ML20202F422
| ML20202F422 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Yankee Rowe |
| Issue date: | 01/26/1999 |
| From: | NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| CON-#199-19961 98-736-01-LA-R, 98-736-1-LA-R, ASB-300-644, LA-R, NUDOCS 9902040055 | |
| Download: ML20202F422 (92) | |
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. ~.. -. . - ~. -. _ - 1 1 . UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 ....a .........-y, 4 In the Matter of: I 5 YANKEE ATOMIC ELECTRIC COMPANY : Docket No. 50-029-LA-R 6-(Yankee' Nuclear Power Station)
- ASLBP No. 98-736-01-LA-R I
7 Prehearing Conference 8 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -X 9 l 10 Grand Jury Room 11 Franklin County Courthouse 12 425 Main Street Greenfield, MA 13 9 14 l ) ,15 Tuesday, January 26, 1999 16 17 The above-entitled matter came on for prehearing 18 conference, pursuant to notice, at 7:02 p.m. 19 20. BEFORE: l 21 THE HONORABLE CHARLES BECHHOEFER, Judge 22 THE HONORABLE THOMAS D. MURPHY, Judge 23 THE HONORABLE THOMAS S.. ELLEMAN, Judge 24 25 _) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i t. I'
m. 2 i 1 APPEARANCES: ( 2 On Behalf of'the Licensee: 3' ROBERT K. GAD, III, Esquire i 4 THOMAS G. DIGNAN, JR., Esquire 5-Ropes & Gray 6 One International Place 7 Boston, MA 02110-2624 8 9 On Behalf of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-t 10 ANN P. HODGDON, Esquire i 11 MARIAN L. ZOBLER, Esquire .12 STEPHANIE R. MARTZ, Esquire i 13 Office of General Counsel 14 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission () 15 Washington, DC 20355 i 16-i 17 On Behalf of New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution: 6 r 18 JONATHAN M. BLOCK, Esquire 19 94 Main Street, P.O. Box 566 y 20 Putney, VT 05346-0566 21 22 On. Behalf of Franklin Regional Council of Governments: i 23 SAMUEL HOLDEN LOVEJOY, Esquire 24 P.O. Box 66 12 5 Turners Falls, MA 01376 I l I l /~N / ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I(m,) Court Reporters L 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 j
3 1 APPEARANCES: [ Continued) 2 On Behalf of Citizens Awareness Network: 3 'DEBORAH B. KATZ 4 P.O.' Box 83 5 'Shelburne Falls, MA 01370 6-7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15-16 17 18 19 20' 21 22 23 24-25 f'3 (/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
I 4 1 EVENING SESSION' ( 2 i L [7:02 p.m.) i 3 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Good evening, ladies and i j '4 gentlemen. 5 JUDGE MURPHY: Excuse me -- we are going to start 6 the hearing, please. We want to start the hearing, please. 7 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: We are on the record. This is i ~ I i 8 a proceeding concerning the Licence Termination Plan of the j 9 Yankee Rowe nuclear reactor. 10 t This is what we call a limited appearance 11 statement where members of the public who are not parties to 12 the proceeding -- the parties have been here all day -- but 13 members of the public who are not parties are permitted to 14 make statements of their views on the subject matter of the 1 () 15 proceeding. 16 Normally the statements -- we should run around five minutes apiece and in order to get everybody in, we'll 17 18 .have to keep to that timeframe fairly closely. i 19 There are no microphones as such. These are for 20 the Court Reporter. We would like the people who are making i 21 statements to come up to the podium up here on my right and 22 I think may be heard both by us and by the people in the i 23 audience. ) 24 We are going to first call upon those who wrote in 25 to us -- there are only two -- for them to make statements '~N ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i i
5 l first and then we'll proceed with the list we have and the l 1 () i 1 2 list that is growing in the back, and as I say try to limit 3 your statements to no more than about five minutes because i 4 otherwise we'll run out of time to hear everybody. t 5 These statements are not evidence as such but they 6 can give the parties themselves opportunities to either j raise issues or deal with issues with the NRC Staff that 7 i 8 they have not known about before, so they are -- they can be i t 9 of use in reaching a -- 10 9 QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE: We can't hear you, f 11 I'm sorry. l 4 12 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I said they can be of use, t i .13-They are not evidence as such, but they can be taken into i t 14 account by the parties and particularly the NRC Staff in l () 15 dealing with issues that may not be part of the proceeding 16 itself. 17 We have a bunch of issues which we have been 18 considering all day and we have got~some more for tomorrow, l 19 but if there are any others the Staff may take these into 4 i 20. account in its review of the application. 4 t 21 The first person we'll call upon is one of those 22 who wrote in -- the representative of the Environmental 23 Protection Agency, Carl Dierker. 24 MR DIERKER: I have a written statement, Your 25 Honor. Would you like me to give you copies of that now or l-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters j. 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 ~' (202) 842-0034
l 6 l r -1 afterwards? t' } 2 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Yes, we'll take it., f l 3 MR. DIERKER: This is the original and I 4 have copies. I 5 Hello. My name.is Carl Dierker. I am Regional i 6 Counsel at EPA New England in Boston and I am presenting i 7 remarks on behalf of John DeVillars, Regional Administrator 8 of EPA in Boston. 9' 'I would first like to thank the panel from the NRC 10 for providing this opportunity and to present testimony this j l 11 evening. ) 12 I would like to address three issues -- the issues 13 surrounding the process, the standard of cleanup, and issues i i l 14 surrounding NEPA, the Environmental Protection Act. l l rx j) .15 As I understand it, the purpose of this prehearing I i 16 conference this morning was to determine whether the i 17 petitioners have submitted admissible contentions. We i 18 .believe that the parties have raised legitimate health and I l l 19 safety concerns which if substantiated at a later hearing l -20 would bear directly on the question of whether Atomic Yankee 21 Electric Company will be able to. satisfactorily clean up the 22 site. We therefore encourage the Atomic Safety and l 23 Licensing Board to fully consider the petitioners' 24-contentions. 25 We further invite the Board to use its 5 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i
- -~._ --.. -.~ - -.. -. _. - -.. -. -. -. - 7 l adjudicatory process to provide the public with adequate t 1 2 4 ) responser to the numerous unanswered and longstanding health i 3 and safety questions which should have properly been 4 addressed in the license termination process or earlier i i j 5 throughL the' National Environmental Policy Act process. 6 EPA is particularly concerned in the l 1 7 decommissioning of Yankee Rowe primarily because it is the I B first commercial plant in New England to be decommissioned. 9 It is especially important that the process 10-affords the public' appropriate opportunities for review and 11 comment and assures the cleanup is done in a correct form at 12 the outset. 13 NRC and Atomic Yankee treatment of the site will 14 both set a precedent for a number of upcoming ( ) 15 decommissionings in New England including Maine Yankee; 16 Connecticut Yankee and potentially Millstone units and-17 continue to impact the health and safety of the people and 18 the environment in the vicinity of this site. EPA New 19 England is. equally concerned about releasing the site for 20 -unrestricted residential or commercial use and allowing the 21 public free access to the site particularly when so many 22 questions about on and offsite radiation contamination 23 remain at this late stage in the decommissioning process. 24 We at first would note that we are very pleased 25 that the Yankee Atomic has committed to a total effective l l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. t Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l' Washington, D.C. 20036 I (202) 842-0034
l 8 1 dose equivalent from residential radiation contamination not f) '2 to' exceed-15 millirems per year above background and we will 13 .certainly be'looking at other decommissioning actions and 1 holding those to the.same level of cleanup. 4 5 We have noted that petitioners have raised some 6' very legitimate concerns, interesting concerns, and the ones 7 that we think need to be looked into, if the petitioners' 8 concerns are legitimate and to the' extent Yankee Rowe 9 decommissioning might substantially fail to meet the cleanup 10 standards, we note that NRC's own publications propose that 11 such sites could be assigned to EPA, back to EPA, for 1:2 listing on the National Priorities List under CERCLA and we 13 hope that we can avoid, we certainly want to avoid that. 14 We comment last on decommissioning as a public ( ) 15 process and. hope that the future need for prehearing -16 conferences such'as this one might be lessened by allowing 17 the public to participate more substantially in earlier 18 stages of decommissioning accompanied by a meaningful 19 environmental review process. 20 In short order, New England will see the 21 decommissioning of a number of nuclear power plants such as 22 Maine Yankee, Connecticut Yankee, and the Millstone 1 unit. 23 EPA New England will monitor the NRC proceedings in these 24 'and other cases to ensure that plant operators demonstrate 25 at least the same level of commitment to radiological ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
l-i y 9 1 cleanup levels and protection of our region's human and () 2 ecological health. 3 With respect to Yankee Rowe, we are concerned'that 4 so many health and-safety issues persist at this stage of l 1 5 the decommissioning process. We are equally troubled by the 6 parties' allegations that the site remediation as described i in-the LTP may not satisfy the chosen radiological cleanup 7 B standards. t f l 9 1 EPA New England believes that the petitioners' i 10 numerous contentions deserve the Board's further attention. We request that the Board fully respond to these contentions i 11 12 as well as concerns raised in this letter in order to ensure 13 the decommissioning of Yankee is done right the first time l 14 and no follow-up is needed. i l ' () 15 We also look forward to working with the NRC on i 16 the upcoming decommissionings in New England. 17 I guess I'would say finally as a former resident 18 in the Berkshires and having lived on the Mohawk Trail for l 19 several years of my life that I think 40 years ago when this l ~ 20 plant was built Yankee Atomic and the NRC with NRC's i blessing came into this community, built a power plant. 21 It l ( 22 had a useful life whatever the concerns were about it, and I 23 think it is now appropriate to have the plant leave the site l 12 4 -and leave the site in the pristine condition to which it L 25 came before it was built. i () ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I , \\_/ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 r '~R-
10 1 I have summarized the comments of Mr. DeVillars () 2 and I will be happy to make copies available to others as 3 well. Thank you very much. 4 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Thank you. 5 [ Applause.] 6 (Discussion off the record.] 7 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Next is Mr. Raymond Shadis, who 8 wrote in. 9 MR. SHADIS: I want to thank the panel for the 10 opportunity to address you this evening. I am a resident of 11 Edgecomb, Maine -- live just a few miles downwind of the 12 Maine Yankee Nuclear Power Station and am involved in the 13 Community Advisory Panel for the decommissioning of that 14 plant. (D y,/ 15 I am also a founding member of Friends of the 16 Coast Opposing Nuclear Pollution, an organization which has 17 followed safety issues through Maine Yankee's trial period 18 through its closing and now is the only organization, 19 activist organization, involved on the decommissioning panel 20 for that plant. 21 I also participate in the Keystone Conference on 22 Decommissioning, a national forum examining the financial 23 implications of decommissioning and I am a staff person for 24 the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution. l 25 I want to urge this panel to exercise its l l ( ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \\ Court Reporters 7 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l
I i 11 \\ discretion in taking the most creative and stringent 1 j , () i 2 possible view of the issues at hand. Those two terms, t 3 " creative" and " stringent" might seem to be mutually j 4 exclusive, but in this case what we'are asking for is the L 5 maximum protection for the citizenry in this area and for i 6 the environment and within the latitude that your office t 7 provides we ask that you look creatively at the regulations 8 that you are obliged to adhere to. 9 Every Atomic Safety Licensing Board panel that I l l ') have ever read about has weighed.in, created some little i 11 piece of precedent, moving the whole burden and body of this j 12 regulation in one direction or another, either making things i 13 more difficult for public intervenors or more difficult for b 14 the industry, but rarely. Generally the trend that I have l () 15' observed since I was involved in my first intervention in i 16 1982 is that the bar has been raised much higher for L 17 standing. The'bar has been raised much higher for the 18 admission of contentions and the trend is to move away from i i 19 meaningful, accountable citizen participation. 20 Now in the decommissioning process, the NRC has j 21 come forward very creatively to build a facade of meaningful 22 participation. I am a participant, an actor if you will, in l l 23 that facade as I participate in my Community Advisory Panel. l 24 There is no other forum, so it puts us in a very hard place, 25 those of us who are activists, to choose whether or not to 4 O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. i k_/ Court Reporters 1025' Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 -~ (202) 842-0034 1 I
7 I I 12 1 1 be participents and be co-opted in a process that is loaded V(N 2 against any critical review. 3 What we have in the entire decommissioning process is a very smoothly oiled case of stone soup -- and I am sure 4 5 you are familiar with the old classic folk tale of stone 6 soup, but it basically involves a vagrant asking to borrow a 1 7 pot to make stone soup, and a stone is added in water and 8 after awhile he begs a little spice and then a few carrots 9 and then a few potatoes and then a little meat, and so on. i 10 Eventually he takes the stone out and throws it away, and this is very much analogous to the process that NRC has 11 12 developed to bring forward decommissioning as a non-issue. i i 13 When these plants were built, this current 14 generation which is now being shut down, including Yankee O) 15 Rowe, the National Environmental Policy Act was not in g x/ 16 place. 17 This plant was built with a very minimal, simplistic environmental assessment and it has gone forward 18 19 these many years -- I think we are talking now close to four 20 decades -- with modifications to the site, roads built, 21 ditches dug, pipes laid, new buildings constructed. The 22 ground itself terraformed and the drainage and flow and 23 compaction of the soil has changed accordingly over the 24 years, but the records have not been kept nor have they been 25 entered into the decommissioning report, nor have they been h(s ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
