ML23081A508
| ML23081A508 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 02/23/2023 |
| From: | Tam Tran Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NRC-2263 | |
| Download: ML23081A508 (1) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Environmental Scoping Meeting Related to the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant, Units 1 and 2, License Renewal Application Docket Number:
(n/a)
Location:
Glen Rose, Texas Date:
Thursday, February 23, 2023 Work Order No.:
NRC-2263 Pages 1-90 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1716 14th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009 (202) 234-4433
1 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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PUBLIC MEETING ENVIRONMENTAL SCOPING MEETING RELATED TO THE COMANCHE PEAK NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, UNITS 1 AND 2, LICENSE RENEWAL APPLICATION
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THURSDAY FEBRUARY 23, 2023
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The Public Meeting was convened in the Somervell County Expo Center, 202 Bo Gibbs Boulevard, West Highway 67, Glen Rose, Texas, at 7:00 p.m., Brett Klukan, Facilitator, presiding.
PRESENT:
BRETT KLUKAN, Facilitator TAM TRAN, Environmental Project Manager EMANUEL SAYOK, Safety Project Manager JOHN MOSES, Deputy Director, NRC
2 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com P R O C E E D I N G S (7:00 p.m.)
MR. KLUKAN: All right. Everyone, we're about to begin. It's 7:00, and we have a number of people signed up to speak this evening, so I'd like to get started on time, if we can. So thank you all for coming out this evening to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Environmental Scoping Meeting Related to the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant, Unit 1 and 2, License Renewal Application.
First of all, can everyone hear me okay?
Are we good? All right? Great. My name is Brett Klukan. Normally, I serve as a regional counsel for Region I of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but, however, tonight, I will be acting as facilitator for this meeting.
Our goals tonight are twofold: One, to provide you with an overview of the subsequent license renewal
- process, both related to safety and environmental reviews for the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant review; and, two, to get your input on the environmental issues the NRC should address in its environmental review.
Now, you're going to hear a lot tonight of scoping. What does that mean? Scoping simply means
3 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com determining the scope of the environmental review that the NRC will conduct regarding the continued operation of the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant. Tonight's meeting is just one way that you can participate in that process, and we'll go over that in more detail during the NRC's presentation.
The meeting tonight will be broken down into, essentially, two parts. First, we'll have a presentation by the NRC staff on the topics that we think are important for you to understand. And a link to the meeting slides can be found on the Public Meeting Schedule Page or on the NRC's website. We're going to try to keep that presentation as short as possible because the second reason that we're here tonight is to listen to and receive your comments.
With that in mind, tonight's meeting is a common gathering meeting. So we'll be actively soliciting your input after we complete our presentation. We'll also be going, again, over the ways in which you can otherwise provide your comments to the NRC for the scoping process outside of the meeting this evening.
Keep in mind that we are transcribing the meeting tonight. In the corner there is our Court Reporter.
4 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com And thank you very much for helping us out this evening. We really appreciate it.
You can help us get a clean recording tonight by identifying yourself, stating your name and any affiliation, if you wish to have an affiliation, before you begin your comment. When we enter into the public comment phase, you're going to be coming up here to this podium. This is just for show. There will be another microphone up here. Okay.
All right. If you'd like to comment this evening and not have already done so, please sign up on the registration table in the back of the room.
Now, some basic ground rules. I ask that we have a civil decorum in tonight's meeting, and out of respect for each other, that you do not disrupt each other when others are speaking. Just as you wouldn't want to be interrupted during your own opportunity to speak, please respect the speaking time of others. And then as well, threatening gestures or statements of any kind under no circumstances will be tolerated and will be cause for immediate ejection from the meeting this evening.
If you feel that you've been threatened in any way, please let me know or another member of the NRC staff, or one of the local law enforcement agents
5 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com positioned in the back of the room.
If you have something you'd like to give to the NRC staff, please hand it to me, and I will turn it over to them. While you are speaking, I'll be standing beside you over here. Okay.
One other thing before we get into it, there is a Public Meeting Feedback Form you can find on the NRC's website. We ask that you please fill that out. It really does help us improve the tenor and the conduct of our meetings.
Finally, I'd like to introduce some of the NRC staff here with us tonight. We have John Moses, the Deputy Director for Division of Rulemaking, Environment, and Financial Support. We have Manny Sayoc, Safety Project Manager; Tam Tran, the Environmental Project Manager; Ryan Alexander, the Regional State Liaison Officer for Region IV. We have Angel Moreno, the office -- from the Office of Congressional Affairs; John Ellegood -- I feel like I
-- he told me how to pronounce it and I messed it up
-- the Senior Resident Inspector for Comanche Peak. We also have Neil Day, the Resident Inspector for Comanche Peak; Victor Dricks from the Office of Public Affairs.
And now, without any further ado, to keep
6 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com us trucking along, I'm going to turn it over to John Moses for opening comments.
MR. MOSES: Thanks, Brett.
Good evening, everyone. As you heard, my name is John Moses. And I'd like to welcome you to this in-person meeting for the Comanche Peak Plant 1 and 2 License Renewal Application. If you weren't aware, this is our second meeting that we've had. We had one on January 17th that was virtual, and now we're having an in-person one today.
As our staff will detail later, a review process is always encouraged, both public participation and transparency. Public participation, openness, and transparency are core NRC values. The licensing of nuclear facilities is conducted in an open and transparent manner. And the public will be informed about and have an opportunity to participate in the regulatory process. This Public Scoping Meeting today is one way that we encourage your participation in this process. So I'm looking forward to hearing your feedback from all the participants here on significant issues that you feel are important for the staff to consider in a detailed analysis of environmental or safety issues to be included in our review.
7 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com While today is focused on environmental issues, we do have some of our safety folks here, and we'll take that in account and keep copies of those comments to consider for later.
Our goal is to hear from you today, to collect any comments you might have so that we may fully consider that during our analysis and reviews.
In advance of your participation, we thank you.
And with that, I'll turn back to Brett.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
Now, again, as stated, the first part of our meeting will be a presentation, a quick presentation -- This is a reminder to them as well --
by the NRC staff so that we can get right into your public comments.
So with that, without any further ado, I'll turn it over to Tam and Manny for the NRC's presentation.
MR. SAYOC: Good evening. My name is Emmanuel Sayoc. I'm the Safety Project Manager for the Division of New and Renewed Licenses in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Our goal is to provide you an overview of the license renewal process for Comanche Peak focusing
8 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com on safety and environmental reviews.
Next slide.
