ML081300739
| ML081300739 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 05/01/2008 |
| From: | Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NRC-2166 | |
| Download: ML081300739 (81) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Three Mile Island Nuclear Station, Unit 1 License Renewal Afternoon Public Scoping Meeting Docket Number:
50-289 Location:
Middletown, Pennsylvania Date:
Thursday, May 1, 2008 Work Order No.:
NRC-2166 Pages 1-80 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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THREE MILE ISLAND NUCLEAR POWER STATION UNIT #1, LICENSE RENEWAL APPLICATION REVIEW ENVIRONMENTAL PUBLIC SCOPING MEETING
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ELKS MOVIE THEATRE 4 WEST EMAUS STREET MIDDLETOWN, PENNSYLVANIA
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THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2008 1:30 P.M.
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P R O C E E D I N G S 1
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INTRODUCTION MR. RAKOVAN: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Lance Rakovan. I work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a communications specialist, and it's my pleasure to facilitate today's meeting.
The purpose of us being here today is to discuss the environmental scoping process for the Three Mile Island Nuclear Station Unit #1, license renewal application review.
I just wanted before we kind of got into things today to go over what to expect from today's meeting, go over a few ground rules, et cetera.
Basically the agenda for today, we are going to have a short presentation by Ms. Sarah Lopas, who is project manager involved with Three Mile Island license renewal. And then essentially we are going to open up the meeting to you.
The purpose of us being here today is to get your comments on the environmental scoping for the license renewal. And Sarah will go into some detail as to exactly what that means during her presentation.
If you have filled out a yellow card, when you came in to the registration table, these kind of
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help us get an idea of how many people are speaking today or how many people expect to speak today.
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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 If you didn't fill out a yellow card and you want to make a comment, that's great. But what I'll be doing after the presentation is essentially going through the cards that I have, inviting people up.
If you are going to speak, we ask that you use one of the microphones, either in the aisle, or if you'd like to, you can come up and use the podium here.
If you could introduce yourself the first time you speak, and we want to make sure that you are using the microphone and that one person speaks at a time.
The primary reason that we're doing that, not only so that everybody can hear and follow the conversation, but because we have a transcriber here today.
Since we were here to get your comments, we want to make sure that we get a clean copy, a clean transcript of the meeting.
So again, if you are going to speak today, we'll ask that you come up, and you use one of the microphones, and that we try to keep one person
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speaking at a time so we can make sure we get a clean transcript.
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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Again, since the purpose of the meeting is to get your comments, we are going to try to not do kind of a question and answer thing. If you go to a topic, or ask a question that is outside the realm of environmental scoping, we might try to answer your question briefly, but we have a number of NRC staff here today who would be more than happy to sit down with you and go through your questions after the meeting. We'll definitely be sticking around to do that.
But the focus of the meeting today again is to get your comments on environmental scoping, so we are going to try to keep the meeting focused on that.
If everyone could silence please, or turn off, your cellphones, Blackberries, et cetera, at this point. That will help make sure the meeting isn't disrupted if somebody gets a call.
Also, hopefully you all picked up a copy of the presentation. They are on the table with the other registration material. If you didn't, I can go back and grab some and bring them around in a moment, once I'm done with my opening remarks here.
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Also on the table was a public meeting feedback form. If you would take a moment to fill that out, you can either it with any of the NRC staff that are here at the meeting; or if you drop it in the mail postage is paid for you. We just ask that you give your feelings on how the meeting went today; maybe some suggestions for some improvement.
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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 We really do look at those, reflect on those, and we try to take those into account when we have future meetings. So that would really help us make sure that these public meetings are as efficient and effective as possible.
The only other thing that I'll say before I turn things over to Sarah is that if you are going to come down this particular aisle to use the podium here, there is a cord running, and there is kind of a ramp over the cord. So just be careful you don't trip on that. It is fairly dark in here, but being a movie theater, this is about as much as the lights apparently go up.
So just be careful if you are coming down that particular aisle.
With that, I'll turn things over to Sarah, who is going to give a brief presentation on the environmental scoping process, and then we'll turn
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things over to t you.
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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 So Sarah.
MS. LOPAS: Thanks, Lance.
Hi, my name is Sarah Lopas. I'm a project manager within the NRC's division of license renewal.
And I'm the project manager for the environmental review for the license renewal review for Three Mile Island Unit #1.
Thank you all for taking the time to come to this meeting. I hope that the information that we are going to give you, I hope you understand the process that we are going through, and the role that you can play in helping us make sure that our review considers pertinent environmental information.
On March 4th, we held two meetings here in Middletown to provide an overview of the license renewal process, which includes both a safety review and an environmental review.
Today we will describe in more detail the environmental review associated with the Three Mile Island Unit #1 license review.
But the most important part of today's meeting is to receive any comments you may have on the scope of the environmental review.
We will also give you some information
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about how you can submit comments outside of this meeting.
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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 At the conclusion of the presentation we'll be taking comments on the scope of the environmental review. And as Lance has already indicated, this meeting is being transcribed, so all of your comments will be recorded, and will be reviewed and considered.
Next slide.
Before I get into the details of the environmental review process, I'd like to take a minute to recap some of our information that was presented back at the March 4th meetings.
The NRC is a federal agency established by the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 that regulates the civilian use of nuclear material.
The Atomic Energy Act authorizes the NRC to grant 40-year operating licenses for nuclear power plants. This 40-year term is based primarily on economic considerations and antitrust factors, not on safety or technical limitations. The Atomic Energy Act also allows for license renewal.
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, referred to as NEPA, established a national policy for considering the impact of federal decision
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making on the human environment. As a matter of policy the commission determined that reactor license renewal constitutes a major federal action for which an environmental impact statement is warranted.
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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 The NRC's regulations governing nuclear safety, security and environmental protection are contained in Title 10 OF THE Code of Federal Regulations, which is referred to as 10 CFR.
Next
- slide, or
- sorry, slide three continued. And exercising its authority, the NRC's mission is threefold: to ensure adequate protection of public health and safety; to promote common defense and security; and to protect the environment.
The NRC accomplishes its mission through a combination of regulatory programs and processes such as establishing rules and regulations; assessing licensee performance; conducting inspections; issuing enforcement actions; and evaluating operating experience from nuclear plants across the country as well as internationally.
The NRC has resident inspectors at all operating nuclear power plants. These inspectors are considered the eyes and ears of the NRC. They carry out our safety mission on a daily basis, and are on the front lines of ensuring acceptable safety
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performance and compliance with regulatory requirements.
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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Next slide, please.
Three Mile Island Unit #1, or TMI-1 for short, was licensed to operate in 1974. Its current operating license expires in 2014. The NRC received Amergen's application for TMI-1's license renewal on January 8th of this year. This renewal application does not apply to TMI Unit #2.
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- 2 has been defueled and decontaminated to the extent that the plant is a safe, inherently stable condition suitable for long term management.
As part of the NRC's review of the TMI-1 license renewal application, we will perform an environmental review to assess the impacts on the environment of an additional 20 years of operation, and I'll explain that process in a few minutes.
I'll also share with you the schedule of the environmental review.
Next slide, please.
License renewal involves two parallel reviews, the safety review and the environmental review. These two reviews evaluate the two separate aspects of license renewal application.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 The safety review focuses on the aging of the components and structures that the NRC deems important to plant safety. The staff's main objective in this review is to determine that the effects of aging will be adequately managed by the applicant.
The results of the safety review are documented in the safety evaluation report, or SER for short.
For the environmental review the staff considers, evaluates and discloses the environmental impacts of continued plant operation for an additional 20 years.
The staff also evaluates the environmental impacts of alternatives to license renewal. The objective of the review is to determine that if the environmental impacts of license renewal are so great that license renewal would not be a reasonable option.
The staff prepares an environmental impact statement, or an EIS, to document its environmental review.
Next slide.
I think we're on the next slide. There you go. Now we are up to date. Slide #6.
This diagram illustrates the safety and environmental review processes represented at the top
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 and bottom of the slide. It also features two other considerations in the commission's decision of whether or not to renew and operating license.
Statutorily mandated by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the advisory committee of reactor safeguards, or ACRS, is a group of scientists and nuclear experts who serve as a consulting body to the commission.
The ACRS performs an independent review of the license renewal application and the NRC's safety evaluation. The ACRS reports their findings, and recommendations, directly to the commission.
Hearings may also be conducted, concurrent with the staff's review interested stakeholders may submit concerns or contentions, and request a hearing.
If a hearing is granted, the commission considers the outcome of the hearing process in its decision on whether or not to renew an operating license.
Now I
am going to describe the environmental review a little more in detail.
Next slide.
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 requires that federal agencies follow a
systematic approach in evaluating potential
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 environmental impacts associated with certain actions.
We are required to consider the impact of the proposed action, and also, any mitigation for those impacts that we consider to be significant.
We are also required to consider alternatives to the proposed action, which is in this case, license renewal, and that includes energy alternatives to the proposed
- action, mitigation alternatives, and the no action alternative, which would examine the environmental impacts associated with not issuing a renewed license.
The NRC has determined that the proposed license renewal of nuclear power plants is a major federal action, and as such, an EIS will be prepared.
In preparing an EIS the NRC conducts a scoping process. The purpose of the scoping process is to identify the significant issues to be analyzed in depth.
We are now gathering information for an EIS, and we are here today to collect the public comments of the scope of their review.
That is, what environmental impacts should the staff consider for the proposed license renewal of TMI-1?
The staff has developed a generic EIS that
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 addressed a number of issues common to all nuclear power plants. The staff is supplementing that generic EIS with a site-specific EIS which will address issues that are specific to the TMI-1 site.
The staff will also reexamine the conclusions reached in the generic EIS to determine if there are any new and significant information that would change those conclusions.
Next slide, please.
One more. Okay, that's fine. Might have to click on the slide. There we go.
Okay, this is slide eight. For the environmental review we have established a team of specialists from the NRC staff who are experts in the various fields and disciplines. This slide will give you an idea of the various areas that we look at in our environmental review. They include terrestrial and aquatic ecology, environmental justice, hydrology and radiation protection, just to name a few.
Next slide. The scoping period started on March 28th when the notice of intent to prepare an EIS and conduct scoping was published in the Federal Register. The NRC will be accepting comments on the scope of the environmental review until May 30th, 2008.
In general we are looking for sources of
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 information about the environmental impact of continued operation at TMI-1 that we should consider while we prepare our EIS. You can assist us in that process by telling us, for example, what aspects of your local community we should focus on; what local, environmental, and social and economic aspects the NRC should examine during our environmental review; and what reasonable alternatives are most appropriate for this particular area.
These are just some of the examples of the kind of input that we're looking for, and they represent the kinds of information that we are seeking through the environmental scoping process.
Your comments today should be helpful in providing us those insights.
Next slide.
This slide illustrates the various considerations that are factored into a decision to issue a renewed operating license. So how do we use your input?
Public comments are an important part of the environmental review process. We consider all the comments that we receive from the public during the scoping process, as well as comments received from the draft environmental impact statement, which is
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 scheduled to be published for comment in December of 2008.
Next slide.
In addition to providing comments at this meeting, there are other ways that you can submit comments for our environmental review process.
You can mail written comments to the chief of our rules and directives branch. You can also make comments in person at our headquarters office in Rockville, Maryland. And we have also established a specific email address that you can email your comments to, for either the scoping period, or also, on comments for the draft EIS. And that email address is Three Mile Island EIS at NRC.gov, and that address is not cap sensitive.
All of your comments will be collected, reviewed, and considered.
Next slide.
This slide shows important milestone dates for the environmental review process. The notice of opportunity for hearing was published in the Federal Register on March 14th, 2008, followed by a notice of intent to prepare an EIS and conduct scoping on March 28th.
The opportunity to submit contentions for
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 a hearing closes on May 13th, 2008. And if you have comments regarding the environmental review, that scoping period closes on May 30th, 2008.
Next slide.
This slide identifies the primary point of contact within the NRC for environmental issues. That would be myself. It also identifies where documents related to our review may be found in the local area.
The Londonderry Municipal Township Building; the Middletown public library; and the Penn State Harrisburg Library have all agreed to make the license renewal application available for public review.
When we publish the draft EIS it will also be there for review.
These documents will also be on the NRC website at the web address shown at the bottom of the page.
In addition as you came in you might have been asked to fill out a registration card at our reception table. If you included your address on that card, we'll be sure to send you a copy of the draft EIS, and a final, and the final EIS as well.
This concludes my presentation. I will turn it over to Lance, and then maybe Ron as well.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Thank you.
MR. RAKOVAN: Thank you, Sarah.
Before we moved on from the presentation, though, we just wanted to check real quick to make sure no one had comments specific to Sarah's presentation in terms of the environmental scoping process or anything else that was on the presentation.
If you could come to a microphone and introduce yourself, please.
Can we bring up his mike? Try it again, Scott.
MR.
PORTZLINE:
Scott Portzline, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, P-o-r-t-z-l-i-n-e.
Associated with Three Mile Island alert as a security consultant.
I notice that the date for requesting a hearing is May the 13th, yet some of the decisions will not be made by the NRC until weeks or months later.
So that timing is awkward in that it forces us to request a hearing when we really don't know if in fact we would need one or not for a particular environmental concern. That date should be changed.
MR. RAKOVAN: Eric, can you introduce yourself?
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 MR. BENNER: My name is Eric Benner. I'm the branch chief of the environmental review for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The opportunity for hearing is somewhat separate from the environmental review. It's really to ensure that if people raise challenges as to whether or not NRC regulations are being met, that the public can raise those issues, and that an independent licensing board can review those issues.
So at this stage the opportunity for a hearing is really to look at B is for the public to weigh in on any of the information provided by AmerGen in this case to see whether or not there are issues there of the application not meeting the NRC's regulations.
MR. RAKOVAN: Did that at least somewhat answer your question, Scott?
(Off-mike response)
MR. RAKOVAN: Well, if you want to say that into a mike, you can. Eric, I'm sure we can talk B Eric can talk with you afterwards if you'd like.
Any other questions at this time? Okay, before we turn things over for scoping comments, I wanted to introduce Dr. Ron Bellamy who is the branch chief of projects in our NRC Region 1 office which is
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
Ron has just a little something that we wanted to talk about before we moved on. So Ron.
MR. BELLAMY: Thanks, Lance.
As both Lance and Sarah have indicated, the purpose of today's meeting is not to discuss any routine operational occurrences at the Three Mile Island site.
However, we are aware that there is significant public interest in an issue that arose at the site Tuesday afternoon, and I want to address that now if you will bear with me for a minute.
On Tuesday, April 29th, at about 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon, a TMI security supervisor discovered that one security officer was inattentive to their duties, while the security supervisor was performing a preplanned management oversight activity.
The officer was assigned to a response post in which the officer was expected to be ready to respond if so notified.
This officer was immediately relieved of his duties, and has been denied further plant access pending the licensee's investigations.
The NRC response to this was to perform immediate and additional spot checks after becoming
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 aware of the issue. We toured the site; we took a look at approximately a dozen security post responder locations over the last few days, and we did this around the clock, so we covered all three operational shifts at the station, including what is called a ready room, a room where there are four people in a room on site that are prepared to respond.
All of these security officers and supervisors were determined to be alert.
Security at this station as well as all nuclear power plants uses a
defense in depth philosophy that creates multiple independent barriers to ensure the ongoing security of the facility.
This guard was one part of one of those multiple barriers.
Although the NRC at this time does not plan to do any special inspection, we will continue to monitor the issue. We will follow the licensee's action, take a look at their root cause evaluation, their further responses, and we will continue to inspect the status of the security at the Three Mile Station as operations continue.
MR. RAKOVAN: Thanks, Ron. Since this happened so recently, that was just something we wanted to get out there, make sure you were aware of
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 our stance on that before we moved on to the environmental scoping comments.
At this point let's go ahead and do that, let's move on to the environmental scoping comments.
Again, when you came into the table, hopefully if you thought you might be interested in speaking you filled out a yellow card. If not I have those, and can certainly bring one to you.
Keep in mind that you might not agree 100 percent with what the person who has the floor is saying, but please, when they have the microphone, allow them to talk.
We have the theater I believe until 4:30, and it's coming up on 2:00 o'clock. So we've got a decent amount of time to talk. I'll probably let people talk I won't say as long as they want to, but I'll definitely give them a little bit of leeway in terms of how much time they want.
We had three people who pre-registered, and so I'm going to go to those people first.
That was Scott Portzline, William Noll and Michael Gallagher.
So Scott, if you would like to kick things off.
