Nuclear energy is not renewable energy, PSC staff says

Florida Power & Light's effort to persuade regulators that nuclear power is a renewable energy suffered a blow Thursday when the staff of Florida's Public Service Commission recommended against including nuclear in the state's portfolio of green energy. In a 75-page report the commission's staff did not wade into the debate over nuclear's impact on the environment but instead relied on the definition of "renewable energy" from Florida statutes. That definition includes hydrogen, biomass, solar, geothermal, wind, ocean, hydroelectric and waste heat as renewable energy sources.

Palm Beach Post

Power cuts feared in UK nuclear plants crisis

In theory, at least, Britain now has 10 operating nuclear power stations, stretching from Torness on the Firth of Forth to Dungeness on the south Kent coast. Each has two reactors, and ministers boast that they supply about one-fifth of the power that keeps the lights on.

The reality, as an Independent on Sunday investigation shows today, is very different. The majority of the power stations are in dire trouble, and their failure is leading to the most acute concern in years that the country may run short of electricity this winter.

The Independent

Request to suspend all licensing proceedings until NRC fixes ADAMS search

Dear Mr. Borchardt: Beginning in November 1999, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) transitioned from disseminating docketed information concerned operating power reactors to dozens of local public document rooms in communities across the United States to depositing that information in an online electronic library called the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS). As described on NRC webpage http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html:

The Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) is an information system that provides access to all image and text documents that the NRC has made public since November 1, 1999, as well as bibliographic records (some with abstracts and full text) that the NRC made public before November 1999. The NRC continues to add several hundred new documents daily. ADAMS permits full-text searching and enables users to view document images, download files, and print locally.

But this is a fallacy; specifically in the “ADAMS permits full-text searching” part. Earlier today, I used the Citrix-based access to ADAMS to conduct a full-text search for documents on the Vermont Yankee docket (50-271) dated between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2008. That search returned a single document. That seemed unusually low for such a long time period. I then performed a second search using all the same search parameters except moving “safety evaluation” from the Document Text Contains box to the Title Contains box. This second search returned 51 documents. Having more than a passing awareness of how the staff enters documents into ADAMS, I understand that the title field is typed in by the NRC staff rather than being taken verbatim from the document, so it’s conceivable that documents with “safety evaluation” in their title may not have “safety evaluation” in their text. So I spot-checked a few documents to see if this explained the disparate search results. Every document I spot-checked had “safety evaluation” in its text. I have attached screen captures of the two search results along with some of the spot-checked documents to save you replicating this exercise, though you are welcome to do so. ADAMS is the NRC’s official source for docketed material. I used ADAMS to look for specific docketed material related to Vermont Yankee (VY). Using the full-text search tool that NRC explicitly describes to the public, I find 1 document. Yet it appears that there may be 50 other documents on the VY docket that the full-text search fails to identify. The actual number of “hidden” documents may be far higher than 50 because there could very easily be documents with “safety evaluation” in their text but not in their titles. The NRC’s purported “full-text search” finds less than 2 percent of the relevant information. Thus, ADAMS is essentially NRC’s electronic hide & seek game. The NRC places docketed materials in ADAMS, which is allegedly then publicly available but in reality is equivalent to being withheld from the public because the tool for finding materials inside the electronic library is fundamentally flawed. I respectfully ask that you immediately suspend ALL LICENSING PROCEEDINGS – ALL OF THEM – until the NRC corrects its flawed search engine for docketed materials in ADAMS. The public cannot participate meaningfully in these proceedings maintains a large electronic library with the equivalent of a bibliographic card catalog of blank pages. We cannot find relevant materials in ADAMS because your search tool is broken. Licensing proceedings conducted with this massive impairment to information access are a sham and must cease until the NRC-imposed impairment is remedied. Sincerely, David Lochbaum Director, Nuclear Safety Project

Questions for TMI's renewal

TMI-Alert Inc. sharply disagrees with the results of a recent poll paid for and released by Exelon on the relicensing of Three Mile Island. At issue are the questions that were not asked. The poll also failed to note that a majority of the folks who actually testified before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were against extending the license of TMI-1.

When the community held a nonbinding referendum on May 18, 1982, more than 67 percent of the voters in Cumberland, Dauphin and Lebanon County opposed the restart of Three Mile Island. TMI and the NRC ignored the results.

How many people would support nuclear power if you asked the following fact-based questions:

The Patriot News

Utilities Seek $122 Billion in Nuclear Loan Support

Southern Co., PPL Corp. and Duke Energy Corp. are among 17 utilities seeking $122 billion in loan guarantees from a U.S. Energy Department program that makes available $18.5 billion to build nuclear plants. Power companies that want to build 21 reactors submitted applications for the guarantees, the department said in an e- mail today. Spokeswoman Bethany Shively said the department isn't naming the utilities. The industry has complained that the $18.5 billion isn't enough to jumpstart a so-called nuclear renaissance, saying that amount could help support three reactors at the most. The program, mandated under a 2005 law, has been mired in funding disputes and delays. It's intended to offer financing support for clean-energy projects that otherwise might not be built.

Bloomberg.com

Millstone Reaches Deal With Environmental Groups

The operator of the Millstone nuclear power plant in Waterford will speed up efforts to curb the plant's effect on Long Island Sound under an agreement reached Monday with two environmental groups. That's good news for winter flounder and other aquatic life: The plant pumps more than 2 billion gallons of water each day out of the Sound to cool its reactors, killing millions of young fish and other creatures before dumping the warmed water back into the Sound. Millstone's owner, Dominion Nuclear Connecticut, has been operating for years with an expired state permit to discharge its used water into the Sound. The process of updating that permit has been snagged by changing regulations and administrative proceedings.

Hartford Courant

Find Sites Undergoing Decommissioning

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has published a map and listing of sites that are undergoing decomissioning.