NRC meeting melts downApr 3 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Sean Teehan Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, Mass.
Boisterous call-and-response chants begun by anti-nuclear activist Diane Turco of Harwich, and echoed by her peers, punctuated the tense atmosphere at a less-than-friendly open house hosted Tuesday night by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "NRC, uphold your mandates! Close down Pilgrim!" they chanted. Several officials from the NRC came to Plymouth Town Hall, where they spent about 1 1/2 hours before a selectmen's meeting having one-on-one conversations with members of the public about concerns about the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. Many of the approximately 65 people from Cape Cod, the South Shore and other regions were immediately dissatisfied when Ronald Bellamy, an NRC branch chief, announced the meeting's setup. Instead of questions and answers taking place in front of everyone, NRC officials stood around the room and answered questions that people asked individually. "This is not an information workshop; it's an obfuscation workshop," said Lillia Frantin of North Falmouth. "This is not how meetings should be held." Much of the discontent with NRC officials stemmed from the regulatory committee's approval last year of a 20-year extension of the 40-year-old plant owned by Entergy Nuclear. The plant exceeds industry averages for automatic shutdowns and unplanned power changes. A federal appeals court in February rejected state Attorney General Martha Coakley's legal challenge to the relicensing. Coakley argued that the NRC did not take into consideration the 2011 nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant in Japan. The room grew loud and chaotic early on Tuesday night, as people crowded around different NRC officials, grilling them about evacuation plans in the case of a disaster and plans for a dry cask storage facility for spent nuclear fuel at the plant. Harwich's Turco held a map of the Cape and asked Bellamy how Cape Codders, who live as close as 11 miles from Pilgrim and would have to drive by a potential disaster site to escape it, would be safe from a possible catastrophe. "The plant has satisfied all federal regulations," Bellamy said. He said the NRC has determined that the likelihood for such a disaster taking place at Pilgrim was very low. Shortly after, Turco began her "mic check" chant -- a call-and-response technique gleaned from the Occupy movement -- in which the crowd repeated what she shouted. The room hushed at 7 p.m. when Plymouth Selectman Matthew Muratore, the board's chairman, gaveled the official meeting to order. After an NRC presentation, during which officials talked about their ongoing inspections of Pilgrim and plans for the plant to store spent fuel there, Plymouth selectmen echoed criticism earlier expressed by members of the public. "The federal government has really let the local communities down," said Selectman Belinda Brewster. "Plymouth is becoming a de facto nuclear waste site." Selectmen then invited the public to ask the NRC questions, allowing the question-and-answer session to extend longer than planned on the agenda. Among the questioners was Ben Almada, 36, of Manomet. Almada was one of five people arrested for trespassing on Pilgrim property during a protest last month. Almada asked the NRC members present about the hardened vents at Pilgrim, which could release radioactive material into the air if there was overwhelming pressure in a reactor. Eric Banner of the NRC told Almada that although the vents could release radiation into the air, Fukushima's inability to vent reactors contributed to the disaster there. "I'm far from reassured from those answers," Almada replied. http://www.energycentral.com/functional/news/news_detail.cfm?did=28123066 |