MR. KLUKAN: While we're working on this, there are some handouts in the back of the meeting slides, if you'd prefer a paper copy of them. This is not that. I'm just showing you what the paper looks like, but there are copies in the back if you'd like to follow along yourself.
All right. Here we go.
MR. SAYOC: All right. We're just waiting for the correct slide here. We're on slide two.
Okay. The NRC is a federal agency that regulates the civilian use of nuclear material. The Atomic Energy Act authorize -- authorizes the NRC to grant 40-year operating licenses for nuclear power plants. The 40-year term was based primarily on economic considerations and antitrust factors, not on safety or technical limitations. The Atomic Energy Act also allows for license renewal.
The NRC's mission is threefold: To ensure adequate protection of the public health and safety; to promote the common defense and security; and to protect the environment.
Let's go to the next slide.
The NRC accomplishes its mission through a
9 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com combination of regulatory programs and processes such as establishing rules and regulations, and conducting oversight which consists of conducting inspections, issuing enforcement actions, assessing licensing performance. We also evaluate operating experience from nuclear power plants across the country and internationally as well.
The NRC has resident inspectors at operating nuclear power plants for Comanche Peak. As was introduced, there's John Ellegood, Senior Resident Inspector, and Neil Day, Resident Inspector. These inspectors are considered eyes and ears of the NRC.
They carry out the safety mission in a -- on a daily basis and are on the front lines of insuring adequate safety performance and compliance with regulatory requirements.
In this slide right here, for the support and decision-making, the input is the aging management and the things that we look at in terms of license renewal.
Let's go on to the next slide.
These are some important dates. The operating license was -- was issued on February 8th, 1990 for Unit 1, and February 2, 1993 for Unit 2.
Commercial operation began on August 13th, 1990 for
10 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Unit 1, and August 3, 1993 for Unit 2. Comanche Peak authorizing -- operating license expires on February 8, 2020 -- sorry -- 2030 for Unit 1, and February 2, 2033 for Unit 2.
The licensee submitted license renewal application in October of 2022 to seek operations through February 2050 and February 2053 for Units 1 and 2 respectively.
Next slide.
This slide right here, I'll go over the concept of -- of licensing basis which consists of design, operating requirements, conditions that must be met for the plant to comply with its operating license. The primary focus of these requirements is to maintain public health and safety. These two principles right here rely on the principle that this license basis is adequate and that will -- it will continue to be adequate during the period of extended operation.
Next slide.
Now I'll talk about the license renewal process. This flow chart highlights license renewal which involves two parallel reviews, a safety review and the environmental review. These two reviews evaluate separate aspects of the license renewal
11 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com application.
It also features three other considerations, the commission's decision whether or not to renew an operating license. The dotted lines show that the hearings will also be conducted if its resident stakeholders submit concerns or contentions and their request for a hearing is granted.
Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, an independent panel of judges, will conduct the hearings. The commission considers the outcome of the hearing process and its decision on whether or not to issue a renewed operating license. As part of the environmental review, the staff consults with local state, federal, and tribal officials, and the staff may hold public meetings to receive comments on the draft Environmental Impact Statement.
So now I'll call on Tam Tran to go over the environmental review.
Tam.
MR. TRAN: My name is Tam Tran. I'm the Environmental Project Manager for this project, so I co -- I co-manage with Manny Sayoc. So I would like to cover the environmental review aspect of the project. The environmental review is performed in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, commonly referred to as NEPA, and the NRC
12 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com regulation titled Environmental Protection Regulation for Domestic Licensing and Related Regulatory Functions.
NEPA established national policy for considering environmental impacts and provide the basic framework for federal environmental reviews. All federal agencies must follow a systematic approach in considering potential impacts of the federal actions and in assessing alternatives to those actions.
The NEPA process allows both public participation and public disclosure. The Public Scoping Meeting is what we are participating in today.
Following publication of the draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for public comments, the NRC allow an opportunity to hold a second public meeting during the public comment period on the draft of the SEIS.
The Environmental Impact Statement serve two purposes: A, it is a decision tool, and B, it is a public disclosure document.
Next slide, please.
I would like to discuss what we mean by scoping. Scoping is the process we will determine the range of issues and alternative to be considered in the EIS. Scoping is intended to ensure that concerns
13 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com are identified early and properly evaluated. These are the objectives of today meeting, to collect in scoping, so to speak, in collecting scoping comments in today meeting.
Next slide, please.
With regard to Comanche Peak, the NRC's proposed action is to decide whether to renew the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant's Units 1 and 2 operating licenses for an -- for an additional 20 years.
Scoping meeting is also used to identify significant issues. For efficiency purpose, NRC prepare a
new Reg
- 1437, titled the Generic Environmental Impact Statement for license renewal for power plants. This Generic EIS or so-called GEIS identify and evaluate 61 environmental issue that are generic to all U.S. nuclear power plants; however, the GEIS or the GEIS also identified 17 environmental issues that are -- that require an additional site-specific analysis, the result which will be the focus of the Supplemental EIS now being prepared.
Scoping also is used to identify consulting agency, assemble NRC review team, and determine additional data that may need to be collected or developed to support the recommended
14 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com analysis.
Next slide, please.
The NRC has issued the following documents and associated with the environmental scoping process:
The Notice of Intent to Prepare the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, inform the public about the scoping process, to note, identify federal actions, comment period, and methods by which comments can be provided. NRC also issues scoping letters to the federal, state, and tribal government agencies, and press releases and newspaper advertisement to advertise public meetings and scoping process.
At the conclusion of scoping process, NRC prepares and issues an Environmental Scoping Summary Report that identify comment received during the scoping period or write responses to the comments submitted, and identify any significant issue from the result of the scoping process.
Next slide, please.
For the environmental review, NRC looks at a wide range of environmental issues and evaluate the impacts of those issue with respect to license renewal as shown on this slide. The focus of this review is on the 17 site-specific issues identified in the GEIS as well as many new and significant information
15 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com pertaining to the generic environmental issues. The environmental review considers mitigation for those impacts that are considered significant. The NRC also considers the impact of alternatives for license renewal including the impact of not issuing a renewal license.
We document our review in the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement which is made publicly available, and we issue the draft Supplemental EIS for public comments.
Next slide, please.
In conducting our environmental review, we consult with various federal, state, and local officials, as well as tribal leaders, and gather pertinent information from the sources to ensure it is considered in our analysis. Example of this consultation include Environmental Protection Agency, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, which is an agency under the National Oceanic
-- Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations.
Ultimately, the purpose of the environmental review is to determine whether or not the environmental impacts of license renewal would be so great that license renewal would become unreasonable.