13 1 entered into the Licence Termination Plan, and so it is impossible to' predict how water is going to move that site, 2 3 where the radionuclides that are released are going to be 1 4' transported or deposited, and NRC permits this to go j 5 forward, I,think as a layperson, and this is a layperson's .6 opinion, I think in violation of the National Environmental i 7 Policy Act. i 8-I see this -- and I know that in Maine at least, j -9 Maine is of course a backward place, but in Maine our -- 1 10 [ Laughter.) I i 11 MR. SHADIS: -- In Maine our deconstruction of an 12 000 megawatt reactor is the largest construction project we j t 13 have going on in the state of Maine, and it is not a project i that is being done with an Environmental Impact Statement, 14 \\ j () 15 .and the reason is that NRC has substituted a generic 16 Environmental Impact Statement and depends on the original r 17-environmental assessment, which was done 30 years ago. 18 Now combined they do not provide an adequate 19 picture of the site, and this is something outside of the 20 discussions that went on earlier today about the 21 measurements of careful -- measurements of radiation. 22 This has really to do with the physical i 23' underpinnings of this, and we ask the panel to consider the l 24 situation that the public or any Intervenor, any agency . 25. outside of NRC has found itself. l t ) f ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. -( Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 l -(202) 842-0034 i t
... ~.. 14 1 Instead of an-Environmental' Impact Ctatement and () 2 thorough plan for decommissioning, power plants are required 3 to produce'a post-shutdown Decommissioning Activities Report !) 4 under the new rule. Connecticut Yankee took about a year to { l 5 produce theirs, 30 some-odd pages -- pardon me? l 6 QUESTION FROM THE AUDIENCE: Thirteen pages. ) 17 MR. SHADIS: Thirteen pages -- well, that's even f L 8 better. Maine Yankee took six weeks and it was 20 pages. 9 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Time is -- L 10 MR. SHADIS: Yes, time is running, I know. This i 11 is an issue that is going to be with us for.a long time -- l 12 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Right. I realize that -- i 13 MR. SHADIS: -- and I don't want to take anyone 14 else's time but I do want to impress upon you that the () 15 system that has been set up looks like there is public j 16 participation and there is some, but it is participation 1 l 17 without accountability. There is no way we can hold L 18 . officials accountable. 19 NRC will send Staff people to talk to the public. i-t 2r They will say whatever they feel like. They will promise to ^1 answer questions. The questions are never answered, and 22 that is what is being substituted for a meaningful i l. 23 adjudicatory process, so I ask you, I beg you really, you 24 are the line that can make the difference in whether or not 25 this is going to be met, this new process, with some i i [, ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters j 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 L Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i l i
. ~. . -.. -. ~. - - 15 1 consideration for! the public or it is going to be a () 2-steamroller for the industry. 3 I am sorry to take extra time. You have my 4' written' statements in front of you and if anyone else would 5 like a copy, we~have also a written submittal. Thank you. 6 [ Applause.] 7-JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Ed Anthes? 8-MR. ANTHES: Good evening. My name is Ed Maryrose 9 Anthes. I am an organic farmer in Vermont and very soon now 10 we will be starting to make maple syrup again and we are 11 very proud to say that is Vermont pure maple syrup, just a 'l 12 little bit north of here, and on this side of the line they 13 have their pure Massachusetts syrup and part of what people buy is that belief that they are getting a product that is 14 () 15 pure, that it is as clean as it was when their grandparents 16 made it and when their parents had it on their breakfast. { 17 It is important what we are going through right 18 now because it is going to set a precedent. It's going to 19 set a precedent for Vermont Yankee, which is going to be up r 20 for its cleanup before long. It is important because there 21 are health effects being felt now for the people who are 22 downwind from Yankee Rowe. We have people who are downwind 23 from both Vermont Yankee and Rowe. If you have the time to 24 go through some of the hill towns and could see the effects 25' that people have been suffering it would add a human O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 ' Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
l 16 l 1 dimension to this. I) 2 The question was raised why should the safety 3-estimates be based on children. We need to use that ( 4 conservative estimate because we can all think of many times 5 that we have heard about playgrounds and schools that have 6 been built on hazardous waste sites and sites from this I t 7 century or the last century where industrial processes were 4 8 carried out. Those uses no longer are remembered by most 9 people and we have put our children, we have put our r 10 families in danger by being there. 11 When Yankee Rowe asks us to consider only the l 12 shorter-lived gamma-emitting isotopes, they are seeking to 13' continue the short-sighted engineering decisions which'have 14 left us with what we face now, a contaminated site and o 's,/ 15 buildings, no known way to isolate those for anywhere near 16 the timeframe that will be necessary to safeguard human life 17 and other life. 18 To base cleanup on tests from the top 15 19 ' centimeters of soil is morally indefensible. I hope that t 20 you will rule that it is also legally impermissible. Thank 21 you. 22 [ Applause.] 23 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Derek Jordan. i 24 MR. JORDAN: Thank you for allowing the public to 25 participate and speak with you tonight. l i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. '( Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 i Washington, D.C. 20036 t (202) 842-0034 I
._._.-_m_ ..e_,.. 17 i 1 I am concerned about what we call and what the '2 industry calls " acceptable levels of exposure." I don't 3 really understand -- I mean I am not a scientist, I am just 4 an average person -- but my understanding is that radiation 5 is extremely poisonous. Even at low levels it can harm 6 cells, it can cause cancer, other possible injuries and 7 health problems in the human body, and I don't understand 8 how any exposure can be acceptable. It seems like a form of 9 legalized murder and that really concerns me deeply. 10 To talk about -- to base these levels on a 200 1 11 pound man who will spend eight hours a day on the site, it 12 just seems a best case scenario. It doesn't take into i i 13 account all the other types of people and age groups that 14 'would be affected and would be affected much more harmfully, O. (,) 15 let's say than the 200 pound man scenario. l 16 I think that -- I really hope that we can have 17 more public input and more public oversight in these i 18 processes and not less. These decisions affect all of us on i 19 a very. deep level and the quality of our life and our 20 relationships and our communities. 21 This is an extraordinarily momentous occasion and 22 I wish this room was filled even more than it is now. It is 23 of great import. I think a lot of people don't even realize 24 how important this is, especially I have heard this may be 25 the last time that the public is allowed to participate in i Os. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
) i 18 f 1 1 one-of these hearings and that is very hard for me to f () 2 believe, but nonetheless I have heard that. 3 I hope that in the future we can make and you can 4 - make good decisions and your body can make good decisions i 5 about this that will be to the benefit of all the. people 6 here, because I am afraid that if you do not, then in the 7 future the people, although they are now not culpable under 8 the law, in the future perhaps they will be accused of crimes against humanity and crimes against nature, in some 9 i { 10 far-flung future time when we can see with the clear light 11 of day the type of damage that we have done to the planet i 12 and to each other, so I just would ask you to please protect i i 13 our community. Thank you, i 14 [ Applause.) ) 15 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: David Kotker. 16 MR. KOTKER: My name is David Kotker, I live in 17 Montague, Massachusetts, which is downwind from the Yankee 18 plant and also the Vernon Nuclear Reactor. It is actually i 19 nearer-to that, and I understand that the NRC likes to I 20 direct things to sort of the purview of the hearing, so I 21 - will first address a couple of points that occurred to be 22 during the hearing as a whole, the first being the sampling s issues that came up in terms of Yankee taking the samples 23 24 and Yankee averaging them, which was addressed by counsel. i 25 It was addressed by Block, but one thing that i i 2 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. - s Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 1 e m y.
19 1 didn't come up was that, in fact, if Yankee is picking the j /T 2 spots, rather than independent, disinterested, outside, (J l 3 completely outside party,_which is what I would hope would 4 happen, there is continuous, really, opportunity for sort of I 5 impromptu cost benefit analysis by Yankee to ensure that i 6 they don't necessarily find what they should be looking for. { 7 There is certainly the appearance of impropriety, I 8 and from living around these people for a number of years, I l think the appearance of impropriety is often a significant l 9 10 indicator of actual impropriety. So I would urge real i 11 independent analysis of the site as a whole. I 12 And, second, you had talked about -- well, in the 13 course of talking about the critical population and who the critical population is represented by, Ms. Hodgdon, the 14 () 15 lawyer for the NRC, had picked out the 100 millirem figure 16 for safe dosage, what she called safe dosage, which, as one 17 of you mentioned, was, in fact, a cost benefit analysis 18 figure from an ongoing running plant. And she had 19 characterized it as the dosage at which it is safe, but, in 20 fact, it is a cost benefit analysis figure, and what that I -21 means is that is the number at which, in the view of the I 22 NRC, or the AEC at that time, the benefits of putting more 23 energy into the power grid begin to outweigh the costs of 24 people becoming sick or dying from the actual radiation that 25-exists, and that is a very different thing than the blanket i i l i ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. j \\ Court Reporters d 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 i Washington, D.C. 20036 i (202) 842-0034 l
20 I safety which she asserted. i () 2 And it is something that I.think is really not i 3 something that it is the business of anyone to determine. I 4 think that that, just by itself, is wrong. It is an error 5 of judgment that was made at that_ time and we are still 6 living-under it. And it was used, of course, -- I mean it 7 was -- and it is not a figure that is relevant at all to a 8-plant once it is closed, because there is no benefit. i t 9 So it was used to justify the use of a fully grown 10 adult male as the standard man because that 100 millirem l r 11 figure was so large that, therefore, that gave wiggle room t 12 to, you know, not have to worry as much about the general 13 population, children and all. But what isn't accounted for in that is that that standard adult man, before he is a man, 14 () 15 is, in fact, a child'and, you know, grows from a fetus and 16 from an egg in the body of a woman, who grows from a girl 117 and that, through this whole process, -- I mean the way that I 18 Mr. Gad.was saying it, it is almost as if until this guy l 19 reaches a certain weight, the radiation, you know, has to 20 throw him back like a fish. -But that is not I mean I I 21 don't think that reasoning should be allowed to be the l 22 precedent, it is just ridiculous. 23 And I mean, really, what he is not taking into 24 account is that while every, you know, adult male is at some 25 point a child, not every child is going to become an adult, O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
21 1 and particularly not in a situation where we play fast and ]) 2 loose with the definitions of what is truly safe and what 3^ people will be able to survive. And that is not a rocket 4 science, you~know, engineering issue, that is basic common 5 sense. Ei And what I notice very often in these proceedings 7 is that the efforts made by counsel, or spokespeople, or B various defenders of the reactor are to exclude anything 9 that is not exactly germane to the specific academic point 10, that is being debated. And while that may, from a 11~ perspective of, you know, getting the hearing finished, may 12 have a rationale like that, I think it is -- what, in 13 effect, is being done is it is being used by lawyers to sort 14 of streamline these hearings entirely out of existence, and C 15 that is a real problem, because there is never a venue to l'6 . discuss the real danger that is taking place in this 17 community. And there is never a venue to discuss the ways 18 in which we have been, you know, constantly denied and the 19 ways in which we have continually been told, you know, 20 throughout this whole process that we have no business '21 discussing or interfering in any meaningful way with real 22 accountability. 23 We can talk and we are obligated morally to talk, 24 but you are not obligated legally to listen, and I think 25 _that needs to be changed. And it may not be within the l O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington,1D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
- - ~ ~ ~ I 22 1 1 1 venue -- you may not do it today, but it needs to be done, ,( ) 2 and it will be done. And that is all I have to say. L 3' JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Thank you. j. 4 [ Applause.] t 5 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Fred Katz. 6 MR. KATZ: Hello, I am Fred Katz and I live in 7 Rowe and I really appreciate you gentlemen being here. I am 8 falling asleep and you guys must be really tired as well. i But being in a courtroom for an entire day brings 9 i 10 to mind judiciary issues, and what comes to mind first is t 11 Judge Ponzer of the District Court, where John Block l 4 12 represented us for the first time. And his ruling was i 13 really inspirational. I mean he was really wonderful in l 14 that he, in fact, understood exactly what our complaint was. 1 ( And in his ruling he said that we being systematically and 15 16 bureaucratically thwarted in our efforts to get a hearing or 17 even to find a site where we could explain our concerns and 18 air our complaints. 19 And his ruling said that what was brought to mind, 20 to his mind, was the office of circumlocution in Charles 1 21 Dickens' " Bleak House." And, unfortunately, I don't believe 22 that the activities or the course of action of the NRC has 23 changed very much since that time, which I think is about 24 six or seven years ago, and since that time, actually, there 25 was an adjudicatory statement by the Inspector General of t i j fi ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \\/ Court Reporters { 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i L e w e m.--+ r +m y 3-y y
l i 23 1 the NRC who said that the propriety of the component removal () 2 project, -- now, the component removal project is what the t 3 choice of language that the NRC used rather than-i decommissioning, because at that time decommissioning would 4 5 require an adjudicatory hearing. So if you called it the 6 component removal project, it wasn't decommissioning, but, 7 in fact, it was a project that would remove, mobilize, and i 8 transport 95 percent of the radioactive inventory at the 9 reactor before a plan had even been submitted. 10 So, in fact, when time went by and we did get a 11 ruling in the First Circuit, that ruling was that the NRC j i 12 had acted in a manner which was described by them as 13 arbitrary and capricious, and utterly irrational. See, not j t 14 just irrational, but utterly irrational, which, in fact, was s ) , f 15 very heartening to me, because a lot of time in those years 16 I thought I was going nuts, you know. I thought I just 17 couldn't understand, you know, how I could look at something l 18 and it seemed so strange, but these were judges. l 19 So that, in fact, that what we are stuck with is 20 -- and it is very poignant when I heard you people say that, 21 well, we are not allowed to talk about that today. So that, l 22 in a certain sense, even you have been bureaucratically i 23 thwarted, you see. So that one has to hope that there will 24 be a forum. And I have a lot of faith, based on our i 25 experience in the District Court and in the Appellate Court, ) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. / Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 .l
