nuclear-news

Seabrook nuclear relicensing could be stalled by Federal legislation

“Allowing the NRC to give a 60-year-long clean bill of health to reactors that are in their nuclear adolescence, especially one with documented safety issues such as Seabrook, is like allowing a doctor to assure a 20-year-old smoker they will never get lung cancer,”

Bill could delay Seabrook nuclear plant relicensing Seacoastonline By Shir Haberman October 08, 2012   SEABROOK — The approval of a 20-year extension of the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant’s operating license could be delayed until 2020 if a bill proposed by two Democratic federal legislators from Massachusetts is approved by Congress.

HR 6554 filed by Reps. Edward Markey and John Tierney would prohibit the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission from granting a license extension to any current nuclear plant licensee that applies for it more than 10 years prior to the expiration of its current license.
Seabrook Station has already petitioned the NRC for a 20-year extension of its operating license, which will not expire until 2030.

“Allowing the NRC to give a 60-year-long clean bill of health to reactors that are in their nuclear adolescence, especially one with documented safety issues such as Seabrook, is like allowing a doctor to assure a 20-year-old smoker they will never get lung cancer,”
Markey wrote in a joint press release issued with Tierney dated Sept.
26, explaining the reason for filing the bill. “This legislation will
help ensure that the effects of aging on America’s nuclear power
plants are more well-known before granting any license extensions, so
nearby residents can have some confidence that the reactors’ ‘golden
years’ won’t involve catastrophic aging-related safety failures.”

Doug Bogen, executive director of the Exeter-based Seacoast
Anti-Pollution League, a local nuclear watchdog group, said this kind
of legislation has been a long time coming…….
Earlier in September the NRC ordered at least a two-year delay in the
licensing of new nuclear power plants and the extension of the
operating licenses of existing plants, including Seabrook, to comply
with a court order directing it to consider future threats posed by
the retention of highly radioactive nuclear waste on plant sites. The
ruling negated the agency’s so-called “Waste Confidence Rule” that
said those potential waste threats would not be considered during
licensing or license-extension debates.

“A federal Appeals Court ruled that the NRC should have considered the
potential environmental effects in the event a permanent repository
for disposing of spent fuel is never built, and found other
deficiencies with the agency’s consideration of leaks and fires
involving spent fuel pools,” according to an NRC press release on the
two-year delay.
http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20121008-NEWS-121009769

October 9, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA