Calvert Cliffs nuclear power project facing 60-day deadline

Once promoted as the vanguard of a "nuclear renaissance," a proposed new reactor at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Southern Maryland now faces a major new roadblock, with federal regulators threatening to shelve the troubled $9.6 billion project unless the French-controlled developer comes up with a U.S. partner in the next two months.

The ruling Thursday by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board was not unexpected, as the board's parent Nuclear Regulatory Commission had warned Unistar Nuclear Energy more than a year ago that it could not get a license for the Maryland reactor without a U.S. partner. Federal law prohibits foreign ownership or control of a U.S. nuclear plant, and Unistar is owned by the French energy group EDF.

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New Hampshire: Seabrook Nuclear Power plant progresses Objections to license renewal rejected

By Shir Haberman

business@seacoastonline.com

March 13, 2012 2:00 AM

SEABROOK — The road to extending the operating license for the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant until 2050 just got a little easier.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced March 8 that it has tossed out three contentions to that extension filed by nuclear safety groups that had previously been accepted for adjudication by the commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.

"This rejection of our intervener status is a complete outrage," said Doug Bogen, executive director of the Exeter-based Seacoast Anti-Pollution League, one of the organizations that had filed a contention against the license extension that the NRC rejected. "The NRC's action is all the more heinous in that it comes just a few days before the anniversary of the Fukushima disaster — an event which should have shaken the foundations of nuclear regulation, but appears to have caused barely a tremor."

SAPL's contention, filed along with the Washington, D.C.-based organization Beyond Nuclear and the New Hampshire Sierra Club, was that the Environmental Report used to justify the license extension filed by NextEra Energy, the operators of the Seabrook plant, failed to evaluate the potential for renewable energy to offset the loss of energy production from the Seabrook nuclear power plant when its current license expires in 2030. The nuclear safety groups argued that new energy technologies in the works would make the power generated by Seabrook Station unnecessary.

The NRC overruled its licensing board's decision that this contention had merit. In doing so, the commission effectively removed these three organizations from the license renewal process.

"As we have discussed, in assessing energy-alternatives contentions, practicality requires us to consider chiefly, often exclusively, alternatives that can be shown to have viability today or in the near future," the NRC wrote in its March 8 order. "Here, Beyond Nuclear (SAPL and the Sierra Club have) not provided support for (the) claim that offshore wind is technically feasible and commercially viable — either today or in the near future — and, therefore, has not submitted an admissible contention."

The NRC decision angered SAPL President Herb Moyer, who claimed the ruling violated federal law.

"One moniker for the NRC is 'Nobody Really Cares;' another is 'No Real Consideration,'" Moyer said. "(The commission's) decision to discard SAPL's legal contention that a license extension requires consideration of future power alternatives is illogical, irrational and contrary to the law embodied in the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969."

NRC Public Affairs Officer Neil Sheehan said that while he would not call the commission's decision to override its own licensing board unusual, "in general, the commission tends to support decisions reached by ASLB unless there are compelling reasons to do otherwise, recognizing that the ASLB heard all of the testimony and carefully scrutinized all of the relevant information."

The decision to toss out the SAPL contention, along with two others filed jointly by the Maine-based Friends of the Coast and the New England Coalition in Massachusetts, leaves only two left for final judgment by the licensing board. Both were filed by the Coalition and Friends groups.

The first claims that the Severe Accident Mitigation Alternatives report submitted by NextEra as part of its license extension request minimized the potential amount of radiation that could be released by the Seabrook plant in a severe accident. While the commission was obviously displeased that the ASLB accepted this contention, adjudication of this issue was allowed to go forward.

"Although we consider, as we said previously, that support for this contention is weak, because the (licensing) board is the appropriate arbiter of such fact-specific questions of contention admissibility, we will not second-guess the board's evaluation of factual support for the contention, absent an error of law or abuse of discretion," the NRC wrote.

The last contention allowed had to do with the claim that NextEra used a faulty modeling process to determine how air currents along the coast would disperse any radioactivity released from the Seabrook plant in the event of a severe accident.

"Here, the board held that (the) Friends/NEC have raised plausible limitations of air dispersion modeling at the (Seabrook) site, and that the asserted limitations of the atmospheric dispersion model plausibly could affect the SAMA cost-benefit conclusions," the commission wrote in the March 8 order. "Given the substantial deference we typically accord licensing boards on contention admissibility, we conclude that the board did not abuse its discretion or commit legal error in finding adequate factual support for the contention."

No date has yet been set for a hearing on these two remaining contentions.

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Nuclear Regulatory Commission sea change?

Chairman Jaczko wants red tape removed for Fukushima contentions

PLYMOUTH —

While the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seems to be moving quickly now, dispensing with the objections and legal contentions standing in the way of relicensing the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, as those impediments are brushed aside something quite remarkable may be taking place.

Almost hidden in several recent decisions by the NRC – decisions which went against critics of relicensing – is the core of a sea change, a belief on the part of certain key individuals in this government bureaucracy that, at least in the case of recent concerns about the relevance of the Fukushima disaster to Pilgrim and other American nuclear power plants, business as usual is no longer acceptable.

That is not to say that there is even a hint that the NRC will not, perhaps within days, approve a 20-year license extension for Pilgrim. The signs all still point to that happening and happening imminently.

Just this week, the presidentially appointed commission that oversees the NRC rejected two more post-Fukushima contentions filed by the Pilgrim Watch organization regarding the license renewal application for Pilgrim.