. ~. -.... -.. l i 24 l that these people.will be able to understand our contentions 1 -( { 2 .as they -- as they are difficult to understand. So that I 3 appreciate your being here so late and we will see you 4 tomorrow. 5 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Thank you. 6- [ Applause.] L . 7 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Nina Newington. l 8 MS. NEWINGTON: My name is Nina Newington, I own a 9 home in Buckland about 10 miles from the reactor, and I also i 10 CAN's representative on the Community Advisory Board to 11 Yankee Rowe, and I also spent the day in court today. i 12 And I think I want to pick up this theme of the 13 utterly irrational, because one of the things that strikes t 14 me, and this was addressed'a little bit in the course of j l) 15 today, was that while it seems that you, as a board, are 16 unable to listen to or take into account CAN's contentions j 17 about how the fuel rods are going to be stored on site, i to 18 the rest of us, to talk about that site and what will be i 19__ left on there in the way of radiation, without addressing 20 the fact that the most radioactive element of the entire 21 reactor will remain on that site, is irrational. 22 We can't make that separation, it is a 23-schizophrenia that belongs only to bureaucracy, because the 24 geographical site is going to contain both the extra l 25 background radiation that Yankee plans to leave and the fuel O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
25 1 rods that will remain on site. It is the same place. 2 Now, I would say that there was a very particular 3 effort to sort of make that not be apparent. And I have '4-noticed it on the Community Advisory Board. We have been 5 divided, against my own desires, into two committees, one of 6 which is concerned with site release, the other of which is 7 concerned with how the fuel rods will be stored on-site. 8 Again, this is really an arbitrary separation, because from 9. the point of view of those of us who have lived with this 10 reactor, and have lived with the consequences of living near 11 this reactor, we can't make that separation. 12 Now, I understand that in terms of what you can 13 address immediately, it is also important to focus on what 14 you can actually talk about. But it is our job as citizens f 15 to go beyond what the bureaucracy can see, because 16-bureaucracies blind themselves. And this is one of the i 17 reasons why the hearings are necessary to the bureaucracy, t 18 They are not just necessary to us, because we are the people 19 who say, hey, wait a minute, let's talk about some common 20 sense. Let's talk about what is actually being left on-21' site. Let's really look at this, because it is in the i 22 nature of bureaucracies and systems, all of us, to become t 23 focused on our specializations and lose the big picture. 24 And that is why it is tragic that it has taken as 25 long as it has to have a hearing, has cost CAN as much money ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters s 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 ._________.._,__I
26 1 as it has, most of which was raised through tag sales and () 2 dances, to fight legal battles with a multi-million dollar 3 corporation, in order to request a hearing where local 4 people might have a chance to say, hey, this is our r 5 experience and that counts for something. 6 Specifically, coming back, having listened to the l 7-stuff about how kind Yankee is being to plan to leave us [ 3 8 less than that 100 millirem figure -- in fact, they are \\ 9 being very kind, they are planning to leave us less than the 10 25 in211irem, they are only going to leave us 15 millirem 11 over background. That means they are going to leave us 12 radiation we didn't have before. We should be clear about I 13 that. 14 We should also be clear that that 100 millirem () 15 figure is not a safe dose, as has already been said. There 16 is no known safe exposure to radiation. There is no known 17 safe exposure. More and more information is coming out i 18 about the specific dangers of exposure to low level 19 radiation. Much has been studied in terms of the A-bomb 20 survivors and exposure to high levels of radiation, and 21 extrapolated from that. There is now evidence that exposure 22 to low level radiation is a different thing, that stuff 23 sneaks in under the immune system and doesn't get wiped out { 24 and causes different kinds of damage. I 25 There is no known safe exposure. What we are [ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \\. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 } Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 I
27 1 being left is dangerous. It doesn't matter, you know, how () 2 it is dressed up, what fractions of the figure that was 3 supposedly safe are being left. There is no known safe 4 - exposure. 5 Then, to add to that, the insult that in 1999, 6 quote, "an individual is to be interpreted as a 200 pound 7 -man," I thought we were beyond that, I really did. I did 8 not think that we thought that anymore. 9 [ Applause.] 10 MS. NEWINGTON: And not only that, but a 200 pound 11 man who will be on site for eight hours a day. That 12 actually means he only sleeps on-site. You know, he 13 actually doesn't. spend any time at home apparently. Oh, he 14 does spend 1 percent of his time in the garden, I gather, as c ) 15 part of the calculation. i 16 It is essential -- essential that we calculate l 17 those exposures of the basis of the most vulnerable members l ) 18 of our population, and that is children -- that is children. 19 And it has to be on the basis of somebody who is.really 20 living there. In a way -- you know, I actually make a e 21 living as a landscape gardener. I spend an enormous amount 22 of time at home growing stock, with my hands in the soil. 23 If I were doing this on that site, I would be getting way 1 24 more than the kind of exposure they are talking about. I 25 wouldn't be one meter away from the hot spots, I would be { J h ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. k/ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
28 1 down in them. () 2 Again, this is a matter of abstraction. You know, 3 it is like that putative average individual is not a real 4 person, and what we have to do is stand here and say -- we 5 are real people, look at us. We have to talk past that 6 bureaucracy and say look at this community. Four-and-a-7 half times the rate of Down's Syndrome in this community. 8 We can't say for sure that'is because Yankee' pumped i i 9 radiation into the river for 30 years, but Down's Syndrome 10 has shown up around other reactors in association with i 11 exposure to tritium. 6 12 You have to say, look, we are the real -- we are 13 people. We are here, the stuff affects us. We are not an l 14 average figure, we are not a statistic. We are not that ) 15 average person who is going to be there eight hours a day. 16 And I appeal to you to listen to that, and, as much as you 17 can, to take and translate the language of the bureaucracy 18 that you have to work from. I understand that there's the 19 difficulty of coming up with rules, the difficulty of coming 20 up'with regulations, with formulating things, with trying to 21 make_them be predictable and applicable across different 22 situations, out you are the human representatives of that 23 bureaur. racy and part of your task is to bring that 24 information to a specific site and to be a bridge between us 25 and all of that information. Juni so I hope very much that h ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \\~ / Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i
.. ~ l 29 1 you can do that. Thank you. 2 [ Applause.] 3 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Carolyn Pressley. 4 MS. PRESSLEY: My name is Carolyn Pressley, I live 5 in Greenfield. And I would like to try to make the point 6 that we are all real people in this room, every single one 7 of us, this side of the aisle, that side of the aisle, the 8 other side of the camera. I don't know how far you traveled 9 from. I was here all day and I didn't learn that. 10 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Washington. 11 MS. PRESSLEY: All three? 12 JUDGE ELLEMAN: North Carolina. 13 MS. PRESSLEY: And? 14 JUDGE MURPHY: Washington, D.C. ( 15 MS. PRESSLEY: I have lived in Greenfield for four 16 years,.but before that I lived in a part of California where 17 uranium is mined, and so I found out that at the beginning 18 of the fuel cycle there is danger. The place where the 19 uranium was mind in the county where I lived had 20 contaminated, in the mining process, the water of the native 21' peoples where the uranium was found, and that created all i L 22 kinds of problems,'as you may guess. 23 And here we are talking about the spent fuel, 24-which sounds a little bit like it is not as dangerous as it 25 may have been before, but, if I understand correctly, it is ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. i Court Reporters -1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 I
30 i 1 the most toxic substance that anybody can name. Maybe I am I' N. )\\ 2 not informed, but I know that I am concerned. It doesn't 3 matter whether I live in Greenfield or east, west, north or 4 south, I think that all of us real people have a concern 5 about that. And we need to try to think less in terms of i 6 what side we are on, or whether or not our particular job at this moment in time is causing us to be here today, on the 7 8 payroll, so to speak. We are not. This is something that 9 concerns all of us no matter where we live. 10 And in Greenfield, if you go to the local junior 11 college, as I do sometimes, you will get a message like -- 12 this week the bulletin tells you what to expect. And what 13 to expect this week is a message from the campus security 14 people welcoming people to the spring semester, and telling f' (%) 15 you they are committed to maintaining a safe and pleasant 16 campus in which to work and obtain an education. At the end 17 of their message they tell you that it is important to j 18 remember that the most important component in a successful 19 crime prevention and awareness program is the cooperation of 20 every member of the campus community, and if a crime occurs, 21 report it. 22 I am not drawing a parallel to something that has 23 gone on today, or in the past here, under discussion, as a 24 crime. At this moment I am just pointing out that this 25 local junior college campus is the evacuation site for (~') ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. N/ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 I
31 1 Yankee Rowe and also for Vernon, the plant in Vermont that 2' is very close to us here. 3 And I think that there is something that costs all 4 of us, that we don't think about this, and that the campus 5 security doesn't think about it in terms of awareness,. i 4 6 because I think that this is a problem that if we all don't 1 4 7. grasp together, we will all suffer the consequences, and too i j 8 soon. 9 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Thank you, i 10 [ Applause.] 11 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Rosemary Bassilakis. i 12 MS. BASSILAKIS: Good evening, and thank you for 13 this opportunity to give you testimony. And I also want to [ 14 thank the organization I belong to, Citizens Awareness L s c ( ) 15 Network, and, also, NE' England Coalition, for having the ( i 16 wherewithal and the endurance, and all it takes to do what l 17 we do, and to stand before you with contentions. It is not i i 18 easy for ordinary people, and I grateful to all of us. 19 What you decide with this issue does have i 20 monumental importance and I am trusting that you gather 21 that. What you allow here in Rowe will happen in my 22 community and will happen in communities nationwide. Now, I 23 -live with my husband and my two school-age kids in Haddam, 24 Connecticut. I live one mile from Connecticut Yankee. 25 Now, let me just touch a minute on Connecticut O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
32 1 Yankee because it is-applicable here. Connecticut Yankee
- ex i-{
2 twas ruled to have been imprudently managed by both the i 3 Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Connecticut Department 1 4 of Public Utility Control, the Connecticut Attorney General. 5 It was an imprudently managed reactor throughout its life. 6 And we all know what that means with regard to money, it 7 means that they can't collect all their money for. 8 decommissioning funds. But what does it mean in terms of i 9 health and safety now and in the future? i 1 10 And just a few details. They operated with faulty 11 fuel for two different fuel cycles. One of them was a 4 12 record long run, they were very proud of that fuel cycle. 13 Unfortunately, it led to transuranic contamination that 4 2 14 pretty much flooded the site, you know, not just the piping, () 15 but the site. And, in fact, the NRC put forth a bulletin i. 16 warning licensees that workers can get unplanned uptake of 17 transuranics because of faulty fuel. l 18 They also operated with stainless steel clad fuel, ) 19 not just faulty fuel, but stainless steel clad fuel which l 20 led to the dumping of massive amounts of tritium into our 21 river, 120,000 curies as far as what was measured. Not what 22 was leaked, just what was measured through their purposeful 23 discharges. 24 They had. drains in the fuel pool building that 25 went directly to a leach field in the environment, directly. O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. i N/ Court Reporters s i 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
33 1 So workers would have buckets of contaminated liquids, and () 2 they would pour them into the drains and they would go out 3 into the yard. They had since built a basketball court over 4 there. But my point is just some of this complete loss of 5 control'of radiological materials. 6 Their reactor water storage tank leaked, on and 7 on. And I hope you are aware of the problem they had with 8 contaminated materials leaving the site, concrete blocks, 9 soil, scrap metal, plywood, all kinds of tools, welders -- 10 which they are in the midst now of trying to locate and 11 bring back to the site. These are decommissioning issues. 12-And I raise this because what you allow here is 13 going to be allowed elsewhere. So that the issues that_were raised today with regard to background measurements, site 14 () 15 surveys, whether or not they are going to go through the 16 arcane measurement of alpha detection. Dose calculations, 17 whether or not those calculations are going to be what 18 children would receive, are all of utmost concern and 19 importance,'and they really do warrant a hearing so that 20-these issues can be discussed, so that people can have 21 discovery, not just a pre-hearing, we really need a hearing. 22 Our fear, of course, is that what you permit here 23 will become the precedent, regardless of whether or not it 24-is protective. If Yankee is allowed to proceed with this 25 plan, this inadequate, somewhat faulty plan, which merely at ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
j 34 l times refers back to generic guidelines as far as what they 1 '[ s} . plan to do, we are all in trouble, not just this' community, 2-I 3 but our nation. There's 110 reactor sites in this nation. l 5 4 Now, with regard to off-site contamination, I will ? 5. be brief if you may let me. The NRC rules are somewhat { i 6 flawed in that as long as licensees do releases that are 7 within the regulations, they don't have to worry about what 8 is left in the sediment, in the rivers and in the waterways, 9 and that is a flaw with the NRC rules, and you need to l 10 . recognize that. And these_ issues need to be addressed in 11 decommissioning. It is not about blame, it is about being 12 protective. So this is something that needs to.be 13 addressed. ) i 14 The fact that we can't discuss removing the fuel l () 15. pool and dry cash storage is really a meltdown of democracy 16 -- and let me just end with this. I had more comments, but i 17 let me just end with this. Before you make your decisions, j 18 I want to press upon you to ask yourself how you would feel 19 if your children or your grandchildren moved to the Rowe 20 site to raise a family. Would you be able to rest 21 comfortably thinking that this license termination plan is 22 going to adequate protect them? Thank you.
- 23 (Applause.]
