ML070530012
| ML070530012 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Vermont Yankee File:NorthStar Vermont Yankee icon.png |
| Issue date: | 01/31/2007 |
| From: | NRC/OGC |
| To: | |
| jmm7 | |
| References | |
| Download: ML070530012 (93) | |
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1 2 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 3 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4 + + + + +
5 6
7 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -x 8 IN THE MATTER OF: :
9 PUBLIC MEETING TO DISCUSS THE :
10 DRAFT SUPPLEMENTAL ENVIRONMENTAL :
11 IMPACT STATEMENT FOR LICENSE :
12 RENEWAL OF :
13 VERMONT YANKEE NUCLEAR :
14 POWER STATION :
15 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -x 16 Wednesday 17 January 31, 2007 18 19 Latchis Theater 20 50 Main Street 21 Brattleboro, Vermont 22 23 The above-entitled matter was convened, 24 pursuant to Notice, at 1:38 p.m.
25 BEFORE: Francis "Chip" Cameron 26 FACILITATOR Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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2 1 I N D E X 2 OPENING REMARKS: PAGE:
3 Chip Cameron 4 4 OVERVIEW OF LICENSE RENEWAL PROCESS 5 Richard Emch 8 6 RESULTS OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW 7 David Miller 17 8 HOW COMMENTS CAN BE SUBMITTED 9 Richard Emch 31 10 PUBLIC COMMENT 11 Kate Casa 33 12 Emma Stamas 35 13 Sally Shaw 37 14 Patrick Moore 42 15 Thomas Salmon 47 16 Claire Chang 55 17 Amanda Ibey 61 18 Howard Shaffer 65 19 Paul Bousquet 68 20 Daniel Marx 72 21 Art Greenbaum 75 22 Sarah Kotkov 84 23 Teresa Caldwell 87 24 CLOSING REMARKS 25 Rani Franovich 91 Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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3 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 (1:38 p.m.)
3 MR. CAMERON: My name is Chip Cameron, I 4 work for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and I want 5 to welcome all of you to the public meeting today. And 6 our subject today is going to be a draft environmental 7 impact statement that the NRC has prepared as one part 8 of its evaluation of the license application that we 9 received from the Entergy Corporation to renew the 10 operating license for the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power 11 Plant. And it's my pleasure to serve as your 12 facilitator for today's meeting and my role will be to 13 try to help all of you to have a productive meeting 14 today.
15 I just want to spend a couple minutes on 16 some meeting process issues so that you know what to 17 expect this afternoon, and I would like to talk about 18 the meeting format and, secondly, just some simple 19 ground rules that will help us all to have a productive 20 meeting. In terms of format, basically we are going to 21 use a two-part format for this afternoon's meeting, the 22 first part is to give you, through some brief 23 presentations, some information on what the NRC looks 24 at when it's deciding whether to renew an operating 25 license, and specifically, we want to tell you about Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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4 1 the findings that are in the draft environmental impact 2 statement, and I want to emphasize the word draft.
3 This environmental impact statement will 4 not be finalized until we, first of all, listen, and 5 second of all, evaluate all the comments that we are 6 going to hear from you today and tonight at tonight's 7 meeting, as well as written comments that can be 8 submitted on the draft environmental impact statement 9 issues. And I just want to emphasize also that 10 anything that we hear today will carry the same weight 11 as a written comment that you might submit. Your 12 comments today are going to be the focus of the second 13 part of the meeting, and we are here to listen to your 14 advice, your concerns, your recommendations on the 15 draft environmental impact statement and license 16 renewal issues.
17 And there will be some time to answer a 18 few questions after the NRC presentations about the NRC 19 license renewal evaluation process and what's in the 20 draft EIS, but we do have a number of speakers so we'll 21 have to move to the second part of the meeting fairly 22 quickly. Now, in terms of groundrules, I would just 23 ask that only one person speak at a time, most 24 importantly so that we can give whomever has the floor 25 our full attention but also so that we can get a clear Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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5 1 transcript. Marty is our court reporter up here, and 2 he is going to be taking a transcript of everything at 3 the meeting and that will be available to all of you 4 and to us as a record of what was said here today, and 5 it's Marty Farley.
6 And another groundrule, would you please 7 try to be concise, we do have a lot of people who want 8 to talk today and I want to make sure that we hear from 9 all of them, so try to be as concise as possible. And 10 it's great that we have a lot of people who want to 11 talk and I would thank everybody again for being here 12 and for your interest, but it means that we do have to 13 set some limit on how much time that each person can 14 speak, and I'm going to set that limit at approximately 15 five minutes today. And we may have a little bit of 16 leeway on that, but please try to keep it to 17 approximately five minutes.
18 And I think that we've found that five 19 minutes is usually enough for people to summarize their 20 main concerns and it accomplishes two important 21 objectives, one is it alerts the NRC staff to issues 22 that it has to start evaluating right away by talking 23 to people who raise comments after the meeting about 24 their comments. And the second important thing that it 25 accomplishes is that it alerts others in the community Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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6 1 to important issues connected to license renewal, and a 2 final ground rule is please be courteous to each other.
3 You will hear a lot of different opinions here today 4 and some of them you may not agree with, but let's all 5 just respect the person who is giving that particular 6 opinion.
7 Let me introduce the NRC speakers today 8 that are going to talk to you. First of all, we have 9 Mr. Richard Emch, who is right here. Rich is going to 10 give you an overview of the NRC license renewal 11 evaluation process, and he is the project manager for 12 the environmental review on the license renewal 13 application for Vermont Yankee and he has been with the 14 NRC for a considerable amount of time, approximately 32 15 years, at this point. And he has worked in a variety 16 of capacities at the agency and he has served as the 17 project manager on other license renewal applications 18 for other reactors around the country. And he has a 19 bachelors in physics from the Louisiana Technical 20 University and a masters in health physics from the 21 Georgia Institute of Technology.
22 And after Rich talks about the process, we 23 are going to go to a description, a summary of the 24 findings in the draft environmental impact statement.
25 We have Mr. Dave Miller right here, Dr. Dave Miller I Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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7 1 guess is more precise, but Dave was the team leader of 2 a group of expert consultants that the NRC used to 3 evaluate environmental impacts from the potential 4 license renewal at the Vermont Yankee Plant. He is 5 from Argonne National Lab in the Chicago area. He is 6 an environmental engineer who has worked on a lot of 7 different projects, including the clean up of 8 contaminated sites, and he is a registered 9 environmental engineer and a registered geologist. He 10 has a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 11 environmental engineering.
12 And I would just thank all of you for 13 being here and, if you could just hold your questions 14 until after we are done with the two NRC presentations 15 so that they can get all the information out to you, 16 and then the rest of the time is going to be for us to 17 listen to all of you today.
18 And with that, Richard, would you like to 19 give us the overview?
20 MR. EMCH: Can everybody hear me? Okay.
21 This slide talks about the purposes of 22 today's meeting, Chip has already gone through them in 23 brief, but I'll go through them again. We are here to 24 discuss the process, I'm going to give you information 25 about the license renewal process, I'm going to also Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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8 1 give you a little more detailed information about the 2 environmental review process. We are going to talk to 3 you about the results of our review, and then we are 4 going to show you the rest of the review schedule and 5 then we are going to open it up to find out what 6 comments you folks have for us.
7 The underlying law, if you will, for the 8 Nuclear Regulatory Commission is the Atomic Energy Act.
9 Under the Atomic Energy Act, the NRC issues operating 10 licenses to nuclear power plants. Originally, those 11 licenses were issued for a 40-year operating term, that 12 40-year operating term was mostly designed for 13 antitrust purposes and for economic reasons, it really 14 wasn't of any belief that the plant could only last for 15 40 years or any safety reasons. The act also allows 16 licensees to apply for an extension or the renewal of 17 their license for 20 years.
18 It's the responsibility of the Nuclear 19 Regulatory Commission to regulate the civilian use of 20 nuclear materials and that includes nuclear power 21 plants. Our mission is threefold, to ensure the 22 adequate protection of public health and defense, 23 promote common defense and security, and protect the 24 environment. The operating, the current operating 25 license for Vermont Yankee will expire in March of Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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9 1 2012. Entergy sent an application in, made an 2 application to extend the license, renew the license, 3 in January of 2006.
4 And we held a scoping meeting here in 5 June, June 7th I think it was, in fact probably a 6 number of you were here. At that time, I asked you to 7 give us information, we told you what we were going to 8 be doing and we asked, I asked you to give us 9 information that you thought we should be aware of 10 about environmental issues and a number of you took us 11 up on that. There is sort of a dual process underway 12 here, there is the safety review, which is in red 13 above, on the lines above, and there is the 14 environmental review which is in green.
15 You see in the middle there is a box 16 called hearings, it's important to note that an Atomic 17 Safety and Licensing Board hearing is going to occur 18 for this application. The New England Coalition had a 19 contention, an environmental contention, accepted and 20 the state of, or rather New England had a contention 21 accepted and the State of Vermont had some contentions 22 accepted, there are four safety contentions and one 23 environmental contention. In addition, the State of 24 New Hampshire is participating as an interested state, 25 Entergy and the NRC are the other parties in the Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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10 1 hearing process.
2 The address at the bottom of the page is 3 where you can go to get more information about the 4 hearing process. You'll also see a box there that says 5 independent review, that's the, once the safety 6 evaluation has been written for the plant, on the 7 safety side, by a team that's lead by Jonathan Rowley.
8 Jonathan?
9 Okay, Jonathan Rowley is the safety 10 project manager. That document will be submitted for 11 review by the ACRS, Advisory Committee on Reactor 12 Safeguards, they provide an independent review of the 13 safety evaluation that is done by the staff and then 14 they provide their views on the review directly to the 15 Commission.
16 Along the green line at the bottom is the 17 environmental review, we'll publish the draft, the 18 environmental statement that we'll be talking about 19 tonight. All of those will be evaluated by the Nuclear 20 Regulatory Commission in its decision about the 21 application. The hearing process or the hearing itself 22 would occur some time after the final environmental 23 statement and the final safety evaluation report are 24 published. As part of the safety review, basically 25 what the safety team looks at is aging management, Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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11 1 programs for aging management of systems, structures 2 and components in the plant, safety components in the 3 plant.
4 They do a review of the application, they 5 do on-site audits to evaluate the technical information 6 that has been provided by the licensee and inspectors 7 come to the site and evaluate the plant to make sure 8 that those programs are indeed in place, have been 9 implemented or are properly planned, then they issue 10 their environmental, then they issue their safety 11 evaluation report.
12 Again, as I mentioned, there is a review 13 by the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.
14 Before we get into, go further on the issue of license 15 renewal, we need to talk about some very important 16 issues; emergency preparedness, security and the day to 17 day operations, making sure that the current safety 18 performance of the plant are all appropriate and that's 19 what this slide is about.
20 All of these things are covered by current 21 processes, they are covered by, we have inspectors, and 22 as a matter of fact, we have inspectors, we have 23 resident inspectors and one of the resident inspectors 24 is here with us this afternoon, Beth, Beth Sienel.
25 These folks are assigned to the power plant and that's Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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12 1 their place of business, they go there every day to 2 help make sure that the licensee is following the 3 rules, the NRC's rules. Because these things, these 4 issues which are very important, are being handled on a 5 day to day basis, they are being overseen by the NRC on 6 a day to day basis, we don't do a separate or a 7 reevaluation of these issues as part of license 8 renewal.
9 As I said, license renewal, on the safety 10 side, focuses on aging management programs. If you 11 need additional information about the way that, the 12 current performance, again there is a spot there at the 13 bottom that you can go to on the Internet.
14 This is a slightly more detailed version 15 or picture of the environmental review process, you can 16 see the application was received in January of 2006.
17 The application was received in January of 2006, we did 18 an audit in May and we held a scoping meeting here on 19 June 7th, I believe it was. We've been continuing the 20 environmental review and, as you can see, we published 21 the draft environmental statement in December. Hard 22 copies and CD disc copies of that report and statement 23 are out front. Many of you had it sent to you because 24 you signed up with us at the scoping meeting.