16 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com The SEIS will be -- will be considered in conjunction with our other safety-related reviews in recommending to the commission whether to renew Comanche Peak operating licenses.
I would like to turn the presentation back to Emanuel Sayoc.
MR. SAYOC: Let's go to the next slide, please.
In summary, before deciding the issue of the renewed operating
- license, the commission considers various factors, including the staff's safety review, which documents a Safety Evaluation Report; the staff's environmental review, which involves preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement; NRC regional inspection findings and conclusions; the recommendations for the Advisory Committee of Reactor Safeguards; and in addition, if a hearing is conducted, the outcome of that process is considered as well.
It's the goal of the NRC's staff to complete this license renewal review and issue a renewed operating license in 22 months from the time the application is accepted if a hearing is not involved. If contentions are offered and admitted to the hearing, then the schedule is typically extended
17 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com to 30 months to accommodate the hearing process.
That completes my presentation of license renewal review process, and I'll turn it back over to our facilitator.
MR. KLUKAN: Great. Manny and Tam, thank you so much.
So based on a request we received from some elected officials, we're going to switch up the order a little bit. So if you look at the agenda, it has questions about process. We will get to that.
First, we're going to go to any elected officials who would like to make statements at this time or representatives from governmental entities, government agencies and whatnot, who would like to make a statement on behalf of their entity.
So we're going to go first with Commissioner Harris.
COMMISSIONER JEFF HARRIS: Thank you. My name is Jeff Harris, Commissioner here in Somervell County for Precinct One. And I actually asked if I could speak first. I have a dinner date with my spouse of 40 years who will be most upset if I'm late.
So I appreciate the little bit of switch around. She's very understanding, but I think it only goes so far.
Any rate, I can't say enough positive
18 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com things about the relationship with Somervell County, with Glen Rose, with our residents and Comanche Peak Power Plant. I had the privilege of serving as an education administrator and a teacher for 30 years, retired in 2015 and needed something to do, so I went to work at Comanche Peak, working outages, just part-time help, contract help. It was an eye opener for me. I learned a whole lot about what goes on out there, and I -- the first thing that I learned was the enormous emphasis that's placed on
- safety, cleanliness, safety. I can't say it enough.
Production is down the list from those other things.
And they made that very, very clear. I never felt unsafe. I never felt any, any kind of negativity, whatsoever.
The impact that it has on our community, our community is what it is, largely in part, and due in part to our relationship with Comanche Peak. And I would propose that we -- that this license be renewed and that we continue this relationship and that we continue to produce the power that Texas so desperately needs.
I shutter to think of what it would have been a couple years ago during February when we had the winter storm that came through North Texas and
19 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com affected all of us. I know this building here was used to house folks that were out of power because, fortunately, it had power. We had heat, and we housed folks here that didn't. And there was a lot of people all over North Texas that were affected by that.
And I'm not an energy expert, I'm not an electricity expert, and I don't claim to be, but I feel like without the power that was produced and is produced at Comanche Peak, that we would have been in a bind, and that's -- that's my country way of saying things, I guess.
Again, I can't say enough about the relationship with the community and the plant, Comanche Peak Power Plant. It is nothing but positive for us, people that have careers, that live in this community out there, people that raise their children by working out there, and I want to -- to see that continue.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Next, we'll have Judge Chambers.
Judge Chambers.
JUDGE DANNY CHAMBERS: Thank you, sir.
20 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Appreciate it.
And I'll warn everybody up front that I'm definitely biased, so before I even start talking, I lean toward the power plant. I'll give you an idea how old I truly am. I was 11 or 12 years old when started dirt work out there, blasting dirt work, doing the dirt work. I worked out there in '79 and '80.
'80, I moved to Dallas, went to school, got married, moved back here in '85, raised my kids here. So I've always been very close in proximity to the power plant. Like Jeff said, you know, Somervell County wouldn't be what it is today without the nuclear power plant.
At one time, the nuclear power plant made up 98 percent of our tax base. I know that's hard to believe, but that's the way it was '89 through about
'93, '94. 33 years later, they still make up 62 to 63 percent of Somervell County's tax base. I'm just talking about Somervell County Commissioners Court.
So you see the way that we provide the services we provide is through, of course, all of our tax bases that we have, the first responders, the Sheriff's Department, the schools we have, the hospitals we have.
And touching on what Jeff said, I know
21 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com many of y'all know this, but we do so many drills every year with the power plant pertaining to safety.
Every autumn every year, we actually have a graded exercise. We have NRC, we have FEMA, we have FBI, we have ATF. We have everybody working pretty much all over North Texas to handle these drills. So far, knock on wood, 33 years later, we've never had an incident that we've had to worry about, but we drill constantly with the group out there. We have a great working relationship.
Patrick, Alan has been through so many more things than he'd rather go through with me, but he's been through a lot. But it's a great working relationship.
Like Jeff said, I can't say it enough, Somervell County would not be what it is today if we were to lose that. And then, of course, bottom line, I'd just probably have to be escorted to my car, if we take it offline right now today, seven years before the renewal, how do we replace what we put on the grid from Somervell County. Anyhow, that's it. Thank y'all very much. Appreciate it.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
22 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MR. KLUKAN: So I know there are other elected individuals in the room this evening, but if you would like to come up now and speak or -- in your elected capacity, please feel free to do so at this
- time, or, as I
mentioned, any members or representatives of tribal nations. Anyone else who would like to speak in their elected capacity at this time? Please.
MAYOR PRO TEM CHIP JOSLIN: Hello. My name is Chip Joslin, and I identify as the Mayor Pro Tem of Glen Rose, Texas. And I'm also a big supporter of Comanche Peak. And they've done so much for me, personally. I graduated here in Glen Rose in 1985.
And like the Judge said, once upon a time, they were 98 percent of our income, and now they're roughly 62, 63, and we need them. We need them for this community. I'm also very involved in multiple philanthropic causes here in this town, and they're always the first to step up. The energy distributors, I won't give a commercial, but the -- the energy distributors that work with the plant are always the first ones to help us in the community.
Next slide.
(Audience laughter.)
I was just making sure you were awake.
23 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Sorry.
Anyway, but I, you know, I agree, safety is very important to me. Safety is very important to our citizens. And I know it is to many of you folks.
And, you know, I know most of you aren't from here.
Some of you may be, but I don't recognize too many of you. But, you know, if my safety and our citizens' safety are important to you, come talk to me, you know. I'm here. I want to hear you. I want to know what you have to say. I'm very curious, because no one has talked to me that I don't know really. So if you're really concerned about our safety, which I think is of the utmost at Comanche Peak, please come talk to me, talk to some of the other officials.
