Thursday, May 21, 2009

State appeals NRC ruling

Attorney General Martha Coakley and her counterparts in New York and Connecticut are appealing a Nuclear Regulatory Commission decision on safety that could impact the relicensing of the Pilgrim Station nuclear power plant.

Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut officials have filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York challenging the NRC’s ruling that there was no “new and significant information” on the risks of severe accidents in the spent fuel pools at nuclear plants, including Pilgrim and Vermont Yankee, caused by terrorist attack, human error, equipment malfunction or natural disaster.

GateHouse News Service

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Yucca Mountain: Obama Budget Takes Another Whack at Storage Site

Mr. Obama aims to cut funding for the planned repository in Nevada to $197 million, a cut of about $90 million, Mr. Reid’s office announced Wednesday in a statement. The proposed cutback is a reaffirmation of Mr. Obama’s “strong commitment to the death of the failed Yucca Mountain idea,” Sen. Reid said. The repository has long been opposed by Nevada’s political establishment.

“The termination language in its plan could not be any clearer–Yucca is history,” Mr. Reid said.

The administration’s budget blueprint, released in February, called for essentially killing Yucca Mountain, by reducing funding only to the level needed to field questions from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is still considering an application for the project submitted by the Bush administration. Until now, it wasn’t clear exactly how much money the Obama administration would seek to support the application.

Wall Street Journal