25 We are going to take all the comments that Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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13 1 we get from you folks here tonight and all the comments 2 that are sent in writing or by e-mail and we are going 3 to evaluate those comments, consider everything and see 4 if it makes any changes, if it brings about any changes 5 on what we've already said in the preliminary decisions 6 and the environmental impact statement that we 7 published as a draft, and then we'll issue the final in 8 August of 2007. Again, the hearings will start shortly 9 after that. Once the hearings are concluded, then the 10 NRC will make a decision on the application.
11 This review is conducted under the 12 auspices of the National Environmental Policy Act of 13 1969, it's an environmental review. We have our own 14 regulation at the top there, 10 CFR Part 51, but it 15 tracks pretty closely with the NEPA regulations.
16 Basically, the NEPA regulations call for us to assess, 17 consider and disclose the impacts of the action that's 18 being taken, in this case, license renewal. NEPA also 19 calls for us to involve the public in our process, 20 that's why we had the scoping meeting here in June, 21 part of why we are having, and why we are having this 22 meeting now and why we have the comment process.
23 Many of you, as I said, gave us comments 24 during the scoping process, and we incorporated those 25 into the process and we'll incorporate whatever you Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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14 1 give us here tonight into the process as well. You 2 will hear us talk about, we prepare an environmental 3 impact statement for each license renewal plant. Now 4 it is a supplement to what we call the generic 5 environmental impact statement, the generic 6 environmental impact statement was published in the 7 1990s and it was an assessment of all of the various 8 environmental issues that could be associated with 9 license renewal and, in that environmental impact 10 statement, the NRC drew generic conclusions about many 11 of the impact areas.
12 However, there were a number of impact 13 areas where they could not draw a generic conclusion 14 and therefore a major piece of our review, on a 15 plant-specific basis, is focused on those issues that 16 they could not declare as a generic impact. For the 17 ones where they do declare a generic impact, we have a 18 process where we look, search for what we call new and 19 significant information, that means any information 20 that might cause us to call into question the generic 21 impacts, the generic conclusions, and all of this will 22 be evaluated and is in draft form in the site-specific 23 supplemental environmental impact statement and it will 24 be in the final as well.
25 This is the decision standard, I'll give Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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15 1 you a moment to read it. But my simple version of it 2 is, Is the environmental impact of an additional 20 3 years of operation of this plant acceptable? And 4 that's, again, my short version of the legal standard 5 that you see before you. The application was received 6 in January, the notice of intent was in April, again, 7 the scoping meeting was in June.
8 That's correct, ma'am, yes, I'm aware of 9 that. I don't know what to tell you, okay? We did a 10 meeting like this at Pilgrim last week, I'm extremely 11 embarrassed right now because I thought I had removed 12 all of the appropriate places where it should say 13 Vermont Yankee instead of Pilgrim. Pardon?
14 Well they are being reviewed at the same 15 time, I don't --.
16 MR. CAMERON: Okay, Richard, why don't you 17 just continue?
18 MR. EMCH: So, going on through the dates, 19 the scoping, the public meeting was June 7th, the end 20 of the scoping comments was June 23rd, our public, we 21 issued the draft in December and our meeting is tonight 22 for the public meeting, comments will be due by March 23 7th and the final SEIS will be issued in August of 24 2007.
25 At this time, I would like to ask Dr.
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16 1 Miller to come up and present the findings. Thank you.
2 MR. MILLER: Thank you, Rich.
3 Good afternoon. As Chip said, I'm David 4 Miller from Argonne National Lab.
5 And can everybody hear me okay? Great.
6 The NRC has contracted with Argonne to 7 evaluate the impacts of license renewal at Vermont 8 Yankee and the EIS team consists of scientists from 9 Argonne National Lab, as well as from the NRC staff.
10 The overall team and set of expertise is shown on this 11 slide and I'll review it quickly, we have atmospheric 12 science, socioeconomics and environmental justice, 13 archeology and historical resources, terrestrial 14 ecology, land use, radiation protection, nuclear 15 safety, regulatory compliance, aquatic ecology and 16 hydrology.
17 This slide describes the overall approach 18 used to evaluate the impacts in the supplemental 19 environmental impact statement. First, I would like to 20 give you some background. In the mid 1990s, the NRC 21 evaluated impacts of all operating nuclear power plants 22 across the country and Rich alluded to this in speaking 23 of the GEIS. In the GEIS, the NRC looked at 92 24 separate impact areas and found that, for 69 of the 25 issues, the impacts were the same for plants with Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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17 1 similar features. NRC called these category one issues 2 and we were able to make the same or generic 3 determination about the impacts in the generic 4 environmental impact statement and that was issued in 5 1996.
6 The NRC was unable to make generic 7 conclusions about the remaining issues which were 8 called category two issues. As a consequence, NRC 9 decided to do site-specific supplemental EISs, such as 10 this one for Vermont Yankee.
11 Now this slide shows the process used to 12 evaluate category one and category two issues in the 13 Vermont Yankee EIS, the team evaluated all category one 14 issues relevant to Vermont Yankee to determine if the 15 conclusion of the generic EIS was still valid.
16 Specifically, we looked for any new and significant 17 information that might change that conclusion.
18 If we found no new and significant 19 information, then we adopted the conclusions of the 20 generic EIS. If new and significant information was 21 identified, then a site-specific analysis would be 22 performed for that issue. We did not find any new and 23 significant information for category one issues and, 24 for all these issues, we adopted the generic EIS.
25 For the category two issues relevant to Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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18 1 Vermont Yankee, we performed site-specific analyses, 2 much of the EIS is devoted to the discussion of these 3 impacts. There is also this process to evaluate the 4 new potential issues in the EIS and these are things 5 that might have been identified during scoping or the 6 EIS analysis. Essential fish habitat was one of those 7 issues and an essential fish habitat assessment was 8 prepared for the Vermont Yankee EIS.
9 Now I would like to give you an idea of 10 how the impacts are quantified, the generic EIS, NRC 11 defined three levels, small, moderate and large. The 12 definitions used are consistent with guidance from the 13 Council on Environmental Quality and this is a 14 description of them. For a small impact, the effect is 15 either not detectable or is too small to destabilize or 16 noticeably alter any important attribute of the 17 resource. For a moderate impact, the effect is 18 sufficient to alter noticeably but not destabilize the 19 important attributes of the resource and for a large 20 impact, the effect is clearly noticeable and sufficient 21 to destabilize important attributes of the resource.
22 Now I'm going to use the Vermont Yankee 23 cooling system and its effect on aquatic resources in 24 the Connecticut River to illustrate how we use those 25 three criteria. The operation of Vermont Yankee Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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19 1 cooling system effects aquatic resources through 2 entrainment, impingement and thermal shock. If the 3 loss of aquatic resources is so small that it can't be 4 detected in relation to the total population in the 5 river or does not destabilize the resource, we would 6 say that that impact was small. If losses cause 7 aquatic resources to decline and then stabilize at a 8 lower level, the impact would be considered moderate.
9 If losses cause aquatic resources to decline to the 10 point where they cannot be stabilized and continue to 11 decline, then the impact would be large.
12 When the EIS team evaluated impacts from 13 continued operation of Vermont Yankee, we considered 14 information from a wide variety of sources. We used 15 information in the license renewal application that was 16 included in the environmental report. We conducted a 17 site audit where our team went to the Vermont Yankee 18 site and interviewed plant personnel, toured the site 19 and reviewed documentation of plant operations. We 20 spoke with federal, state and local officials, 21 permitting authorities and social services and we 22 considered the comments received during the public 23 scoping meeting and public scoping process. All of 24 this information formed the basis for the analysis and 25 the preliminary conclusions in the Vermont Yankee EIS.
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20 1 The EIS considers the environmental 2 impacts of continued operation of the Vermont Yankee 3 Nuclear Power Station during the 20-year license 4 renewal term, that is 2012 to 2032. The impacts of 5 routine or normal operations were considered for the 6 cooling system, radiological impacts, threatened or 7 endangered species and cumulative impacts. The EIS 8 also considers the impacts of postulated accidents and 9 severe accident mitigation alternatives.
10 I'm going to spend some time on this 11 slide, one of the project features we looked at closely 12 is the cooling system impact and, I might add, I'll do 13 the same for a few other issues that are of importance 14 in this EIS.
15 Now, for the cooling system, there are 16 basically five category two aquatic ecology issues 17 relevant to the cooling system, these include water use 18 and impingement of fish and shellfish, heat shock and 19 the enhancement of populations of microbiological 20 organisms resulting from the discharge of warm water to 21 the river as a public health concern. For water use 22 conflicts, Vermont Yankee withdraws water from the 23 Vernon Pool in the Connecticut River which is 24 considered a small river. At times, the flow in the 25 river is low. A site-specific analysis was conducted Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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21 1 that included evaluating water consumption from the 2 river under drought conditions and comparison of that 3 use to Vermont's state quality criteria.
4 Entrainment refers to the pulling of very 5 small aquatic organisms into the plant's cooling 6 system. Entrainment usually results in the mortality 7 of that organism. Vermont Yankee uses a hybrid cycle, 8 whereby cooling capacity can be provided by cooling 9 towers, that's called closed cycle, or it could be 10 provided solely by river water which is called open 11 cycle or it can be provided by a combination of the two 12 operations which is called the hybrid cycle. When 13 Vermont Yankee is only operating on cooling towers, 14 entrainment is known as a category one issue. In other 15 words, they are not withdrawing large volumes of water 16 from the river and so it would be treated as a generic 17 category one issue.
18 However, since it has the potential to 19 operate in the category, sorry, the open cycle mode 20 where it completely cools using river water, it's 21 treated, we treated it as a category two issue across 22 the board, so that meant that we did a site-specific 23 analysis for entrainment for the entire year.
24 Now this is also true for impingement and 25 heat shock and I'll describe impingement next.
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22 1 Impingement occurs when larger organisms are pulled 2 into the cooling system and pinned onto the debris 3 screens of the system. When Vermont Yankee is 4 operating only on the cooling towers, impingement isn't 5 of a, the magnitude isn't the same as when they are 6 operating in an open cycle so, once again, we treated 7 it as a category two issue and did a site-specific 8 analysis.
9 And then heat shock can occur when 10 relatively warm water is released into cooler water.
11 Aquatic organisms adapted to the cooler water can lose 12 equilibrium or die when exposed to significantly warmer 13 water. When Vermont Yankee is operating on the cooling 14 towers, once again, there is less of an impact from 15 thermal conditions, whereas when it's discharging its 16 water in the open cycle, the heated water in the open 17 cycle, we treat that as a category two issue so, once 18 again, we treated the whole thing as a category two 19 issue and did a site-specific analysis.
20 Finally, microbiological organisms, the 21 effects of microbiological organisms on human health 22 are listed as a category two issue and require a 23 site-specific evaluation for plants with closed cycle 24 cooling on a small river. The analysis considers 25 potential public health impacts associated with the Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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23 1 thermal enhancement of enteric, that is intestinal 2 type, pathogens. Our review of the cooling system and 3 studies conducted on these issues suggested that the 4 potential impacts on these areas would be small.
5 Radiological impacts, they were determined 6 in the generic EIS to be a category one issue, that is 7 the impact of radiological releases during the nuclear 8 plant operations during the 20-year license renewal 9 period would be small. However, because these releases 10 are a concern to many people, I would like to discuss 11 them here. All nuclear plants release some 12 radiological effluents in the environment, although it 13 should be noted it's Vermont Yankee's operating policy 14 to not routinely release liquid radioactive effluents.
15 I'll get to that in a moment. This, once again, should 16 be Vermont Yankee.
17 MR. CAMERON: Okay, so, is that clear to 18 everybody? And we apologize if it's confusing, but 19 that should say preliminary findings regarding Vermont 20 Yankee, is that correct?
21 MR. MILLER: Yes, absolutely. No, I 22 wasn't on the Pilgrim team, I've written my notes to 23 this slide.
24 MR. CAMERON: Well it isn't generic.
25 MR. MILLER: I wrote my own notes to these Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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24 1 slide shows, yes, I did.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay, we are going to have 3 time to answer all of your questions, just note that 4 this should say Vermont Yankee and let him finish up.
5 MR. MILLER: Yeah, perhaps I could clarify 6 that in the--
7 MR. CAMERON: Then we'll get to you for, 8 we'll get to you. Yes, okay? All right, so, Sally, 9 let him go on and then we'll get to questions.