So thank you very much for your time.
Please spend a lot of money. I don't know how long you're staying here, but spend a lot of money in the hotels, and we have shopping downtown. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: All right. Any other elected officials or representatives of government agencies?
Going once, going twice. All right. So thank you for those of you who did speak in your elected capacity.
We very much appreciate you coming out tonight.
24 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com So we're now going to turn it over to the process questions section. We have a limited window before we get into your comments, which is the bulk of this meeting, for you to ask questions about NRC's presentation.
Now, about how the NRC goes about a review. If you have substantive questions about the application, like, "Why does it say this and on this page of the application," I would ask you to hold that as a comment during the comment portion. If you have questions about like what do you -- how -- what, you know, "What are the chapters to the EIS? When will the EIS be published? How long is -- does the comment take?" -- I'm not trying to prime you, but if you do have questions about process, this is the time to ask me. So if you do have a process question, please raise your hand.
Sure.
MS. CHARLOTTE CONNELLY: Hi. I'm not trying to control somebody. Are these pictures supposed to help? Because I don't find them helpful.
And I don't think a presentation with the lack of slide shows is helpful. I just want to ask you to change the amount of pictures.
MR. KLUKAN: We appreciate that. Thank
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com you. Could you state your name for -- just for the transcript.
MS.
CHARLOTTE CONNELLY:
Charlotte Connelly.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
Any other process questions at this time?
MR. LON BURNAM: Hi. I'm Lon Burnam, and I'm from Fort Worth. And my question is: Is this really going to be the only public meeting here in Glen Rose or are you taking in consideration the 2 million people that live in Tarrant County and have just as much at stake in what we're discussing tonight as the people of Glen Rose?
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you for the question.
He's hiding. One second.
Okay. So the question was: Are we considering additional meetings as part of the environmental -- did I hear that right -- in other areas?
Tam, do you want to try to take that?
MR. TRAN: Yeah. At this point, we typically have one in-person at the location near the power plant because we want to, as part of the review, we try to collect local data because we do a site-specific Environmental Impact Statement, not a
26 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com generic one, so that's important for us, so that's why we have it here. But also we know that there are other folks who have interest in the license renewal at Comanche Peak for which we also conducted a virtual meeting. That was January 17.
As far as additional in-person meetings, if you make requests, then we have our process for which we would make the decisions.
Do you want to say something about that, John?
MR. MOSES: Sure. Sure. Sorry.
So your comments and your questions are very important. You can submit those to us tonight.
You can submit those by email or through a web form on www.regulations.gov until March 13th. We actually have little cards, if you'd like, you can put it on your computer, your phone, pull up the Q.R. code, you can submit your comments. It's -- on one side, you can submit the comments or questions, and the other side, you can actually look up the application materials from the licensee applicant to read more about what they're proposing and to learn more about the entire facility.
In terms of public meetings, we did have the hybrid one on January 17th. We actually extended
27 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com the scoping period to take through March 13th. And, obviously, we're having this in person. At the --
actually, I don't know if the slides are up, if you want to put up the page with all the dates.
So once, for the environmental side, they incorporate and review your comments, the team will develop an Environmental Impact Statement, or EIS.
That should be completed -- I thought it was in the fall. Okay. And at that point, another --
Yeah, thanks.
So that should be completed and published approximately September 2023. At that point, you can also submit another round of comments about what the agency has assessed and determined on the environmental impacts.
The environmental impacts are pretty wide-ranging. It may have been difficult to see in the slides. I brought up a few more slides that are a little larger, or if you want to see the different types of environmental impacts, it could be on endangered species, could be on cultural resources, it could be on ground water, et cetera. So there's a whole series of different areas that we look at. So in a sense, this is not your only time for public comment. There will be another round before the draft
28 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Environmental Impact Statement.
MR. TRAN: We have a slide up with the lights.
MR. KLUKAN: Okay. So...
MS. LAVONNE COCKERELL: Couple of things.
And this is not my statement. But it is now, you know, 35 minutes into this, and you haven't heard from us, and we would like to talk.
In that first meeting that you had, Mr.
Tran, I'm very good at my computer, and I was not allowed to talk because I couldn't access. And there were many of us that could not talk to you personally because the system didn't work. Why we don't use Zoom, I have no idea. Everybody uses Zoom. So just use Zoom for your next meetings. So I would not consider that meeting a meeting because half of us didn't get to speak.
(Audience clapping.)
MS. LAVONNE COCKERELL: So now, you have a one-hour meeting, and you've taken up more than half of it. So let's get on with talking so that we can all explain why we decided to come over here, and also wonder why, where is Glen Rose. Here are all the executive men, but where are these women? Where are the women? Wasn't advertised. But that's not my
29 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com statement. I would like to make a statement.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
And just for clarification, we're going till 9 tonight, so this is not an hour-long meeting.
So, all right, so without any other process questions, or else, we'll get to it. All right. Great.
So here's how this is going to work. I'm going to try to help people, essentially --
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a question, please. Would you please clarify the difference for me in your definition, the difference between a meeting and a hearing, because I think of a hearing is you hear from the public, and this is a meeting where you are speaking, so I'd like clarification.
MR. KLUKAN: This is not a hearing under the NRC's definitions. I'm putting on my attorney hat. There's a process and a sub part or part two of the NRC's regulations that goes over that. I am not going to go over the hearing process tonight. That is outside the scope of this meeting. This is a public meeting for the purpose of hearing your comments. So when we say "meeting," that's what we're talking about. A hearing has a very particular meaning for
30 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com the NRC. I don't have the time to go over that now, nor is that really the purpose of the meeting. The purpose is to hear from you. Okay.
All right. Any other process questions?
We're good? Okay. Great.
So there are, as I count, about 20 of you who have signed up to speak this evening. We have about an hour-and-a-half to go. I'm going to ask you
-- While I don't do this for elected officials, and you're asking why didn't I time them, I don't do that to elected officials. I'm going to ask you to try to limit this to 4 minutes. I'll hold up a finger, I'll be standing right there, when you have just one minute left so you have some time to wrap up your comments.
And, again, if you have longer comments, you can state it to us in any of the other ways that we mentioned in the presentation. We'll be happy to help you figure those out after the meeting.
So without any further ado, I'm going to call up Lon Burnam.
You're going to speak from this podium.
And I put faith and trust in you in handing you this microphone that you will give it back to me at some point. So with that said, again, state your name before you begin.