MR. PORTZLINE: All right, thank you.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Scott Portzline representing Three Mile Island Alert. Next slide, please.
The new proposed security requirements have a potential impact on the environment. At Three Mile Island there are some unique features of the land on the plant that requires special attention by the NRC.
This issue must be included in the environmental impact assessment.
This is a quotation from the proposed rule, the new rules on security, and talks about contingency planning, and site specific factors must be accounted for.
And it
- says, safeguards contingency planning must include a site description to include maps, drawings of the physical structures, and their locations.
Slide.
So overheard of Three Mile Island, in the red circle there you can see the north entrance. And there is a bridge that goes across the Susquehanna River there to the plant. The yellow line that is now on the screen is a water channel, show the next two lines. There is another channel, and a third channel that terrorists would have access to destroying that
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 bridge from those water channels.
Next. That's the entrance, along side Route 441 at the north end of the plant. And currently that entrance is open. There is a vehicle barrier there, but it is unlocked and unguarded.
There are some surveillance mechanisms there, but there is nothing in place to stop a truck bomb from destroying that end of the bridge.
Next. And the star is the exact location of where they are going to have to do something to B if the NRC were to decide to have that entrance locked so they can maintain control of access to that bridge, it could possibly create traffic troubles at that point, and so this then becomes an environmental issue, what impact it would have. There is a railroad right there, and some of those big tractor trailers, and I've been there to see them come down around the bend, and you can get a line of traffic during a shift change.
So there are some considerations there that in fact would affect the environment if they implemented the rule properly.
Next slide, please. This is the south entrance. You can see the red circle, the bridge again going across the Susquehanna River. That's the
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 only other entrance. It's usually locked and secured, so that the vehicle cannot drive across there, and that is where the blue marker indicates that that barrier is usually closed.
Again, the NRC should make sure that the licensee maintains control of that waterway and that bridge.
Next slide. So the site description, this is the rule, the proposed rule. The site description must address the site location in relation to nearby
- towns, transportation
- routes, pipelines hazardous materials; onsite independent spent fuel storage, and other pertinent environmental features that may have an effect on coordination of responds operations.
Next slide.
Regarding the owner controlled area, the licensee shall establish and maintain physical barriers in the owner controlled area to deter, delay, and prevent unauthorized access; facilitate the early detection of unauthorized activities; and control approach routes to the facilities.
Special emphasis on control the approach routes. They must be controlled.
Next slide please. The licensee shall describe the site specific factors affecting
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 contingency planning, and shall develop plans for actions to be taken in response to the postulated threats.
Some of the topics that need to be addressed are the approaches. Particular emphasis B this is the NRC's statement now, not mine B particular emphasis must be placed on main and alternative entry routes, for law enforcement and other offsite support agencies, and the location of control points for marshaling and controlling response activities.
They must limit and control all approach routes.
Next slide. TMI, these are my statements now, TMI must control the entrances and pathways, which emergency responders are planning to utilize.
TMI has only two entrance points since it resides on an island surrounded by water. Methods to control the pathways would include vehicle barriers, watercraft barriers, and other denial systems to prevent the loss of usage of each bridge.
NRC must assess what effects these denial systems will have on the environment.
Next slide.
Second topic of my concern for environmental impact, in 1978 the Atomic Safety
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Licensing Appeal Board promised that if times changed sufficiently on the future that there could be a reexamination of the effect of aircraft impacts at Three Mile Island. And they were referring to the size and weight of the aircraft.
Three Mile Island is less than three miles from the Harrisburg International Airport. In 1993 NRC Commissioner Ivan Selin stated, a small airplane can do a lot of damage, and that, quote, you probably would not even have to put explosives on it.
I'm aware of the recent studies that were fudged by the NRC to indicate that an aircraft can't cause a successful release of radiation, and I imagine in today's world of security that is the public relations statement that needs to be made, when in fact that's not the case.
Next slide, please.
Regarding spent fuel on the environmental impact B this is my third and final topic in this presentation B
it is totally unconscionable to continue making more high level nuclear waste without a working solution for the waste, or a fiscal accounting of the future costs.
The industry has promised a solution for nearly 50 years with little results. Even if Yucca
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Mountain ever opens, it's already out of storage space.
The NRC must include the economic impact of spent fuel issues in its relicensing assessments.
The single greatest issue, second to none other, paramount to all, surpassing any short or long term issue, is the problem of generating even more highly reactive spent fuel which will require utmost care and protection for longer than all of recorded history.
To exclude this factor from the relicensing process would be one of the mankind's greatest folly whereby B slide please.
Future generations will curse our generation for saddling it with the cost of a perpetual waste bill. The price will far exceed the benefits of the electrical power we consumed from nuclear plants.
Imagine how we would view the ancient Egyptians if they had created a waste, stored it in the pyramids, causing making to ceaselessly foot the bill just so they had some long-forgotten benefit for five decades. Slide please.
Imagine translating ancient manuscripts with a team of scientific experts and rules, decided
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 that the controversy of creating this waste was not part of the decision making process. Imagine the problems of having to rebuild the Egyptians' repository, and stopping the leakage of the waste, and having to guard against the terrorist threat, or theft of the fissionable material on an endless basis.
Slide please.
Now do the math, and realize that if this were actually the case for the last 5,000 years, if the generations prior to ours had paid all those bills until right now, then we still would not have paid 1/10000th of a percent of the price of maintaining such a site. And on the right-hand side is a chart.
You can see in the bottom in yellow, it says, the first 5,000 years, and then at the top you see the 200,000 year mark. This is what your payment schedule would look like, the green line on the right would take another 22,500 pages to print that line out.
That's how long we are going to be paying for this waste that we are benefitting from the electricity now. Yeah, I hear you choking on that, too.
How can generating more waste be considered fiscally responsible, or thoughtful planning or morally acceptable?
Next slide, please. PA reactors receive
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 more than $11 billion in bailouts known as stranded costs. For decades nuclear generated electricity has been the most expensive of all the conventional electrical providers in Pennsylvania. Nuclear power has no affect on gasoline prices. Nuclear power does not relieve our dependency on foreign sources.
A couple of examples: reactor vessels and components are made in Japan now. Reactor and head retrofitting and milling is done in France. And if we ever go to the pebble bed reactor, that nuclear fuel will be manufactured in the United Kingdom.
The price of uranium is soaring right now.
Next slide, please.
Nuclear utilities have sued and are suing the U.S. Department of Energy to receive more than a billion dollars year of taxpayer money to maintain the spent fuel stored onsite at the plants, hemorrhaging claims to save Pennsylvania's
$288 million in electrical charges each year; $288 million divided amongst the 13 million PA citizens is about $1.85 per month saved. It's not a whole lot, but if we just factor in a couple of the bailouts, and not even accounting for all these other issues with the waste B the cost of sending the National Guard, the state police, the FBI, jet fighters, to the plant B TMI has
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 cost Pennsylvania citizens at a minimum $1.90 to $2 a month. So we actually come up on the losing end of that comparison.
Next
- slide, please.
Capitalism and nuclear power are incompatible. Nuclear power has always been an economic failure in the free market, and has been and always will be subsidized by the government. Forbes Magazine has called nuclear power the largest managerial disaster in business history.
A disaster on a monumental scale.
Finally nuclear power's corporate welfare fiasco with risk, dangers, costs and consequences unlike any other industry.
That's the end.
MR. RAKOVAN: Thank you, Scott, and of course these slides will be included as the transcript for the meeting. Which brings up an excellent point.
If you do have a point that you would like to make at today's meeting, and you want to write it down during the meeting, again, you can give it to myself or any of the NRC staff and we will have it included formally as part of the transcript for the meeting.
Again if you don't want to comment today, maybe you are mulling it over later, or you want to comment later, again if you look at the slides, we
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 have that information as to how you can send your comments in on the environmental scoping after today's meeting.
We'll go to the next two people who had signed up for the meeting. William Noll from Amergen.
MR. NOLL: Good afternoon. My name is Bill Noll and I'm the site vice president at the Three Mile Island, and I have the overall responsibility for the safe and reliable operation of the plant.
Operating TMI is a safety responsibility that everybody at the plant takes very seriously. We understand our obligation to the community, to the environment, and to ourselves to operate the plant safely every single day.
A key commodity in a thriving community like ours is the availability of clean, safe and reliable electricity. As we look into the future of power needs across Pennsylvania and the United States are increasing.
