” energy production through other sources — on top of meeting their regular target goals.

The proposal does not consider the toxic legacy of radioactive waste, high likelihood of further catastrophic accidents and security breaches, high levels of water use and waste, dirty process of uranium mining, or routine radiation releases that come with nuclear power. It also ignores research that has shown nuclear to be six times more carbon-emitting than wind power and at least twice as emitting as solar (both of those proportions go up as the efficiency of renewable technology increases). Hydropower, which is comparable to nuclear in many respects as a non-fossil-fuel power source, is not included in the proposal at all.

The nuclear power industry spent more than $650 million on lobbying, campaign contributions, and advertising from 2000-2010. Still, there is an opportunity for citizen voices to be heard before the final carbon rule goes into effect: the public comment period for the EPA proposal extends through October 16. A guide and link for submitting comments is available at www.nirs.org. — NIRS briefing, July 2014; Greenwire, June 2 & Aug. 8, 2014

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Nervous US Nuke Industry Pools Resources for Two “National Disaster Response Centers”

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2014

MEMPHIS, Tennessee — At the end of June, operators of the 100 US nuclear power reactors opened the second of two national “emergency response centers” in Memphis. The first, built outside of Phoenix, opened in May.

After an earthquake and tsunami caused a triple meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi reactor complex in 2011, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) pushed nuclear utilities to develop plans for dealing with similar loss-of-power events, including off-site storage of disaster response equipment. The two response centers are somehow supposed to help all 100 reactors be prepared.

The centers will cost $400 million over a 40-year period. Divided among 100 reactors, the cost is about $100,000 per year for the owners to pony up. The warehouses contain portable generators, water pumps, lighting and other equipment that is preloaded onto trailers, ready for transport. The industry claims these items can be delivered to any reactor in the US within 24 hours of an emergency.

“If Fukushima had such equipment, things might have gone differently,” said Allison Macfarlane, NRC Chair. One of the biggest problems at Fukushima was that the backup power generators and batteries for pumping water to cool the nuclear fuel were wrecked by the tsunami. However, emergency workers there did attempt to prevent the meltdowns by using fire trucks to spray water on the fuel and dumping water from a helicopter, and they had unlimited access to sea water. The Palo Verde nuclear facility, just southwest of the Phoenix response center located in the middle of a desert, has purchased extra on-site emergency equipment, including five new fire trucks.

— Arizona Republic, May 22; Local Memphis, June 27, 2014

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ALEC and Nuclear Industry Fighting Against Renewables in Illinois

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2014

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois — A May 29 voice vote of the Illinois House passed pro-nuclear resolution HR-1146, a bill that would provide massive subsidies to the state’s unprofitable nuclear power reactors and curb the growth of truly “clean,” renewable energy sources. Watchdog groups have reason to believe the bill, introduced by House Speaker Michael Madigan, was largely written by Illinois nuclear utility giant Exelon Corporation as part of a larger effort organized on the national level by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

“This Resolution is not just a pro-nuclear resolution. It is an overt effort to destroy renewable energy statewide, a way to keep dirty coal plants running, and a way to continue and make permanent the outdated system of ‘centralized baseload power,’” said David Kraft, Director of the Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS) in Chicago.

Exelon is now investing $12-15 million per year, along with other ALEC members, in a pro-nuclear industry front group called Nuclear Matters. ALEC’s July 2014 Energy Task Force Meeting, where the Environmental Protection Agency’s new carbon rules were a focus of discussion, included a presentation from Nuclear Matters. In the last two years, ALEC has focused on attacking renewable energy standards in at least sixteen states, but, despite its massive financial investments, these efforts it has been largely unsuccessful. It did succeed in freezing the Ohio renewable energy standard for two years earlier this year. The Progressive magazine has launched an “ALEC Exposed” campaign, with more information available at www.progressive.org. — NEIS Press Release, May 29; Energy and Policy Institute Briefing, July 2014

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Savannah River Site Becoming World’s Nuclear Dump

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2014

COLUMBIA, South Carolina — As the Department of Energy (DOE) comes closer to finalizing plans to accept highly radioactive used commercial reactor fuel from Germany at its Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, watchdog groups are becoming increasingly concerned that SRS is quietly becoming the world’s nuclear dumping ground — despite serious safety and contamination concerns.

In addition to the potential transport of German waste to the site, SRS is slated to receive or has already received waste from Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, and perhaps other countries yet to be identified, such as Japan. According to the group SRS Watch, SRS will soon import almost 7,000 gallons of liquid high-level waste from the Chalk River Laboratories in Canada, adding to an already volatile liquid waste tank system onsite. The Ottowa Citizen discovered secret shipments of foreign plutonium to the site in February and March of this year. Japan is planning to transfer highly enriched uranium and plutonium to the US, and with the closure of the WIPP cite in New Mexico and no plans for a high-level waste disposal facility, that waste is likely to be dumped at SRS as well.

SRS is located on an earthquake fault and a large aquifer, with sandy soil and high levels of rain. SRS Watch Director Tom Clements, who claims the waste is a DOE strategy to keep the SRS open, says, “The SRS already has more nuclear waste than it knows how to deal with.”

— Atlanta Progressive News, June 9, 2014

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