10 MR. MILLER: So we looked at how the 11 applicant determines and demonstrates that they are in 12 compliance with regulations for the release of 13 radiological effluents, we also looked at data from 14 on-site and near site locations that the applicant 15 monitors for airborne releases, and direct radiation 16 and other monitoring stations beyond the site boundary, 17 including locations where water, milk, fish and food 18 products are sampled. We found that the average 19 maximum and calculated doses for a member of the 20 public, even after the 20 percent uprate here at 21 Vermont Yankee, recently granted, would be within the 22 annual limits that are considered protective of human 23 health.
24 Since releases from the plant are not 25 expected to increase over the 20-year license renewal Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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25 1 term and since we also found no new and significant 2 information related to this issue, we adopted the 3 generic EIS conclusion that the radiological impact on 4 human health and the environment is small.
5 This is on threatened and endangered 6 species, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 7 determined that the bald eagle is the only federally 8 listed species under their jurisdiction that is known 9 to occur in the vicinity of Vermont Yankee. They 10 concluded that operations were unlikely to effect this 11 species.
12 The National Marine Fisheries Service was 13 also consulted. Based on these consultations and our 14 review, the staff's preliminary determination is that 15 the impact of operation of Vermont Yankee during the 16 license renewal period on threatened and endangered 17 species would be small.
18 Cumulative impacts of the proposed action, 19 together with other past, present and/or reasonably 20 foreseeable future actions, regardless of what agency 21 or person undertakes those actions, is what's 22 considered under the cumulative impacts. The staff 23 considered cumulative impacts in the following areas, 24 aquatic resources, terrestrial resources, radiological 25 impacts, socioeconomics and ground water use and Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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26 1 quality. Cumulative impacts were evaluated to the end 2 of the 20-year license renewal term and the geographic 3 boundaries of the evaluation were dependent on the 4 resource. Our preliminary determination is that 5 cumulative impacts resulting from the operation of 6 Vermont Yankee during the license renewal period would 7 be small.
8 The team also looked at impacts related to 9 uranium fuel cycle and solid waste management in 10 decommissioning of Vermont Yankee. In the GEIS, NRC 11 considered impact areas associated with these topics as 12 category one issues. Our team found no new related, no 13 related new and significant information and therefore 14 adopted NRC's generic conclusion that impacts in these 15 areas were small.
16 Alternatives. We looked at the, the EIS 17 team evaluated a number of alternatives to license 18 renewal to the existing plant. Specifically, we looked 19 at the impacts of replacing Vermont Yankee's power with 20 power from other sources, Vermont Yankee has a capacity 21 of 650 megawatts. The team looked at a no action 22 alternative, that is not renewing the license, 23 development of the new generation from coal fired, gas 24 fired and new nuclear to replace the 650 megawatts, 25 purchase power to replace Vermont Yankee's capacity, Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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27 1 other technologies such as oil, wood, wind, solar and 2 hydropower to replace the capacity and a combination of 3 alternatives.
4 In this case, we looked at a combination 5 of natural gas generation, conservation and purchase 6 power to replace Vermont Yankee's generating capacity.
7 For each alternative, we looked at the same types of 8 issues that we look at for operation of the Vermont 9 Yankee plant during the license renewal term. The 10 team's preliminary conclusion is that the environmental 11 impacts of alternatives would reach moderate to large 12 significance in at least some impact categories, 13 primarily due to the need for new construction.
14 Preliminary conclusions. To summarize our 15 conclusions for the category one issues presented in 16 the generic EIS that relate to the Vermont Yankee 17 plant, we found no information that was both new and 18 significant. Therefore, we have preliminary adopted 19 the conclusion that impacts associated with these 20 issues are small. In the Vermont Yankee EIS, we 21 analyzed the remaining category two issues pertinent to 22 the Vermont Yankee plant and we determined that the 23 environmental impacts resulting from these issues were 24 also small. Lastly, we found that the environmental 25 effects of alternatives, at least in some impact Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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28 1 categories, could reach moderate or large significance.
2 I'm going to switch gears a little bit and 3 present the findings of the accident analysis for 4 Vermont Yankee. We have Mr. Robert Palla in the 5 audience today, he is the one from NRC who is 6 responsible for this portion of the analysis. The EIS 7 evaluated two classes of accidents, design-basis 8 accidents and severe accidents. Design-basis accidents 9 are those accidents that the plant is designed to 10 withstand without risk to the public; the ability of 11 the plant to withstand these accidents has to be 12 demonstrated before the plant is granted a license.
13 Since the licensee has to demonstrate 14 acceptable plant performance for the design-basis 15 accidents through the life of the plant, the Commission 16 found, in the generic EIS, that the environmental 17 impact of design-basis accident is small for all 18 plants.
19 The second category of accidents evaluated 20 in the generic EIS are severe accidents; severe 21 accidents are by definition more severe than 22 design-basis accidents because they would result in 23 substantial damage to the reactor core. The Commission 24 found, in the generic EIS, that the risk of a severe 25 accident is small for all plants.
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29 1 Nevertheless, the Commission determined 2 that alternatives to mitigate severe accidents must be 3 considered for all plants that have not done so. There 4 is a term they use for this, those alternatives are 5 termed SAMA, S-A-M-A. The SAMA evaluation is a 6 site-specific assessment and is a category two issue, 7 as we explained earlier about category two. The 8 purpose of performing the SAMA evaluation is to ensure 9 that the plant changes with the potential for improving 10 severe accident safety performance are identified and 11 evaluated.
12 The scope of potential plant improvements 13 that were considered included hardware modifications, 14 procedural changes, training program improvements and 15 basically a full spectrum of potential changes. The 16 scope includes SAMAs that would prevent core damage as 17 well as SAMAs that would improve containment 18 performance, given that a core damage event occurs.
19 The preliminary results of the Vermont Yankee SAMA 20 evaluation are summarized on this slide. There were 21 302 candidate improvements identified for the Vermont 22 Yankee plant. The number of candidate SAMAs was 23 reduced to 66 based on a multi-step screening process, 24 then a more detailed assessment of the risk reduction 25 potential and implementation costs was then performed Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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30 1 for each of those 66 remaining SAMAs.
2 A total of two SAMAs were identified as 3 potentially cost-beneficial by Entergy. In response to 4 NRC staff inquiries, four additional potentially cost-5 beneficial SAMAs were identified. None of the 6 potentially cost-beneficial SAMAs are relating to the 7 managing the effects of plant aging during the period 8 of extended operation. Accordingly, they aren't 9 required to be implemented as part of the license 10 renewal, pursuant to 10 CFR Part 54. Regardless, the 11 NRC staff considers that further evaluation of the 12 potentially cost-beneficial SAMAs by Entergy is 13 warranted. Since the draft SEIS was issued, Entergy 14 has indicated they are evaluating the potentially cost-15 beneficial SAMAs for possible implementation.
16 Now I would like to turn this back to Chip 17 or Rich, I guess, has a few more slides.
18 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Dave.
19 MR. EMCH: Thank you, Dave.
20 I just want to highlight three milestones 21 for the review. We issued the draft environmental 22 statement on December 13th and the end of the comment 23 period is March 7th, and again, we will be issuing the 24 final environmental statement after we have evaluated 25 all the comments that you folks give us in August of Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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31 1 2007. There are several ways where you can get 2 information about the document or see the document, if 3 you don't have it. Of course, as we mentioned, you can 4 pick up a copy at the front of the room, the front of 5 the theater, there are also copies of the environmental 6 statement at these libraries in New Hampshire, 7 Massachusetts and in Vermont.
8 The contact information for me is at the 9 top of this slide and you can also view the draft 10 environmental statement on the NRC's Internet web site 11 at the address that's on the slide. Now, how do you 12 submit comments? The first and foremost method is by 13 you being here tonight and we are going to have an 14 opportunity here, just in a few minutes, for you to 15 give us your comments. As Chip has already indicated, 16 they will be transcribed and they will be made public.
17 The next way is you can send them to us by mail at the 18 address on the slide.
19 Another very common way, a method that 20 many of you used during the scoping period was to send 21 them to us by e-mail to the VermontYankeeEIS address 22 that's on the slide and then, finally, if you had some 23 reason to be in Rockville, Maryland, you can deliver 24 them in person to us at the address there.
25 That completes my remarks tonight. Again, Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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32 1 I want to thank all of you for coming out and helping 2 us with this review. Sam, can you put the last slide 3 that has the submitting comments on it back up?
4 MR. CAMERON: And why don't we just keep 5 that up there so that people can have enough time to do 6 that.
7 MR. EMCH: Sure.
8 MR. CAMERON: And are we ready to go to 9 questions? Just to emphasize what we said before is 10 that all of the information on these slides, and of 11 course all of the information in the draft 12 environmental impact statement, are specific to the 13 Vermont Yankee license renewal and we apologize for any 14 confusion that might be caused. We have time for some 15 questions on process, whatever, and if you could just 16 please introduce yourself to us?
17 MS. CASA: My name is Kate Casa, I'm with 18 the Commons newspaper. What happens if the NRC 19 approves the license extension but the state does not, 20 in fact the state says no?
21 MR. CAMERON: This sounds like we should 22 probably turn to our representative from the Office of 23 General Counsel who is here, Steve Hamrick.
24 Steve, can we provide any information on 25 that?
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33 1 MR. HAMRICK: At this point, there are a 2 number of aspects of the regulation that are state 3 governed. It is not clear, at this point, whether or 4 not the state has authority to keep the renewal from 5 happening. The federal government has what's known as 6 preemption on certain issues, health and safety issues, 7 and so it's the federal government that takes care of 8 the license, so it's the federal government that issues 9 the license and, as far as the federal government is 10 concerned, the plant can, if the license is issued and 11 renewed, the plant can proceed.
12 MR. CAMERON: And just to clarify on that, 13 Kate, there are certain permits that the license 14 applicant has to get from either state agencies or 15 other federal agencies and if they, they need to get 16 those permits to operate, okay? That's correct, right?
17 MR. HAMRICK: Yes, there are NPDES 18 permits, which is the water permits under the Clean 19 Water Act, it's a State of Vermont issue. There is 20 also a Certificate of Public Good, which is a State of 21 Vermont issue, which has to do with the need for power 22 and electrical generation; that's a state issue. So 23 there are other aspects that belong in the state's 24 court.
25 MR. CAMERON: So, generally, the license Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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34 1 applicant also has to get those permits. There may be 2 some state approvals that fall into this preemption 3 area that Steve was talking about, but generally, the 4 license applicant has to get the other permits in order 5 to be able to operate.
6 MS. CASA: Thank you.
7 MR. CAMERON: You're welcome.
8 Yes, ma'am? And can you just introduce 9 yourself?
10 MS. STAMAS: I'm Emma Stamas and I'm not 11 affiliated with any particular organization, but I 12 recently read that the courts decided that the nuclear 13 power industry did indeed have to evaluate the threat 14 of terrorism for each nuclear plant, especially those 15 under review for extension of licenses and so forth, 16 but even every plant and every storage facility. And I 17 would like to know why the threat of terrorism wasn't 18 specifically evaluated and reviewed for this particular 19 plant, not only for the plant but also for the control 20 rods, the spent fuel rods that are in makeshift storage 21 pools?
22 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thanks, Emma.
23 We are going to go to Steve Hamrick again 24 from our Office of General Counsel to explain that. It 25 is a little bit confusing.
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35 1 Steve?
2 MR. HAMRICK: That's correct, there was a 3 decision that came out of the 9th Circuit Court of 4 Appeals, which is out in California, with respect to a 5 spent fuel storage facility and, in that case, they, 6 that court said that the NRC, when it does an 7 environmental impact statement, should address the 8 impacts of terrorism. The Commission has not yet, that 9 decision was appealed by the licensee in that case to 10 the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court decided not to 11 hear the appeal. That happened very recently, like 12 last week, I believe.
13 At this point, the Commission has not 14 decided, they have not told us how they would like to 15 deal with that situation, they have not given us 16 guidance yet so, at this point, we are awaiting 17 guidance from the Commission for them to tell us how we 18 should be going about interpreting that decision in our 19 EISs.
20 MR. CAMERON: And one of the important 21 things, I guess two important things to understand 22 about the decision is, I guess first of all and most 23 importantly, it dealt with how the NRC would look at 24 security issues, terrorism issues, in the context of an 25 environmental impact statement and we do look at Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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36 1 security considerations as a part of regulating any of 2 these plants.