31 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MR. LON BURNAM: Good evening, everybody.
As I said earlier, my name is Lon Burnam. I'm from Fort Worth. And I am one of the founding members of the Citizens for Fair Utility Regulation. We took opposition to the initial licensing for operation all the way to the Supreme Court.
I'll congratulate Vistra and all the previous owners that it hasn't turned out to be as bad as we expected, but there are a lot of problems with the operation of this plant.
First of all, I want to extend my sympathy to the people that live here in Somervell County because it is a truism, no matter where you are in the country, if you are a one-industry town, your leadership has not done a good enough job about expanding your economic base. Unfortunately, you've had half a century to expand your economic base.
The problem with this plant goes back to the mid-Seventies when the utility companies got DPS to spy on citizens for raising questions about the safety of this plant.
So, I've been in Fort Worth virtually all my life. I've been opposed to nuclear power since I was in high school and read what David Brower had to say about it. For 18 years, I was a state
32 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com representative from central city Fort Worth before I got to the legislature. And ever since I left 10 years ago, a primary issue and concern of mine is what to do with the waste.
This gimme cap says, "Nuclear waste is not your friend." On the backside, I have a button that says, "Mutants for nuclear power."
One of the first science classes I had in high school, I studied genetics. But let me tell you, as a cancer survivor, I am really angry, not just about the fact that I had to come to Glen Rose for a public meeting; I'm really angry at the NRC and the way they have conducted their business over the decades. I'm really angry about being a cancer patient and not knowing what environmental issue caused my cancer, but it's a good chance the background radiation that we have created over the last 50 years, if it didn't contribute to my cancer, it has contributed to the cancer of a lot of people in Somervell County because there's constant low level emissions in that radiation.
So this evening when you hear various speakers, I want you to understand, a bunch of us have been through a whole bunch of EIS processes over decades and we know the fraudulent process when we see
33 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com it, and this is one of them. We're going to be raising questions and we're going to be challenging the whole notion that you can narrowly define your EIS, when in reality there are huge issues that you should be talking about in this process.
The first one is just the aging of the plant. It wasn't built right in the first place. It took over two decades to build it. Spent almost 11 billion dollars to build it, and charged the utility consumers in North Texas over a 25 percent rate increase in the early Nineties. That aging reactor is more dangerous than when it started 30 years ago.
There's cracks and embrittlement issues that need to be explored.
The earthen dam. Life expectancy of an earthen dam in this state may be 50 years if it's not afflicted by all sorts of earthquakes that are caused by the fracking and injection that's been going on in this region.
I was on the Energy Resources Committee of the Texas House of Representatives when we were having so many earthquakes in this immediate area, and people
-- the industry decided maybe they should back off a little bit. Economic issues. We reduced those numbers of quakes -- I mean the fracking --
34 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com earthquakes because of the fracking.
Let's talk about the drought. Guys, you may be into denial about climate change, but it's real, and we're in a drought. And there's a very real issue about the access to water and whether or not there's enough water to cool this plant and meet the needs of people in Granbury as well.
And let's talk about that waste issue, which I have specialized in for over a decade. For over half a century, people have promised us that they're going to figure this problem out, and they haven't. So why, why, why should we keep digging a hole and making it deeper and a bigger problem when we haven't solved that problem in over 50 years.
I say let's have a real scoping exercise, and let's do a real EIS on the comprehensive aspect of the many problems that you're going to hear about tonight. Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. So in order to -- for the sake of efficiency, I'm going to now read out the name of the next person as well as the person who will be following them so they are prepped to go.
So next we'll have Danny Bradford. Danny
35 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Bradford. And then after Danny, we'll have Joshua Worthey. So Danny, and then Joshua.
MR. DANNY BRADFORD: May have the public scrutiny to stand up in a crowd and not be in front of it. Just a little bit about myself. Let me introduce myself. My name is Danny Bradford.
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE MEMBERS: We can't hear you.
MR. DANNY BRADFORD: Oh, okay. I don't do karaoke so I didn't know if maybe I had to use the microphone.
My name is Danny Bradford. At age 17, I signed up to join the United States Navy, to go through the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, at 17, and I remember seeing on the Channel 5 News that Unit 2 in February of 1993 got its operating license. I'm like, you know, when I get out of the Navy, I'll just go to work at Comanche Peak. I didn't know we had a nuclear plant in Texas.
So after I got out of the Navy, I had a brief stint at a steel mill as an electrician. And after two weeks, I was ready to run back to the safety of nuclear power, because safety is truly number one at our industry.
But I'm not here to talk about Comanche
36 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Peak as an employer. I'm a Glen Rose resident as well, so I'm here to talk about Comanche Peak as a community partner. Both my kids have gone to school here. I have a sophomore and an eighth grader.
They've gone all through Glen Rose school, elementary, intermediate, junior high, now in high school. And if you've had the chance to check out our facilities, they're fantastic. We get to live in a small community, but we have a lot of bigger city amenities.
We have a arena for basketball. Our football field is fantastic. So I get to live here in a small town and have a great school to send my kids to.
Comanche Peak is loved by us residents. I mean, you probably -- you guys probably think I'm biased though. Glen Rose does love us. They absolutely do. We are volunteers. We will go out and volunteer in the community. I take a group up to Fort Worth to make sandwiches for homeless shelters. We judge science fairs. We do community projects. And it's just a great community partner. So, and I'm proud to work at Comanche Peak. I'm also proud to be a Glen Rose resident. Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
Joshua. Joshua will be followed by Chuck
37 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com O'Dell, and then Mike Stakes.
MR. JOSHUA WORTHEY: Thank you. All right. I'm Joshua Worthey. I am the business manager and financial secretary of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 220. I also have spent the last seven years as an operator here at Comanche Peak. I'm also a veteran and a father of three.
I ask the NRC consider this license extension for Comanche Peak in a timely and efficient manner. Comanche Peak has served the local community with significant job creations and community aid. As Mr. Bradford pointed out, this community has benefited in significant ways. This facility employs an extremely large number of veterans, as do most nuclear facilities across this entire country. Comanche Peak has operated in a safe and efficient, environmentally clean manner for roughly 30 years. Most recently in those 30 years, Comanche Peak held the line. Its highly-trained operators and maintenance personnel performed their jobs admirably, keeping the Texas grid online during Winter Storm Uri, potentially saving thousands of lives.
Again, I just ask that everybody consider this and move forward and accept this licensing
38 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com extension.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Next, we have Chuck O'Dell, followed by Mike Stakes.
MR. CHUCK O'DELL: Good evening. My name is Chuck O'Dell. I'm also a Comanche Peak employee.
