Group items tagged

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will solicit public comments at two meetings on Wednesday, Jan. 28, regarding its preliminary conclusion that there are no environmental impacts that would preclude a 20-year extension of the operating license for the Three Mile Island 1 nuclear power plant. A draft environmental impact statement on the proposed license renewal contains the information. The report, which was issued in December, will be discussed first at a meeting to be held at 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 28 at the Sheraton Harrisburg Hershey Hotel, 4650 Lindle Road, Harrisburg, Pa. A second session will get under way at 7 p.m. on the same day at the same location. The two meetings will begin with identical overviews, including a discussion of the contents of the report, then be opened for public comment.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it has approved transferring the operating license for Three Mile Island Unit 1 from AmerGen Energy Company, LLC, to Exelon Generation Company, LLC. AmerGen had been a partnership between Exelon and British Energy, the NRC said. Exelon said in 2003 it was buying out British Energy's share and would become the sole owner of AmerGen, the NRC said.

AmerGen Energy has asked federal regulators for permission to transfer the operating licenses for Three Mile Island and two other nuclear plants to its parent company, Exelon Corp. If approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Exelon would hold the licenses for 10 plants and AmerGen would be dissolved as a subsidiary, said Ralph DeSantis, a spokesman for AmerGen.

Before a nuclear plant is allowed to run for an additional 20 years, federal regulators should make sure local emergency plans have kept up with the communities' needs. That's the basis of an appeal Eric Epstein, a nuclear watchdog and activist from Harrisburg, has filed with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

Petition for Rulemaking Filed by Scott Portzline, Three Mile Island Alert; Consider Petition in the Rulemaking Process AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Resolution and closure of petition docket. SUMMARY: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is considering the issues raised in a petition for rulemaking submitted by Scott Portzline, on behalf of the Three Mile Island Alert, in the ongoing ``Power Reactor Security Requirements'' rulemaking. The petitioner requested that the NRC regulations governing physical protection of plants and materials be amended to require NRC licensees to post at least one armed guard at each entrance to the ``owner controlled areas'' (OCAs) surrounding all U.S. nuclear power plants. The petitioner stated that this should be accomplished by adding armed site protection officers (SPOs) to the security forces--not by simply moving SPOs from their protected area (PA) posts to the OCA entrances. The petitioner believes that its proposed amendment would provide an additional layer of security that would complement existing measures against radiological sabotage and would be consistent with the long- standing principle of defense-in-depth.

Nuclear power has a major advantage over fossil fuel power sources when it comes to global warming. Generating power from nuclear fuel does not produce any carbon dioxide. Shouldn't we be retiring our coal-fired power plants and replacing them with nuclear plants?

he upcoming anniversaries of the two worst nuclear accidents in history present an opportune time to examine the state of nuclear safety, writes Jason Vaughn for Diplomatic Courier. On 28 March 1979, the worst ever accident at an American nuclear power station took place at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. This coming 28 March will be the 30th anniversary of that event, when a partial meltdown of a reactor there resulted in a "very small off-site release of radioactivity," according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Further, according to the USNRC, there were no casualties, either injurious or fatal, from that event. As life on earth is exposed to a relative amount of radiation throughout time regardless, reports generally show that exposure of radiation to humans never rose above minor "acceptable" levels.

Fresh from its recent move of a giant transformer to the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant across Harford County last month, the State Highway Administration plans to take on another oversize move next week. On Tuesday, the first of two million-pound steam generators will be taken off a barge at Port Deposit in Cecil County to begin an almost three-week journey to the Three Mile Island Nuclear Facility outside Harrisburg. The next day, a second 510-ton generator is expected to arrive. For both humongous cargoes, the first legs of their journey will take them over the roads of Cecil County to the Pennsylvania state line. The equipment will first be transported along Route 222 to the former Bainbridge Naval Training Facility. From that staging area, they will be moved starting Sept. 13 along Route 276, through the roundabout at Route 273, then up U.S. 1 to Pennsylvania.

The company orchestrating one of the largest moving projects in Lancaster County history wants to talk to the public. Representatives from the France-based AREVA Inc. are scheduling meetings for the week of June 8 at the Conoy Township building, Columbia High School and Solanco High School to present information and answer questions about the company's plans to move two 510-ton steam generators through Lancaster County. The journey will begin in Port Deposit, Md., and end when the generators are delivered to the nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island in Dauphin County. The 70-mile move is expected to take about 20 days as 26-axle truck-and-trailer rigs hauling the generators creep along at about 3 mph. Overhead utility wires will have to be moved, temporary bridge bypasses will have to be built and traffic will have to be stopped. AREVA officials recognize the impact of the move on Lancaster County's roads and communities will be massive and so they want to "come talk about what impacts there might be and how we can minimize those impacts," said Denise Woernle, AREVA's manager of corporate communications.

It could cost nearly $1 billion to shut down Three Mile Island's Unit 1 reactor if the plant's owner does not get its operating license renewed, according to a report prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Though the report acknowledges Exelon Generation will likely receive a 20-year extension, the report detailing the shutdown cost is required every time a nuclear plant comes within five years of the end of its license. The plant's current license expires in 2014. The report gives several scenarios for decommissioning the plant. The most likely is a system called SAFSTOR, which basically means mothballing the unit and monitoring it for up to 60 years, according to NRC spokesman Neal Sheehan. The size of the industrial site, coupled with the need to safeguard radioactive materials, leads to the high decommissioning costs, he said.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission completed the environmental part of the license renewal proceeding for Exelon Corp's (EXC.N) 786-megawatt Unit 1 at the Three Mile Island nuclear power station in Pennsylvania, the NRC said in a release Friday. The NRC concluded there were no environmental impacts that would preclude the reactor's license renewal for an additional 20 years of operation. The current license for Three Mile Island 1 expires April 19, 2014. A new license would extend the reactor's operating life until 2034.

Visitors at Three Mile Island are asked not to photograph guard towers, vehicle barriers and other security measures. Yet these items are easily seen on the Internet through such sites as Microsoft's maps.live.com, now bing.com/maps. Scott Portzline, a consultant for the watchdog group Three Mile Island Alert, thinks this is a security issue. He has been monitoring sites like Google Earth, which bring satellite images to home computers, for several years. But he noticed that recently the level of detail has increased. The amount of detail on Microsoft's site "could show terrorists the quickest and best route to buildings," Portzline said.

If you want to snap a photo of two of the largest objects ever to move across the Lancaster County landscape later this summer, don't worry, they will be creeping by at a tortoise-like 2 or 3 miles per hour. Two steam generators, each weighing about the same as two locomotives, will be pulled by the same kind of self-propelled transport that moves the space shuttle to the blastoff pad. As they navigate the length of the county in August or September en route to the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, there will be a whole lot of commotion in front of the oversized loads.