24 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: While the next person on the 25 list is Debbie Katz -- i l. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
35 1 MS. KATZ: I can't talk? 2 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think you -- -3 MS. KATZ: I talked a lot. 4 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Right. 5 MS. KATZ: I'll have to talk to you tomorrow. 6-JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Yes. This is intended not for 7 the parties. 8 MS. KATZ: Yes. I'm not done. 9 [ Laughter.) 10 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Okay. Rich Garant. 11 MR. GARANT: Hi, I am Rich Garant from 12 Brattleboro, Vermont, just a few miles -- 13 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Sorry I mispronounced your 14 name. ) 15 MR. GARANT: That's fine. I should have given 16 Rose a few more minutes because mine is going to be pretty 17 short. 18 This is first sort of day-long meeting that I have 19 ever attended on this issues. I just moved up to the area a 20 little over a year ago. I had a great deal of difficulty 21 listening to counsel for the Licensee continually talking 22 about plan and implementation of the plan and the 23 differences in these things. I mean to me it doesn't seem 24 like there is that much difference if you have got your plan 25 set out there. The implementation of it is of course going O Jdni RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 ~ (202) 842-0034
t l i 36 { 1 to depend on what the plant says and for him to just really [ i ;- - j 2 i sort of bifurcate the two so much to a very legalistic i 3 degree was -- I found very difficult, which just struck me. 4 The other, the sampling issues on and off site I l 5' think Dave discussed a little about it. It really should be l 6 a far more independent group that is doing that type of L 7 analysis because it is so obvious that it is to certain j 8 groups' self-interest to report low figures or to juggle f 9 around where they take their samples. 10 The third issue that I found a little 11 disappointing and maybe it is just because I haven't been to I l 12 a lot of these types of meetings was -- 13 [ Laughter.] 14 MR. GARANT: -- was I thought that the NRC () 15 Staff -- it's a public agency. I mean they are the one sort 16 of " big hitter" on the taxpayers' side. As a taxpayer, that 17 is where my money is going, and for them to sit there and be 18 little more than a glorified cheerleader, not even to take t 19 the side of either CAN or New England Council -- thank you, '20 Coalition on Nuclear Power but just to give a little more 21 critical information -- it's a public venue. 1 22 I mean, you know, we support the Licensee. We 23 have no problem with this. I mean, you know, I know there's 24 a far greater range of discussion about these issues and 25 they could have done a much better job about presenting some ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l Court Reporters i i 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
t 37 1 of their concerns, and I heard none of it, and that bothers i ) 2 me in this type of venue. Thank you for your time. 3 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Thank you. [ r 4 [ Applause.] 5 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Okay. Tim Judson. I 6 MR. JUDSON: Hi, My name is Tim Judson and I am 7 from Syracuse, New York. i 8 I represent the Syracuse Peace Council and the 9 Syracuse Anti-Nuclear Effort, and we are also the New York 10 affiliate for Citizens Awareness Network -- 11 JUDGE MURPHY: I didn't hear that. 12 MR. JUDSON: We are the New York affiliate for the 13' Citizens Awareness Network. 14 I guess I want to begin by saying that -- I mean () 15 to make the comments I am going to make tonight it makes me 16 a little bit sad, because while I'm glad that a lot of i 17-people in the room have already talked about the very human i 18 issues that the communities face here and face in all I i 19 reactor communities and waste communities and transport 20 communities face and so I feel like as an activist on this 1 21 issue a lot of times we talk about and we work on the issues 22 so much and we deal with the technical details of this 23 really perverse situation to the extent that sometimes I think even we have to develop a certain callous way of 24 25 talking about technical details and technical aspects of i p/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \\_, Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
l l 38 1 nuclear power and that kind of diverts us away from dealing n (V ) 2 l with the very human issues of how nuclear power and nuclear 3 waste affect people who actually live in the communities and 4 affect the environment -- ad infinitum. 5 I mean these effects are going to be seen 6 forever -- you know, a lot of the isotopes we are dealing with are radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, and 7 8 so I guess at the start I would like to reinforce the sense 9 that we are really in this hearing tonight at a historical 10 juncture, an historical moment, and I think everyone here is 11 conscious of the fact that what is decided here in this 12 process is going to act as a precedent for decommissioning 13 around the country. 14 What I think is actually sort of criminal about n ( ) 15 that at this point were the LTP as it stands to go forward 16 is that it deals with the issues of decommissioning and the 17 issues of the waste that is being left in this community in 18 such a general way as to actually not be able to deal with 19 the problem at all, and so what I guess I am going to urge 20 in my comments is an independent site-specific evaluation 21 that takes into account the actual contamination of the 22 community, not just averages but actually pinpoints the l 23 varying degrees of contamination at various points in the 24 community and within the contamination pathways and 25 investigates and takes into account the particular ( ANN RILEY &' ASSOCIATES, LTD. \\- Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
39 1 ecological and environmental circumstances of the Deerfield 2 River Valley, 3 As they stand right now, the estimations that 4 Yankee Atomic is using and that the NRC is supporting are 5 basically. design-basis estimations. They are going on 6 estimations of how the nuclear plant was supposed to 7 operate, where its waste was supposed to go, where 8 contaminants were supposed to end up, and basically it tries ~ 9 to draw the line on the contamination pathway as close to 10 the fence of the reactor as possible. t 11 This is basically indefensible. We all know that 12 contamination has spilled far outside the boundaries of that 13 and in random ways that we don't really understand right now 14 and that is largely because the environmental and ecological () 15 factors have not been understood yet. 16. For instance, one of the reasons that they can't 17 approve the Yucca Mountain National Repository is because 18 recently they discovered radiological -- they discovered 19 radioactive isotopes that have transported through 20 groundwater into the mountain from miles and miles away, and 21 this is in the middle of a desert where there is not much i 22 water to begin with. 23 And so here we are in the Deerfield River Valley 24 in one of the most water-rich regions of the planet and we 25' have no idea where water goes. It seeps underground through O-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202).842-0034
~. l 40 l t 1 various pathways. It's in the air. We have air l () inversion -- all these different ecological factors that 2 3 i -have yet to be taken into account and understood and how 1 4 they transport radioactive contaminants. 5 Essentially the area is saturated and through 6 processes that we' don't even understand yet, and in order to i 7 really get a handle on this, we need an independent 8 investigation because obviously Yankee Atomic isn't even l t l 9 interested in finding these things out. They have been -10 completely disinterested in going through an actual process i 11 of understanding how their reactor has messed up this l l 12 . community, and there are plenty of environmental scientists 13' and there are plenty of independent agencies who would be l 14 interested in actually understanding the ecology of how ( their water moves and how it goes to different places and 15 1 l 16 what it carries with it, and so what we have here are just 17 very crucial questions that we need to deal with in order to 18 process this. l 19 I guess there are a couple of other concerns that i .20 I have particular to the LTP, and one is with respect to the l 21 whole remediation -- am I running out of time? l j L 22 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: You have run out of time. 23 MR. JUDSON: I have? Okay. Well, what I will say 24 -with respect to soil remediation are two points. There seem 25 to be two assumptions behind what Yankee Atomic is saying l l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 i L (202) 842-0034 i Y
41 1 about the 15 centimeters depth. One is that the l X_s)/ / 2' contamination is higher closer to the surface than under, t 3 and if have groundwater contamination, that is manifestly i 4 not to be assumed. 5 Secondly, that exposure only happens to a certain r .6 depth and not significantly at depths greater than that. l 7 Fifteen centimeters is only about six inches. It seems { highly probable that exposure could happen at depths greater 8 9 than that, significantly, and that needs to be taken into 10 account as well. l 11 Just in conclusion, I would like to support L 12 Citizens Awareness Network and New England Coalition on l 13 Nuclear Pollution's other contentions and I.am going to hope 14 that the Commission can'take those into account. Thanks. O g j 15 [ Applause.] 16 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Keith Snow. 17 MR. SNOW: Good day, Your Honors. I am a local i 18 boy. I grew up in Williamsburg, which is very closeby. I 19 live now in Greenfield. I worked for General Electric for 20 five or six years. I have a Master's in Electrical 21 Engineering and I worked in Aerospace Electronics 22 Laboratories in Syracuse, New York. Science is not a 23 stranger to me. 24 Today what I heard was very disconcerting for me. 25 I heard Yankee Atomic complaints, calls for dismissals, O I \\s)) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. g Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
42 legal discreditation of contentions, and attempts to 1 l 3 2 discredit the petitioners' technical experts. t 3 I didn't hear a lot of substance, Your Honor, and i 4 one of the things that became sort of clear to me today was j 5 that what the petitioners are asking for is some substance 6 to the LTP and there isn't a lot of substance according to ? the petitioners. I haven't read it. t 8 I do have some experience looking at Yankee j 9 documents however. Yankee complained and complained today 5 10 that the Intervenors are suggesting that YAEC won't fulfill i 11 its obligations, which as Yankee points out, it has not yet [ 12 had the opportunity to fulfill, and the petitioners' i 13 contentions notwithstanding, it has every intention of j 14 fulfilling, this gives Yankee the opportunity to loosely () 15 interpret the Licence Termination Plan. 16 This is a history that Yankee has demonstrated in this community and it gives Yankee the opportunity to 17 18 loosely interpret the new NUREG guidelines since the LTP and 19. the Guidelines are loosely defined to begin with. It is my 20 contention that Yankee has and will continue to attempt to l 21 contravene any and all requirements from this LTP, anything 22 it can get away with, so to speak. It will minimize its 5 23 obligations, having already secured their loose . interpretation and will, as in their recent history, argue i 24 25 that they-have fulfilled these nebulous obligations, all the j j l [' ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \\A Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
c__ 43 while contending that they were procedurally delineated by 1
- [~')
2 this hearing, and finally that the procedure is no longer up i LJ 3 for debate and therefore that the site has adequately been 4 discontaminated -- decontaminated. i 5 This is a process of judicial, administrative 6 "round-speak" -- introduce a concept, twist it around, claim 7 you are going to do this and that, and in the end that you 8 did this and that. What does the public want? Clean-up. 9 What does " clean" mean? Yankee records suggest that, quote, 10 " Background measurements were taken prior to the startup of 11 plant operations." Further, documents often cite, quote, 12 " Samples taken for routine characterization over the history 13 of Yankee's 31 years of operation." 14 What we get when we start talking about background ( )j f 15 and I mean we, any member of the public, as far as I can 16 understand, is this duplicitous Orwellian argument whereby 17 background is never related to Yankee but always deemed a 18 product of global weapons tests, nuclear fallout, or the 19 original geological spectrum, all the time the background is 20 ever-revised upwards to suit the corporate financial gain. 21 This is what it looks like to me, Your Honors. 22 I am not interested in Yankee's selective and 23 arbitrary spectrographic analysis which in any case 24 according to Yankee has not yet been defined and therefore i 25 shouldn't even be up for discussion. In contra-distinction, (T ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (_s/ Couri Repc;ters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
44 1 this is exactly what is being asked for under the () 2 petitioners' request.of specificity. 3 Yankee's history is one, as far as I am concerned, 4 and I think this goes for my corporation when I worked for 5 them and for myself when I worked for them, of technological 6 arrogance. The site contamination is an unknown quantity I 7 think at this point. It is untransparent and shielded from 8 public and independent scrutiny. There's. insufficient, 9 nonexistent, complacent or vested interest regulatory 10 oversight, Your Honors. You do not appear to me as 11 independent. 12 There's lost or disappeared engineering 13 documentation of early designs, there are structural 14 alterations over the history of Yankee's operations, there
- (-')
' q,f. 15 were physical modifications to the site, its buildings and 16 structures, its inputs and outputs. This is from the record 17 'from the Public Document Room, Your Honor, from the fiche 18 itself, the fiche of the records. 19 There are examples of moved and/or buried storm 20 drains, culverts, quote " deep storm sewers" -- deep storm i 21 sewers? What does that mean? 15 millimeters is it? 22 SPEAKER FROM THE AUDIENCE: Centimeters. l 23 MR. SNOW: Oh, centimeters. Deep doesn't apply to 24 15 centimeters, I don't think. 25 And there is early decontamination areas such as i s O-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 j (202) 842-0034
I i 45 i 1 the, quote, " outdoor decontamination pads cited in Yankee ) y 2-reports from 1966." 3 There's significant, numerous, countless spill, f ~ 4 quote, " overflow," quote " leak"~ incidents outsidb of the, { t 5 quote, " routine," primary to secondary coolant leakage where 6 hundreds of thousands of gallons of contaminated effluent i 7 'were routinely dumped'into the river 8 Where is this? What is the characterization of I 9 the site? When the petitioner is asking for a i 10 characterization in my technical understanding this means t 11 you have a plot or a grid and you use known scientific i 12 quantities which are not delineated.by a dependent, vested 13 interest party to determine. 14 There are known scientific quantities that are ( ) 15 agreed upon by the petitioners, perhaps in Yankee itself or I 16 some independent and in this case I am not looking for some i 17 clown from MIT to come down and substantiate it because most 18 people or some people, those who have taken the time to 19 figure it out, know that Mr. Rasmussen himself was involved i ) in the President's Commission to misdirect the inquiry into 20 21 the accident at Three Mile Island. i' 22 i So there have been asphalt paving and storm sewers 23 and culverts with contamination due to leaking relief valves 24 and safety injection heat systems, " fence the culvert system I 25 via the floor drains" -- this is the words from Yankee's own l i f ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 { i
