Beyond Nuclear’s Radioactive Waste Watchdog, Kevin Kamps, has issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) years-late and meaningless Confirmatory Order, dated May 16, 2016, regarding Entergy employees’ “willful violation” of safety regulations at the Palisades atomic reactor in Covert, Michigan on the Lake Michigan shore
[…]
“NRC’s Office of Investigations’ (OI) conclusion – although it took three and a half years too long to arrive at – that Entergy employees’ violations of safety regulations at Palisades, vis-à-vis the Safety Injection Refueling Water Tank, were willful, is most significant. The cover-up of the crisis in the control room – the leakage of radioactive and acidic water from the ceiling – took place at the very same time as a very serious close call with catastrophe at Palisades.NRC has, however, yet again betrayed its mission, to protect public health, safety, and the environment, by disregarding its own OI’s conclusions. Having ‘agreed to disagree on the issue of willfulness,’ NRC has let Entergy off the hook. These willful violations were only brought to light in the first place thanks to courageous Palisades whistleblowers, who turned to U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) for help. U.S. Representative Fred Upton (R-MI), whose job as U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman is to oversee NRC, is entirely derelict in his duty at Palisades, putting his own constituents at increasing risk of a radioactive catastrophe. Not only Entergy, but the rest of the nuclear power industry, can thus learn the dangerous lesson that even willful violations of safety regulations, as at Palisades, will be tolerated by NRC, with no meaningful enforcement actions taken.
Despite gouging ratepayers via an exorbitantly expensive Power Purchase Agreement, with the blessing of the Michigan Public Service Commission; and despite cancelling long overdue, astronomically expensive, major safety repairs, with the complicity of NRC; Entergy is nonetheless losing money at Palisades.
[…]
Read more.
