On December 18, 1997, CAN and NIRS filed a petition for review of agency action with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The petition, filed on behalf CAN and NIRS members in Connecticut, challenges NRC’s handling of Connecticut Yankee decommissioning. CAN and NIRS allege that NRC is violating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and depriving citizens of their constitutional rights to be heard on matters that vitally effect them and their children.
CAN and NIRS contend that NRC is illegally permitting Connecticut Yankee’s owners to decide whether or not the decommissioning even requires a site-specific environmental assessment and/or impact study. Under the original rule, this decision was the responsibility of an impartial regulator not a profit-driven operator. CAN and NIRS contend that NRC crafted its new rule in an illegal attempt to dodge the First Circuit’s 1995 ruling in CAN v. NRC in which NRC actions were rejected as “arbitrary, capricious, and utterly irrational”. The First Circuit ruled that decommissioning is a major federal action requiring NEPA compliance. NRC skirted public oversight and accountability by reformulating its decommissioning rule. Its scheme is to present reactor dismantlement as a process so minimal that there is no longer any need for a distinction between reactor operation, closure, and dismantlement. This is deceptive; These regulatory categories are essential to provide effective safety and meaningful public oversight at each point in the reactor’s cycle.
NRC must be held accountable to their mandate to protect workers, public health and safety, and the environment. CT Yankee is the precedent for commercial decommissioning in the USA, it will set the standard for the industry. This standard undermines the democratic process guaranteed under the Atomic Energy Act, undermines EPA regulations governing the National Environmental Policy Act and creates defacto deregulation of decommissioning and rad waste disposal. Utility-driven revision of regulations has forced the continual relaxation of standards and undermined and degraded NRC’s accountability as the protectors of the public health and safety.
If the “new ” decommissioning rule goes unchallenged, there is no distinction between reactor operation and cessation. NRC oversight is curtailed since decommissioning is not classified as a major federal action. NEPA requirements no longer apply. There are no adjudicatory hearings offered to impacted communities. Reactors like CT Yankee and Maine Yankee submit generalized, brief decommissioning plans that provide no actual description of decommissioning activities. The choice of the decommissioning option is determined by the utility without input from the community.
Presently Connecticut Yankee decommissioning is temporarily suspended until the NRC is satisfied that the tradition of systemic radiological control failures at the reactor is corrected by its operators.
Should NRC permit decommissioning to begin, CAN and NIRS will request a temporary stay of any decommissioning activity from the Second Circuit to ensure adequate public participation that could create responsible regulatory oversight.
“This rule creates a melt-down in democracy in which regulator and operator conspire to exclude affected communities from questioning utilities’ choice of profit over health and safety of its workers and the public” said Deborah Katz, President of Citizens Awareness Network.
“An informed citizenry must participate in pollution prevention and reduction for democracy to survive and for the development of a just and equitable solution to the nuclear industry’s monstrous waste problem.”
“Building a garden shed in Haddam requires more oversight and opportunities for public participation than dismantling a nuclear reactor. The building of a shed requires a detailed hearing process while the stripping and transporting of rad waste from a contaminated reactor site is accomplished without any meaningful public participation” said Rosemary Bassilakis, Researcher for Citizens Awareness Network.
“NRC continues to conceal its real agenda: to bar affected communities from meaningful decision-making participation in decommissioning nuclear power stations. These decisions vitally effect the health and safety of the workers and the public now and in the future. Citizens must push NRC from the door as the agency blocks access to the democratic process.” said Paul Gunter, Director of the Reactor Watchdog Project for Nuclear Information and Resource Service.