The proposed takeover of the Palisades Atomic Reactor at Covert in Van Buren County by Holtec International is under attack by a coalition of three individual environmental groups who have petitioned the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission intervening against that plan.
The groups known as Beyond Nuclear…Don’t Waste Michigan…and Michigan Safe Energy Future have jointly petition the NRC raising health, safety, environmental and financial concerns over the proposed takeover of the nuclear plant on the shores of Lake Michigan for decommissioning.
Meeting the agency’s truncated 20-day deadline, the environmental coalition’s legal counsel, Toledo, Ohio attorney Terry Lodge, has submitted a petition to intervene and request a hearing to the NRC, on behalf of members of the groups, some of which live less than a mile from the Palisades nuclear power plant.
The legal and technical challenges opposed to the current owner Entergy Nuclear’s license transfer to Holtec International for decommissioning purposes and high-level radioactive waste management include Holtec’s “disqualifying bad corporate character, and its unacceptable bids to drain the already woefully inadequate Nuclear Decommissioning Trust Fund for non-decommissioning expenses, such as irradiated nuclear fuel management and site restoration.”
The intervention also objects to Holtec’s “large underestimation of both decommissioning expenses, as well as irradiated nuclear fuel management expenses.” By way of example, the coalition’s expert witness, Robert Alvarez, an Institute for Policy Studies senior scholar, and a former senior advisor to the U.S. Energy Secretary, has shown that Holtec has given no consideration to high burn-up irradiated nuclear fuel’s higher thermal heat load and radioactivity levels, even though it comprises a large fraction of the fuel to be stored on-site, and likely for much longer than Holtec’s overly optimistic year 2066 terminus date.
Lastly, the coalition has argued for the NRC to undertake a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, to address:
- The site’s radioactive contamination of soil and groundwater
- Various “low” level radioactive waste streams, such as steam generators and highly radioactive Reactor Vessel Internals
- The need for repackaging irradiated nuclear fuel from non-transportable and even defective current containers into new replacement containers
- Increasing radiologic risks due to the current historic high, and worsening, Lake Michigan water levels
Holtec’s proposed takeover would also include Palisades’ sibling, the Lake Michigan shoreline Big Rock Point nuclear power plant site in Charlevoix as part of the package deal. Although the NRC in 2006 approved the decommissioned site’s release for unrestricted use, watchdogs remain very concerned about significant documented radioactive contamination abandoned there. In addition, eight casks of highly radioactive waste are still stored there, with nowhere else to go.
Michael J. Keegan, Co-Chairman of Don’t Waste Michigan in Monroe, says, “With no ability to unload the high-level radioactive waste from an already known defective VSC-24 cask, and potentially additional faulty casks of this and other models in the future, Entergy and Holtec have teed up a cataclysmic disaster on the shore of Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan is about to eat Palisades, and this unaddressed problem amounts to ‘Criminal Negligence.'”
Bette Pierman, President of Michigan Safe Energy Future in Benton Harbor, says, “We continue to call for a safe and complete decommissioning which requires the removal of all radioactive waste that will likely be stored onsite indefinitely,” and adds, “It must be secured in non-permeable hard casks because of the highly radioactive waste. We strongly question Holtec International’s decommissioning proposal with no guarantee of this to safeguard our health and that of our precious Lake Michigan. We also have serious concerns about the current Decommissioning Trust Funds–which were previously raided by Consumers Power and Entergy—to cover the complete costs of cleanup and restoration of the Palisades site. We do not want Holtec to leave Michigan ratepayers with a bill and a radioactive legacy.”
Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist with Beyond Nuclear, a national watchdog group based in Takoma Park, Maryland, says, “We object to NRC allowing Holtec to drain $166 million from the Palisades Nuclear Decommissioning Trust Fund for unrelated high-level radioactive waste management expenses, because that will severely shortchange the cleanup of documented extensive hazardous radioactive contamination of soil and groundwater,” and warns, “Abandoned radioactive contamination will flow downstream over time, into Lake Michigan and inland aquifers, both drinking water supplies. The radioactivity will not dilute, but rather bio-concentrate up the food chain, endangering current and future generations.”
Gail Snyder, Board President of Nuclear Energy Information Service, based in Chicago, says, “As people who share the same Lake Michigan drinking water supply with 16 million other people, we are deeply concerned with how the Palisades closure and decommissioning is handled,” and adds, “Having witnessed the numerous highly questionable dealings surrounding the decommissioning of the Zion nuclear reactors in Illinois from 2010 to the present, we are highly suspicious of Holtec’s motives and capability to conduct a credible and safe decommissioning, and skeptical that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will do more than a check-box oversight of the project. For those reasons constant and direct oversight from state and federal legislators in Michigan is imperative.”
Beyond Nuclear, Don’t Waste Michigan, and Nuclear Energy Information Service have also intervened against Holtec’s proposal to target majority minority (Hispanic, Indigenous) New Mexico with the country’s high-level radioactive waste dump, a so-called “consolidated interim storage facility” (CISF) for irradiated nuclear fuel that risks becoming de facto permanent surface storage. Terry Lodge serves as legal counsel for Don’t Waste Michigan and Nuclear Energy Information Service, and five additional grassroots environmental groups from across the U.S., in that proceeding as well. NRC has rejected all opponents’ appeals, and the groups have now appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the second highest court in the land.
Terry Lodge, the environmental coalition’s legal counsel, notes, “At the very top of the list of CISF non-starters is highly radioactive waste barge shipments, from Palisades to the Port of Muskegon, for offload onto a train for export out to the Southwest,” and adds, “Irradiated fuel sunk to the bottom of Lake Michigan could cause ruinous radioactive releases into the drinking water supply for tens of millions of people downstream in seven states, two provinces, and a large number of Indigenous Nations. Radioactive steam generator barge shipments across Lake Michigan, through Chicago’s waterways, and down the Mississippi River could likewise lead to drinking water catastrophes.”