At the same time there is a growing concern about the greenhouse effect and climate change resulting from the burning of fossil fuels.
To help meet that growing demand, and to help keep our environment clean, AmerGen has applied to the U.S. regulatory commission for a 20-year
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 extension to our operating license.
TMI's current license will expire in the year 2014. With a license extension TMI can provide our region with clean power until 2034.
We understand our special obligation to operate the plant safely and reliable, while being open and honest with our neighbors.
We pledge to continue that sacred trust as we operate the plant well into the future.
The 104 nuclear reactors in the United States provide roughly 20 percent of the nation's electricity, and the reactors nationwide have all received approval from the NRC for a 20-year license extension, including Peach Bottom which is operated in York County.
TMI operates in a manner that preserves the environment. The plant produces no greenhouse gases. The plant conducts about 17,000 tests annually on air, water, fish, soil, cow's milk and other food products to measure for the environmental impact.
We also maintain the chain of about 90 radiation monitors around the plant to monitor and operate safely.
To ensure TMI continues to operate safely for years to come AmerGen is investing in upgrades to
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 the plant's equipment. Since 2000 AmerGen has invested more than $120 million into the plant, including the installation of a new reactor vessel head, new turbines, new transformers, new valves, and refurbishing the cooling towers.
In addition TMI has made more than $17 million in physical modifications for security since 2001.
One of our bigger future investments is going to occur next year in 2009 when TMI replaces those steam generators and completes other equipment upgrades. This is a $300 million investment. And TMI spends about $10 million every year on ongoing capital improvements.
As you can see we are investing in the future to ensure that TMI meets the power needs both of our local region and our country.
Our investment in the future does not stop with equipment. Everyday we look for new employees, we look for new people around the region to hire and train to work at our station.
Last year we qualified 11 people as control room operators, and this year we started a new class of 17.
We have significantly increased the size
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 of our security force, and hiring and retaining our top talent is a top priority at Three Mile Island.
Over the past 20 years TMI has been one of the best performing and reliable generating stations in the nuclear power industry. During that time the plant has set four separate world records for continuous days of operation, the most recent being in October of 2005 when TMI completed a continuous run of 689 days.
While we are not setting out to break records, it is an indicator of continuous operations in one superb human performance and equipment reliability that TMI strives for everyday.
We also take pride in our investments in the community. In 2007 TMI donated close to $250,000 to the community in contributions to the United Way, fielding ambulance companies, education, health and youth organizations.
And many of our employees are volunteers in the local communities around the plant.
In conclusion TMI looks forward to working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as you review our license renewal application.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak today, and have a safe day. Thank you.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 MR. RAKOVAN: Thank you.
The last person that signed up prior to the meeting to speak is Michael Gallagher. After that we'll start going through the cards. I have Daryl LeHew, Andrew Dehoff, and Eric Epstein.
So first, let's go to Michael.
MR. NOLL: Okay, good afternoon. My name is Mike Gallagher, and I'm the vice president of license renewal for Exelon and AmerGen.
I have overall responsibility for the TMI license renewal application.
Exelon has a great deal of experience with license renewal. We have already obtained the renewed licenses for Peach Bottom plant in York County, Pennsylvania, as Bill mentioned; and our Dresden and Quad Cities plants in Illinois; and we are awaiting NRC decision on our Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey.
Just briefly about myself, I've been in the nuclear power industry for 27 years. I was the licensed senior reactor operator and plant manager at our Limerick facility, which is near Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and I worked at two other nuclear plants in their corporate offices.
Mr. Noll, our site vice president, spoke of reasons for renewing the license renewal. I'd like
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 to speak briefly about the process that we did preparing for this license application, and the amount of work and engineering analysis that was put into preparing this application.
Because TMI can be operated safely and reliably, Exelon decided to pursue license renewal for TMI. TMI is a very clean energy source which produces no greenhouse gases, and TMI is also good for the economy in that it lowers market prices of electricity for the citizens of Pennsylvania to the tune of $288 million per year.
So in April of 2005, we announced our intentions to seek license renewal for TMI. Later that year we started the work to prepare the application.
After over two years of work, we submitted the application to the NRC on January the 8th, 2008.
The application, when you print it out, is about 2,550 pages of information, and when you put it in binders, it's three very large binders of information.
This is a huge amount of information.
However it only represents a small part of all the work that was done for the engineering analysis to prepare this application.
That total amount of engineering analysis,
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 if we printed it all out, would be about 122 binders worth of information.
We invested over 60,000 man hours of engineering
- work, and once we completed our application we brought in experts from outside Exelon to review the application to ensure that it was complete, thorough and accurate.
Our total cost to prepare and get our application reviewed by the NRC will be approximately
$25 million.
There are two different parts to our application. Today here we're talking about the environmental scoping. There are actually two parts:
the safety review, and the environmental review.
For the safety review we took an in-depth look at the history and condition of all the safety equipment in the plant. We did that to determine whether the necessary maintenance was being performed on that equipment to make sure that the equipment will be able to operate when it's needed, not only today but for an additional 20 years.
When you look back at TMI when it was built, all the equipment was new. It was thoroughly tested to make sure it would perform properly. But like anything else equipment does age.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 That doesn't mean it won't work, but it does age, and certain activities need to be done with that equipment. Preventive maintenance is performed.
Sometimes equipment is refurbished. Some equipment may be replaced. There may be modifications done to the plant to upgrade the equipment.
IN fact as Bill Noll has pointed out, we've invested more than $120 million in such equipment upgrades since purchasing TMI in 1999, and are planning to make more than $400 million worth of investments over the next 10 years.
We also in preparation of the application reviewed calculations that were performed as part of the original design of the plant. These calculations were done to ensure that the plant could originally operate for 40 years, so we reviewed those analyses and those calculations, and we were able to confirm that the plant would be able to operate safely for 60 years.
So overall our conclusion from our engineering review was that TMI could operate safely for up to 60 years.
We also took a look at the environmental impacts of continuing to operate TMI. We looked at all aspects of continued impact of the plant on the
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 environment.
Our conclusion is that the impacts on the environment are small. And I use the term small in the sense that it is in the regulation. The regulation defines small as the environmental effects are not detectible, or are minor.
We've also reviewed the alternatives if TMI would not have its license renewed, and another source of electric generation would have to be installed either onsite or somewhere else to generate this replacement electricity.
We concluded that any other means of generating the replacement electricity would have more of an impact on the environment than continue operation of TMI.
For instance if TMI were to be replaced by a coal-fueled generating facility, it would produce greenhouse gases the equivalent of adding 1.3 million cars, more cars to the roads producing those exhaust fumes.
In conclusion we operate TMI safely, and we can continue to operate it safely for an additional 20 years.
TMI will provide approximately 800 megawatts of baseload generation that's not only safe
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 but it's clean, reliable and economical.
Continued operation of TMI will benefit this community, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and our nation.
Thank you for this opportunity.
MR. RAKOVAN: Okay, let's go ahead and go to the cards, people who signed up.
Again I'd like to start with Daryl LeHew of Londonderry township. From there move on to Andrew Dehoff and Eric Epstein of TMI Alert.
MR. LeHEW: Good afternoon. My name is Daryl
- LeHew, and I'm a
Londonderry township supervisor.
As most of you know Three Mile Island is located in Londonderry township. And my family and I have lived near or next to the plant during construction and through production.
We are proud to have TMI located in our township. The plant does produce electricity safely without polluting our environment.
In fact Three Mile Island and other nuclear plants in general seem to have the least amount of impact on the environment.
TMI representatives keep the township informed regarding anything and everything that goes
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 on at the plant; for instance, the incident that happened yesterday. We were one of the first municipalities that were notified of the incident.
And that's the way it is anytime anything happens at the plant. We are either notified via telephone, email, fax or in person.
TMI is a very good neighbor. Their employees volunteer at local communities, and the station has donated money to various nonprofit organizations. These investments have improved the quality of life and the people in southern Dauphin County.
I know TMI is committed to continuing their community involvement, and that is very important to the many people in our area who benefitted from it.
For example our fire company has received over $100,000 from TMI during a golf tournament that they provide fundraising each year.
The purpose of this meeting is to address environmental issues. I know TMI does a lot of monitoring of the environment, as I have been privilege to travel on the island as a guest of theirs to view every part of the island that they could show without breaching security.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 And finally my family and I have been boating on the Susquehanna River for almost 59 years.