That leaves one contention raised by the state Attorney General and two more filed by Pilgrim Watch, all three filed post-Fukushima.

Both of the contentions dismissed this week challenged the Severe Accident Mitigation Alternatives (SAMA) analysis performed by Entergy as part of its license renewal application.

One contention argued that, in light of new information about the possible re-criticality of nuclear fuel at Fukushima following the disaster, the old analysis was now deficient.

The other asked the NRC to review whether that same SAMA analysis effectively accounted for off-site releases of radioactivity, in light of apparent problems encountered with the vents that were supposed to release hydrogen and prevent explosions at Fukushima.

A majority of the commission upheld the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) panel that first reviewed, and rejected, these contentions.

But while brushing aside these two Fukushima-related contentions, the commissioners publicly declared their sensitivity to the underlying issues.

The fine print

The commission’s written decision directly referenced the NRC’s ongoing review of – and the concerns of citizens groups with – the Fukushima disaster.

“Although we have made, and continue to make, significant progress in identifying and implementing lessons learned and prioritizing regulatory actions,” the announcement of this latest ruling noted, “the NRC continues to analyze the Fukushima events, to engage stakeholders, and to develop further recommendations.”

The commissioners further assured concerned citizens that if they find changes are needed to maintain the safety of plants of a similar design to the GE boiling-water reactors in Japan, such as Pilgrim, they will order those changes made regardless of the status of the affected plants.

In short, even if the plant were relicensed tomorrow, changes in response to the Fukushima disaster could and would still be enacted.

“We have in place well-established regulatory processes by which to impose any new requirements or other enhancements that may be needed following completion of regulatory actions associated with the Fukushima events,” the decision announcement stated.

“All affected nuclear plants ultimately will be required to comply with NRC direction resulting from lessons learned from the Fukushima accident, regardless of the timing of issuance of the affected licenses.”

Additionally, the vote to reject the contentions was not unanimous.

Gregory Jaczko, the commission’s chairman, offered a strong dissenting opinion.

“Fundamentally, I believe that the reopening standard is not appropriate for Fukushima-related contentions,” Jaczko argued. “Therefore, I believe the admissibility of these contentions should have been considered solely under the criteria applicable to non-timely filings.

“As the majority observes,” the chairman added, “the higher threshold for contention admissibility imposed for reopening a record places a heavy burden on a litigant seeking the admission of new contentions.

“In my view, this more stringent contention admissibility standard is not appropriate for contentions arising from the unprecedented and catastrophic accident at Fukushima.”

Put simply, Jaczko seems to think that, overall, the events at Fukushima are unprecedented, and so deserve special treatment. He suggested these kinds of contentions should receive expedited consideration: Rejecting them based on admissibility standards is a mistake.

“Given the significance of that accident and the potential implications for the safety of our nuclear reactors,” Jaczko argued, “we should allow members of the public to obtain hearings on new contentions on emerging information if they satisfy our ordinary contention standards.

“Applying more stringent admissibility standards to Fukushima contentions because a board has taken the administrative action of closing the record on an unrelated hearing will lead to inconsistent outcomes and, more importantly, unfairly limit public participation in these important safety matters.”

Though this may be a remarkable change in the tone of the discussion, it is not unprecedented.

Over the past several years, NRC Administrative Judge Ann Marshall Young has dissented with several majority decisions on contentions offered by Pilgrim Watch and others, even prior to March 11, when word of the earthquake and tsunami first reached America.

Young dissented again, in part, earlier this year, when the two contentions that were just dismissed first came before the Atomic Licensing and Safety Board. She concurred with regard to the Re-criticality Contention but would have admitted the Direct Torus Vent Contention.

In addition to her rulings on the admissibility of these contentions, Young also opined that Pilgrim Watch’s contentions raised significant issues and, therefore, using an argument similar to Jaczko’s, warranted sua sponte (without being prompted) review.

Young further recommended that the commission “consider having the staff look more closely – take a ‘hard look’ – into the issues raised in these contentions, as well as any other issues arising out of the Fukushima Daiichi accident that relate particularly to Mark I BWR reactors (the GE design used by Pilgrim and dozens of other American plans), prior to any decision on the license renewal application.

“I believe this would serve the interests of both public safety and public trust in the process the NRC utilizes for attending to such safety and environmental issues, which I find is particularly warranted given the seriousness of the Fukushima accident and the effect it has had on public perceptions of the safety of nuclear power. Whatever the outcome of such an inquiry, in my view, taking such a ‘hard look’ would provide an important public service.”

License to license

A few dissenting opinions, however, do not offset the majority.

The two contentions were dismissed and the expectation, again, is that the remaining three contentions will suffer the same fate.

Pilgrim Watch founder Mary Lampert characterized the NRC’s decision on these last two contentions in terms of its ethics.

“Germany and some other countries responded to the ongoing tragedy in Fukushima by stopping operations until they were 100 percent certain they understood what the problems were and were certain they could go forward without risking the public’s safety,” Lampert said.

“In contrast, this decision (like the recent decision to grant a license to build two new reactors) shows that NRC commissioners have decided to go forward with licensing until they are certain that it is not alright to do so.”

Lampert said this reflects a clear bias on the part of the NRC “in favor of the nuclear industry – not to take the conservative route and slow down until 100 percent convinced it is safe to do otherwise.”

At least in the case of Jaczko and Young, though, the bias appears to be in a different direction.

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