3 MR. HAMRICK: This case was limited 4 strictly to the evaluation in an EIS, an environmental 5 impact statement. The court went to great pains to 6 make sure that everyone understood, when they're 7 reading it, that it was not a discussion of the NRC's 8 security requirements, it was limited strictly to the 9 NRC's evaluation of these risks and impacts in an EIS.
10 MR. CAMERON: So that discussion was right 11 in the court's opinion?
12 MR. HAMRICK: Correct, yes.
13 MR. CAMERON: Let me go to Sally, and then 14 Gary has a question and I think we probably, all right.
15 Well that's up to you, if you want to go home, but we 16 are here after the meeting, if you want to talk 17 further to Steve. But let me just get these couple 18 other questions and then let's go to comments and, if 19 we have time before the end of the meeting, we can go 20 back to questions, including back to explaining this in 21 more detail.
22 Sally? Sally Shaw.
23 MS. SHAW: May I have permission to go 24 from a question right into my comment because I have to 25 leave to pick up my daughter at the school bus?
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37 1 MR. CAMERON: Let me, yeah, do that.
2 MS. SHAW: All right, I'll make it quick.
3 I have to leave in three minutes.
4 MR. CAMERON: Okay.
5 MS. SHAW: Okay. The process question is 6 I thought this meeting was for the purpose of the NRC 7 hearing from the public, so I think the back and forth 8 with questions and answers does not serve that interest 9 very well in that there are a lot of people here and 10 you are going to run out of time. So, after saying 11 that, I'm going to try to make it quick. My primary 12 concern is that, as was in evidence with the slides 13 that referred to Pilgrim and not from Yankee, that this 14 is really not an environmental impact statement for 15 Vermont Yankee and the communities who are suffering 16 the effects of Vermont Yankee, but it is more 17 accurately terms an environmental insult statement.
18 The good news is that, as an ecologist, I 19 can tell you that environmental systems are very 20 resilient, natural systems are very resilient, but they 21 only restore themselves if you stop the environmental 22 insults, and then they can restore themselves. If you 23 continue to insult them, they will continue to degrade.
24 My primary concern here is that the GEIS, 25 the generic environmental impact statement, which I've Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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38 1 already spoken about at an earlier meeting, and the 2 assumptions behind your supplemental environmental 3 impact statement are based on erroneous and incomplete 4 information, and therefore, your environmental review 5 is neither thorough nor conservative. It has not been 6 properly done.
7 Since there is a petition for rule making 8 questioning the scientific basis of the radiation 9 standards and calculations in the GEIS, which is still 10 in the comment period until February 5th, you can find 11 information about this petition on the Federal Register 12 web site, the environmental review cannot be considered 13 complete until those issues are resolved and a decision 14 is made whether the generic environmental impact 15 statement accurately reflects risks or needs to be 16 revised.
17 Therefore, I hereby petition you to halt 18 the license renewal process of Vermont Yankee while the 19 petition for rule making on the adequacy of radiation 20 standards and risk factors in the GEIS is pending and 21 until a full review and reconciliation of the radiation 22 standards consistent with BEIR 7 and other current 23 scientific studies of health effects of low-level 24 ionizing radiation, external and internal, is 25 undertaken. Then you can apply these more realistic Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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39 1 standards to your estimates of early fatalities, latent 2 mortality and radiation caused injuries that would be 3 expected from continued operation of Entergy-Vermont 4 Yankee under normal operating and accident scenarios.
5 These data are of intimate concern to 6 those of us living in Windham, Cheshire and Franklin 7 Counties, the Vermont Yankee sacrifice zone. I would 8 also like to present to you for your consideration this 9 new and significant information. From 1999 to 2002, 10 the Windham County cancer death rate was 12.7 percent 11 above other Vermont counties based on 451 deaths during 12 this four-year period. However, the death rate for all 13 other causes in Windham County was only 1.7 percent 14 greater. The source of this information is the 15 National Center for Health Statistics at the Centers 16 for Disease Control. Some factors causing Windham 17 County residents to die in excessive numbers from 18 cancer and not from other causes, reasons for the high 19 death rates need to be understood.
20 Number two. Since 1979, the Windham 21 County death rate exceeded the rest of the state by 19 22 percent for infants, 38 percent for children and 23 adolescents and 30 percent for young adults. High 24 death rates for these 243 persons include cancer, birth 25 defects and other causes. This information came from Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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40 1 the same source, the CDC. Why should Windham County 2 have high death rates? There is no obvious reason.
3 The county is nearly identical to the state in percent 4 of minorities and foreign born residents and 5 educational, poverty and income levels.
6 Reasons accounting for the high death 7 rates need to be understood. Emissions from Vermont 8 Yankee must be considered as one possible factor. For 9 years, scientists have agreed that radiation is much 10 more toxic to the very young. Our local children and 11 young adults have lived all their lives with Vermont 12 Yankee releasing radioactivity and have never breathed 13 air or drunk water without this radioactivity. How do 14 the infant mortality rates compare to the rest of the 15 state? How do the premature births and, what do you 16 call them, miscarriages rates compare to the rest of 17 the state? This information needs to be systematically 18 investigated.
19 I'm going to stop there, although I have 20 pages more, because I need to go pick up my dear 21 daughter at the bus.
22 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Sally.
23 We are going to continue on with the 24 comments and hopefully we'll be able to answer 25 questions later on. Our next two speakers, we are Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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41 1 going to go to Dr. Patrick Moore, and if you want to 2 come up, and then we are going to go to Thomas Salmon.
3 Go ahead, right up. Okay, Sally, let's, Sally, you can 4 perhaps be able to do that some time or later, but 5 let's let him talk and we'll see you later tonight.
6 Then we are going to go to--
7 MR. MOORE: Cat calls and derision have 8 actually no impact on my statement.
9 MR. CAMERON: Okay, let's hear Dr. Moore's 10 statement, please.
11 MR. MOORE: And in fact my comments are 12 relatively generic with regard to the nuclear energy 13 industry in general and energy in general.
14 I would just like to point out off the top 15 that I've spent the last 35 years as an environmental 16 activist and Ph.D. ecologist trying to understand how 17 we can continue to gain the energy, materials, food 18 that we require for survival every day while at the 19 same time working to change our behaviors and our 20 technologies in ways that result in reduced negative 21 impacts to the environment. To me, that is basically, 22 in a nutshell, the definition of sustainability.
23 We have to face the fact that there are 24 six and a half billion people who wake up every morning 25 on this planet who need resources in order to survive.
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42 1 We have to keep mining, logging, fishing, growing food 2 and all these other things, and producing energy, and 3 we have to do it in ways, intelligently, where we can 4 hope that it will be more sustainable for the future, 5 especially when that means technologies that we apply.
6 The 103 nuclear plants that are now 7 operating in the United States, producing 20 percent of 8 the U.S.'s electricity, half of that, by the way, is 9 using dismantled Soviet warheads, Russian warheads, for 10 the power source as a result of the reduction in 11 nuclear arms, the equivalent of 100 million cars taken 12 off the road, if that same power was being produced by 13 coal, which 50 percent of our power is produced by.
14 That's a lot of cars, that's a lot of CO2.
15 There is no other power source that 16 results in a larger mitigation of greenhouse gas 17 emissions than nuclear energy, so at least it must be 18 given credit on that count. Coming to the State of 19 Vermont, Vermont can be proud of the fact that it has 20 the lowest carbon dioxide emissions per capita of any 21 state in the country. In the case of many states, 22 twice as low. There is only one reason for that and 23 that is the mix of your electric supply, the fact that 24 over two thirds of your electric supply is 25 non-greenhouse gas emitting, the hydro and the nuclear, Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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43 1 the largest ones by far, and then a small amount of 2 biomass, such as heating the state capital, which is 3 also carbon neutral, and a little bit of wind, you 4 could use more of that.
5 You have an environmentally enviable 6 record and you've got to keep Vermont Yankee running if 7 you want to keep that record because there is no plans 8 for any non-CO2 emitting alternatives at present and 9 certainly none under construction. Again, I suggest 10 that you try and figure out your little argument about 11 where the wind power should be and get some windmills 12 in this state, maybe you can get five percent of your 13 electricity from wind, if you actually build some wind 14 farms, and Vermont should engage with the heightened 15 national dialogue on climate change.
16 Now that the democrats are in control of 17 Congress, there is going to be a much larger emphasis 18 on environmental issues, climate change being the most 19 important one. You can demonstrate that you are a 20 model with the lowest CO2 emissions in the country, and 21 you should get the credit for this in the ongoing 22 dialogue so that people can see how you did it. The 23 people who decided to buy the hydro and build a nuclear 24 didn't even know about climate change when those 25 decisions were made, but they were rather prescient; in Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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44 1 retrospect, they made decisions that gave you the best 2 carbon footprint in the country.
3 MR. CAMERON: Excuse me, this is, let's 4 listen to his comment and just like we are going to 5 listen to everybody's comments.
6 MR. MOORE: There is legitimate concern 7 about the future of the used nuclear fuel stored 8 on-site at Vermont Yankee. Thankfully, there is a new 9 impetus to establish a nuclear fuel recycling industry 10 in the United States, as has already been established 11 in France, the U.K., Japan and Russia. Ninety-five 12 percent of the original energy is still contained in 13 the used fuel, recycling or reprocessing, as it is also 14 known, allows the recovery of this energy in the form 15 of uranium and plutonium, results in a much reduced and 16 shorter-lived waste in the form of the fission products 17 that can be glassified and buried.
18 The nuclear renaissance is a worldwide 19 phenomenon, from Finland to Canada, to Australia to 20 China, Russia, and India and many other countries are 21 planning new nuclear construction now. In fact the 22 stigma against nuclear energy has largely been a North 23 American phenomenon over the past 30 years, another 24 area are the German speaking countries, but most 25 countries have moved ahead with nuclear during the time Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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45 1 that the United States has been more or less calm on 2 the subject.
3 Vermont should be part of the renaissance, 4 both as a way of reducing CO2 and the threat of climate 5 change, yes, indeed, I think a lot of energy should be 6 spent on ending the war in Iraq, the way to reduce 7 reliance of fossil fuels from politically unstable, 8 speaking of Iraq, and potentially hostile regions, so 9 it's got to do with energy security, just as much as it 10 has to do with climate change.
11 I believe that nuclear energy is the only 12 large baseload source of electricity that can 13 effectively reduce fossil fuel consumption while at the 14 same time satisfying the growing global demand for 15 power. A final point on efficiency and conservation, 16 both of which are very important, efficiency being 17 improvements in technology, conservation being changes 18 in behavior. As I like to put it, conservation is 19 turning a light out when you leave the room, efficiency 20 is swapping out the incandescent bulb for a compact 21 fluorescent one.
22 Since 1973, the U.S. economy has grown by 23 157 percent. In that same time, energy production and 24 consumption has increased by only 32 percent, that is a 25 very clear measure of the effectiveness of conservation Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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46 1 and efficiency practiced by American individual 2 citizens and businesses. This will continue into the 3 future, no doubt. With that, I'll end my comments.
4 Thank you very much.
5 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you, thank you.
6 Thank you very much, Dr. Moore.
7 And please, just like everybody is going 8 to have their chance, everybody is going to have their 9 chance to come down here and comment, and we are not 10 going to let anybody heckle someone up here, okay?
11 So now we have the next three speakers, we 12 are going to go to former Governor Thomas Salmon, and 13 then we are going to go to Claire Chang and then to 14 Gary Sachs.
15 Governor Salmon?
16 MR. SALMON: Good afternoon. My name is 17 Thomas P. Salmon, I live in Rockingham in this county.
18 I served two terms as Vermont Governor in the `70s and 19 at least six years as President of the University of 20 Vermont in the `90s. Along life's pathway, served some 21 17 years as Chair of the Board of Green Mountain Power 22 Company, Vermont's second largest investor-owned 23 utility, and I'll try to be very brief.