And I have never seen a negative environmental impact from the operation of TMI.
What is taking place on the Susquehanna River is the impact of nitrites and phosphates being put into the river from various sources throughout this particular watershed.
This is being addressed via the Chesapeake Bay water pollution initiative.
In conclusion, I am very supportive of the license renewal for TMI, and I urge the NRC to approve it.
Thank you.
MR. RAKOVAN: Thank you, sir.
Next I'd like to go to Andrew Dehoff.
MR. DEHOFF: Thank you.
I am Andrew Dehoff. I'm the director of planning and operations at the Susquehanna River Basin commission in Harrisburg.
First off I'd like to thank NRC and AmerGen staff for including us in the informational briefings and the facility tours that took place earlier this week. It was very helpful.
SRBC is still at the stage of gathering
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 information, and as such don't have comments, specific comments, ready to share today, but we will be submitting written comments by the deadline.
Preliminarily I can offer that SRBC's main concerns would be related to the water withdrawn from the river for plant operations, and the water used onsite, and also any changes to operations or equipment that would affect the water use on site.
Some examples of other issues, we might be commenting on, would relate to the facility and its situation on the river. And by that I mean flood preparedness and drought preparedness, and the fact that there is a great deal more water use both upstream and downstream of TMI than there was when the plant began operating.
Finally just a thank you to NRC for hosting this open house today, and giving us the opportunity to speak.
MR. RAKOVAN: Thank you.
Now I'd like to go to Eric Epstein from TMI Alert.
After Eric, I'd like to go to Nick DiFrancesco, and then Mary Osborn.
So Eric.
MR. EPSTEIN: I'm here for Panda Kung Fu,
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 and kind of disappointed, what's going on here.
Today, and I'm not really sure how to proceed. I'm not going to make any official comments.
I have an official request to enter my testimony. I have altered the testimony that I submitted earlier.
And so for the transcript I'm not really sure how we want to proceed here. I have the questions and the data. How many copies do you need?
All right, that's three then. That's nuclear math.
I also want to say, Scott, I don't know where you are at, that was an excellent presentation.
My comments are somewhat brief, and I just want to first of all acknowledge that there was an incident at the plant yesterday involving security, and that to the company's credit, they did dismiss Wackenhut, and to the NRC's credit, they recognize that there is a fatigue issue.
However, we still have a problem. There are still people that are not attentive, and I think we as a community need to come together and figure out a way to defeat this problem.
I really want to get past this assigning of blame. We have a workforce there. They are a good workforce. Obviously there is a problem. And this is not insignificant. It's happened at TMI; it's
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 happened at Peach Bottom.
So my plea today before I make some other comments is, this is a problem that affects us all.
Let's identify how we are going to defeat this problem. It's not just the nuclear industry; it happens elsewhere.
Again, I appreciate the fact Wackenhut is no longer there, and I appreciate the fact that NRC has recognized fatigue. But recognizing a problem and dealing with it are two different things.
And just so you know what we have called upon are essentially what we believe are two strategies to defeat this problem. One is to have the governor conduct an independent audit of nuclear power plants throughout the state. I think we need an independent set of eyes to look at the problem, to help deal with the problem.
Certainly if we can hire Jamie Lee Whit (phonetic) to look at a snow storm over one day, we can hire Jamie Lee Whit or some other notable entity to come in and examine security and awareness at nuclear power plants.
Second thing I would hold out is, again, TMI Alert believes that we need a federalized nuclear security force at all nuclear power plants. I think
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 we have to get past this notion that this is a privatized issue.
And if the DOE can have a nuclear federalized police force, certainly we can have it here.
So again, my preliminary comment is, we all know what happened yesterday. I don't want to take the opportunity to take advantage of that. I wanted to take the opportunity to at least say to the company we are willing to work with you to address that problem because it affects all of us.
The only other comment I'd want to make, and I don't think this is a surprise to anybody, the plant is going to get relicensed. So if you come up here and say I'm for it or against it, I think that's pointless.
There have been 48 prior applications.
They've all been approved. This one will be approved too.
I think what we can do as a community is make sure that there are conditions attached to the relicensing of TMI that makes it a safe plant.
If you want the ability to operate a nuclear power plant in our community, you are going to use water; you are going to store radioactive waste;
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 you are going to have an impact.
There is a risk-reward formula, and I'm hoping Exelon is hearing me, and I hope the NRC understands that.
And one of the concerns I have is when you go through the scoping process, and I've gone through it before, it's very narrow and very restrictive. My plea to the NRC, and I know you guys have taken a hit from GAO for cutting and pasting some of these relicensing. My plea to you is, don't let anything go uncovered or unchecked. Investigate everything.
I'm glad the SRBC is here, DEP, everybody that has a stake in this should have the ability to be heard.
Final comment I would make is, this is truly historic today. This is the first time in modern memory where the Phillies are competitive. The Flyers are still eligible to compete for the Stanley Cup. And the 76ers have yet to be eliminated.
I will not be with you tonight. I will be here watching Panda Kung Fu. And I've got to ask the NRC, is the first time you've ever had a relicensing proceeding where you were upstaged by a Panda?
I guess you can get back to me on that.
MR. RAKOVAN: Actually, Eric, tonight the
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 8:00 o'clock showing is Iron Man.
MR. RAKOVAN: Yes.
MR. EPSTEIN: All right, that's what you're going to need to watch the plant.
MR. RAKOVAN: Thank you, Eric.
Now we will go to Nick DiFrancesco from the Dauphin County Commission.
Next after him we'll have Mary Osborn, and following Mary Beverley Davis.
MR. DiFRANCESCO: I want to begin by thanking Eric for keeping his comments brief, because I was a little intimidated having to go after him today. So thank you, Eric, wherever you disappeared off to.
My name is Nick DiFrancesco, and I am here today as part of the Dauphin County Board of Commissioners. As anyone in this audience would know, part of our responsibility is taking care of the planning that comes about as a result of the plant being here, and the idea that in the case of an emergency we would be instrumental in coordinating a lot of the activities that would be taking place.
So in my current job, and even prior to, and working at the local level as an elected official,
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 we've had a lot of time to work with this team down at Three Mile Island.
And while a lot of the components of the team continue to change, I think the relationship over the years has remained fairly consistent. It's not that we haven't had disagreements throughout time, but usually when those disagreements pop up, they get resolved very very quickly.
The local elected officials in this area are very committed to keeping their eyes open to making sure that the plant does things the way they are supposed to be done. We as the county maintain that same attitude.
I'm not here today to talk about the safety of nuclear power. There are a lot of very intelligent well trained people in this room and in the NRC who can speak to nuclear power whether it's safe in the long run or not safe.
I'm here to talk simply about this plant, and some of the concerns that we want to make sure the NRC is looking at. There is constantly a lot of talk about the security at the plant, and my good friend, Daryl LeHew, had mentioned about how he's been able to tour the plant and evaluate the security first hand, and I would basically echo his comments in that I've
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 had the opportunity to go down on the island several times to have them give me the tour around.
And sometimes I think that one of the challenges that TMI faces is the fact that it's on an island. If you travel around and see other plants, I was just down in the shadow of Limerick, you basically have residential housing built right up to the facility. To me the big concern is the fence line.
It's the actually controlled piece of property, not so much the island itself.
And from what I have seen over time, the fact of the matter is that if there would ever be an attack in central Pennsylvania, I would probably want to be in that facility, because it is as hardened and as secure as anything I've ever seen.
So today I don't think we have a concern with security, but at the same time I do believe that it is an important component of the application process.
- Again, talking about emergency preparation, obviously it's of great concern to the government officials, and to the citizens obviously that due consideration be given to emergency planning.
Obviously there would be no greater impact than at the time of an event, and we want to make absolutely
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 certain that we feel we're very well schooled, very well trained, very well prepared.
These are items, though, that I think through the review process also have to be looked at, and I'll get to some concerns at the very end where I'll speak to the NRC process directly. But obviously we want to make certain that the B whatever you would require, or whatever you would consider to be state of the art in terms of emergency preparedness is also being done in this local plant. Because unlike many of those other facilities or actually all those other facilities, they've never experienced an accident; we have. And we want to make sure that we never lose sight of that, and that we are always prepared for our people.