= - ~ i 46 1 documents. () 2 What global climatic mayhem, Your Honor? Where 3 are you' thinking about-that? There are tornadoes. There l t 4 are storms. Who is going-to be watching out for this site 5 under these conditions? -I don't believe that there are too 6 many people in the corporate sense of the word here who h 7 understand what global climatic mayhem means. I feel that I i 8 do and I feel that it needs to be taken seriously into l 9 account when you look at the nature of definitions like i 10 "100- year flood plan." 11 Last year the Deerfield rose to a over 100 year i 12 flood plain level. This Yankee diagram, 9699-FY6A shows 13 where the reactor input cooling water inlet and outlet are. i Where in the remediation plans will Yankee be addressing the 14 I) 15-sludge that lies at the outlet from the reactor where for 31 16 years in the soil which Yankee has spoken up for with the 17 NRC in a hearing when Morton Fairtile was present that there 18 are unknown contaminants in the soil under the water at the 19 outlet. 20 According to this diagram, the inlet is 70 to 90 21 feet down. The outlet is in 10 feet of water. What is 22 going to prevent somebody's child from taking a boat out i 23 there and diving down and digging up some of this gunk when 24 he is on a little fishing expedition? That is what 25 remediation security means in my understanding, not this t I i (('V } ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters { l 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 i l Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202) 842-0034 l r w
I k i t 47 1 technical jargon which Yankee likes to throw around, at [/\\ 2 'least in the sense that the lawyers are in control and w 3 involved with it, and many of the things I have heard -- l I 4 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Time is up. i 5 MR. SNOW: -- are just meaningless. I am almost i l 6 done, Your Honor. L 7 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Because your time is up. I { l 8 MR. SNOW: Thank you. NRC's delineation or i i 9 parameters whereby the spent fuel pool and ALARA and onsite f i i 10 storage issues are neatly excluded from this hearing is 11 unacceptable, Your Honor. i 12 That is the history of the NRC. 1 l 13 I was sitting back there trying to think what are the major words, but I don't have any magic words -- what ( 14 () 15 will help you people see what I see. This is only little l 16 old me but I would like you to see what I see, because I t l 17 want to clean this thing up. I would like to help you do i l 18 that, but I reject the deployment of some -- I reject YAEC's 3 l 19 claims for, quote, " good faith" -- their promises of 20 attention to detail and thoroughness and their assurances of 21 good working relationships, because YAEC has a history of 22. subterfuge and deceit, cowardice and bad faith, pollution of 23 the democratic process, and the use of the local newspapers 24 through financial measures that the citizens do not have I j 25 access to, which makes it overly unfair, and that's why 4 4 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters s 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 ~~~ (202) 842-0034 L i
~ 4 48 1 there aren't more citizens in this room, because they have (~') 2 been swayed'by the public media, so-called. %/. 3 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think -- 4 MR. SNOW: In my eyes, you are not really 5 interested in public inputs. You are merely laying the 6 groundwork and testing -- and tempering the waters for 7 future public exclusion, environmental hostility, and social B expropriation. How can you expect my trust? 9 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Thank you. 10 [ Applause.) 11 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Nicole Petrin. 12 MS. PETRIN: It's P-trin, thanks. i 13 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Okay. i 14 MS. PETRIN: I wasn't here today. I'm kind of l () 15 relieved about that. It's been a long day. I 5 16 I'm a local yokel. I am 31, almost 32 years old, t 17 like Yankee Rowe. What you all said, I want to just say I { 18 support most, almost everything, that's been said at this l 19 podium before me, and that I want to repeat a couple points 20 that seem especially important to me -- the democratic 21 process being the most important, that we continue being 4 22 able to put our time and effort, our nonpaid time and effort i 23 into protecting our own interests, for me being my friends, I t 24 family, community, or environment that I live in. 25 This is my home. This is my home and when we talk 1 I i /~') k,/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters s 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 I' 1 i
i 49 1 about children, these are my potential children. These are 2 my kids, you know, and I carry them with me from birth. 3 Women carry their~ eggs with them all their lives. Every I single thing that has happened to me, everything I eat, t 4 5 everything I ingest, all the cow's milk that I have ever ) 6 had, everything that happens at Yankee Rowe, at Vernon, the 7 confluence of the rivers, the Connecticut and the Deerfield, l 8 all that is affecting my children, my potential children. 9 It is affecting my decision to have children, my 10 faith that I might be able to have healthy children. You i 11 know what a big decision that is? It makes me just -- I { 12 mean it's hard to stand up in front of people and cry, but I i t .13 might not be able to have children, you know? -- because I 14 don't trust that they would be healthy. Okay, they might be 15 healthy but then what about what they eat and what they l 16 drink and I want to live here with my family. I grew up 17 here. My people grew up here. 18 And that is why I am just begging you -- keep the p 19 process open and listen with your hearts, you know, and what { 20 was said about the grandchildren and the children, really I 21 think about that. I mean these are issues we don't 5 22 understand. We pretend to with our scientific knowledge, l 23 but we don't have a clue. We don't understand how, we t 24 really don't -- it's how things are connected and where that 25 water f?ows and what plant grows up there and, oh, I was l l . [} ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. i (_, Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 j i
i 50' into eating wild edibles and did I pull up the wild edible { 1 () 2 from the Deerfield River'and who else pulled that up, what 3 other beings pulled that up that live in this community? 4 Who buys their fiddlesticks at the coop? Where do those 5 fiddlehead ferns come from? You know, they come from the i i I 6 watery areas. They come from down by the river and somebody 7 goes and collects them. Little things like this -- people 8 are ingesting parts of our community. The plants are part 9 of our community. The animals are part of the community, j and I am just urging you to protect my community because you l 10 11' guys have the power and you have the power to shut us off, i i 1:2 and I_ basically beg you, don't shut us off, you know? It's in your hands, my fellow human beings -- so thank you. 13 14 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Thank you. l ) 15 [ Applause.] i 16 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Sam -- 17 JUDGE MURPHY: Sam Streeter? t i 18 MS. STREETER: Sandra. 19 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Sandra? Okay. Sandra? 20 -MS. STREETER: Sandra. 21 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Okay. We couldn't read it. 22 Streeter, is that the right -- 23 MS. STREETER: Correct. 24 My name is Sandra Streeter and I live in 25 Bernardston, Mass., which is a small town located between O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 -(202) 842-0034
-m 51 1 Vernon and Rowe. 1 (mi 2 ~J I have had the pleasure of visiting your home in 3 Washington and I was impressed mightily. I love beautiful 4 places and that pink and white marble that is the NRC's home 5 in Washington is a gorgeous place. I experienced wiping my i 6 feet on your nice doormats outside. I experienced armed 7 guards protecting your door and the opulent lobby, and the 8 ' beautiful panel, the mirrored hallways and the meeting rooms 9 that we attended a hearing in or prehearing. 10 It was very clear I should be respectful of your 11 splendid home. I even experienced stopping to read the i 12 carved relief platitudes of how much you care about the 13 human condition and me, my children. 14 I am here tonight to beg you to honor our home. /N i ) 15 The walls are not polished marble, just granite and forest, 16 but I love every inch as dearly as you love your home and I 17 wish my children to be safe here, which at the present time 18 I really question if my two-year-old grandson should stay in 19 Bernardston because of the proximity of Vermont Yankee. 20 Our community cannot afford guards to make sure ) 21 our home is honored and respected. In fact, we can barely j \\ 22 compensate the wonderful legal help that we have received, 23 and this condition is caused partly because our Federal 24 taxes pay for your home and your salaries. 25 Our Federal taxes paid for the nuclear reactors /) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (m / Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
m i t 52 1 originally. Our state welfare and insurance rates, both our f( ) 2 taxes and insurance rates help pay for the illness of the 3 people who become ill from the pollution, and now the l 4 powers-that-be in our state have enforced that we must pay 5 the stranded. costs of nuclear power. t 6 In my estimate we have paid for those plants three times -- when they were built through the ratepayers, i 7 i 8 through our high rates for power, and now through the 9 stranded cost. 10 Nuclear communities are painfully being drained of 11 life. Rural people have become the new natives. I feel we 12 are being systematically exterminated along with our 13_ ecosystem. i 14 In my neighborhood illness is rampant. When I see l 15 my neighbor's grandchildren playing outside, one of them in i 16 a wheelchair, trying to play baseball -- I'm sorry, does i 17 someone have a Kleenex? 18 [ Pause.] l 1 _19 MS. STREETER: I'm sorry. In my neighborhood 20 illness is rampant. And, as I said, my neighbor's 21 grandchild goes outside and plays baseball in a wheelchair 22 because of spina bifida, and this is a common problem, spina 23 bifida is very prevalent in our community. 24 I really -- I start questioning if my home is 25 being honored by the very people who should care for us the (/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ) \\ \\_- Court Reporters j 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i i l I
~n 53 1 most,~our protectors. I think NRC are the only protectors O 'g j
- i 2
of the people. I become more and more uncomfortable about 3 seeing three white males sitting up here in judgment, no l 4 women, no children. i 5 { Applause.] 6 MS. STREETER: I really, I wonder if you can hear 7 the pleas of the mothers and the grandmothers for the safety 8 of our children and our planet. 9 When Oak Ridge National Lab is cited as helping to 10 protect us, of making decisions for us, I think about their 11 record of abuse in their own site. I have a copy of an 12 August 4th, 1991 incident about radioactive frogs hopping in 13 their driveways, being run over'by cars and the tires 14 becoming contaminated. Their environmental coordinator ,-sc , (,) 15 said, and I quote, "The frogs aren't particularly cute, so I 16 don't think anyone is going to take them home as pets." 17 What kind of concern is this?- Do they know frogs are eaten 18 by other animals? They-are scientists, shouldn't they know 19 this? -20 They remediated that site with a frog fence, and I 3 21 am supposed to trust them. I am not a scientist, but I can 22 add two and two, and it equals we are not being protected. [ 23 Do we provide your home and pay your salaries to i 24 protect the public or to give the public a snow job with 25 white paper? Were does it say in the Bill of-Rights, my t 1[ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. !A Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 - i
. -_ ~ 54 -1 Bill of Rights, my children's Bill of Rights, that we must 2 (sv) accept contamination and poisoning of our atmosphere and our 3 home for corporate stockholders' gains? 4 If I come to Washington, to your home, with some 5 of Franklin County's waste, which I guess would have to be 6 cow manure, will your guards let me bring it to your house 0 7 and store it on your site? I doubt it. 8 It this justice that citizens must come begging 9 for a fair and prudent settlement of a site that they have 10 already given up their health to, and then be told that it is safe for your next generation of children to live near 11 12 and play on? And this is just a guess, and we don't have 13 any assurance that the corporation may be trying just to cut its losses and screw the rural poor community one more time. 14 f (%) 15 I'm sorry, but I feel it is an outrage and I ask 16 you, please, to think of us. 1 17 (Applause.) 18 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Libby Hubbard. 19 MS. HUBBARD: Hello, I am writer-artist, I am a 20 futurist. And it is ironic that I am a futurist because I 21 am also a dead end gene. Can you guess what a dead end gene 22 is? I'm sterile. I tried to conceive a child, I went to 23 fertility doctors and they said you have unexplainable 24 infertility. Now, after 4 billion years of human evolution 25 of my ancestresses being able to conceive, why could I not [N (_) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
_ _. - _ _. - _ _ _ _ - _. _ _ _. ~. _ - - - _ - h r-- 55 i 1 conceive? ) i 2 Perhaps it was because I am a child of the nuclear i 3 age. Since my birth there have been thousands of nuclear l 4 test site explosions, nuclear power plants have popped up on 5 the planet like canker of some terrible venereal disease. [ 6 The water, the soil is contaminated, and you know it. And I j 7 am a dead end gene. I will not go on. I do not have any 8 joy of raising children, or being near children. I stopped. 1
- 9 I don't have money, like that scientist said, oh, 10 well, just use in vitro fertilization, you know, use -- go l
11 to a sperm bank, get sperm, take somebody else's egg, and l 12 you can have a baby that way. But I don't even have health i 13 insurance. It is not an option for poor people to use that i 14 technology. '( 15 I will leave you with this idea -- plutocracy. I l 16 am sure you judges know what that is, government by the 17 rich. And plutonium is their byproduct. 18 (Applause.] i 19 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Katie Flynn-Lambeck. 20 MS. JANBECK: Janbeck. 21 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Pardon? 22 MS. JANBECK: Katie Flynn-Janbeck. You have to 23 bear with me, I am dealing with microphones and cameras, 24 which are my two least favorite things to speak in front of. 25 I would like to say, in general, that I am here to
- p)
ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. 'g, Court Reporters 1025LConnecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington,.D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
56 1 support the contentions of CAN and the New England Coalition n l(v) 2 on Nuclear Pollution. And as I am not an expert and we have 3 already gone over many of these at length, I think what I 4 wanted to speak about 5 AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT: Louder. 6 MS. JANBECK: I'm sorry, like I said, you have got 7 to bear with me. 8 I am pretty much just going to touch on the things 9 that seemed obviously absurd. You know, I am not expert 10 enough to get into some of the details, but some of this is 11 -- just strikes me as very bizarre. We have thrashed over 12 the -- or talked a little bit today about the concept of 13 using a 200-plus pound man on the site as kind of your 14 standard person. You have to excuse me. From what I (Qj 15 understand, this person is a farmer who only gardens 1 16 percent of the time, which is kind of conflict, I would 17 think, because if you were going to be a farmer, you might 18 be on the site for more than eight hours a day, and would 19 most likely be gardening for more than 1 percent of your 20 time. That is what you do, essentially, if you are a 21 farmer. 22 So that these are the kinds of things that if we 23 are screwing up on that kind of stuff, that really makes me 24 be concerned about the rest of it. The stuff, you know, the 25 issues that, maybe because I am not an expert, I might not I] ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (_s Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
.._ - __.._ ~ .m. t 57 i i catch the math on, but some of these things are -- they are ) 2 pretty straightforward that there is -- basically, I am i saying if the math is wrong on the little things, I am i 3 4 really concerned about some of the larger things. 5 I also have some really -- it somehow seems absurd L 6 to me as well that we are not addressing any issues having f 7 to do with the fuel pool when we are talking about a license j 8 termination plan. It is my understanding that the NRC is i 9 not going to release that site if there is fuel on it, or if 10 there is, you know, if there is fuel in the fuel pool, if 11 there's fuel in casks, most likely you will still have some l
- 12 oversight of that area.