24 Unlike Dr. Moore, I am not a scientist.
25 Dr. Moore is one of the most gifted scientists I have Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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47 1 ever met. And frankly, these snide comments don't add 2 anything to this public hearing where the NRC is 3 attempting to get a broad range of everybody's 4 perspective, everybody's point of view, consistent with 5 a great Vermont tradition of inordinate respect for the 6 ideas, the thoughts, the perspectives of all of its 7 citizens.
8 Let me simply, let me simply say this, 9 there is a quite amazing phenomena going on in Vermont 10 here and now and Dr. Moore alluded to it, and the buzz 11 words are about climate change. Can you believe that 12 the first three weeks, the first three full weeks of 13 Vermont legislative session has been dedicated to 14 bringing in whole series of speakers from a variety of 15 perspectives on the subject of climate change? And 16 what is most remarkable about this, as again was 17 largely covered in Dr. Moore's remarks, is that the 18 brave little State of Vermont leads this nation in the 19 context of its energy portfolio contributing the very 20 least of carbon dioxide and other noxious substances 21 ingested into the environment.
22 And that's something that all of us, all 23 of us, ought to care about and ought to be concerned 24 about and the reason for that again was covered but it 25 relates to, yes, this nuclear facility in Vernon, a few Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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48 1 short miles down the road, and it relates to the wisdom 2 of entering into long-term contracts with Hydro Quebec 3 for hydroelectric power. And now the issue is how can 4 Vermont, which is now number one, as the cleanest state 5 in the Union on the CO2 and related issues front, 6 somehow strive diligently to hold onto its position and 7 to hold onto that position. It is not rocket science 8 to understand that relicensure of this nuclear facility 9 would add vitally to our quest for continuing baseload 10 reliable and cost effective energy, as would success in 11 artful negotiations with our friends in Quebec to 12 replicate in some significant way the hydroelectric 13 contracts of the 1980s.
14 Now even if we are hugely successful in 15 this quest, we can make a contribution to the nation, 16 we can make a contribution by showing our leadership 17 here in this state. Our contribution will not show up 18 so much as a speck on the horizon in terms of reversing 19 the trend of climate change in this country but our 20 leadership potential is significant and greatly in a 21 significant potential fulfillment.
22 Now if the decision were, for whatever set 23 of reasons, not to relicense this plant and an 24 inability to renew the Hydro Quebec contracts, the 25 natural and probable consequence of that is rather Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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49 1 clear, we would move for our energy supplies, with no 2 plans whatsoever to pursue other alternatives at the 3 present time, to the spot market of America, when it 4 comes to electric energy, and we would find that market 5 inordinately expensive.
6 And we would find the enviable position we 7 find ourselves in, as a non-toxic state, moving sadly 8 the other way and such would not enure well from either 9 an environmental or an economic perspective to the 10 people of the State of Vermont because arguably beneath 11 the surface, in my view at least, the most compelling 12 issue facing our people here and now is our demographic 13 profile. We our losing our young people between the 14 ages of 25 and 44 and people between 45 and 65 are 15 emerging as the dominant class in the state and, if 16 that trend continues, in very, very few years, we'll 17 have the most senior population in all of these United 18 States per capita, and that is a subject of profound 19 and considerable concern in terms of how we, with a 20 reduced base of citizens, remain capable to serve the 21 needs of all of our citizens.
22 Thank you.
23 (Applause) 24 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Thank you very 25 much, Governor Salmon.
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50 1 Now let's go to Gary, Gary Sachs, and then 2 we'll go to Claire Chang.
3 MR. SACHS: First off, if I might, I'm 4 Gary Sachs, resident of Brattleboro. I'd like to 5 respond to something I heard Dr. Moore say, which is 6 that we do not currently have, developed any 7 replacement sources for our electrical generation here 8 in Vermont, to which I would say, since 1940, roughly 9 1948 to 1999, there was $150 billion put to energy 10 research and development, $145 billion of that went to 11 nuclear, $5 billion went to replacement sources. I 12 believe that is one of the reasons why we currently are 13 behind the eight ball, as is everywhere in the country.
14 I do wish you would get your facts and your science 15 straight, sir.
16 Of the 32 boiling water reactors that are 17 still in operation, there are 24 that have mark one 18 containments, it's only this one that interests me, the 19 one that's five miles from here. The NRC is attempting 20 to conceal the fact that a large release of 21 radioactivity as a result of a terrorist attack on this 22 structure is entirely possible, which is according to a 23 Congressionally mandated study by the National Academy 24 of Science. There is no mention of the word terrorism 25 in the entire EIS, I've read it.
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51 1 Nearly 3,000 Americans died on 9/11.
2 Since then, more than 3,000 Americans have died 3 fighting terrorism. Roughly 70,000, if we could know, 4 Iraqi civilians have died, I'm sorry, civilians, 5 terrorists, insurgents, whatever one chooses to call 6 them, have died, Iraqi citizens, and the NRC considers 7 it okay to not include the word terrorism in it's 8 environmental impact statement.
9 I believe Vermont Yankee deserves an 10 independent, site-specific analysis. In this 11 environmental impact statement, any environmental, 12 economic, employment, sociological impacts and costs of 13 routine radiation releases that will, as the course of 14 operation, result from this license extension, they are 15 simply denied with no evaluation.
16 There is no evaluation of the probability 17 that security protocol is adequate, this is even 18 though, in 2001, not even one month prior to 9/11, 19 Vermont Yankee had the notorious rating as the least 20 secure reactor in the country, that's as the result of 21 the operational safety response evaluation test of the 22 NRC. Vermont Yankee has repeatedly said, since 9/11, 23 that they have invested $8 million strengthening their 24 defenses, upgrading their security systems. So what?
25 I don't know if that's any more or any less than the Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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52 1 Pilgrim reactor, or the Monticello reactor, or any 2 other boiling water reactor or PWR, pressurized water 3 reactor, for that matter, in this country.
4 All we here can know is that we started on 5 9/11/01 with the least secure reactor in the country, 6 as determined by NRC tests. Maybe it's more secure 7 now, maybe not. There is no assessment of the 8 environmental, the economic, employment or sociological 9 impacts and costs if this environmental impact study, 10 or your regulation or your insight, or your oversight 11 of this industry, excuse me, is not adequate to prevent 12 an uncontrolled and catastrophic release of radioactive 13 nuclides. You have no analysis of the probability the 14 plant management procedures actually can prevent an 15 uncontrolled catastrophic release of radiation or of 16 the environmental, economic, employment and 17 sociological impacts if those procedures are not 18 sufficient to prevent such a release.
19 These flaws are fatal, they are not 20 particularly difficult to understand. Information that 21 allows the environmental impact statement to avoid 22 these flaws is readily available on the record. If 23 that information is rejected and this document is 24 deemed adequate, it's only, it will only be because 25 decision makers are intent on substituting their Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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53 1 opinions, the privileges of nuclear theology for common 2 sense, common decency, verifiable substance and the 3 rule of law. This draft environmental impact statement 4 includes the NRC's staff's analysis that considers and 5 weighs the environmental impacts of the proposed 6 action, its environmental impacts of alternatives to 7 the proposed action and mitigation measures available 8 for reducing and avoiding adverse impacts, that's taken 9 directly from the abstract.
10 This recommendation made in the 11 environmental impact statement is based on the analysis 12 and findings in the GEIS, which was written ten years 13 ago, it's not site-specific and among other things, 14 it's written based on the NRC staff's consideration of 15 public comments received during the scoping process.
16 One of those public comments was mine in reference to 17 the BEIR 7 report released by the National Academy of 18 Science in 2006. Apparently the NRC decided that this 19 new study by America's top scientists was not good 20 enough to warrant consideration to upset the generic 21 environmental impact statement.
22 Terrorism must be considered here on a 23 site-specific basis. Oh, actually, I did have, I 24 wanted to briefly, if I could, respond to something you 25 said, Counselor, when you said that you do not believe Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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54 1 the state has the ability to intervene or, I forget the 2 verb you used, to, oh, that the federal government has 3 precedent, can, preemptive power over, in terms of 4 approval, what the state's ability is, for health and 5 safety, correct. We are in a regulated state.
6 When Entergy took over and purchased this 7 reactor in 2002, very clearly on July 2nd of that year, 8 in the Public Service Board hearing room, they said to 9 the Public Service Board that if the Public Service 10 Board determines that Entergy stop, they will heed what 11 the Public Service Board says, thus the state level, 12 not the federal level.
13 I thought I would clarify that for you.
14 (Applause) 15 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you. Thank you 16 very much, Gary.
17 And now we are going to go to Claire.
18 This is Claire Chang.
19 MS. CHANG: Hi. I'm Claire Chang. I have 20 a PowerPoint presentation, I would like to invite, 21 please, come up on stage. I have a PowerPoint 22 presentation that I would like to have up on stage.
23 MR. CAMERON: Claire, what are you doing?
24 MS. CHANG: They will just be my 25 PowerPoint presentation. I don't, I'm not allowed to Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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55 1 have slides up there, so these are my slides.
2 MR. CAMERON: Okay, I'll tell you what, 3 let's get them up here and let's do your presentation.
4 MS. CHANG: Thank you.
5 MR. CAMERON: Come on, ladies, and then we 6 are going to ask you to step down after that. Okay, 7 Claire, go ahead.
8 MS. CHANG: So my name is Claire Chang and 9 one thing I wanted to say was if we had a catastrophic 10 event at Vermont Yankee, we need an evacuation plan, we 11 need a number of first responders, we need a number of 12 measures that we need to take but, if we have a 13 catastrophic event at a wind turbine or at a solar 14 panel array, would we need evacuation routes or first 15 emergency responders? I don't think so. Louder?
16 Really? Do we need that repeated, what I said 17 previously, to those in the back? So, if there is a 18 catastrophic event at a wind turbine or at a solar 19 panel array, would we need first responders, or an 20 evacuation route, or FEMA, or the Vermont Emergency 21 Management Association or agency to come down and 22 rescue us? No.
23 But from Vermont Yankee, we do, and that 24 is part, I think, of what the impact is of having that 25 power plant within sight, and within smell and within Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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56 1 hearing range, because we hear the sirens every 2 Saturday at noon telling us what we might do if there 3 was a catastrophic event. Yet none of those plans or 4 measures are taken into account in the environmental 5 impact statement, neither is the event of a terrorist 6 attack and even not a terrorist attack, if there is any 7 other kind of mishap that happens.
8 And the National Academy of Sciences has 9 already said that the spent fuel pool, which isn't 10 included, I didn't see it on the slide, but maybe the 11 gentleman hadn't prepared the slide and so the spent 12 fuel pool isn't included in the slides, about it being 13 70 feet up in the air, outside of containment, in a tin 14 swimming pool, basically.
15 And if that swimming pool were breached, 16 the water would start leaking out, and it doesn't all 17 have to disappear, just some of that water needs to go 18 and those fuel rods would start igniting on their own 19 because even though they are spent fuel rods, they are 20 actually highly radioactive, more radioactive than the 21 fuel rods that go into the reactor. And those fuel 22 rods would start igniting and there would not be an 23 explosion but there would be a fire, a very, very long 24 lasting fire that would basically release radioactivity 25 into the air and potentially contaminate 25,000 square Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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57 1 miles. That's about 90 miles radius and, depending on 2 how wind blows that day, who would get affected, but it 3 would be a majority of New England, and that's all of 4 us sitting in this room and I think that needs to be 5 included in the environmental impact statement.
6 Now Hellen Caldecott has written this 7 book, it's called Nuclear Power is not the Answer, it's 8 not the answer to our energy problem, it's not the 9 answer to global warming and it's, but it is the answer 10 for Entergy to make lots and lots of money and it is 11 the answer for us, as the common people, to stay 12 beholden to the corporation and to the central 13 government. The only way we can get out from 14 underneath this is if each one of us takes personal 15 responsibility for all of our actions every day from 16 this day on and that's the only way we are ever going 17 to make any change.
18 And that's why I've invited these women to 19 come up, because they take personal responsibility 20 every day for trying to figure out how to make the 21 world a better place for themselves, and for everyone 22 in this room, and for everyone in the state and for 23 everyone in New England. Each one of us has to start 24 turning off the lights, changing our light bulbs to 25 compact fluorescents, driving at least half less than Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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58 1 we drive now. Every gallon of gasoline puts out 18 to 2 19 pounds of carbon into the air, every gallon. Now 3 what's your fuel efficiency, 12, 15, 20, maybe 35 or 4 40? But that's very few people.
