Entergy is also battling the state of Vermont who ruled last year to close their Vermont Yankee plant by 2012. Entergy, seeking to block the state decision, has filed a complaint against Vermont in US District Court, although the NRC approved the relicensing for the plant in March, 2011 for an additional 20 years. Vermont Yankee is not the only nuclear plant whose relicensing application has dragged on for years. The relicensing process for Entergy's Pilgrim Station reactor in Plymouth, Massachusetts, whose current license expires in June of 2012, has also gotten bogged down under a swelling list of contentions.
For utility companies, applying for a new license is an arduous process requiring thousands of documents for the NRC and specially formed review boards. The boards conduct public hearings -- a practice supposed to demonstrate transparency but which rarely amounts to more than a masked dog and pony show. The real, laborious reviews take place inside the NRC's administrative law process within its licensing body, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB ). But these are tightly controlled and severely restricted in scope to one item: the safe management of the reactor's aging components. The reviews typically and glaringly omit such considerations as terrorism, health effects -- think cancer clusters near nuke plants -- safety procedures, evacuations.
When Entergy applied to renew Indian Point's license, several organizations filed contentions raising these sorts of considerations shortly after in 2008, only to be systematically turned down as irrelevant by the ASLB. It rejected former Westchester County Executive Andy Spano who argued that the NRC should hold Indian Point to the same standards as they do for newly built reactors, especially in population density.
Other hot-button contentions argued by both New York State and Riverkeeper were likewise rejected: failure of the applicant to address the risk of a terrorist attack on Indian Point's now full-to-capacity spent fuel pools and underestimating the population density around the plant and its consequences for evacuation in case of an accident or attack.
Just a few weeks ago the NRC gave Riverkeeper a "thumbs down" on two additional contentions: argued first was that Indian Point emergency preparedness was inadequate; and second, that 1500 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel sitting in dry cask storage on a tarmac next to the plant, was unsafe. (Considerably more spent fuel fills the Indian Point spent fuel pools which contain roughly three times the radioactivity of Fukushima according to the recent Bob Alvarez study from IPS).
The NRC claims that contentions concerning spent fuel are not applicable to the relicensing process because the agency already addresses radioactive waste on a regular basis.
Also dismissed was the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater's complaint that the regulatory process ignored higher-than average cancer rates in communities around Indian Point. That concern was echoed by the citizen's group Connecticut Residents Opposed to Relicensing of Indian Point (CRORIP), which claimed the renewal application didn't look at negative health effects from cumulative radiation exposure from routine and accidental accidents. Meanwhile, independent studies and investigative reporting continues to find escalating rates of thyroid cancer in and around Indian Point.
In total, over 154 contentions were filed by 15 government entities and groups against the relicensing of Indian Point - the most of any license renewal in the history of the NRC. Now, well past four years of reviews, appeals, hearings and court appearances, the ASLB has rejected contentions from the Rockland County Conservation Association, Public Health and Sustainable Energy, the Sierra Club-Atlantic Chapter, WestCAN, then Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, and many others. The original 154 contentions has been whittled down to 15.
At present, notwithstanding dismissed contentions, the NRC has found Entergy's relicensing application for Indian Point, "acceptable." A Safety Evaluation Report will be issued by August 19, 2011, which is when "intervenors" with standing in the process can file new or amended contentions, which could be addressed in a hearing as early as January, 2012. All told the filings are likely to turn the Indian Point application into the most extensive in NRC history.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
