By Harvey Wasserman
The bitter battle over two stricken southern California reactors has taken a shocking seismic hit.
The
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ignored critical questions from two
powerful members of Congress just as the Government Accountability
Office has seriously questioned emergency planning at the San Onofre
nuclear plant.
At
a cost of some $770 million, Southern California Edison and its
partners installed faulty steam generators at San Onofre Units 2 and 3
that have failed and leaked.
Those reactors have been been shut since January, 2012 (similar defects doomed Unit 1 in 1992).
They've generated zero electricity, but SCE and its partners have billed ratepayers over a billion dollars for them.
SCE
wants San Onofre reopened by June 1. The idea is to experiment with
Unit 2 at 70% of full power for five months, despite widespread concerns
that the defective generators will fail again.
That
would require a license amendment, about which the NRC staff has asked
Edison 32 key preliminary questions. But there’s been no official,
adjudicated public hearing on Edison’s response.
On
April 9, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Representative Ed Markey
(D-MA) asked the NRC to keep Unit 2 shut until the safety issues can be
fully vetted
Boxer
chairs the powerful Senate Committee on the Environment and Public
Works, which oversees the NRC. Markey is ranking Democrat on the House
Energy and Commerce Committee, and is the current front-runner to fill
John Kerry’s vacated Senate seat.
Their
letter to NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane says San Onofre must not re-open
without a "comprehensive investigation" and "full opportunity for
public participation." Utility efforts to "shortcut the license
amendment process,” they say, “would put public safety at risk." ( http://www.nukefree.org/sen-
SCE's
backdoor dodge "was made despite evidence showing that there could be a
significant hazard from the operation of the deficient steam
generators." That, in turn, "would fall far short of the kind of
consideration the 8 million people who live within 50 miles of San
Onofre deserve."
Boxer
and Markey asked the NRC to respond by 4pm April 10. Instead, the
Commission staff publicly issued a “no significant hazard” ruling that
would speed the re-licensing process---a precise renunciation of the
Boxer/Markey concerns.
Markey, in turn, said the NRC "showed blatant disregard” for public safety.
Boxer
said the ruling was “dangerous and premature," especially since “the
damaged plant is located in an area at risk of earthquake and tsunami.”
She
added that "It makes absolutely no sense to even consider taking any
steps to reopen San Onofre until these investigations look into every
aspect of reopening the plant given the failure of tubes that carry
radioactive water.”
The
Commission has made some preliminary recommendations in response to
Fukushima, including a call for new filters, which the industry has
resisted. But it’s at least two years away from issuing new regulations
based on lessons learned. Former NRC Chair Greg Jaszco has criticized
the industry for failing to respond to Fukushima’s warnings. The
Commission, he says, is “just rolling the dice” on public safety.
Jaszco’s
concerns were mirrored in a report issued April 9 by the Government
Accountability Office warning that there were deep flaws in plans for
evacuating southern California should San Onofre actually blow.
Mirroring widespread anger over soaring electric rates, Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik
( http://articles.latimes.com/
The
escalated San Onofre uproar comes with the double-shorting of a
critical Fukushima cooling system prompted by a hungry (now fried)
rodent that ate through some cable insulation. The power outage
threatened a Unit Four spent fuel pool laden with hundreds of tons of
immeasurably dangerous rods.
The
system crashed again when the owners botched the installation of a
rodent protection system. They've further confirmed major radioactive
leakage from at least three of five tanks holding Fukushima's millions
of gallons of contaminated wastes.
Parallel leaks at the Hanford nuclear facility in Washington state now threaten the Columbia River.
A
major equipment crash at Missouri's Calloway was preceded this week by
an accident at Arkansas Nuclear One that killed at least one worker and
injured at least seven others.
Once
the atomic poster child, France is now exploring joining Germany in
phasing out its expensive, decaying nuclear fleet for a massive new
commitment to renewables.
Germany is turning coordinated large-scale natural systems into base load providers.
And the city of Los Angeles now offers green feed-in tariffs ( http://prn.fm/category/
Edison is fighting off installing wind or solar generators, hoping to keep the public paying for its failures at San Onofre.
But
for SCE and the NRC to flat-out ignore Congressionals as powerful as
Boxer and Markey may indicate how desperately they want San Onofre paid
for by the public.
SCE
warns of power shortages this summer, but San Onofre was off-line last
summer without major impact. SCE wants the public to continue to pay
for these nukes, faulty generators and all. But if they're down another
summer, the odds against them ever reopening will jump.
Two
other US reactors---Kewaunee in Wisconsin and Florida's Crystal
River---will soon shut forever. Public pressure on New York's Indian
Point, Oyster Creek in New Jersey, and Vermont Yankee could drive the
number of US reactors under 100 this year for the first time in decades.
Boxer (202-224-3553) and Markey (202-225-2836) are
now being asked to hold those adjudicated public hearings in southern
California, and to investigate the GAO'S findings on evacuation, before
any new license is granted at San Onofre.
Rising
anger over a dangerous restart and more billions flowing into utility
pockets guarantees that this fight will continue to escalate. Edison
and the NRC seem willing to ignore the public's demands and those of
Sen. Boxer and Rep. Markey. But they now face an ever-angrier public
upheaval.
The potential restart of San Onofre still hangs in the balance.
But the magnitude of the confrontation has taken a significant leap.
Stay tuned!….or, better still….get involved!
-----------------
Harvey Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH is at www.solartopia.org. He edits www.nukefree.org. A version of this was first published at http://www.progressive.org/
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