5 And this includes anyone from the NRC or 6 from Entergy, no one is exempt, every car puts out that 7 much carbon, unless of course you are driving an 8 electric vehicle or you are driving one that has a high 9 fuel efficiency, like the new hybrids or whatever, but 10 we need to each one of us take into account what we do 11 and how we can make a change. And the only reason 12 Entergy and all the other corporations who run nuclear 13 power plants are trying to put this as a green, clean 14 solution to global warming is because we are all 15 scared, and we have reason to be scared, but the thing 16 is that nuclear is not going to dig us out of the hole.
17 We are so far in the hole, we have to take 18 every measure to get out of the hole, and electricity 19 generation only accounts for maybe a third of the 20 carbon dioxide that is going into the air, 21 transportation accounts for another third and another 22 third, amazingly enough, is attributed to natural, such 23 as forest fires, actually, it's really scary. So I'm 24 not saying up here, well maybe I am, sorry. Okay, so, 25 another thing I just remembered was that Patrick Moore Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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59 1 said that we, and also the former governor said that we 2 in Vermont need to have this power plant because we 3 can't possibly replace it with anything else.
4 Well Vermont gets maybe 200 to 250 5 kilowatt hours from that power plant. Megawatts, 6 sorry, I made the same mistake the last time too, I saw 7 it in the transcripts. So, megawatts. I want it to be 8 small, I'm trying to make it really small. So, of 9 those 250 megawatts, we can actually replace tomorrow, 10 this is not in 10, or 15 or 20 years, we can replace 11 tomorrow 25 percent of it just through conservation and 12 energy efficiency. If the State of Vermont decided it 13 was the will of the people and the will of the state, 14 we could replace our washing machines, our dishwashers, 15 our refrigerators, our air conditioners and other 16 appliances with energy efficient ones and we could 17 immediately drop 25 percent of our demand.
18 Now that takes care of more than half of 19 Vermont Yankee, what Vermont uses from Vermont Yankee.
20 Massachusetts uses another 25 percent of Vermont 21 Yankee, approximately, I don't know the numbers 22 exactly, so Massachusetts could do the same thing, 23 poof, we could shut Vermont Yankee down tomorrow and it 24 would be amazing. So it's not inconceivable, it's not 25 this unreachable solution, it is within our power, the Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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60 1 people can decide. That's all it takes and that's all 2 it's ever taken is the people deciding that they want 3 to do something different and they are going to do it 4 now. We can't sit on our duffs anymore. Thank you 5 very much.
6 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Thank you, 7 Claire.
8 All right, ladies, if you could just go 9 back and thank you very much. All right, the next 10 three speakers, we are going to go to Amanda Ibey, and 11 then Howard Shaffer and then Paul Bousquet.
12 Amanda?
13 MS. IBEY: Good afternoon. My name is 14 Amanda Ibey, I was born and raised here in Vermont, I 15 came back after graduating from college and today I'm 16 here in my capacity as the Executive Director for the 17 Vermont Energy Partnership. The partnership is a 18 diverse group of 75 business, community and labor 19 leaders, as well as individual energy experts, 20 committed to addressing Vermont's impending electricity 21 supply gap. The need for Vermont to secure a reliable, 22 affordable and clean electricity portfolio has never 23 been greater which leads the partnership to reiterate 24 its support for the license renewal of Vermont Yankee.
25 First, though, let me be clear, the key to Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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61 1 Vermont's future prosperity is through a broad, 2 diversified electricity portfolio. To this end, the 3 partnership urges the state to work to permit and 4 develop new in-state generating sources like wind, 5 solar, small scale hydro, biomass and other 6 environmentally friendly resources. The partnership 7 also feels it is equally important that Vermonters 8 incorporate more energy efficient products into their 9 homes and businesses, as well as looking for ways to 10 increase their conservation practices.
11 While the partnership believes these steps 12 outlined above should be implemented, we cannot ignore 13 nor deny that the foundation for any successful 14 electricity portfolio starts with baseload sources of 15 power, this is why it is vital that we continue to 16 secure HydroQuebec and Vermont Yankee beyond their 17 current operating licenses. Vermont Yankee, our 18 state's lone significant in-state source of power, has 19 been safely and reliably providing Vermonters with 20 electricity for over 30 years. It has continually met 21 the NRC's highest safety standards largely due to the 22 dedicated men and women who work at the plant and live 23 with their families in the surrounding communities.
24 It is important to keep in mind the public 25 safety issues that are sure to arise if Vermont does Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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62 1 not have an adequate supply of baseload power. With 2 the New England Region strapped for power as it is, we 3 cannot responsibly close the plant and cavalierly 4 assume that our neighbors will provide us with 5 sufficient let alone reasonably priced power. Should 6 rolling blackouts and brownouts have to be implemented, 7 the stress it will place on our public safety and 8 health will be enormous.
9 The steady stream of electricity Vermont 10 Yankee has supplied has been crucial for consumers and, 11 at a time when Vermont must contend with an aging work 12 force and an exodus of young people, the plant employs 13 over 600 highly skilled men and women full time.
14 Vermont Yankee provides more than $200 million of 15 economic benefit annually to Windham County and the 16 State of Vermont through state and local taxes, its 17 payroll and the purchase of local goods and services, 18 but the economics of the plant and its contributions 19 are simply one piece of this discussion.
20 Perhaps right now an even greater benefit 21 of the plant is its low environmental impact, 22 especially as it relates to the issue of global warming 23 and climate change. Many claim, including Vermont's 24 own legislature, that global warming is possibly the 25 most serious environmental issue we face. Today, the Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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63 1 United States is largely dependent on coal fired 2 plants; approximately 600 coal fired plants supply 50 3 percent of this country's electricity. Unfortunately, 4 these plants also release harmful toxins and greenhouse 5 gases into our atmosphere.
6 Now, while the country looks to reduce its 7 reliance on carbon emitting sources like coal, here in 8 Vermont our story is different, we have one of the 9 cleanest electricity portfolios, one of the lowest 10 carbon emitting portfolios because our two main sources 11 of power, including Vermont Yankee, do not release 12 carbon emissions when producing electricity. Should 13 Vermont Yankee's operating license not be extended, 14 then our utilities would be forced to purchase power 15 from the spot market at a high economic and 16 environmental cost, as the only realistic alternatives 17 to replacing Vermont Yankee lie in other baseload 18 sources of power such as coal.
19 In closing, Vermont Yankee is a safe, is 20 safe and good for the environment and economy, it has 21 provided Vermonters with reliable, affordable and clean 22 power for more than three decades and it has done so 23 safely. We know there is a strong array of support 24 throughout the state for the plant's continued 25 operation and we believe that granting Vermont Yankee a Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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64 1 license extension is a responsible and necessary 2 action.
3 On behalf of the members of the Vermont 4 Energy Partnership, I would like to thank you for this 5 opportunity.
6 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you. Thank you, 7 Amanda.
8 And next, we are going to Howard Shaffer.
9 Mr. Shaffer, excuse me, introduce yourself to us, okay?
10 MR. SHAFFER: Good afternoon again. Can 11 everybody hear me? My name is Howard Shaffer, I am a 12 retired nuclear engineer now living in Enfield, New 13 Hampshire, but continuing my license in nuclear 14 engineering and professional engineering in Vermont, 15 and New Hampshire, and Massachusetts and Illinois where 16 I have worked. I have come back here for retirement, 17 my first retirement activity was in public service as 18 an American Association for the Advancement of Science 19 Congressional Fellow in Washington in the year 2001, a 20 very interesting year there.
21 During that time, the House wrote and 22 completed its energy bill and I was on the energy 23 subcommittee of the House Committee on Science. That 24 energy bill finally got passed in the last Congress, it 25 went over to the Senate in September, 2001, but then Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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65 1 they got their attention diverted by the events of 2 September 11th. And interestingly enough, one of the 3 things that Congress did right away, which has not 4 gotten very much good coverage in the press, was take a 5 quick look at our most vulnerable infrastructure in the 6 country to see what measures ought to be taken right 7 away, and they found the most vulnerable infrastructure 8 and they took action.
9 That most vulnerable infrastructure was 10 our public water supply system, reservoirs are wide 11 open and so forth. The electric transmission system 12 has had damage to it on a far greater scale by ice 13 storms than terrorists could ever do. Natural gas 14 pipelines are designed for sectionalizations because, 15 as the representatives told us, our worst enemy is 16 somebody with a backhoe, people are digging up natural 17 gas pipelines all the time, so they are designed for 18 accidents, terrorists couldn't possibly do worse.
19 And nuclear power plants were not on the 20 list at all because of, as Mr. Sachs proved by his 21 remarks, there was a formal process in place since 1979 22 to guard against terrorism, as the court mentioned in 23 the Diablo Canyon decision, 1979 is when the NRC 24 started formally looking at terrorism, and there were 25 bullet proof steel shields in the hallways of the Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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66 1 plants and so forth during the 1980s when I was back 2 here working again on the plant. So, as I found in 3 Washington, at the end, all decisions are based on 4 personal value judgements, all the important ones, not 5 science and engineering alone.
6 As a matter of fact, there are no 7 scientific formulas or engineering processes that can 8 tell you whether something is safe or not, science and 9 engineering can only tell you how something works and 10 what the consequences are. Whether that's safe or 11 whether it's acceptable is a personal value judgement 12 and that's what politics is all about in this country, 13 but making the right value judgements depends on public 14 education and the industry, and I want to say to the 15 staff members here, and I hope you'll take it back, the 16 Commission has a long way to go on public education on 17 these matters.
18 Even though people may still continue to 19 disagree with us forever or with the Commission and the 20 majority view on nuclear power and other things 21 forever, we have an obligation to continue the public 22 education. I realize, in a politically charged 23 environment like Washington, particularly when there is 24 a hostile majority in Congress or hostile 25 administration in the White House, how difficult it is Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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67 1 to not seem to be an advocate, but I would offer for 2 the Commission's consideration that telling the whole 3 truth in things that have happened is not advocacy.
4 There is nothing wrong with saying that 5 the Commission's activity on concerns on terrorism 6 began in 1979 so, when 2001 came, we are not starting 7 from ground zero. There is nothing wrong with saying, 8 when you look at health and safety of radioactivity and 9 radiation, that the research and development began over 10 100 years ago and the regulatory process began in 1928.
11 There is nothing wrong with saying those things to 12 continue to reach out to people, so my message is we 13 must continue the public education process but at the 14 end know that there will still be people who disagree 15 with us, but remember what one of the founders of our 16 country said, I may disagree with what you say but I 17 would defend with my life your right to say it. Thank 18 you.
19 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you very much, 20 Howard.
21 And I think Paul is making his way up to 22 the microphone now.
23 MR. BOUSQUET: Hello. My name is Paul 24 Bousquet, I live in West Townsend. This is the 25 question I asked last meeting and I didn't quite Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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68 1 understand the answer then, so I'll repeat it. My 2 understanding is that the general security has been 3 beefed up since 9/11, yet nothing has been added for 4 security from the air. If this plant is relicensed, 5 how can we feel secure from an attack on the spent fuel 6 pool? Then my speech goes, of course I don't see too 7 many employees, but I thought they would have brought 8 the bus and packed them in, like one meeting years ago.
9 But I would like to speak today not only 10 to the NRC folks but also to all the employees at all 11 the remaining reactors around our vast country. I 12 challenge all of you to read up on the changing science 13 behind the nuclear industry, the National Academy of 14 Sciences and the Union of Concerned Scientists have 15 recent information that you need to know. Whatever 16 information that your bosses are feeding you is 17 incomplete and one-sided, the effects of ionizing 18 radiation are greater than previously thought. It's 19 all but proven that scheduled and accidental release 20 are poisoning our surroundings.
21 The spent fuel pool is radically more 22 dangerous and susceptible to terrorism than previously 23 thought. The highly toxic waste, with the national 24 repository not going to open, is already at its final 25 resting place, and that place happens to be in my Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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69 1 backyard close to where both my father and my 2 grandfather are buried, a place worth fighting for.
3 You people of the industry should be ashamed, you've 4 placed good paying jobs and careers ahead of 5 responsibility. You've read your pipeline of 6 propaganda and you feel reasonably sure you can keep 7 your bomb material and cancer causing waste out of our 8 environment, you must feel somewhat sure or you 9 couldn't sleep at night.