Am I wrong? Can I ask a question? ] 13 JUDGE MURPHY: I was off someplace. Ask the l i 14 question again. , /)N i\\, 15 MS. JANBECK: Well, I am having hard enough time 16 up here, so I would really appreciate it if you had paid 17 attention. 18 [ Pause.] 19 MS. JANBECK: That is not -- I am just asking you, 20 am I correct or am I -- 21 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think the answer is yes, but 22 you might better ask the staff. 23 MR. MASNIK: Yes. 24 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think the answer is yes. 25 MS. JANBECK: You still would have some oversight. ( O '\\ / ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202) 842-0034
i i 58 l 1 MR. MASNIK: Oversight. As long as there is fuel () 2 on the site, there will be oversight. i 3 MS. JANBECK: All right. Okay. So, these are the 4 reasons why it just -- it seems somewhat absurd to me. It 5 also seems.very strange that there.is -- that Yankee is 6 allowed to not find what they don't want to find. You know, if they get to pick how deep they want to look -- and I know 7 8 that you are following other regulations as well, but it is 9 pretty easy not to find something if you are really not 10 looking for it. And, so, do you understand the level of 11 absurdity that I am referring to? 12 One question that was not answered earlier, too, 13 about if you do find a hot spot, I mean maybe they will 14 stumble across one, what would you want to know about it? O) (, 15-And besides just kind of knowing what kind of isotope it i 16 would be, you know, how long-lived -- long the half-lives 17 were of that isotope, I would want to know how it got there. 18 Because maybe if we know how it got there, we would know 19-where else to look. If we know that it got there from one 1 20 of these underground gutters, then you should be looking in 21 more underground gutters. If you think that it got there 22 because they are using a faulty fuel, then you would have 23 somewhat of an idea. And I don't know if you can figure 24 this stuff out, but I hope that you are able to and that you j 25 do. l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. t Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
59 1 It nas also been really frustrating to me, today, () 2 here, listening to counsel talk about how hard it is to 3 understand goofy old CAN's contentions. You know, we are 4 not lawyers. You know, I took a vacation day to be here 5 today. I would rather use my vacation day to be on 6 vacation. You know, you guys can figure it out. I have 7 pretty high confidence that you guys can muddle through. 8 And as much as it might be annoying to have to come deal with us, and it might take time out of your day to come deal 9 10 with us, we are here, you are going to have to deal with us, 11 whether we do it on your terms or on our terms, we kind of 12 muddle through the way that we have been muddling through. 13 I mean that is why we are all here, is because we live here. 14 If we didn't live here, it wouldn't be an issue. That's all (O ,/ 15 I have to say. Thanks. 16 No, wait. Actually, wait, wait, I'm sorry, that's 17 not all I have to say. That's why I wrote it down. We have 18 to remember that it is -- that this issue does not get 19 cleaned up and go away. If we take the waste from the Rowe 20 site, we are bringing it somewhere else, and then it is 21 somebody else's problem, and we can't forget that in this 22 whole process. And that is something that, you know, a lot 23 of-people ~here are aware of, but you have to really keep 24 that in sight as we talk through this process. Thanks. 25 [ Applause.] 3 ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (- Court Reporters j 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
~... - 60 i 1 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Larry Kilroy. l () 2 MR. KILROY: Thanks for coming out. I think we 3 were here like four years ago. I don't know if it was this 4 room or one of these roome here, and I do appreciate you 5 coming out, because that day it didn't seem like anyone was I 6 listening. 7 So, anyway, I am from a town called Warwick, t 8 Massachusetts, which is close to here. It is actually 9 within 10 miles of Yankee Vernon, not the Rowe plant itself. i -10 I am about 20 pounds short of being an average man, but I do I 11 think that, one, I just want to take a couple of minutes of i 12 your time and impress upon two ideas. 13 One is that for several years now I have got the 14 feeling from, not yourselves personally, obviously, but that () 15 the public is somehow this other segment of folks who might 16 not know much about things, and I just wanted to say that I think you should listen especially to people who have been 17 involved with this from the public because they do have a 18 11 9 different perspective on things, and there are people who 20-are experts in the public. Not all of us choose to work for 21 the nuclear industry, but we can still have expertise in 22 those areas, and I am confident that you will. 23 I also wanted to point out that the level of 24 absurdity, since that is the term that seems to be working I 25 here, I just wanted to give you a quic:t example of one that i /O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \\ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 4
.m ~, l 61 i 1 I grew up in. I grew up in a home that was about 15 feet i 2 from the actual 10 mile radius that was the immediate l 3 ' evacuation zone around Yankee Vernon. The house across the 4 street had to leave immediately in case of an accident, 5 whereas, we didn't. And I never understood that. So I l 6 think, you know, a lot of us who have grown up around these 7 plants have experienced that, and I am just asking you to at 8 least absorb that we do have some of these preconceptions l 9 that seem to hammer on us all our lives that we just don't l 10 understand. And I am sure you will take that into account, 11 t I also, the last thing I wanted to touch on is the 12 idea of Yankee testing itself, policing itself and, you 13 know, figuring out when to test and where to test. And that I just think that it is fair to assume that they are going 14 15 to do that honestly. And I say that because I have worked t 16 with CAN and other folks, and private citizens, and even i with -- I guess you could say with folks from Yankee Atomic, 17 18-on the issues, and I don't feel like there has been a 19 groundwork established to expect us to trust them. I am not 20-saying they couldn't earn it, but I think at this point it 21 is -- they'would have to do a lot. 22 So, I would just ask you to consider that. But if 23 you should decide that they can police themselves, and since 24 you are down in Washington, I thought maybe you can some 25 strings for us citizens, and I have some ideas. Maybe you 'O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
~- e 62 I could see if we can monitor ourselves for speeding, that - (s_/) ' 2 would be good. Also, maybe get some strings' pulled so that 3 we could' pay our own taxes and make sure-we pay our own 4 taxes. And, finally, I think we should all just drug test 5 ourselves from now on. 6 [ Applause. ) 7 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Kim Medeiros. 8 MS. MEDEIROS: Okay. So, my name is Kimberly J 9 Medeiros, I live in Montague, Massachusetts. I am 24 years 10 old and I am scared out ofimy wits to be up here talking. 11
- But, basically, it scares me a heck of a lot more about what is going on with the nuclear industry in this country-and 12
.13 the. effects that it can have on the communities and the 14 people that we love, and the people that you love, too, so. .() 15 I am not-a scientist, I am not a public speaker, i 16 but there is one thing I do want to point out to you. I am 17 sure you have read the license termination plan and this 18 cover sheet here that they gave to us to make us feel better 19 about the way that they are going to decommission this site. ) 20 And, you know, there is a couple of things on here. It 21 says, first of all, that it was safe from start to finish, 22 'which is ridiculous, because we all know that there is '23 nothing safe about radiation. The other thing is that they 24 call this entire decommissioning plan " Project Green l 25 Fields," as if they could just magically return Yankee Rowe ((} ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \\- Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 l (202) 842-0034
i l 63 i r 1 to what it was before. And then to make us feel even better 2 about it, they-give us a picture of what the reactor site i 3 _looks like now and then they air brush the reactor off the j 4 river. But they failed to erase the reflection of the 5 reactor in the river, even on their own advertising. 6 [ Applause.] 7 MS. MEDEIROS: So if they can't do it on paper, i 8 then I really don't believe that they can do it in real 9 life. So, please, you know, consider CAN's contentions and 10 the Nuclear -- Coalition on Nuclear Pollution's contentions 11 and reconsider their license termination plan and don't 12 leave the site unrestricted. That's all I got to say. 13 [ Applause.] 14 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Thomas A. Wilson. '15 MR. WILSON: My name is Tom Wilson, I am a dentist 16 in Shelburne Falls. Kim, that was marvelous. 17 There has been some anger up here. I generally 18 try to bring some with me. -And there have been some people 19 close to saying just plain " bullshit," which works for me 20 better than some of the other jargon. And there have been 21 some common threads coming through here, in case you haven't i 22 been tnLing notes, and I just wanted to mention a few. Like 23 the utilities running roughshod over the democratic process. 24 I guess the first time we became really aware of that was 25 Seabrook. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters i 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 '(202) 842-0034
64 1 The pre-determination of how these hearings come l 2 out and what is reported, and what the media gets, and how 3 i you guys feel pretty safe in here, and gals, token,-and I 4 hope you people don't mind now looking at four old men. 5 [ Laughter.] 6 MR. WILSON: The nuclear plant is creating a 7 radiological public health nightmare, and, in a lot of ways, 8 touching on perpetuating the lie of nuclear technology. 9-Back in the '60s when they were writing some plants for the 10 Montague plant, they were a little more truthful and they 11 used terms like " nuclear park." Better -- better, " national 12 sacrifice area." I wonder what that means, or what it was 13 supposed to mean, or what it is going to mean. 14 I am just part of the public and I have been 15 really angry for a number of years about "the lie." And I 16 have gone all over the country in a way visiting different sites from the nuclear fuel cycle, mostly the nuclear 17 i 18 reactors. And I went to Harrisburg in 1981, and the people 19 there were organizing, like the people here do, CAN, and 1 20 upper in Brattleboro, the Nuclear Coalition, and they have 21 money-raisers, which somebody already mentioned tonight, 22 which was fun, and sell T-shirts. 23 And in 1981, at the third commemoration of the 24 disaster at Three Mile Island, which continues, a nationally 25 syndicated cartoonist designed a T-shirt, Jules Feiffer, a ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
.. ~ 65 l 1 simple statement -- I'll show it to you. I show it to you I U) I 2-first, in deference, and I consider you part of this whole L 3 process, I don't consider you protectors. I think you are j 4-bad guys. + i 5 Now, this is a simple statement using a nuclear 6 cooling tower as the eye, and it says, "They lie." And I 7-know who they are, the people who conceived of the nuclear 8 i technology in order to make weapons grade material and sold 9 the public on the idea that energy was going to be too cheap I i 10 to meter and, hey, that didn't happen, we know that. It was 11 economics that they say shut down the Rowe reactor, but it 12 was probably more lack of safety associated with the 13 radiation from that reactor. I 14 My favorite shirt, "They lie." Pretty simple. I I L/"T (,/ 15 wish they would stop lying. I wish you people would stop 16 lying. I wish you would fess-up to this whole mess. I wish i 17 all the reactors around the country and around the world 18 were shut down, period. And no disrespect meant, but I 19 don't want you guys overseeing anything. I want the people I 20 to be overseeing the decommissioning of the reactors in 1 21 their own neighborhood. We don't need the NRC, and we don't 22 need to pay federal taxes. 23 IApplause.] 24 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Jonathan Snelling. 25 MR. SNELLING: My girlfriend, Joycelyn Jay, would
- O ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD.
l. s/ Court Reporters 1025. Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 ~~ (202) 842-0034
66 1-like to take my_ spot. [ 2' "MS. JAY": Ooh, it's me. I \\- 3. MR. SNELLING: So I am going to give my spot to my l 4 girlfriend. 5 "MS. JAY": Thank you so much, Jon. We are going i 6 to kick the level of absurdity up -- what do you think of my 7 exposure? Do you have no eyes? i 8 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Could you make a statement? I 9 "MS. JAY": This becomes heavier than the average i 10
- man, i
11 (Laughter.) 12 "MS. JAY": Yes, I am Joycelyn Jay, and I am a [ 13 clown, and I am here to clown around with you guys because i t 14 you think you have no show time. You come plowing in here (~N ( ) 15 to Greenfield with your drama and your theater, and you 16 think all these wonderful, beautiful, sincere, heartfelt 17 people -- not you guys, them guys -- are going to sit here 18 and pour our hearts out to you and you are sleeping, and you 19 are like schmoozing around, and, hey, we want to talk about 20 billfolds. Who's got the biggest billfold here? Is it on 21 this side or is it on that side? Oh, but anyway, or perhaps 22 it is with you gentlemen. 23 Now, they have been calling you the honorable l 24 gentleman. Are you judges, or are you just sort of i 25 bureaucrats from the NRC? O. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. A/ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 i Washington, D.C. 20036 j. (202) 842-0034
's 67 1 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: We are judges. 'lD 2 "MS. JAY": You are judges. Federal judges? Oh, { d -3 my goodness. I have been so disrespectful. Oh, I hope you 4 don't find me in contempt, but if you do, maybe we can go in 5 the back room and I can do what Bill Clinton would like. 6 But that's something else, sorry. 7 But, honestly, I would like to sing a song for l 8 you. This is a prelude, it is not really a fat lady 9 singing, but the fat lady will sing if you continue to act like you do. 10 11 [ Laughter.] 12 "MS. JAY": So I want to just sing. And I want to 13 turn this drama and this theater into a bit of a cabaret, if 14 you don't mind. So I would like to come down off the stand. h ("N I ( ) 15 And I am sure you can hear me -- and see me. But I will t 4 16 cruise'along and, Susan, follow me, because there is no 17 other press around. 18 [ Laughter.] 19 "MS. JAY": They found some funny rocks out on the 1 20 cobble road flats, so they thought they would make some [ 21 money, and they hired some bureaucrats. Now, they say it is 3 22 what we need to keep us free from all our care, and we have 23 atcmic power -- radiation everywhere. 24 You can't'see it, you can't feel it, you can't 25 stash it in the hall. You can't serve it up for dinner, it ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. (_- Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
~ 68 1 will answer when you call. You can't flush it down the ( )' 2 toilet and, my friends, this ain't no lie, you will give it 3 life and money but you'll never make it die. 4 Well, it is the rage in Russia, and in China and 5 in France, and every little dictator'wants to get their 6 atomic chance. And they will breed it right along until 7 there's tons on it on store, and they will put it in their 8' missiles and they will have themselves a war. .9 Yes, it is in the air, it is in the food, and it 10 is the milk kids drink. It is in the snow at Christmas and 11 it'is in the kitchen sink. And down below the continent 12 there's tons of it on store, and all we have to do is keep 13 it safe forever more. 14 Now, here's to all the great men who have brought () 15 .it right along,-in all their war and glory and in business, 16 right or wrong. And when we finally meet them, in the 17. mansion in the sky, we can thank them very kindly for 18 kissing our ass goodbye. .9 You can't see it, you can't feel it, you can't 1 20: stop it in the hall. You can't serve it up for dinner, it ^ J 21 will answer when you call. You can't flush it down the 22. toilet, and, judges, this ain't no lie, we are going to give j 23 it life and money -- oh, I can't even fit in the chair -- 24 but they will never make it die. 25 Okay. Now, I want to offer you a little extra [ ANN-RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. v Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
69 bonus just to entice you to give us some stiffer regulation .1 >rs ,( ) 2 with these people, I want to offer you each a little Viagra. 3 Now, we can take Viagra and have stiff regulation. The 4 world would be a better place and I wouldn't have to sing. 5 I don't want to sing, I want to be happy and clown'around. 6 Yeah, thank you very much. 7 [ Applause.] 8 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Joshua Jay. 9 SPEAKER FROM THE AUDIENCE: He's not here. 10 MR. JAY: That's me -- l 11 [ Laughter.] 12 JUDGE MURPHY: Wait a minute -- Sal Mangiagli. I 13 Can we have some -- i 14 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Sal Mangiagli. ,rr (,) 15 MR. MANGIAGLI: My name is Sal Mangiagli and I am 16 with the Citizens Awareness Network and I live in Haddam, l 17 Connecticut, a mile from Connecticut Yankee. 1 18 That was quite an act. There's been a lot of very I 19 strong, very powerful testimony tonight, and I am wondering i 20 how it is received by you guys, to stand here and listen to 21 people talk about their cares and their concerns, their l 22 children, their health. 23 In Connecticut, it is not received very well. We i 24 . deal with Northeast Utilities down there. We live about 23 c 25 miles from the Millstone reactors. We have been dealing ' [ '}. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. N-Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
