Sign on to oppose new reactor at North Anna
Dear Friend:
Would you please sign on to a letter opposing the first proposed nuclear reactors in America in over 25 years? The letter below will be submitted at a Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearing this week to protest Dominion's plan to build two new nuclear reactors at its North Anna site in Virginia.
* Please email annerabe@msn.com to sign on in solidarity with the local groups fighting these reactors and send a national message to the NRC (please do not reply to nirsnet@nirs.org). To sign on, send your Name, Group, City and State by 10 am, Thursday, February 17th to annerabe@msn.com CHEJ's BE SAFE campaign is coordinating this solidarity protest letter with Public Citizen, NIRS and other groups.
Constructing new reactors would be bad for the environment and public health, bad for the safety and security of our country, and bad for ratepayers as well as taxpayers. The letter urges the NRC to deny the application for an Early Site Permit and for Dominion to instead focus on finding alternative methods of addressing expected increases in energy demands over the coming years. Thanks. Anne Rabe, BE SAFE, CHEJ
Coalition Letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission:
We, the undersigned organizations and businesses, OPPOSE any plans by Dominion to build any new nuclear reactors at its North Anna nuclear power station in Virginia. The site is unsuitable, and many important factors are not being considered in the decision of whether to approve Dominion's application for an Early Site Permit (ESP) at the site. Constructing new reactors would be bad for the environment, bad for the safety and security of our country, bad for principles of open and accountable government, and bad for ratepayers as well as taxpayers. For example:
- The Early Site Permit is part of a new "streamlined" licensing process meant to reassure investors that past regulatory delays will not occur again. However, this will prevent citizens from raising crucial safety problems that have been at the root of past delays. The process has gone forward rapidly with little effort on behalf of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) or Dominion to involve members of the public, either locally or nationally, despite its profound implications.
- Safer, cheaper alternatives to new nuclear generating capacity are not being explored as part of the ESP process. The ESP application also doesn't consider what the effect might be on the cost of power in Virginia or nationally, or whether there is a need for new generating capacity. Virginia currently has a surplus of electrical generating capacity, so excess power will likely be sold outside the state rather than being used in-state to lower prices. Local residents will be forced to live with the risks of the nuclear plant without getting the benefits.
- Nearly 3½ years after September 11th, 2001, legislation to improve security at nuclear plants has not been enacted, and security improvements by the nuclear industry have been shown to have significant gaps and flaws. Security guards are often ill-trained and ill-equipped. Mock assaults designed to test guards and keep them on their toes are often done in an unrealistic manner, with weeks of advanced warning and limited attack scenarios. Further, the company testing security also guards nearly half the plants in the country, creating a conflict of interest that prevents meaningful security analysis. Eight state attorneys general submitted comments to the NRC in January 2005 calling for vastly improved security standards.
- A major nuclear accident could leave an area the size of Pennsylvania uninhabitable for decades. The area around the Chernobyl nuclear plant, site of a major accident in 1986, is still closed to public access and radiation levels are still high. Cleanup costs for a major nuclear accident are estimated to be around $500 billion, not including broader economic shockwaves. The nuclear industry's liability for such an accident is capped at around $10 billion, leaving taxpayers with an estimated $490 billion bill, ratepayers with a bankrupt utility, and surviving residents without a home.
- Emergency plans for dealing with an accident or terrorist attack are inadequate, and rely on uninformed teachers, bus drivers, doctors, and other civilians to facilitate an evacuation, without taking into account the possibility of role abandonment. Studies of the Three Mile Island accident, which took place in 1979 in Pennsylvania, found that doctors and other key workers abandoned their posts up to 25 miles from the site to tend to their families or save themselves. In the case of a more severe accident, heroic actions would be required to successfully carry out an evacuation.
- There is at this time NO solution to the problem of nuclear waste, and constructing new reactors will only worsen that problem. The proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada continues to face strong opposition and many scientific questions about the suitability of the site. The State of Nevada and local and national environmental groups were successful in a Federal District Court setting aside of a 10,000 year radiation dose standard, deemed unsafe for future generations and there are still lawsuits currently pending. These court cases have sent the U.S. Department of Energy back to the drawing board. Meanwhile, all of the highly-radioactive irradiated fuel from the plants will continue to be stored on-site and needs to be protected and monitored. In addition, there is no place to send the so-called "low-level" radioactive waste from routine operation and dismantlement and decommissioning of this proposed new nuclear reactor in Virginia.
- The history of nuclear power demonstrates that constructing nuclear reactors is expensive, with final costs often running billions of dollars over budget — costs that are often passed on to ratepayers. The first 75 reactors constructed in the U.S. had a combined cost overrun of over $100 billion. The average reactor ran 400% over budget and was over 4 years late in start up. The last reactor in the U.S. to be completed, the Watts Bar plant in Tennessee, was finally opened in 1996, 23 years after it was first proposed. It cost $8 billion. Nuclear power continues to be uneconomical. The cost for the ESP process, as well as the later permitting stages, is being split between the industry and the U.S. Department of Energy. The federal energy bill would provide each of the first six plants built with a $1 billion subsidy, costing taxpayers as much as $6 billion. After a half-century and $74 billion in subsidies, nuclear power should be forced to survive or fail on its own.
- Nuclear power, due to the large generating capacity of one reactor, is an inherently centralized form of electricity production. As a consequence, we have to generate more power overall because there has to be so much extra capacity to continue meeting demand when just one reactor goes down. Also, taking that much power off the grid at once, as can happen in the case of an emergency or during events like the August 2003 blackout, is very destabilizing and can make the situation worse. Third, it takes a huge amount of money to build a nuclear plant, meaning that it's difficult if not impossible for smaller energy companies to enter that market, meaning there's less competition. Plus, the large utilities that can afford to build or own nuclear plants are growing ever larger, as evidenced by Dominion's quest to purchase the Kewaunee reactor and Exelon's proposed merger with PSEG. Centralized control means loss of local control. We should be moving toward decentralized, rather than centralized, energy systems.
- Renewable energy sources such as wind power create more jobs per investment dollar than does nuclear power. Those jobs also require less specialized education, increasing the chances that local workers will be able to secure the jobs rather than requiring outside experts.
In light of these concerns, we urge the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to DENY Dominion's application for an Early Site Permit, and for Dominion to instead focus on finding alternative methods of addressing expected increases in energy demands over the coming years.
Sincerely,
Your Name, Group, City, State
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