10 Have you ever wondered why your industry 11 needs to dump so much time and money on the public 12 relations around the reactor towns? Are you 13 abnormally, are your abnormally large donations 14 intended more as bribery than charity? Of course they 15 are, you are trying to pacify the public while you 16 shove your dirty industry down their throats. You know 17 the majority of people don't want anything to do with 18 this dangerous form of energy, so they have to be 19 bribed. The bottom line is that this power plant and 20 all the others are a liability to our future.
21 You are poisoning not only ourselves and 22 our environment but also the coming generation's.
23 Every day, every minute that you are generating 24 electricity, you are creating an obscene amount of 25 atomic bomb making material and cancer causing toxins Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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70 1 stored in temporary vessels seemingly without a clue as 2 to what to do next. I've heard people from the outside 3 of the fence refer to the people inside the fence as 4 evil. I think of you more as greedy and misinformed.
5 People, you've been lied to, there is no nuclear 6 renaissance, there are no new safe waste-free reactors 7 ready to go on line, just a dying industry treading 8 water until the final science shuts them down.
9 We need help in figuring out how on earth 10 to ever clean up the mess your industry has created. I 11 leave you with a misinformed quote from my ex-brother 12 in law who was known to encourage other workers to go 13 deeper into hotter areas of the plant to make more 14 money. He was an electrician at Vermont Yankee for 14 15 years before he died, middle-aged, of leukemia. He 16 said, in all seriousness, don't worry, nukes melt down, 17 not up. Don't be misinformed, people, you know your 18 industry is biased, maybe a career change is in order.
19 Vermont is at the edge of creating true renewable 20 energy, careers, and they should use some of you bright 21 minds currently being wasted on your poisonous, 22 gluttonous industry.
23 Thank you.
24 (Applause) 25 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you for those Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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71 1 opinions, Paul.
2 And we are going to go to Daniel Marx, and 3 then Art Greenbaum and then Emma next, Emma Stamas 4 after that. This is Daniel, Daniel Marx.
5 MR. MARX: My name is Dan Marx, I live in 6 Dummerston, the next town up the road a bit. I'm a 7 member of the Vermont Energy Partnership for about a 8 month. For 24 years, from 1972 to 1996, I was the 9 chief biologist at Vermont Yankee, I retired from 10 Vermont Yankee in `96. I came to Vermont Yankee from 11 the University of Minnesota with a Ph.D. in zoology.
12 In Minnesota, I had some prior experience with aquatic 13 environmental monitoring at the Monticello and Prairie 14 Island Nuclear plants, both on the Mississippi River, I 15 also worked with large coal fired generating plants.
16 With Vermont Yankee, my primary function 17 from day to day was management and implementation of 18 the aquatic environmental monitoring program on the 19 Connecticut River, my responsibilities including 20 sampling, monitoring, surveillance of a large number of 21 parameters, physical, chemical biological. Near the 22 top of the list was temperature of the river at many 23 fixed locations in the river and the plant discharge 24 cooling water. I was also responsible for the 25 management and maintenance of the environmental Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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72 1 discharge permit, so called NPDES permit, which means 2 National Pollutant, not Pollution, Discharge 3 Elimination System, a minor bit of trivia there.
4 This is a permitting system driven by the 5 Federal Clean Water Act and the EPA. I spearheaded the 6 renewal of the discharge permit every five years, I 7 also guided two combined 316A, 316B demonstrations 8 which resulted in modification of thermal discharge 9 temperature criteria being permitted under very 10 specific conditions of overflow and temperature to 11 adequately protect river biota. During my 24-year 12 tenure, all the data collected from the river, with 13 associated analysis and interpretation, was conducted 14 for Vermont Yankee by the environmental consulting firm 15 Aquatech Incorporation out of South Burlington.
16 Vermont Yankee and Aquatech actually began 17 the studies pre-operationally in 1967 before I was on 18 the scene. From day one, the early environmental 19 program was crafted with consultant, with consultation 20 and input from the state environmental agencies from 21 Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. In the very 22 early days, up to about 1972 or `73, the Atomic Energy 23 Commission, now the NRC, you guys, was also on board in 24 proffering the studies. The programs always remained 25 flexible with an eye to modifications, as might be Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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73 1 required in the future.
2 Incidentally, it was also in 1967 that the 3 New England states, which host the Connecticut River, 4 launched a long term project to attempt to restore the 5 Atlantic Salmon to the river, along with the 6 collaboration of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
7 The area of the river included in the Vermont Yankee 8 study zone extends from up river in Brattleboro where 9 the West River enters to the south, down river, at the 10 old abandoned Shell Bridge at Northfield, 11 Massachusetts. This 26-mile stretch of river is 12 without question the most intensively and extensively 13 studied section of the entire river.
14 In conclusion, my 24-year tenure, `72 to 15 `96, in charge of the Vermont Yankee river studies, 16 it's my professional judgement, opinion, that it has 17 been adequately demonstrated that Vermont Yankee's 18 impact on the ecosystem of the river has been 19 negligible, not zero but negligible, very low, or, in 20 the parlance of the NRC, very small. Vermont Yankee 21 has been a very low environmental impact baseload, 24/7 22 producer of a major portion of Vermont's electrical 23 energy, it deserves to be a part of Vermont's energy 24 future along with green renewables, hydroelectric, 25 wind, solar, biomass and conservation. Let's get off Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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74 1 all fossil fuels to generate electricity.
2 Thank you.
3 (Applause) 4 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Dan.
5 Is Art Greenbaum here? Okay, great, and 6 then we'll go next to Emma Stamas.
7 MR. GREENBAUM: My name is Arthur 8 Greenbaum. I'm a resident here of Brattleboro since 9 1971, 36 years. My wife Susan and I have raised our 10 two daughters here. I am also a part owner of a local 11 33-year old construction company, we employ 12 approximately 15 people and work geographically within 13 60 miles of the Brattleboro area, and we do a small 14 percentage of work with Vermont Yankee. I'm an active 15 local businessman who has been part of the Rotary, the 16 Chamber, serves also as a team member for the 17 evacuation plan at the Bellows Falls Reception Center 18 and I spend my free time with my family enjoying the 19 outdoors.
20 I support an environmentally sound 21 electric portfolio, nuclear and Vermont Yankee are part 22 of it. I've been driving a hybrid car for two years, 23 home heating with wood for over 25 years and have 24 replaced oil furnaces at six residences that we rent to 25 local folks. I've done replacement windows and I Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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75 1 purchase 25 percent of all of my electric through 2 Vermont Cow Power. I've had the opportunity to see 3 firsthand the amount of safety technology and training 4 the plant, the industry and the NRC has put into 5 Vermont Yankee to allow it to be safe and reliable.
6 From the original design of the plant, 7 with concrete walls several feet thick, to the ongoing 8 upgrades and maintenance of the plant, I believe it is 9 a safe plant, the millions of dollars spent on 10 security, plant upgrades and training is part of the 11 reason for this. Another part of its success is the 12 process here today. The NRC, other industry 13 organizations learn, listen and implement ideas from 14 concerns raised. The development of technology needs 15 to continue with power generation, as it is doing in 16 other fields. Nuclear power, I believe, is a safe, 17 cost effective component of our energy needs.
18 It is also a key component in solving 19 greenhouse emissions and I encourage you to continue 20 having Vermont Yankee to be part of our Vermont energy 21 portfolio, keeping prices affordable and promoting 22 economic development in the state while contributing to 23 our economy. Thank you very much. I do have one other 24 comment, it's not written.
25 MR. CAMERON: Go ahead.
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76 1 MR. GREENBAUM: But if the majority of the 2 people here would spend their time and effort promoting 3 wind power and implementing many of the good ideas that 4 have been expressed here today, we would all be further 5 ahead. Thank you.
6 MR. CAMERON: Thank you very much, Art, 7 for those comments.
8 And this is Emma.
9 MS. STAMAS: I'm Emma Stamas, I'm not paid 10 to be here. I hope there are some NRC people in the 11 audience that are wiling to listen. I noticed that a 12 lot of the scientists who spoke left promptly, I guess 13 we don't have, as citizens, anything that could 14 possibly be interesting or informative to them, they 15 know it all, I guess. Some of them seem pretty 16 arrogant in terms of their long range views.
17 I am here to represent hundreds, literally 18 hundreds of friends, relatives and teenagers who work 19 with my, I know several teachers and I'm representing 20 people from just south of the State of Vermont in the 21 hill towns of Massachusetts.
22 We are just as concerned as those that 23 live a little bit over the border in Vermont, many of 24 us are closer than most of the residents in Vermont and 25 I think it's pretty arrogant for the Governor of Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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77 1 Vermont, from many years ago, to be so sure that he is 2 doing the right thing in supporting this aging plant.
3 I haven't heard much talk, except the last fellow 4 talked about methane being produced and used as an 5 energy source. One of the things that many people do 6 not realize is that we are pouring huge amounts of 7 methane as well as carbon dioxide into the atmosphere 8 and both of these greenhouse gasses contribute to 9 greenhouse warming; you can read more about it in The 10 Inconvenient Truth and other web sites.
11 The problem is that, in farming 12 communities, such as we still have in Vermont and 13 Massachusetts, we have the opportunity to reduce the 14 methane that we put into the atmosphere by simply 15 making containment types of facilities on farms that 16 can produce methane and generate electricity, thus 17 reducing the amount of methane that goes into the 18 atmosphere during farm, that type of farming 19 production. There is, the leftovers from the digestion 20 tanks can then be used by fertilizer, they are less 21 odoriferous because the methane has been used, drawn 22 off, and they are just as good as fertilizers, if not 23 better, because they are not raw, they have been 24 digested and, in doing this type of change, we can 25 create an avenue for our farms to remain economically Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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78 1 viable.
2 Why isn't this happening like wild fire 3 all over New England and other parts of the United 4 States? Because forces within our generation industry 5 our power generation industry, have a vested interest 6 in making sure that our power is produced by huge 7 facilities that can be controlled by huge corporations.
8 These people do not have a vested interest in allowing 9 small generation facilities to develop and proliferate 10 across the United States, even if scientists could do a 11 very thorough study and prove that this would be a more 12 efficient, effective, cost, both cost effective and an 13 economically effective way of producing energy that 14 could be sustainable into the future, not only 15 providing jobs in areas that are rural and sustaining 16 farming in areas that are barely able to have their 17 farmers make a living, but by making a whole, a much 18 cleaner, safer form of energy production.
19 The ironic thing about the whole study of 20 the effect of the nuclear power plant as being so much 21 safer and more wonderful for our region because it 22 produces enough power and we aren't going to have the 23 lights to out or the heat go off, the ironic thing 24 about that is that, this month, in Monticello, at the 25 Monticello facility in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a nuclear Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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79 1 facility that is just about the same type and age as 2 the Vermont Yankee plant and the Pilgrim plant, in a 3 facility that was just recently granted their 20-year 4 renewal, a 13 ton control box fell and hit, it didn't 5 cause a serious amount of damage but it caused the 6 steam lines to dent and the steam pressure to drop, and 7 that power plant had to be suddenly closed down.
8 I don't even know if it's up and running 9 again because there has been so little publicity about 10 this event. I have heard one report on NPR, did a 11 Google search on the Internet and found out, that same 12 report I got written up but very little else, and I 13 have not heard what has happened since this happened 14 several weeks ago.
15 Now, this is my question to you folks who 16 are so proud of your nuclear power industry and what 17 wealth and wonder it has brought to us, when we have 18 600 milliwatts or megawatts of power produced by one 19 facility and suddenly, just like that, as happened in 20 Monticello, in the dead of winter when it is the 21 coldest part of the winter it suddenly goes off line, 22 what happens? You lose 600 megawatts of power.