I live in Granbury. I moved here about five years ago. I've been in the nuclear power business since 1990, in the commercial world, but I also went in the U.S. Navy, got out, figured out what I wanted to do, and really the best thing in the world is the nuclear power field. It is safe. It is reliable. Our motto here is safety, quality, and schedule. So we focus, very first thing, every meeting, every discussion, how are we going to be safe
- today, industrial, radiological, plant-wise, people-wise, everything.
That's the first thing out of the chute every meeting every single day. Every avenue of focus we go through, safety, quality, schedule. So that pressure that you feel sometimes where people feel about nuclear power, that's the bottom of the rung. Safety, quality, schedule, always in that order.
And I'm a huge advocate for Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Station. I worked in another utility entity at Arkansas Nuclear One for 27 years before I
39 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com came here. This plant right here is highly qualified.
The operators Josh talked about, great operator crews, great people, they work hard, they know the plant, they study, they're smart. They are probably the most conscious organization, the engineering folks, the maintenance folks, the licensing folks.
Everybody comes to work every single day wanting to do the right thing, protect the health and safety of the public, safely generate electricity for the state of Texas.
My family lives in Glen Rose. My daughter lives just south of Waco. I've got three kids that live in Arkansas still. As soon as they get out, one gets out of law school, one gets out of school, they're moving down here to Granbury. This is a great place, great community, great power plant to have in the area.
Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
Next, I've been told that Mike isn't here with us this evening, so we will go to Terry McIntire.
Terry McIntire.
And then, Terry, you will be followed by Steve Willis. So, Terry.
40 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com MR. TERRY MCINTIRE: Thank you. I'm actually a long-time resident here. My family is --
owns a family farm that borders Somervell and Hood County, been in the family since 1850s. Family cemetery where my great, great, great grandparents are buried. When I visit the family cemetery, the first thing I drive past is evacuation siren. Kind of interesting it's beside a cemetery. I -- I would like this plant to be safe for my great, great, great grandchildren. And so far, I guess it has been for me.
My first knowledge of the plant, let's talk about taxes, which it was probably put here because the tax base was so low. That was kind of a general consensus of everybody I knew here then. It was really low, so, the taxes in Somervell County, let's put the nuclear power plant there. And the taxes have done some really good things. We have the Expo Center. The schools are really commendable.
There's also been some bad things, you know. City government was a large part of trying to stop the flow of the river through a national natural landmark. We spent 20 years trying to fight that.
That would never happen without the taxes from the power plant. So they do bad things as well.
41 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com My concerns are the water and air quality.
Danny kind of mentioned that you have a control incident, you have drills and things, but what about afterwards? What happens afterwards?
Waste storage. We were told at the time at Stephenville there will be some kind of an off-site waste storage. As far to my knowledge, that's never happened. All the waste is still stored on site. I suspect it will, always will be, be managed, managed or mismanaged forever there.
I worry about the seismic activity here.
When I was a kid, there was no seismic activity. It seems to increase over the years. If it keeps increasing and gets worse, is that going to affect the power plant, affect the cooling reservoir? Maybe. Who knows.
Drought. We've seen Lake Granbury get very low a couple of times. If we run out of water, the people need more water as the population grows, is there going to be water in the towers?
Terrorism. You know, nuclear power plants are just targets for terrorism, watch out for terrorism. I worry about that. I'd like to hear an answer to that.
And oversight. I remember during the
42 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com construction phase, I heard all these stories from people, a lot of people that worked there when I was in college at the time. I heard stories about carpenters that couldn't read yardsticks, about welders that were here illegal with no Social Security number, and they were very relaxed on regulations with asbestos. And I know these were probably fixed, but it was just poor oversight, and it gave me an uncomfortable feeling this being built here. In fact, it was built and rebuilt so many times and so much money was spent on that.
But my question is just oversight in the future. What if the local utility district becomes as lax when future management is working construction on this project? I mean, one incident, and that's it for us. We're gone from this area forever. Just some things for us to think about.
If -- I'd like to see a formal hearing happen. And if this could be used, we should make sure this is as safe as possible and guaranteed safe for the foreseeable future, very far into the future.
Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
Next, we have Steve Willis. Steve will be
43 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com followed by Payton Fletcher.
MR. STEVE WILLIS: My name is Steve Willis. I moved here into Somervell County in 1978.
They were building the power plant. We knew the power plant was going to come online. My family, my parents chose to bring us here because it was a good community to grow up in.
I have raised my son here. I have now grandchildren that live here. And I serve in the community taking care of people. I have a servant heart. God gave me that. And if I had concerns about the power plant being dangerous, being hazardous, then I would not be here. I wouldn't be here and I wouldn't have my children here, my grandchildren here.
But that's not the case. I've also worked out there, also taking care of people, and dealing with regulatory compliance. And I can tell you that the plant is -- goes to every extreme necessary to protect the people of this community and those neighboring us.
I have been involved in emergency management activities. I'm glad the Judge is not here anymore because I'm going to contradict him. He said we never have used the training, the rehearsals, the drills. We have used those. They just weren't nuclear related. We had wildfires that we used our
44 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com emergency management training that the plant provided us to help us manage a very huge incident. We've had natural disasters that, again, we used the training and the provisions that the plant provided us to take care of that.
So let's put the money aside. Let's put the -- all the other beliefs aside.
Ma'am, I know a lot of women in this county, and they're very vocal. They would be here if they had concerns about Comanche Peak. They would be on Facebook if they had concerns about Comanche Peak, because, believe me, they're on there all the time, about the government and several other things. So the reason that you don't see any more people here from Glen Rose is because they're not concerned, because they know that the people that are taking care of the facility, that are taking care of the regulations --
you know, there's two Nuclear Regulatory Commission officers that stay, that office at Comanche Peak to provide additional government oversight. You don't see that in many other industries. You don't see that.
And they also partner with the OSHA Administration. And I deal with them on a regular basis to do with, you know, people safety.
45 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com So to think that the plant is not safe, to think that it's doing -- they're doing something that they haven't -- I don't know where the science is coming from about emissions because, you know, I look at all that. It's not there.
So I just ask the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to seriously consider extending the license. The money is already spent to get the plant going. There's an operating cost, but the big bucks have already been spent. Now we have electricity that we depend on as citizens to keep us comfortable, prepare our foods. And I can tell you that if you took these two units offline, then there's not enough wind and there's not enough sun to replace it.
Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: So next up will be Payton Fletcher. Payton will be followed by Dwayne Griffin.
MR. PAYTON FLETCHER: Thank you very much.