The third point that I really want to make locally is the fact that this plant, again not speaking to the safety of nuclear power or not, I mean I'm a supporter of nuclear power, but that doesn't mean I know all the scientific details of it B this plant is a
great community partner from the perspective of jobs. This is one of the few areas where we do get a lot of jobs that support and sustain many of the families.
If you go around this room and talk to the
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So it is an important economic engine.
And in terms of cost benefit, it's a big benefit in terms of our local economy.
Without going too much farther, I did want to make some comments about the licensing process itself, or at least the little that I know about the technical side of the licensing process.
The relicensing process: when I had the opportunity to sit down with some NRC members early on to go over sort of what you should expect through this process. And maybe I had somewhat of a false impression, and it gives me a little concern B and again, I'm talking now strictly to the NRC and the process B a lot of the cost-benefit analysis that's done in terms of the true impact to the local area, a lot of that is sort of standard information about how do nuclear power plants impact a local area, and not so much about how does TMI impact the local area.
And while you can argue that statistically they are pretty much all the same, I think the people
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 of this area would be a lot more secure if we knew that the application process was not B I hate to use it but I will - a rubber stamp; that in fact when the evaluation is done that the NRC is looking very closely at the specifics of this plant, and not some statistical data on, generally speaking, this is how cogs and so forth hold up over time.
You know, again, I'll stress, I stressed it with the folks that work at the plant and manage the plant all the time, we had an incident here, and that should never, ever be forgotten.
And we are very sensitive. We want to make certain that the NRC is doing its job, because I think most people in central Pennsylvania would share my sentiment, that we can't tell you whether or not nuclear power is safe. We have to rely on this leg of our government to protect our interests.
And we simply want to make absolutely certain that the NRC is not using some, again for lack of a better description, generic set of standards.
That they are in fact looking at this facility. It is a facility that sits in the middle of a river. It's a facility that B the river feeds the Chesapeake Bay that's, you know, how many people around it and so forth, in very close proximity.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 There are a lot of unique aspects to Three Mile Island. And in a relicensing process we want to make absolutely certain that the people who are supposed to be protecting our interest B
the government, the NRC B is doing their job, and doing it very thoroughly.
In closing I simply want to say, I am personally a big fan of nuclear power from a personal perspective. I'm a big fan of having this facility here. I've already said to them that more than likely I would support them even if they chose to put in a second facility, because I know what it means to our economy. And I do trust the safety of the industry.
But having said that it is critically important to the people of this area that this licensing process be handled in a way that in fact eyes are looking at the specifics of this plant.
And that's what I really want to stress today.
So thank you very much.
MR. RAKOVAN: Thank you, sir.
Next I'd like to go to Mary Osborn, Concerned Mothers and TMI Alert, and then after Mary Beverley Davis.
MS. OSBORN: The public concern versus the
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NRC's concern for environmental impact unfortunately are not the same as we have experienced first hand 29 years ago.
I have environmental issues, and this is reality.
During the first days of the accident, we didn't know that the solid reactor fuel was melting into liquid, flowing like hot olive oil, and that TMI was
- burping, venting and dumping unfiltered radioactivity into our communities, our rivers and our bodies.
But our bodies knew, and the animals knew.
Our bodies reacted by experiencing symptoms and effects. The metallic taste or smell. Burning or reddening of our skin. Burning in our nose or throat.
Itching, tearing of
- eyes, nausea,
- vomiting, subsequent diarrhea and hair loss.
Birds died, many of our pets and farm animals died, and many were born deformed. Flowers and leaves started growing deformed or mutated, and many trees died. They continue to do so.
It's just spring right now, and I've already found six mutated dandelions in my neighborhood, and three deformed daffodils.
And this has not stopped ever since the
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 accident. So if you want to get into the environment you've got to look at the human health, and you have to look at what's going on around you.
Our effects may not have been as severe as Chernobyl, but they are in many ways identical. And I absolutely have severe problems with the NRC just as much as I have with the nuclear industry. If the NRC would have done their job 29 years ago, or 29-1/2 years ago, we never would have had this accident.
They were falsifying leak rates for a half a year before the accident, and the NRC let it go just like they let Davis-Besse go.
When are you guys going to realize you are supposed to protect the health and safety of the people, and not the industry? And until you get that straight, you guys are a bunch of crooks.
And not only you, but Jimmy Carter because he helped cover up the accident. He withheld information from his presidential commission report because if it was published in its entirety, it would have destroyed the civilian nuclear power industry, because the accident at Three Mile Island was infinitely more dangerous than was ever made public.
So here you have an affidavit. Here you have Jimmy Carter who ran for president and said what he will do.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Well, what he did was criminal.
Pennsylvania currently has the highest thyroid cancer rate in the country, and the only thing that could have caused it was the fallout from Three Mile Island.
Nuclear power facilities release approximately 240 radionuclides of potential importance in routine releases, on a regular basis; 240. So anybody downwind at the wrong time is going to get zapped.
And I have a radiation map for the NRC so they can figure out where these things are affecting the human body.
Mayor Steven Reid in 1979 wrote a letter to the NRC requesting to look into all the symptoms that we experienced including the metallic taste. And to this day, 29 years later, it's never been researched or investigated.
And then you want to proceed with more nukes. You know, you've got to get it straight.
Don't put the cart before the horse anymore.
Dr. Carl Johnson helped us with many issues, and he requested that the government do surface respirable dust studies following the accident, and the government refused.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Had they done that, maybe they would know that there are flowers and vegetables would still be growing mutated.
I've plotted on numerous different maps of where people lived and some of the symptoms that they had, and I am giving this stuff to the NRC so maybe they'll learn something, and start taking humans not for granted anymore.
In Middletown, there was a guy that worked at Hershey Med Center, and he lived on Catalpa Street, which is an elevated area. And it may be just within five miles of TMI.
He took his radiation monitor home, and when he went from his house to his car, he got 10 R per hour on his machine. When he got into the car it went down to three.
So apparently the 10 R may have been gamma beta, and the 7 R was all beta, which you guys never want to talk about. Almost all the studies ever done were based on gamma radiation, and that's how a lot of the medical profession and scientists get away with saying, oh, not enough got out to hurt anybody. Well, they only considered certain issues.
I happen to live on a radiation plume line that was in NUREG 0600. I lived near the Host Inn.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 And when the helicopter that was taking radiation readings during the accident saw me, it flipped over and went around.
And I also have a set of maps from the Department of Energy. The radioactive fallout went beyond the 10-mile range, beyond the 20-mile range.
It was reported in Albany, New York; New England coast; Canada; Philadelphia, New Jersey and Maryland.
And that includes all the stuff going down the river to the Chesapeake Bay which is an issue.
I received information from the University of California at Davis regarding mutated evergreens and pines. Identical to what I'm finding here is exactly what they reported in their Chernobyl studies.
I also got a paper based on the mutation rate of the wheat crops in Chernobyl area.
I have pictures, and I've been documenting this for 29 years, tree tops that are deformed and mutated. Dr. Gunkel of the Brookhaven Lab, and also of Rutgers University, came to this area, and he verified and explained in detail what the effects were.
Trees damaged in my neighborhood, all over central PA. Mutated glorioso daisies, and the man who had these lived on the river bank and he died of
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 cancer; his wife had breast cancer.
Deformed dandelions, roses double is which B is the most common effect. And one rose had a bud and a
stem going through the center with no reproductive parts.
A lady gave me a Queen Anne's Lace. She lived in Enola, well beyond 10 miles, and she died of brain cancer.
Also in Millersville area, a lady had a zinnia that was a color mutation. And as a child I saw in my science text book almost the identical thing, a flower that was half red and half white. I saw the fruit fly that Muller did, and I also found bees that had similar effects.
And we had three double-headed calves in the area, and one was stuffed and mounted, which I also have a picture of. The vet told the guy to have it stuffed and mounted because nobody would believe him.
My friend had a farm in Etters. They had hair loss on their goats identical to those in the bomb test fallout in Utah and Nevada. Multiple cattle death, many spontaneous abortions, a poodle puppy born across the street from TMI had no eyes. It had eye sockets and no eyes. And when the owner at my first
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 public meeting asked GPU when they were going to pay her settlement, they paid her no questions asked. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut.
And the vegetables as well, in Lancaster County and Dauphin County, have been growing deformed as well.
There was a chicken born south of TMI with four legs shortly after the accident.
Hundreds of birds died in Lebanon County, and that was after the first few days of the accident.
