ML21067A655

Comment from Dave Staiger on the Palisades and Big Rock Point Consideration of Approval of Transfer of Control of Licenses and Conforming Amendments (NRC-2021-0036)

ML21067A655
Person / Time
Site:	Palisades, Big Rock Point  File:Consumers Energy icon.png
Issue date:	03/07/2021
From:	- No Known Affiliation
To:
SECY/RAS
References
86FR8225, NRC-2021-0036
Download: ML21067A655 (2)

Text

From: Dave S To: Docket, Hearing

Subject:

[External_Sender] Comments on the proposed licensing transfer of Palisades and Big Rock Point nuclear plants Date: Sunday, March 07, 2021 5:42:45 PM

Dear NRC Secretary,

Hearing Docket Officials, and Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff, I am emailing because I live in Michigan, near Lake Michigan, and am deeply concerned about the safety and future of the Great Lakes. As you know, the Great Lakes make up 21% of the Earth's surface fresh water, and 84% of North America's. I am extremely concerned about the radioactive risks at the Palisades atomic reactor, and Big Rock Point nuclear power plant site both located on West Michigan's Lake Michigan shoreline. I am against the transfer of licenses and ownership, from current owner Entergy Nuclear to proposed new owner Holtec International, for the Palisades and Big Rock Point sites.

I am very happy that Palisades should shut for good, by May 31, 2022 at the latest. For health, environment, safety, and security's sake, it should have been shut down many years ago. It's great that after May 31, 2022, a reactor core meltdown can no longer happen at Palisades and no more high-level radioactive waste will be generated.

I'm also glad that the risk of a meltdown, and yet more high-level radioactive waste generation, ended more than two decades ago at Big Rock Point, when the reactor shut down for good.

Radioactive risks continue, however, after reactor shutdown, at both sites. There is significant contamination of the entire Palisades site, with hazardous radioactivity and toxic chemicals. There is also a vast amount of high-level radioactive waste stored on-site, where it will almost certainly remain not for years, but for decades to come. Thus, the decommissioning (facility dismantlement and radiological cleanup) phase at Palisades still portends very significant radioactive (as well as other hazardous) risks.

It is unacceptable to put crooked -- even criminal -- and untrustworthy companies like Holtec and SNC-Lavalin in charge of radiological clean up at Palisades, and high-level radioactive waste management at Palisades and Big Rock Point. They will do as little radiological clean up at

Palisades, and will take as many shortcuts on high-level radioactive waste management at both sites, as the complicit NRC will allow. They will then put the lion's share of the Palisades Nuclear Decommissioning Trust Fund (NDTF) in their pockets, as pure profit. The radioactive risks -- lingering contamination, irradiated nuclear fuel -- left behind at Palisades, and Big Rock Point, after that will continue to haunt the public forevermore into the future. This is entirely unacceptable. The Palisades NDTF should be used for comprehensive and complete radiological cleanup, as it was intended to be from the beginning, a half-century ago.

For these reasons, Palisades', and Big Rock Point's, licenses should not be transferred to Holtec and its decommissioning partner SNC-Lavalin.

I am thankful, State of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel for her office's intervention in this proceeding and hope that the NRC commissioners do all they can to stop the transfer to Holtec and support a safe decommissioning and removal of radiation of both sites.

Sincerely, Dave Staiger 3111 Chestnut Hills Dr.

Kalamazoo, MI 49009 269-548-8919