This is the LRA, the License Renewal Application. A thousand-one-hundred pages. What I really want to do is I want to reach in here and grab a single page and say "Is there anyone in this room who can read it, understand it, and explain it?"
Because it would surprise me if there is. Now, I
46 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com admit, I've only spent about 10 hours1.157407e-4 days <br />0.00278 hours <br />1.653439e-5 weeks <br />3.805e-6 months <br /> trying to decipher what that says. And I don't have a detailed background in nuclear engineering, but come on. That doesn't provide any usable information to someone who doesn't have probably a Master's Degree in Nuclear Engineering.
I'd like to start off by talking about what I fear as the worst day that can happen at Comanche Peak or any other nuclear reactor. I learned a new phrase while I was researching Comanche Peak:
Open air nuclear reactor fire. Now, the only time this has ever happened on the planet has been at a place called Chernobyl.
When I was worried about Chernobyl was when I was in Germany. I was worried that my kids would get radiated because they were only a few thousand miles from the Chernobyl plant.
On the 25th and 26th of 1986, a scheduled safety test went wrong. They had the written procedures standing there in front of them, and instead of following step one, two, three, they did something different, and so much steam built up inside the reactor that it blew the top of the reactor off.
So there was nothing between heaven and the reactor except air. 33 people died in the first couple of
47 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com days. Any guesses who those people were? They were first responders. Even though all the safety alarms had been turned off, they figured out what was happening and they rolled, on their last mission.
They didn't survive Chernobyl because they did their job.
If you know a first responder, and I know a bunch, put them at the top of your prayer list tonight, folks, because we are blessed to have them all.
And folks that took care of the power plant at Chernobyl were not any slouches. They were the finest engineers, the finest rescue and firefighters that you can imagine. They just were in a bad place at a bad time because of human error.
Thousands of people had to be evacuated.
They still can't go back. So imagine if they knocked on your door and say you have to leave, and they never told you you could go back. That's not what you want to do, especially if your family is buried in the cemetery there.
The city, the state of Ukraine has 36,000 widows, who the reason for their widow is because of Chernobyl. 36,000 women who receive a pension because their husbands died from Chernobyl. It's hard to
48 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com believe.
A good friend of mine a few days after Chernobyl happened, was looking in -- was walking through Kensington Park, admiring the pretty clouds. A business colleague came up and said, "They've just said we're supposed to take our kids, get them inside and lock the windows and doors." A few days later, the BBC announced that there was a mass culling of wild stock, sheep, and in Scandinavia, reindeer.
So if we think the 10 miles or any other limited range is going to take care of the problem if we have our worst day, we're just dreaming. The people who work out there can tell you we're dealing with mother nature at her most powerful and potentially at her most unforgiving. Let's hope we look really detailed at what we're doing before we keep it going for another 20 years.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: So again --
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
Up next, we will have, again, Dwayne Griffin, Dwayne Griffin. Dwayne not here with us?
Okay.
49 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com We will go to Brian Jones then. Is Brian with us? No, no Brian either. Okay. Cross those names off the list.
So now we will go to Susybelle, Susybelle Gosslee. Susybelle will be followed by -- got my pages out of order -- by Doreen Geiger. So Susybelle, and then Doreen.
MS. SUSYBELLE GOSSLEE: I am Susybelle Gosslee. I am in Dallas, Texas. And I thank you for having an in-person public meeting in the area where Comanche Peak Nuclear Reactor is located. I -- I beg you to have an in-person public hearing. There is a difference. The NRA's public comment process has not been well-publicized to inform the public about this meeting and the license review process in a thorough manner, in a very public manner, in a broad -- through the broad population of Texas, and to be clear for the general public to understand what a nuclear power plant does, how it does it.
When the last online Internet meeting was held, many people could not enter the process and participate. Many people in Texas do not have access to an Internet. And so many people who would be affected by any accident at any nuclear power plant in this area, there's one, Comanche Peak, they would not
50 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com know that even this nuclear power plant existed.
The Office of the Federal Register is unknown to most people in this country and is an inadequate notice location to invite people to participate in a democratic process in a democratic government. Transparency and accountability are key elements of good government and make democracy work.
We want and we need a public hearing.
The principles of good government include participation by the
- public, an informed participation; the rule of law, this -- the law must be fair, indiscriminate, enforced, and adhered to, especially the law of human rights.
Transparency is another principle. The freedom of the flow of information in various institutional processes must be easily accessible. I have concern that this process has not followed the principles of a democracy or good government. The --
basically, the notices have been hidden.
I have driven around this city, and I've driven around some of the county, and I tell you, I think it's beautiful. I wish I'd known about it before I moved to Dallas because I can see what loving people you have living in this area, and I appreciate all of the benefits that you have. And I know that
51 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com many people are afraid of losing their jobs, but you know, there's another way to look at this. Comanche Peak could diversify and develop sustainable energy.
You could do that and still have jobs. Many jobs would be available to you within the sustainable energy field, so then the only jobs are not going to be at Comanche Peak. The sustainable energy needs all kinds of electricians and plumbers, et cetera.
Glen Rose is a beautiful place, and everyone I have met here is perfectly lovely. I appreciate meeting some of the people here tonight and seeing what gracious people you are. The people who are attending here and have concerns about the nuclear reactor have legitimate concerns. Let's talk to each other because we all live in the same state, we're all going to be affected if there's an accident. An additional 20 years of operation of a plant that is becoming brittle and is aging out causes problems for lots of people. And we have to think about the broad perspective, not just what happens to me. I'm thinking also about what happens to you, your children, your access to your cemeteries, your access to all your friends that grew up and lived here. We all want to live together. We all want to live forever and have our families go on forever.
52 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com So that is why I support the best for your community, and I hope that you will keep your mind open to hear what people like me have to say, and I hope that we will build a relationship and be friends forever, and we will be safe with sustainable energy.
Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
So after Doreen, we will go to Danny Bradford, and then Kerry -- Karen Hadden.
MS. DOREEN GEIGER: Please, do not give Comanche Peak a 20-year extension on their aging Unit 1 and Unit 2 Nuclear Reactors. We demand a hearing.
I have two major concerns: First, the earthquakes in the area of Texas has put safety of Comanche Peak at risk. There are injection wells and fracking in the region that caused several small earthquakes in recent years. What will any future fracking do to Comanche Peak? What impacts will this have on the reactors or the Squaw Creek earthen dam that holds back water containing tritium? What will happen to water levels in Squaw Creek Reservoir and how will homeowners be impacted?