That was in the month of April, late April, when the filters were taken off by workers, and they left the job because their shift changed, so they didn't put the filters back on. And massive amounts of iodine leaked out. So that's another failure.
And then our so-called
- hero, Harold Denton, gets interviewed for Farm Journal magazine after the Chernobyl accident, and he tells to limit the migration of cesium into the food supply, the USSR has had to deep plow, irrigate and lime hundreds of thousands of acres. Additional measures, says Harold Denton, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission director, include treating highly contaminated areas with calcium to fix radionuclides in the soil. Then the areas might be sewn with crops such as lupines
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 (phonetic) that absorb radionuclides. These crops would then be harvested and buried.
Well, my lupine grew, mutated, in my backyard before I ever saw this. So my lupine told me that Three Mile Island did it, and you guys better remember that.
MedEd also found mutations, but theirs were in the river. They had a paper that was not basically for the public where the fish they were finding had eyes fused together, one eye undeveloped, notochord crooked or kinked, missing or partial eyes with the eye socket formed but healed over, missing or broken fins, and eyes popped out.
So I
am not the only one finding mutations.
And there was a paper written in 1979 called Reversing the Birth of the Earth by Dr. Miles Robinson. And he actually mentions Chesapeake Bay in danger.
Well, during the accident they dumped accident reprocessing grade radioactive water into the Susquehanna River which flows down to the Chesapeake Bay. During all that time the reactor vessel had thousands of microbes or microorganisms growing in its own reactor vessel, which I never knew was possible.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 So if it can happen in a reactor, it's going to happen in the Chesapeake Bay.
So just don't blame the farmers for all this stuff.
How many nuclear power plants are on the Susquehanna River, and it starts in New York State, which I also found mutated trees and dandelions and daisies which freaked me out near Cooperstown.
Another thing is, during the Hiroshima-Nagasaki data, someone found that they said people have symptoms of radiation doses in the 200 to 500 R range. The calculations do yield doses higher than 500 R, for the area described around the hypocenter of around 100,000 meters. But they arrive at only 15 R for a distance of 2,000 meters where the clinical picture demands at least 200 R.
So this is basically saying that people had symptoms which the official government scientists would say would be 2 - 500 R, which people would die if that had that per hour. But if you would do the physics calculation it was actually only 15 R. And that 15 R range is really interesting, because NUREG 600 and a couple of other documents mention that during the first radiation calculations, they got 10 R or 40 R per hour over Goldsboro. Two guys working at
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 TMI got the same figure. But later the government said, oh no, they miscalculated.
But those figures fit more with what I have found than anything else. And I have a little sheet of paper here listing the ranges of radiation from the bomb test fallout to the Hiroshima stuff to what happened here.
There was another person who worked in a New Cumberland Army depot who was ordered to go to Middletown. And he took readings downtown Middletown, and he got 5 R per hour.
So the range of radiation that I believe is harmful, severely harmful to humans, isn't 2 - 300 R, it's less than that. And any dose of radiation even the health physics people are finally starting to admit this, any dose of radiation is harmful. It just depends on all the other parameters involved.
But most of the fallout I found even in John Fuller's book, The Day We Bombed Utah, it ranges from 3 to 5 to 16 to 20 R, and in the book, Under the Cloud, where they document all the fallout that went all over the U.S. during the `50s and `60s bomb test fallout, the lowest bomb test was recorded at about.5 R, and it went up to 2, 3, 4, 15, 20 R, but it also went up to hundreds of R.
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 So people better realize and start being honest with the humans, because the government knows all this stuff. It's just that we're learning it because we had an accident here at Three Mile Island.
And another interesting thing, Maggie Reilly from the Pennsylvania Department of Radiation Protection actually mentioned in the health physics newsletter, 1999, that a bit of TMI trivia was that the DOE project name for its response to the TMI accident was called Ivory Purpose. And even with the help of congressmen I have not been able to get any information regarding this.
But I was also told that the DOE was really in charge, and not the NRC; so whether that was true or not, I don't know.
And the other issue now, because of this relicensing thing, because these reactors are all getting so very old, and embrittlement and other problems are an issue, according to David Lochbaum once again, it's not a case of if but when we have another nuclear accident.
And it was mentioned before, the cost benefit risk analysis, which is really interesting, I've got this newspaper article. It's from last year, and this lady who was an expert, and she was an
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 outspoken critic of the system analysis doing this cost-benefit analysis.
And I believe that cost-benefit analysis allows people to kill people, and it should be unconstitutional.
And I could say a few things more, but it's not really for public. But when will the NRC begin to protect people and our environment, instead of continuing to be lackeys to the nuclear industry?
All you guys ever want to do is help them keep on running, and it's the risk of the people nearby, and those of us who lived here have had it.
You know we know when we are lied to now, and we have had our hearts broken, because so many people denied when we went door to door. They believed what the government said, that nothing got out. So their cancer couldn't be because of Three Mile Island, when in fact we all know very much that that is the case.
So I just wish, no more nukes, and I don't believe Three Mile Island ever should have been allowed to restart. We voted to keep it shut, and it was restarted, and I don't believe because of all the stuff that we've been going through now that it should ever be allowed to operate or continue to operate.
MR. RAKOVAN: Do you have materials that
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 you want to be included? Okay, thank you.
We've got one more speaker that I had who signed up, a yellow card, and that is Beverley Davis from the TMI legal funds. If anybody would like to speak after Beverley, if you'd like you can raise your hand right now and I'll bring you a yellow card.
The yellow cards help us basically make sure that we have your name spelled right when we put it into the transcript.
MS. DAVIS: My name is Beverley Davis. And this concerns definitely what we are talking about today.
I've heard what's been said about the reassurance about the way the plant is being operated, and I certainly applaud if all of these things are true, because that is certainly what we B if somebody is determined to reinvigorate this plant, then I would hope that everything has been covered to keep it operating.
The one question I have concerns the waste which is in the facility. Now I have B I do not have the latest information, but I have gone to meetings where they have indicated that the plant containing this is full, or that it's so close to being full that nobody knows where they are going to put the rest of
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If that is true, then I think we have something in operation which is more than just how you run the plant; it's what the plant is doing.
So I really would like to know, first, how much radiated material is stored on site; how it is contained; how long they expect to store it; and how long before it's going to be full; and when it's full, then what.
MR.
RAKOVAN:
Thank you.
I have received two additional cards. Michael Helfrich from the Lower Susquehanna River Keeper. And after Michael we'll go to Nick B I'm going to slaughter your last name, I apologize B Favorito.
MR. HELFRICH: Hi. I had B we've had some concerns lately with the area that Three Mile Island is in as far as fish health. We've had some fish kills there recently, and we believe, not caused necessarily by TMI, but in the vicinity there is a decline in some fish and a decline in small mouth bass that we were observing.
I would be very interested in getting some biological studies of the macro-invertebrates in the area, including radiation testing. I would also like someone to look at the mussels. The mussels are very
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 much ignored in the Susquehanna River, but throughout the United States, 70 percent of our mussel species are endangered or threatened. And the mussels are the longest living thing I believe in the river. Some mussels B we are not entirely sure how long some of them live, but some of them have been known to live 120 years.
The ones that we know of in the Susquehanna live up to 40 years, and we think that testing the mussels would be a good gauge of telling radiological bioaccumulation.
Let's see. We also have concerns with thermal pollution in this area, and although the amount it seems that is going into the river is much less than some of the other contributors, we would be interested to know if there were thermal shock zones in the area similar to Bruner (phonetic) Island which has problems there where the hot water is meeting the cold water at different times of the year.
So although I've talked to one of the NRC biologists earlier, and they said that approximately one dead fish found per day in the intakes, I'm interested in what's going on in the effluent, and also the temperatures of that effluent, and the temperature differences between the river temperatures
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 and the effluent.
And speaking of river temperatures, and while some Exelon people are here, I just wanted to comment on the fact that last year in July we found temperatures of 102 degrees a mile below Peach Bottom.
So just because it did get approved for a new license doesn't necessarily mean that it's doing a good job of being stewards for the environment.
So we want to make sure that there is some follow up, maybe also by NRC. I believe there is going to be a new permit on that. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to go too far from your topic today. But Peach Bottom does also present concerns for the Susquehanna and the Chesapeake Bay.
Oh yeah, it was reported last year that tritium was being found in the groundwater. We would like to know the extent of that, where the plumes of this are; also whether we can expect this to be increasing. Don't know that much about it, so I'd like to learn a lot more.
