Baker urges nuke plant owners to correct federal concerns

[unhappycamper]

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/article/20150903/NEWS/150908376/0/breaking_ajax

Baker urges nuke plant owners to correct federal concerns
By The Associated Press
Posted Sep. 3, 2015 at 1:05 PM

BOSTON — Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker is urging the owners of the Pilgrim nuclear plant to take "corrective actions" in response to concerns raised by federal regulators.

In a letter Thursday to New Orleans-based Entergy Nuclear Operations, Baker called on the company to analyze the root causes of previous shutdowns at the Plymouth plant and make all necessary repairs.

Activists opposed to Pilgrim, meanwhile, delivered a letter to Baker urging him to call on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to immediately close and decommission the plant.

The letters came one day after the NRC said it was ramping up inspections at Pilgrim, which shut down automatically during a January blizzard when an electric connection to the grid was interrupted.

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The Gov is "Urging" the operator? Why doesn't the NRC tell them to fix the valves?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Regulatory_Commission

Criticism

Byrne and Hoffman wrote in 1996, that since the 1980s the NRC has generally favored the interests of nuclear industry, and been unduly responsive to industry concerns, while failing to pursue tough regulation. The NRC has often sought to hamper or deny public access to the regulatory process, and created new barriers to public participation.[39]

Barack Obama, when running for president in 2007, said that the five-member NRC had become "captive of the industries that it regulates"[40]

Numerous different observers have criticized the NRC as an example of regulatory capture[40][41] The NRC has been accused of having conflicting roles as regulator and "salesman" in a 2011 Reuters article,[42] doing an inadequate job by the Union of Concerned Scientists.[43] and has the agency approval process has been called a "rubber stamp".[44]

Frank N. von Hippel wrote in March 2011, that despite the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania, the NRC has often been too timid in ensuring that America’s 104 commercial reactors are operated safely:

Nuclear power regulation is a textbook example of the problem of “regulatory capture” — in which an industry gains control of an agency meant to regulate it. Regulatory capture can be countered only by vigorous public scrutiny and Congressional oversight, but in the 32 years since Three Mile Island, interest in nuclear regulation has declined precipitously.[45]

An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists stated that many forms of NRC regulatory failure exist, including regulations ignored by the common consent of NRC and industry:

A worker (named George Galatis) at the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in Connecticut kept warning management, that the spent fuel rods were being put too quickly into the spent storage pool and that the number of rods in the pool exceeded specifications. Management ignored him, so he went directly to the NRC, which eventually admitted that it knew of both of the forbidden practices, which happened at many plants, but chose to ignore them. The whistleblower was fired and blacklisted.[46]

In Vermont, the day before the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that damaged Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, the NRC approved a 20-year extension for the license of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, although the Vermont state legislature voted overwhelmingly to deny an extension.[44] The plant had been found to be leaking radioactive materials through a network of underground pipes, which Entergy had denied under oath even existed. At a hearing in 2009 Tony Klein, chairman of the Vermont House Natural Resources and Energy Committee had asked the NRC about the pipes and the NRC also did not know they existed.[44]

In March 2011, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a study critical of the NRC's 2010 performance as a regulator. The UCS said that over the years, it had found the NRC's enforcement of safety rules has not been “timely, consistent, or effective" and it cited 14 "near-misses" at U.S. plants in 2010 alone.[47]

In April 2011, Reuters reported that diplomatic cables showed NRC sometimes being used as a sales tool to help push American technology to foreign governments, when "lobbying for the purchase of equipment made by Westinghouse Electric Company and other domestic manufacturers". This gives the appearance of a regulator which is acting in a commercial capacity, "raising concerns about a potential conflict of interest".[42]

San Clemente Green, an environmental group opposed to the continued operation of the San Onofre Nuclear Plant, said in 2011 that instead of being a watchdog, the NRC too often rules in favor nuclear plant operators.[48][third-party source needed]

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The NRC does not tell people to fix stuff, they are only interested in selling stuff. Can you imagine a plume of radiation emitting from a faulty nuke plant 35 miles south of Boston? Keep going down this path and we shall see.