23 The irony here is we have been told time 24 and time again that we can't possibly go to wind, 25 solar, methane, hydro because those produce too little Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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80 1 power. The fact of the matter is we need to have small 2 power plants scattered throughout the land, providing 3 jobs throughout the land--
4 (Applause) 5 MS. STAMAS: --providing power that may 6 not be huge in its amount, it may vary from moment to 7 moment in the amount it feeds to the grid, but it will 8 not suddenly cut out just like that, 600 megawatts gone 9 in a moment in the dead of winter. We do not need this 10 kind of power and we can do better than it, it's old 11 fashioned, it's not sustainable, it's expensive. The 12 Rowe power plant not far from here, it took 20 years to 13 decommission that plant and it cost three times as much 14 money to decommission that plant than it cost to build 15 it, and that is adjusted for inflation, look it up on 16 the Internet. These are facts that are not from some 17 wild group, these are facts from the industry web 18 sites, check them out.
19 The fact of the matter is we cannot afford 20 to keep these aging plants going, we must gradually 21 phase them out. We are not asking for Vermont Yankee 22 to shut down tomorrow, we are asking for it to phase 23 out over a five year period and, during that five year 24 period, we here in this part of the world are very, 25 very fortunate to have several factors that can allow Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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81 1 us to replace that plant, and those factors are we have 2 a motivated New England Yankee ingenuity to start using 3 methane, hydro. We have vast hydro resources not just 4 in Canada, right here in Vermont and Massachusetts.
5 (Applause) 6 MS. STAMAS: And we don't have to make 7 huge dams and flood property to make, we have the 8 technology to take a little tiny stream that I have 9 next to my house, I could generate all the electricity 10 I need in that house, in my household, with a little 11 micro hydro system the size of this speaker platform, 12 and it only costs a few thousands dollars. Why isn't 13 everybody doing it? Because we don't have the 14 knowledge, but we do, in this area, have some well 15 educated ingenuity, people with a lot of ingenuity that 16 also have time on their hands because we don't have a 17 lot of job growth here.
18 We don't need Vermont Yankee's power to 19 lull us into submission and continue on the track that 20 most of the United States is on, thinking that we can't 21 possibly do anything except keep this power plant going 22 as long as possible. We can show the rest of the 23 United States a different way, we also have huge wind 24 resources. It breaks my heart when I hear that people 25 will not accept wind power because it's aesthetically Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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82 1 unpleasing and therefore it's not a viable alternative.
2 How aesthetically pleasing is any power plant that 3 you've ever seen? How aesthetically pleasing is any 4 electrical line running over a mountain top? None of 5 it is.
6 MR. CAMERON: Emma, could you just sum up 7 for us?
8 MS. STAMAS: Okay, one final summation.
9 My husband has worked for 30 years as a 10 quality assurance manager in a pharmaceutical company.
11 Evidently, in the pharmaceutical field, people are more 12 concerned about quality assurance than the NRC is 13 because it is a known fact that quality cannot be 14 inspected into a facility. In other words, you can 15 inspect a facility every single day, that does not make 16 it safer or more quality than it already is, what it 17 does is it lets you see the problems as they come up.
18 And in the pharmaceutical industry, there 19 is a rule that when any major change is made in a 20 facility, a whole new quality assurance program must be 21 written because when any retrofit, or upgrade or change 22 is made in the facility, everything in the facility is 23 effected by that change and it is impossible to know 24 what the quality is going to be, whether it's safe, 25 whether there is going to be a potential problem, Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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83 1 unless you completely redo your whole quality analysis.
2 Now, if this is done in the pharmaceutical 3 industry where there is time to call back medicines 4 that are found to be poorly made, and poorly designed 5 and so forth, before people actually swallow them, why 6 isn't it the policy in a field like nuclear energy 7 production where when a problem occurs, time can be of 8 the essence and people who may have inspected the plant 9 years ago or may have some inkling of what the problem 10 is may have retired or may not be there, they may have 11 died. The plant is way beyond its original life span 12 and yet we aren't requiring this kind of quality 13 inspection and assurance from this industry?
14 And I think that is something we are going 15 to have to apologize to our grandchildren about when 16 they have to deal with decommissioning the mess--
17 MR. CAMERON: Okay, thank you.
18 MS. STAMAS: --that we've created.
19 (Applause) 20 MR. CAMERON: Thank you, Emma.
21 We are going to go to Harvey, Harvey 22 Schaktman? He is not here, okay. David McElwee?
23 How about Sarah, Sarah Kotkov? Sarah?
24 This is Sarah Kotkov.
25 MS. KOTKOV: My name is Sarah Kotkov, I'm Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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84 1 on the Board of New England Coalition but these remarks 2 are my own. I was going to talk about the fuel pool 3 fire, but Claire Chang already has discussed that.
4 However, I haven't gone to these NRC meetings, I know 5 that they talk about probabilistic risk assessment.
6 Admittedly, it is a low probability that terrorists 7 will attack the fuel pool, probably because Vermont is 8 a little bit boring, but the consequences would be 9 extremely severe. As Claire said, 25,000 miles would 10 be contaminated by such an event.
11 If some of the water drains out of the 12 fuel pool, the chimney effect of the effect of cool air 13 passing through the cladding would be stopped and 14 therefore the zirconium would self-ignite, that's the 15 cladding of the fuel would self-ignite and spew 16 radioactive contamination over three states. Of 17 course, assuming we got out, which is, which is quite 18 an assumption of course because the evacuation plans 19 are really laughable, assuming we got out, we could of 20 course never come back, and neither could our children, 21 grandchildren, etcetera, these areas would be basically 22 permanently contaminated.
23 The fuel pool could also be damaged in the 24 case of an earthquake and this area is subject to 25 earthquakes. The fuel must remain in the fuel pools Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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85 1 for five years to cool down, so even if the plant 2 operates until 2012, the fuel would be there for 3 another five years. Now, if the plant is relicensed, 4 this situation will continue for 20 more years beyond 5 that, of course. The fuel is, once it's taken out of 6 the fuel pool, it is then placed in dry casks, so I 7 think that now we have permission to have six dry casks 8 on the banks of the river, then this would add another 9 20 more years of fuel that would be stored on the banks 10 of the Connecticut River.
11 This is of course high level waste, 12 meaning that it is extremely long lasting, as well as 13 highly radioactive. One of the lovely misnomers of the 14 lingo is that low-level waste, we think that sounds not 15 too dangerous, of course it's extremely radioactive, 16 just as radioactive as the high level waste, it just 17 won't last quite as many generations. I think that we 18 can expect that this waste will be permanently on the 19 banks of the river and this, the banks of the river, in 20 1991, were studied for a low-level radioactive storage 21 facility, as it's called, and were deemed inappropriate 22 because of the, because it's a wetland, basically.
23 So now we would have a high level dump, 24 with greatly more waste, if the plant is allowed to 25 relicense, on the banks of the river permanently Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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86 1 because Yucca Mountain of course is in nowheresville, 2 that's probably never going to happen. Another issue 3 of course is the fence line dose. Because of the 4 uprate, the fence line dose is being exceeded and of 5 course this is another situation that would then 6 continue for 20 more years. So I think that, to call 7 this green is, this plant that is producing, that is 8 leaking radiation and producing highly toxic waste that 9 will last basically forever and will be here forever is 10 just absurd.
11 I think that's all I have to say, thank 12 you.
13 (Applause) 14 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Thank you, 15 Sarah.
16 Ed Sprague and Connie Burton? Ed Sprague?
17 How about Connie Burton? And Bill Maguire?
18 And Teresa Caldwell? Here is Teresa.
19 MS. CALDWELL: Hi everyone. I'm speaking 20 off the cuff here and I'm going to try not to ramble.
21 This is such a polarizing topic for people, and I don't 22 think I'm going to change anybody's mind and I don't 23 think anybody has said here before me is going to 24 change my mind.
25 I wish that Dr. Moore and the former Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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87 1 governor hadn't left so soon because I did want to 2 apologize to them for people who are heckling them and 3 being disrespectful. I think that people get so 4 emotional because we are afraid and that people who are 5 opposed to this plant hear people expressing points of 6 view that it's safe, and it doesn't emit carbon, you 7 know, CO2s, and we are angry and afraid and so that we 8 were disrespectful and I wanted to say I was sorry for 9 that.
10 I have to disagree with Dr. Moore because 11 I think his point of view could kill me. I think that 12 this plant is unsafe and it should be decommissioned, I 13 do not believe it should have a 20-year license 14 extension. I think that I've been coming to these 15 meetings with the NRC for about 30 years and I know 16 there are some people here who truly believe nuclear 17 power is the wave of the future. Most of the people I 18 hear who speak on behalf of nuclear power have a 19 financial investment in the industry and therefore I 20 have to disagree with them just because I think that 21 they're not thinking straight.
22 I do believe that the NRC is aware that 23 there are increased risks for us who live downwind and 24 that a catastrophic accident is possible, the likes of 25 Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. It could be a Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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88 1 terrorist target, and I believe there is no solution to 2 the high level waste that is being created that will be 3 deadly for thousands of years and I'm here to urge the 4 NRC not to relicense Vermont Yankee. It's been my 5 understanding that any nuclear power plant that has 6 come up for an uprate or a license extension has been 7 granted one automatically.
8 I know a number of people who wanted to 9 come to this meeting who didn't want to bother because 10 they felt that it was a foregone conclusion, the NRC 11 has made up their mind, and that they just have to 12 listen to us complain and that it's already been 13 decided. So, if there is any person here, who has any 14 influence, who is with the NRC, I want you to think of 15 me, look at my face, remember me. My name is Teresa 16 Caldwell, and I live 12 miles from this plant and I 17 sleep with my bedroom window open and when I go to bed 18 at night, I think which way is the wind blowing? What 19 is the wind carrying? Are they having a release today?
20 Should I close the window? Has there been an accident?
21 And I'm afraid of this plant and I know 22 that there is a lot of people who think that I'm 23 hysterical or that I'm misguided and uninformed, and I 24 think I'm very informed and I think I'm very aware of 25 the risks that this plant raises. So all of you, when Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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89 1 you go to bed tonight, I hope that you don't sleep near 2 this plant and I hope that you're not downwind from it 3 but, if you are, think to yourself could I be making a 4 mistake? Could I be wrong in supporting this plant?
5 And if I am, then I am subjecting an entire community 6 to unacceptable risks.
7 Thank you.
8 (Applause) 9 MR. CAMERON: Thank you. Thank you, 10 Teresa.
11 Did I miss anybody who signed up to speak 12 today, this afternoon? We are going to be here 13 tonight, open house starts at 6:00 until 7:00 and then 14 the meeting is going to go from 7:00 to 10:00. There 15 were a number of issues raised that I would like the 16 NRC staff to, if the people are willing to talk about 17 them, Paul had raised the question about aircraft and I 18 think there is some recent Commission action that 19 discussed aircraft, and at least we can tell him what 20 that is.
21 There may be people who want to find out 22 more about the 9th Circuit decision and what the NRC 23 might do about that, and Emma raised a question about 24 Monticello and what has been going on with that, and it 25 may be that perhaps one of our residents might be able Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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90 1 to talk about that. But the staff is here to talk to 2 all of you and I would just thank all of you for coming 3 out and your comments.
4 And I want to ask Rani Franovich, who is 5 the chief of the environmental branch who does these 6 reviews for license renewal, to close the meeting out 7 for us this afternoon.
8 Rani?
9 MS. FRANOVICH: Thank you, Chip.
10 I just want to reiterate to everyone who 11 took time out of their busy schedules to be here today 12 that this is an important part of our process and we do 13 transcribe the comments. Even though you may see staff 14 wander around the room, migrate towards where it's warm 15 over here by the radiators, we listen to you while we 16 are here, we read the transcript when we get back to 17 our offices to make sure that everything you say is 18 collected and can be addressed in our final EIS. But 19 thanks again for coming, it's a very important step in 20 our process, as I've said, and your comments will be 21 considered.
22 I wanted to remind everyone that the 23 comment period ends on March 7th. I think the handouts 24 with the slides has the information on who to contact 25 with your comments, Richard Emch is the project manager Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
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91 1 for the environmental review.
2 And I wanted to also let everyone know 3 that we have an NRC public meeting feedback form that 4 you may have received when you registered out in front.
5 If you can think of any ways that we can improve our 6 meetings, things that we can do better, things that we 7 can do different, please fill out the form, let us 8 know. You can leave the form out front and we'll find 9 it, you can give it to somebody with a badge, a name 10 tag, or you can fold it up and send it in to us, the 11 postage is prepaid.
12 And with that, thanks again.
13 (Whereupon, at 4:02 p.m., the hearing 14 was adjourned.)
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