But obviously when we are dealing with radiation and things with potentially very long half-
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or accumulation in the environment is definitely a concern.
So even though we were all B supposedly
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 our concerns were quelled last year that these levels were not very high, if this is an ongoing issue, we would definitely want to know more about that, and have some kind of comparison to a more virgin area, perhaps somewhere far from nuclear reactors, that we might be able to get a better comparison of that.
And I'd also just finally like to echo our concerns with the remaining wastes or the remaining radiation that migh8t be there from the 1979 incident.
It does not seem to me that we should be going on with running one reactor while we haven't yet completely cleaned up the mess that was made in the other reactor.
Thank you.
MR. RAKOVAN: Thank you.
Nick Favorito from Exelon, please.
MR. FAVORITO: Hi, I'm Nick Favorito. I'm a young engineer at Three Mile Island, and I live right here in Middletown about a mile away from where we are right now.
And I just wanted to stand up here and share my support. I think Three Mile Island is run cleanly and safely, and I think we will continue to do that in the future.
I hope to start a family here at some
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At Three Mile Island, when the accident happened I wasn't even born yet. But we still are B have acquired training on the topic to make sure we remember, and we understand what went on, and we understand the impact to the community.
So we do take that very seriously, even if those of us that are starting weren't around then.
And a couple of people had mentioned about future generations having to deal with nuclear power and greenhouse gases, and I just wanted to bring up that that is my generation. We are coming into nuclear power now, and we are the ones that have to deal with that. And we feel a sense of responsibility that nuclear power is the right thing to do. It reduces greenhouse gases. It helps the environment.
And given the alternatives, I don't want to have to deal with breathing in greenhouse gases.
And the best way that we have right now available to us is through nuclear power. I think it's very important. I think relicensing TMI for those reasons is very important, as well as continuing to start new plants in the future.
Thank you.
MR. RAKOVAN: Okay, before we moved on to
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 close the meeting, I wanted to offer again anyone who hasn't had a chance to speak, a chance to speak.
Also if you have already spoken, and you want a moment or two to speak again, we certainly have enough time in the meeting to do so.
I think Scott Portzline said that he wanted to have the mike for a few more minutes, so Scott, if you want to go ahead.
MR. PORTZLINE: A few points to address some other things that came up after I spoke.
The atmospheric sciences, I saw that is part of the environmental concerns, seems to me recognition by the nuclear industry that the atmosphere is changing; that there is more energy; that global warming may be occurring. They are certainly advertising to that extent to have people view nuclear power more favorably.
And if that were true then we do need to study the fact that the weather has more energy, and tornadoes are more severe, floods are more severe.
There is a trend growing. It's not hard to see that in the next 10 to 20 years there could be some serious problems with tornadoes at nuclear plants like what happened at Davis-Besse a few years ago where the control room operator said, when they went into a
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 station blackout situation, that their hearts went into their throat until finally things started to settle down a little bit.
But at first they had power problems where they couldn't even read their control panels.
So I'd like to see B that issue also cross-ties in with the security issues, where the loss of off-site power and station blackout can be caused by terrorism. The same thing can happen with a tornado, and that we need redundancy systems for B to prevent station blackout.
There has been some discussion of that with the security discussions, but with environmental impact assessment including atmospheric sciences, I think that falls there too.
So we've got to look at the floods. Don't forget, we had a bad flood in 1972, excuse me, the Agnes Flood, which flooded Three Mile Island.
We have some plants around the country that have spent fuel casks, basically, is in the parking lot is how we saw it. That's not literally true. But it's not hard to see that some of these would have to be moved in emergency situations someday. So there needs to be planning for that now.
And also with the thermal impact as
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 brought up, where we are pre-boiling the fish that you catch, the 102 degree temperatures, we are going to see even increased temperatures with the droughts that are occurring across the nation, and the thermal impact of nuclear power plants is going to be pronounced in decades.
Now onto another issue about communications. I do suspect that AmerGen is starting to communicate a little better, but there is still a lot of room for improvement, and I've been very critical of that. I want to remind the Londonderry township supervisor that on October 17th, 2001, when we had the threat against the plant, that the NRC at Three Mile Island failed to notify the local community leaders, governmental leaders, and in fact Congressman B United States Congressman George Gekas held a federal hearing which I participated in on that problem.
We were also supposed to discuss security at that meeting, and he ended B gaveled, closed the meeting. And I showed him on the agenda that his office had given to me, and he said, oh, I didn't even realize that was one of the agendas.
So these open meetings sometimes aren't as open as you would think, or as open as you were told
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 before the meeting starts.
Operation Ivory Purpose, Mary brough8t that up, answer a question publicly very few people are aware. It's really not that important to me anymore. It was the name given to the evacuation operation under United B under National Guardsman Colonel Orrin Henderson. And it may have come from, we won't be able to evacuate everybody, 100 percent of the people, but let's go for 99.44 percent of the people, Operation Ivory Purpose.
Paduca, Kentucky, talking about the B one speaker just a few minutes ago mentioned that there is no greenhouse gases released. That is not accounting for the mining and the whole fuel cycle which you would probably have to take into effect when they do an analysis, but the NRC is not going to look at that when it comes to operating this specific plant.
Paduca, Kentucky, emitted B one enrichment facility was emitting 88 percent of all United States CFC ozone-eating gas, 88 percent of all those produced gases came from that plant. That's B that was pretty bad. Fortunately they fixed some of those leaks in the refrigeration system.
And that chart I showed you with the payment schedule, that's a little bit intellectual
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 dishonest, because it actually should be eight times longer than that, because that was just figuring the half life of the uranium, and that's only one half life. You have about eight more to go.
But that point was mute, because the sun would engulf the earth by that point, and we won't have to be any longer paying on our bills. So we will pay for the price of this fuel until we're gone.
The last thing is, sometimes people ask what my expertise in security is, and what I tell them is that my research has been cited by the Department of Energy, the various military branches, and the Department of Homeland Security.
Thank you.
MR. RAKOVAN: Thank you. Anyone else care to B okay, if you would like to reapproach the mike.
MS. OSBORN: Just one more thing. Some years ago before Governor Casey got out of office I was fortunate enough to be given a copy of the TMI advisory panel on health research studies. That's Pennsylvania Department of Health. I received their minutes.
And on the very last page of the last minutes that were provided, Karl Morgan asked Gerr, who did the dose assessment for the health department,
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10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Karl Morgan asked him what was the highest dose anyone received during the accident, and what was the total person REM.
The total person rem per Dr. Gerr, he responded that the thyroid dose was 27 person REMs in the first few days. The highest maximum was 10 REM.
So I just want you all to know that this all fits together with the range of radiation, and there are a whole lot of other dynamic stuff in their minutes, but I'm only going to provide you with this one.
And I really do wish the NRC would wake up and protect those that they are supposed to be protecting.
MR. RAKOVAN: Sorry about that. Thank you, Ms. Osborn.
Anyone else, one more chance at the mike, now that you are awake?
Okay, I had a few things to go over in closing for the meeting. Again, your comments on the environmental scoping are due by May 30th. If you have a copy of the slides there is information in there as to how to get your comments in.
I'd like to thank you all for attending today. I'd like to specifically thank those of you
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There will be another meeting similar to this tonight, at the Londonderry Elementary School. I believe it starts at 7:30 B 7:00 o'clock? I know part of that will potentially conflict with the showing of Iron Man in the theater tonight, so you are going to have to make a decision on that. I think you will make the right one.
Again, NRC staff will be hanging around after the meeting if you have any questions about what was discussed today, or any other topic involving the environmental scoping or other issues with Three Mile Island, we'll be milling around afterwards, so just grab someone who has one of these name tags on.
In terms of transcripts, a transcript of the meeting will be included in the scoping summary report, which will be available in about two months in our public meeting room; that's on our NRC website.
Sarah, Eric, either of you, or anyone else, want to say anything in closing, or should we just go ahead and wrap it up? Sarah, would you like to tell us that?
Ms. LOPAS: It wasn't our public meeting room; it's our public document reading room. So in
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MR. RAKOVAN: Sorry about that.
Okay, with that we'll go ahead and close the meeting.
And
- again, tonight, Londonderry Elementary School, 7:00 o'clock.
(Whereupon at 3:12 p.m. the proceeding in the above entitled matter was adjourned.)