i 70 { with Northeast Utilities and the NRC for a number of years 1 () 2 and they do lie to us and they deceive us, both Northeast 3 Utilities -- may be record-breaking -- and the NRC. i 4_ Connecticut Yankee was called by our Attorney-t 5 General and our Governor an undocumented waste dump, 6 radioactive waste dump, and as Rosemary had raised the t issues of the sloppy radiological controls over there, 7 j the i 8-awful contamination that has been detected en the roofs, in 9 the parking lots, in the grass, the tritium that has been 10 dumped into that river. This is one reactor that is going l 11 to be decommissioned after Rowe, and what you set here for i -12 Rowe is what we will have to live with in Haddam, and I 13 there's great concern that that site is left as clean as 14 possible, not by the utility's standard but as clean as 15 .possible. 16 I have been sitting here listening to all this ~17 testimony and I have been sort of sidetracked. I have been here all day and I have been thinking about what I wanted to 18 19 say and it's all been said very well, and I just want you 20~ folks to hear it and that as these reactors are aging, as 21 the problems are surfacing, as they are starting to shut 22 down, as the waste is piling up, as the low level waste 23 dimps are failing and leaking, every one of them, as Yucca 24 11,untain has to break down its hurdles to be found suitable, 25 this is the endgame of nuclear power, and the waste is going \\~- - ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
71 I to be with us for a long, long time, and we have to be l () 2 responsible with it because it kills people, it contaminates 3 for a long, long time and it is very important that you guys i 4 set very high standards. 5 In Connecticut Northeast Utility gets what it i 6 wants. i It's obvious -- none of them are in jail. They have 1 7 paid some fines. You know what has gone on down there, t 8 Northeast Utility has run four reaccors into the ground so 9 bad that they cannot collect decommissioning funds on one of 10 them, that another one of their reactors is shut down after 11 an inspection, and after citizens demanded those 12 -inspections, otherwise I believe those reactors would still 13 be running, because the NRC wasn't doing their job and those 14 reactors -- Millstone 3 was a 10 year old reactor. They had () 15 to spend over a billion dollars to bring it into compliance, 16 and the NRC was there the whole time, so you are not doing 17 your jobs and you need to start doing your jobs. This is i 18 the endgate and it is very serious and I guess that's all I 19 have to say. 20 [ Applause.] 21 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Are there more names on the 22 list out there? 23_ (No response.] 24 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Thank you very much. 25 JUDGE MURPHY: Here. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. .3 Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
i \\ 72 l 1 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Katra Foust. () 2 MS. FOUST: Hi, I live in Vermont, in 3-Westminster, west Vermont -- I think as the crow flies about 4 16 miles from Vernon Nuclear Power Plant. I 5 I think tonight I feel truly honored to be here i 6 with a group of people that have truly become my inspiration l in the last year and a half in terms of really taking on the 7 I 8 nuclear power industry. i 9 As a therapist I work continuously to help people i 10-heal-and I work on a systems model and I ask people to look i 11 at the biological issues, the psychological issues, the 12 sociological issues that influence their life, and the 13 spiritual'and. creative issues that come to play in their life on a day-to-day basis which influenced the quality of { 14 ) 15 their life. 16 The people who I respect most here tonight, the 17 people from CAN and the New England Coalition and the other 18 people who have so bravely come out here to speak about the 19 concerns that deepest in their hearts have addressed many of 20 these concerns -- the biological, somewhat the 21 psychological. i 22 Again and again I ask organizations that I work 23 with and children that I work with to look at what the world 24 is that they see and what is the world that they want to 25 have for their children and again and again the answers that O(s/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 j Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
73 i 1 I hear are answers that are vague and despairing. The rate f ( 2 of suicide that we see in teenagers in this country speaks ? 3 acutely to the fact that we live in a country that does not 4 have hope. They don't have hope in the older generation. 5 They don't have hope in democracy. They don't believe that 6 the men in the suits care. They don't trust. 7 When I talk to the older generation, the retired l 8 generation, they have the same despair. They believe that 9 they are leaving our Earth in worse shape than when they 10 came into this Earth and they are saddened and they are 11 depressed, and they feel hopeless. 12 So I look again and again at despair and 13 empowerment and what does it mean to feel despair and how do 14 we empower people in the nuclear age? How do we define what ( ) 15. democracy is and how do each and every one of us in our own 16 small and yet gigantic ways make democracy alive on a day-i 17 to-day basis? 18 I ask them to find ways to creatively do that. I 19 asked 27 people in all realms of life that I knew when is I i 20 the last time they called a politician, and each one of them i 21 in all different walks of life said they hadn't, and I asked 22 them why, and they said because it doesn't matter. i i 23 Well, I have a daughter who is 12 years old and I 1 24 have three stepchildren and it does matter because I have 25 taught them that it matters and I am here tonight because it /'k,, ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
. ~ - l P 74 [ 1 matters to me and it matters to me because it mattered to my t f% g i 2 %J grandparents, and that leads me to the last aspect, the 3 aspect of spirituality. 4 That is an issue that I haven't heard addressed 5 here tonight, the spiritual issues of the struggle. 6 I was raised'by four grandparents, all of who are j 7 ' immigrants from Sweden, and they were all dairy farmern. My f one grandfather was more prosperous than my other 8 9 grandfather because my one grandfather had 27 cows and my i 10 other grandfather only had 16, but they were both Lutherans 11 and all four of my grandparents believed very strongly in i 12 their community and they were optimistic about their life, 13 and they taught me and their church taught me some very I 14 simple and yet complex truths. e 15 Number one was to love God in each waking moment 16 of my life. Number two was to love the Earth -- every 17 single inch of the Earth. To love one another as I loved 18 myself. And my grandfather said to me repeatedly, remember i 19 always, that the sins of the parents will be visited upon i 20 the child. I 21 As we look at nuclear technology, we look at 22 hundreds of thousands of years worth of nuclear waste that 23 our children will have to deal with. It's the greatest sin 24. that I have allowed to exist for my children and for their 25 children's children and for their children's children. O - ((d. ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
1 75 1 For those who see this as a competition and of s j g ) 2 those who will win and those who will lose, it is very clear i i 3 that we are all losers and all of our offspring will lose l 4 with us. I 5 You are all in my prayers. You are in my prayers 6 and it is very wonderful that you are here because there are i i 7' now faces that I can connect to my prayers -- and there is 8 also a political movement and I really feel blessed that I live in New England where people truly feel that it is okay 9 10 to fight, and by being here we have won. I 11 There are lots of issues that come about when we l I 12 look at what trust is, and there's nothing that exists if we 13 do not trust, nothing. It is about predictability. It is 14 about knowing that somebody is predictable, that what they ,i () (_,/ 15 say they will do. Nothing about the nuclear energy fiasco [ 16 has proven to me that there is predictability, that I can i t l 17 predict outcome. l 1B Two near-misses during the refueling of Vermont t 19 . Nuclear Power Plant this summer leads me to believe that for 20 me to believe that there is predictability there would 21 certainly be unwise. 1 1 22 Competency -- I am not sure about competency. I 23 know Peter James Atherton. I know that Peter James Atherton l [ 24 still has a case in front of the NRC and I don't feel that 25 he has been treated fairly as a nuclear whistle-blower, but j I ~
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). ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 -ee
) 76 I 1 there are many whistle-blowers and many whistle-blowers who [/1 2 have not been treated fairly by the NRC and the companies N. 3 with which they work. t 4 So it makes me question competency, predictability i 5 and certainly caring -- the ability to care for themselves 6 and the ability to care for others, and yet I am optimistic. i t t 7 I am truly optimistic because I truly do believe in a God. i 8 Thank you. 9 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Thank you. 10 [ Applause.) 11 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Jen Gutshall. i 12 MS. GUTSHALL: My name is Jennifer Gutshall and i i 13 you'll have to forgive me because I always cry when I get -- l 14 [Laught e.". ] { d 15 MS. GUTCdALL: It's really hard for me to be in 16~ this position and look at your faces. Really, you are going 17 to have to forgive me but I am just going to go ahead and do 18 it, okay -- all right. 19 I'm not a freak for crying. I'm a normal person 20 but it's just very hard for me to be in this position where i 21 I have to look at your faces and when I passed you in the j 22 hall,'you look like you're normal. I feel like you're 23 normal and then when I smile at you, and then -- like a 24 connection -- it's really hard for me to look at you in the 25 eyes because I know that although I could talk to you in a i l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. -/ Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1034 I, . Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l
77 1 normal conversation and really connect like a normal human i ( ) 2 being.that you go back to D.C., where ycu are completely 3 . disco. nnected from what we go through, and you make your ~4 little deals'and you have these, all these alternate plans 5. for things and I know that your end, but also the thing is i 6' that I know that you are pulled and I know that you are 7 pushed and I'know that you have to deal with everything that i 8 everyone else has to deal with, because it's all politics. 9 I understand that, but the thing is you heard all l i 10 this testimony. These people are normal people and I don't I \\ 11 know if you look at them with contempt. I don't know if you i 12 look at me with contempt and I am an educated woman and I 13 have spent -- and.I can't even tell you the countless hours 14 'that we spent learning and learning and learning and 1 ) v 15 travelling and travelling and travelling and suffering and 16 sacrificing our normal lives to just protect ourselves and -17 that people that are around us. 18 I think of my parents. You know, I grew up in 19 Pennsylvania, in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. I was seven 20 years old and maybe 55-60 miles north of TMI when they had 21 their-accident, and I also live 10 miles west of Susquehanna 12 2 Nuclear Power Plant, so I am not a stranger to this and when l' 23 they moved to New England, I don't know what I was 24 thinking -- 25 [ Laughter.) 1 1 j[ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. 's-Court Reporters j '1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 ~ ~ - (202) 842-0034
= _ _ _ - _ - _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ - - _ _ - _ _ - _ - - - 78 1 MS. GUTSHALL: -- but I think of my parents and () 2 they are so ignorant and I love them but they are ignorant 3 and here I am trying as hard as I can. I cry because I 4 can't try any harder and I don't know if you are listening. 5-You know, I don't know how much harder we can try. 6 We don't like to spend so much time away from our 7 friends. We don't like to spend so much time away from our .8 families, spend so much time on the road, spend so much 9 money that we don't even have -- do you understand that? We 10 spend so much money that we don't have to protect ourselves 11 and we have to go to people who don't have money and get it 12 from them too. 13 I don't know if you can understand this. I don't 14 know if you can understand what it must be like and I know () 15 you cll who work Yankee and who work for the NRC must be 16 normal people underneath. I don't know how you deal with 17 the duality. I don't know how you do it. I don't know if I 18 you are normal and that you have a work identity and a 19 normal identity, and I don't know how you deal with the two. 20 I mean you must have families that live in reactor 21 communities, you know? You must think about it and you 22 must -- and every time one of us speaks, does it poke the 23 veil? Do we poke into your soul? 24 Does it affect you at all? Do you go home and 25 think about it? Do you ever have dreams about us? l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
i t 79 i 1 I can't imagine that you don't and we are just () going to keep poking because it's the right thing to do 2 i 3 until you wake up. I mean we are not going to go away and 1 4 am not -- I don't want to be -- it's hard for me.beca'Ise I 5 don't want to -- when I am this close to you, I don't want 6 to hate you. When you are in D.C. and there's these 7 decisions getting made that are so disconnected from our t 8 experience and it affects us, and I know it was only to deal 9' with money or power, it makes me hate you and I don't want 10 to hate you. I don't like that. I don't want to live in an ) 11 angry world. I don't want to be "us" and "them." 12 So I am begging you, not even begging you -- I 13 want you to please go back and think about us when you are 14 gone and think abc.ut two things. We need a hearing. This () 15 is the only chance we get to deal with this stuff, really, 16 and you know, just so you know, we represent the masses of 17 people who don't have the strength or the courage or 18 whatever to speak for themselves? Do you understand? We 19 are not like weirdos. I mean for every one of us there's 20 like 500 people that we must be representing and this is 21 just a small portion, and mind you, there is a person from 'i 22 Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut -- I mean all l 23 fighting the same battle and think about why they are here. - 24 I mean this is a pretty specific item we are 25 dealing with tonight. It's not like general waste issues or l JdDJ RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters s_ 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 l l I
{ 80 1 general this issues. You are setting -- this is a () 2-historical moment. Do you see yourselves in'that position, i 3' I-mean really,^when you look at the whole scheme, the whole 4 history.of the nuclear industry? i 5 You -- right now, everything that we are doing 6 right now is historical and you, unfortunately, have to make the decision, and I hate to appeal to ego but do you want to 7 8 be a champion or a devil? Thank you. 9 (Applause.] i 10 (Discussion off the record.) 11 MS. ALZNER: Can I say something? 12 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Yes. 13 MS. ALZNER: Okay. One of the things that came up 14 a lot tonight was -- 15 JUDGE MURPHY: Excuse me. Could we have your 16 name, please? 17 MS. ALZNER: Sure. Susan Alzner -- Alzner, 18 A-1-z-n-e-r. 19 One of the things people talked about a lot today 20 was how this whole issue affects children and I kind of feel 21 like a child here, because I am kind of new to this work. 22 Maybe a year I have been listening to different i 23 people talk on this issue and so I feel kind of naive in a 24 way and kind of innocent, but I think that is a good thing,
- 25 and that is why I came up here, because I feel like I don't i
O AJUJ RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters j 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 j Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i l-
. __ -. - - -. - - ~ 81 have a lot of rules to my perspective and I just want to 1 fs f 2 kind of attack this from that place. 3 What I have heard tonight is pretty much one of 4 the most sort of intense presentations of truth that I have 5' ever heard in my life from the people, the regular people 6 who talked tonight in the past two and a half hours, and to 7 me when I hear people talk like this or when I have 8 experiences like this, you know, I mean it's kind of like 9 being in the Grand Canyon or something like that where you 10 are just really overwhelmed by beauty and truth and life is 11 really pure and intense, and in fact you feel alive -- like 12 truly alive. 3 13 I have always been frustrated with these sort of ( impediments in the world that keep us from feeling alive. 14 I (,, 15 think that all of our goals should be to feel as alive as we 16 can possibly feel. 17 Now given that, in summary, through this whole 18 evening what I would like to know -- everybody said I hope 19 you feel what we have been talking about today, I hope you 20 go home and think about this, but I want to know now -- 21 [ Laughter.) 22 MS. ALZNER: -- how do you feel? I mean has this 23 impacted you, and I know how courtrooms are. It's like, oh, 24 "us" and "them" -- hush, hush, you know, like there are 25 these rules or something. I don't get it. We are all l 1 (A) ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 f l
~ 82 l' people. We are having -- we should have a dialogue here. A( j 2 To.me, that is what seems to be the goal is for us to reach 3: common ground, you know? 4 I mean I think that we give you a service of -5 listening to you. I think that all of the people who work 6 in this movement, one of the greatest assets of individuals, 7 of the personalities in this movement is that everyone knows 8 how to listen. We have to listen because we have to learn 9 and the only way we are going to learn is that we are going 10 to listen, so we've listened to you and I really hope that 11 you listened to us, but I really need to know how this has 12 affected you, you know -- 13 SPEAKER FROM THE AUDIENCE: Let them answer. 14-JUDGE ELLEMAN: Can I say something? /)N (, 15 [ Laughter.] 16 JUDGE ELLEMAN: I can't speak for my associates I 17-will speak for myself. I think it is very clear this 18 evening that all of you feel very strongly and very 19 sincerely about the issue you have spoken to this evening. 20 I think, Ms. Alzner, you put your finger on it 21 when you said it was one of the most intense sessions that -22 you have heard and I would endorse that. 23 I have sat in Moscow listening to the citizens of 24 Russia beat up on the operators of their nuclear plants and I 25 I would say they were far more subdued and -- well, I won't [ l l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. \\-- Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 l Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 i
83 1 say kinder because that is not a correct allusion -- but it () 2 was a much.less intense session than what it has been here 3 this evening. 4 I am very sorry that some of you view us as if we 5 come from another world, becatae we really don't. I look 6 out my window and see the Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant 7 operating outside of my community just like you did every 8 day, and I live with the reality of nuclear power right next 9 door to me. 10 You think that we don't recognize your i 11 environment, but I come through here all the time to visit 12 my daughter, who lives in Maine, where my two youngest i 13 grandchildren are, and I care very deeply about what happens 14 to them. () 15 I think another thing that makes me very sad is to 16 -hear that some of you don't trust us. You think we are 17 going to lie to you, that you think we are dishonest, and I think all I could say to you is that there have been many - 18 19' times in my life when I have been wrong. There have been 20 many times when I have operated incorrectly given the gift 21 of hindsight, but all of us up here try to act in as honest 2:2 and forthright and sincere way as we are capable of doing, 23 and we are not'up here to deceive you and we are up here to 24 listen closely and sincerely to what you have to say and 25 what the issues of the case we have been called upon to i O-ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. I Court Reporters i 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 + -%..m. m 2 .-wr
. ~.. ~ _. _ - - __.. _ _ _.. -. _.. _ _.. _ _. _ _,... _. i 84 1 listen to have to say. 3 l:/~'N 2 The only last comment I would make is there were 3 some allusions to how wealthy we are, and I was very tempted 4 to ask when was the last time you met a wealthy ex-teacher, 4 5 but I kept quiet and didn't say a word, but I will close 1 6 with that comment. 7 IAPPlause.] 8 MS. ALZNER: Does anyone else want to share? 9 Well, I'mean, you know, he can't speak for everyone. I mean 10 I am actually -- 11 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, I would almost conclude. 12 For one thing, they have asked us to get out of here by 9:30 13 and that is almost now. But I have been very impressed by 14 the sincerity of all of those people who have addressed us, () 15 as well as the people who are petitioners who came this 16 afternoon, all day, actually, and which will continue i 17 tomorrow. 18 We will-do our best to take various views into 19 account. We are bound by certain rules that, for better or i 20 for worse, -- some of them we don't necessarily like, but 1 21 that is what the Commission has put into effect, so we will 22 do our best to give a fair decision, and recognizing various 23 views that have come before us. And we do appreciate all of 24~ your~ coming out and making statements and showing your 25 interest, so we appreciate that. i ( ANN RILEY &-ASSOCIATES, LTD. \\s-Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 i Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
1 W 85 l' MS. MILLER: I would like to speak. j 2 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, make it quick because we 3 have to get out of here fast 4 MS. MILLER: I will. 5 MS. ALZNER: Well, thank you anyway. l 6 [ Applause.] 7 MS. MILLER: I am Sunny Miller, I am formerly a B teacher and an artist, and currently the director at 9 Traprock Peace Center in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and I l 10 lived ~within the 10 mile radius of Yankee Rowe, that is when 11 I got real interested in nuclear issues. 12 A couple of thoughts to close with. For hope, I [ 13 hope we can remember Nelson Mandella, imprisoned for so many 14 years, held back, but with integrity, and now things have ( ) 15 changed and are continuing to change. And, of. course, there 16 is struggle after change as well as before. But it is one i thing to remember, nothing stays the same, everything 17 18 changes. There are hard times ahead, there are hard times 19 behind us. There's joy ahead, there is joy behind us. 20 And I think this thought that we don't want to be 21 "us" and "them," none of us, really, it is very 22 uncomfortable. We would much rather understand one another 23 as neighbors, overcome our doubts and our lack of trust, 24; come to know one another, and understand one another. 25 I thought of singing " Love Will Guide Us" to l ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. ( Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034 ) -~
86 close, but maybe it would be more appropriate if we went out 1 th) 2 to the pub. V 3 [ Applause.] 4 MS. MILLER: And we will get out in time. There is a lovely pub right -- just walking distance, and maybe 5 6 there is more than one pub. We ought to take a tour, you 7 know. And we won't keep you out too late, you know.
- But, 8
really, to -- you know, to visit and share and speak from 9 the heart. 10 I would like to remind you that Albert Speer was 11 the weapons manufacturer for Nazi Germany. He was a great 12 guy, he was very efficient and very productive, a winner. 13 Later, after the Nuremburg trials, in prison he wrote his 14 memoirs. And Bishop Gumbelton, a Catholic Bishop from /^s ( ) 15 Detroit, who visited recently, we brought him out here to 16 speak, said, you know, in his memoirs, he said something 17 that really has stuck with me, and I think it is true today 18 in so many ways about Iraq, and our depleted uranium that is 19 creating birth defects. 20 This -- we have been, in effect, fighting a 21 nuclear war against Iraq. Since 1991, children born without 22 heads, with skulls that won't st;p growing, with all kinds 23 of birth defects that are horrendous, because we have let so 24 many genies out of the bottle in our efforts to win. But 25 Albert Speer's words were, "We didn't want to know." And /O k _/ ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. Court Reporters m 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 842-0034
..s. l i 87 1 imaybe we can find-the common ground that, really, it serves i r() 2 us all best if we do know, we really know, and know one 3 another, and come to trust one another. 4 So let's have a beer. l 5 (Applause.] r 6 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: The meeting is adjourned. We 7' will be back at 9:00 tomorrow. j 8 [Whereupon, at 9:31 p.m., the prehearing 9 conference was recessed, to reconvene at 9:00 a.m., i 10 Wednesday, January 27, 1999.] 11 12 13 14 ( )/. 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 12 5 l- != ANN RILEY & ASSOCIATES, LTD. l-Court Reporters 1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1014 Washington, D.C. 20036 i (202) 842-0034
. ~.. - ~... - - -..~ . ~ 4 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE I This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in f i the matter of: NAME OF PROCEEDING: YANKEE ATOMIC ELECTRIC COMPANY (YANKEE NUCLEAR J POWER STATION) 4 PREHEARING CONFERENCE l i 4 l i j CASE NUMBER: 50-029-LA-R \\ j 98-736-01-LA-R l PLACE OF PROCEEDING: Greenfield, MA i were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and thereafter reduced to 4 typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings. O 1 !J 0 \\,4 YL iMtw ~y 7 i Jon Hundley 1 Official Reporter l a_ Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd. i l' t'
.Ivd*W I 8% 'O.i UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY p) { REGION I (V JOHN F. KENNEDY FEDERAL BUILDING 4 BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02203-0001 1 January 26,1999 Charles Bechhoefer, Chairman Atomic Safety and Licensing Board [ Mail Stop T-3 F23] U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 2 White Flint Nonh I1545 Rockville Pike Rockville, MD 20852-2738 Office of the Secretary t Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D.C. 20555 i G RE: In re Yankee Atomic Electric Company (Yankee Nuclear Power Station) License O Termination Plan, Docket No. 50-029-LA, ASLBP No. 99-754-01-LA-R To the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board: In accordance with 10 C.F.R. 2.1211(a) (1998) and 63 Fed. Reg. 67494 (December 7,1998), the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) - New England, Region I submits the following non-pany s'atement, which expresses our view on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) approval of the Yankee Rowe License Termination Plan (LTP). The stated purpose of the January 26,1999, prehearing conference is to determine whether the petitioners have submitted admissible contentions. We believe that the parties have raised legitimate health and safety concerns, which if substantiated at a later hearing, would bear directly on the question of whether the Atomic Yankee Electric Company will be able to satisfactorily clean-up the site. We therefore encourage the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board to fully consider the petitioners' contentions. We further invite the Board to use its adjudicatory process to provide the public with adequate responses to the numerous unanswered and longstanding health and safety questions, which should properly have been addressed in the LTP, or earlier through the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process. EPA - is particularly interested in the decommissioning of Yankee Rowe. Because it is the first commercial plant in New England to be decommissioned, it is especially important that the process affords the public appropriate opponunities for review and comment, and assures that the [D) clean-up is done correctly from the outset. NRC's and Atomic Yankee's treatment of the site will both set a piecedent for a number of upcoming decommissionings in New England, and continue
~ /3 to impact the health and welfare of the people, and the environment, in the vicinity of the site. V EPA - New England is equally concerned about releasing the site for unrestricted residential or i commercial use and allowing the public, including children, free access to the site, particularly when so many questions about on-and off-site radiation contamination remain at this late stage in the decommissioning process. We note at the outset that EPA - New England is pleased that Yankee Atomic has committed to a Total Effective Dose Equivalent from residual radiation contamination not to exceed 15 mrem / year above background. EPA considers 15 mrem / year to be a minimally acceptable dose limit, consistent with both the risk range for other carcinogens, and our mandate under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), that clean-up levels "at a minimum... assure protection ofhuman health and the environment." CERCLA { 121(d)(1). This is the same level ofclean-up that EPA requires of all other radioactively contaminated CERCLA sites. We also commend Yankee Atomic for assuring that upon license termination, the plant-related contamination in groundwater and surface water will not exceed the EPA's National Primary Drinking Water Standards (Maximum Contaminant Level) for radioactivity. Notwithstanding our approval of the chosen clean-up standards at Yankee Rowe, we believe the petitioners have raised a number of health and safety concerns that directly challenge how and whether Yankee Atomic will meet these standards under the LTP and Final Status Survey Plan. For instance, the petitioners challenge the LTP's site characterization, arguing that Yankee Atomic has not yet: determined background radiation levels; fully examined the extent of contamination on-site below a depth of 15 cm; adequately surveyed for contamination off-site; or, accounted for all possible radionuclides (e.g. plutonium and americium). Petitioners further i allege that site inspections revealed that Yankee Atomic's scan survey results are biased toward { low readings, and that sampling methodologies have been adjusted to de-emphasize existing hot-i spots on-site. We do not address the validity of these contentions, as that is the proper function of the Board. But if the petitioners' concerns are legitimate, and to the extent that the Yankee Rowe decommissioning might subsequently fail to meet the stated clean-up standards, we note that NRC's own publications propose that such sites could be assigned to the EPA for listing on i the National Priorities List unde-CERCLA. We comment last on decommissioning as a public process, and our hope that the future need for prehearing conferences, such as this one, might be lessened by allowing the public to participate more substantively in the early stages of decommissioning, accompanied by meaningful environmental review. EPA - New England believes that the public has cause for concern and its questions should be addressed. The NRC has recognized that Yankee Rowe decommissioning is in many ways experimental and that some of the clean-up technologies and methodologies are ~ untested. Recent incidents occurring during the decommissioning of Connecticut Yankee at IIaddam Neck demonstrate that decommissioning is not necessarily environmentally benign, and i 4
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) i v 2
(r) also indicate that greater NRC oversight is required.8 Radiation can pose serious health and v environmental risks. It should be treated in the same manner as other regulated pollutants, not more leniently. Its clean-up should be addressed openly. As evidenced by the First Circuit's recent decision,2 the Yankee Rowe decommissioning process precluded public panicipation and environmental review for a number ofyears while nearly 90% of the site was dismantled. This should not be allowed to happen in the upcoming decommissionings of the Maine and Connecticut nuclear power plants. Many of the contentions presently before the Board could have been addressed earlier in the decommissioning process or through NEPA. Although NRC's new regulations do not require NEPA compliance during the earliest stages of decommissioning, EPA - New England suggests that an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is the appropriate vehicle for environmental review of decommissioning activities because it would allow for comprehensive site characterization and consideration of alternative clean-up scenarios and mitigation, as well as full public review and comment. NEPA also encourages public participation in the scoping process early in a federal agency's decisionmaking process. Especially in the case of Yankee Rowe, which was the first commercial plant to come off-line and be decommissioned, we are surprised that without much current environmental information, NRC issued an Environmental Assessment / Finding of No Significant Impact and relied to a great degree upon an outdated,1988 Generic EIS, which contains no site-specific information, in approving the decommissioning plan. We also agree with the petitioners that it appears that NRC has segmented the decommissioning process by allowing n the temporary storage of spent fuel to be considered under a separate licensing scheme, the V environmental review of which typically occurs after an LTP has been approved. By doing so, the impacts associated with Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) -- earth-moving, alterations to drainage and surface and groundwater flows, radiation releases -- which also affect the decommissioning of the site, remain unaddressed until the closing stages oflicense termination. In short order, New England will see the decommissioning of a number of nuclear power plants, such as Maine Yankee, Connecticut Yankee, and Millstone Unit 1. EPA - New England will monitor the NRC proceedings in these other cases to ensure that the plant operators demonstrate at least the same level of commitment to radiological clean-up levels, and the protection of our region's human and ecological health. With respect to Yankee Rowe, we are concerned that so many health and safety questions persist at this stage of the decommissioning process. We are equally troubled by the parties' allegations that site remediation, as described in the LTP, may not satisfy the chosen radiological clean-up standards. EPA - New England believes that the petitioners' numerous contentions deserve the Board's further attention. We request that the 8 See Director's Decision, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, Docket No 50-213, DD-99-01 at 3-5 (Jan.12,1999). 2 .S3e Citizens Awareness Network. Inc, v. United States Nuclear Regulatory f) Commission,59 F.3d 284,293,295 (1st Cir.1995). G 3
_.. _ _..... _ _. - _ _ _ _. _. _ _ _ _.... _ _ _.. _ _. _ _. ~... l i Board fully respond to those contentions as well as the concerns raised in this letter, in order to ensure that the decommissioning of Yankee is done right on the first try. And we look forward to working with NRC on the upcoming decommissionings in New England. Sincerely,. I \\ \\. ~ / - John P. DeVillars Regional Administrator l. c:\\wp\\wpdocs\\rowe\\3 comments.wpd j t L L I-s l e l-J l j (, 4 t I i J pe,- .me .-n e-.-a ,, +. - -.. ---}}