Second, please include in your scoping the additional waste storage issues if this plant operates
53 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com until 2053. Will all additional high-grade nuclear waste be stored only in Comanche Peak? Please do not ever think about transporting it anywhere. That would be too dangerous. The very recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio is proof the damage derailments can cause. According to the federal government's Bureau of Transportation statistics, in the past 31 years, there have been 54,593 accidents in which a train derailed. That is an average of 1,704 derailments every year. Texas Governor Abbott has already sued to prevent high-grade waste from being transported into, within, or out of Texas.
Thank you very much.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Okay. Next, we will have Danny Bradford, Danny Bradford.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: He's already been up.
MR. KLUKAN: He's already been up.
MR. DANNY BRADFORD: Yeah.
MR. KLUKAN: Oh, there you are. You're the same. There aren't two of you. Okay.
Next, we will have Karen Hadden. Karen Hadden.
54 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com And then Karen will be followed by LaVonne. LaVonne. Okay. Great. All right. So we'll have Karen next, and then LaVonne.
MS. KAREN HADDEN: Hello. My name is Karen Hadden. I do not live in Glen Rose or Granbury, but I appreciate the beauty in this area. And I do like to come visit, and I have, and I love Dinosaur Valley State Park. I think you're lucky to live here.
I'm happy to hear from the people here who are happy with their jobs, with their families, with their schools. I respect that. I think everyone does. But I wonder sometimes why the community doesn't know more about the everyday operations of nuclear reactors. And I would contend that the reason that there's not more vocal people here, there's only people on the payroll, is because nobody told most of those people. They did not know. And that is a conclusion I reached after coming into town to try to talk to people and let them know what was going on. No one seemed to know, and I'm really sorry about that.
My main concern about operating this reactor that was designed for 40 years of operation is that it was not designed for 60. And if you read the literature, you find that nuclear reactors, especially pressurized water reactors like we have here, are
55 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com prone to metal fatigue and embrittlement.
Now, embrittlement, okay, we might think that's no big deal, but when you look into the studies, in some cases, metal can actually become like glass after its been under high pressure and temperature for a long period of time, and also neutron bombardment, it can shatter.
So when I look through -- And I read much of that big document, not all of it. It's actually 2281 total pages. And, um, when I read it, there was not an analysis of where we are right now with Comanche Peak in terms of embrittlement and metal fatigue. It called for studies to be done on numerous safety features with the results being available in 2030 and 2033. That's right before the additional 20 years. And I maintain that our process is backwards.
First, there should be the study of what the shape of the reactor is today, right now, and how much we're going to have to spend to fix and repair it, if it's possible, if necessary, and then, then should come a decision on whether to give it another 20 years. This is backwards, and it's not in the interest of public safety.
There are routine emissions. A lot of people don't even know about that, but nuclear
56 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com reactors are allowed, under federal law, to release radioactive materials into the air, water and soil.
And this is what happens to various organs in your body that get impacted and exposed. I'm going to leave that in the back for anybody who wants to look at it.
There are studies about this. If you don't think that it's happening, you can google Comanche Peak Radiologic Report, and you will find the emissions from this reactor. So I encourage you to do so, because there's a lot of ranches and farms around here.
I maintain that if you were to clean up and close down these reactors as planned, that you've got plenty of time, there could be plenty of time for a transition to where workers could keep jobs, new technologies can come in, cleaner energy.
I do -- I'm grateful for the fact that Comanche Peak reactors did not go down during Winter Storm Uri. That is important. We were so close to losing the grid. However, down in South Texas, Unit 1 went down the very start of the storm and did not come back online until it was over. Now, that is not reliable. And I know that's not you and that's not here, but that is a major part of our grid. What kept
57 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com us alive this last time was that the wind from South Texas came in stronger than anticipated, and that is the reason why the whole grid didn't go down when there were a lot of gas plants were having problems.
So it is time to consider newer technologies, newer jobs.
I also want to talk briefly about the discharge. If you find -- if you go back to like page 2260 and go from there to 2281, you'll find some letters in the environmental report that address the discharge water is very, very hot. About 112 degrees is some of the temperatures, averages that were mentioned. Now, that is a breeding ground for bacteria, and there are numerous bacteria that are breeding there. There are also amoebas being generated there, the kind that can infect the brain and lead to death, the kind that we worry about losing people across the state of Texas in the hot weather.
The plant said, okay, nobody can swim in Comanche Peak Reservoir. Fine. But people are getting into boats, and don't you think they're getting their feet wet, don't you think they're getting in the water getting out there to go fishing. So I do have concerns about health and safety.
There are concerns about 20 more years of
58 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com operating and creating additional waste for which we have no good solution, no permanent repository. If and when consolidating end-term storage gets approved for West Texas, that means people in this region are going to have heavy-duty, high-level waste going on trains across the region. And that is not especially safe as well.
I'm going to go ahead and hand you a couple of these documents.
And before I wrap up, I want to say that this process, I'm glad that you're here tonight, but this process has not been open and transparent. I have been so distraught with how this process has gone on with the canceling of a meeting that was set up here in January, which a lot of people were ready to attend and had worked really hard through the holidays to be able to be here. So that got cancelled, supposedly because of COVID in the area. However, when I asked was there any warning anybody heard of about COVID in the area, none of the local people ever heard of it. No businesses closed. No schools closed.
Then there was an online meeting at which many of the participants -- I'm not through yet. Many of the participants did not get a chance to speak, and
59 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com that's why I'm asking for an additional amount of time because I was one of the people that did not get any time at an online meeting. And that was because of technology. And it was because so many of us could not even get in. I was so angry that I took the time to write to the Inspector General of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And for the first time, I got somebody to listen. We sent in a letter from a Congressman. So, no, this has not been an open process.
And, no, the local community, I don't see too many people here that are not employees of the plant that are here begging for everything to stay. I think the local community does not know what's going on. When I talk to people about it, they say, oh, well, we are concerned about our children, and maybe a brighter future would appear if we went ahead and retired in a timely manner, kept the income coming in, and then brought in new industry.
So I thank you for listening. You may or may not agree with what I'm saying, but I'll doc up and I'll back up any facts with documentation. And I urge you to think seriously. I do not think that this license renewal should be approved. And I think you're doing it in the wrong order, that there needs
60 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com to be a study of the embrittlement first and the price tag, because utility consumers and customers are potentially going to get hit with skyrocketing bills for repairs later down the line.
Thank you very much.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
All right. After LaVonne, we will have Suzanne Mabe, Suzanne Mabe. Okay. Great.
So you're up.
MS. LAVONNE COCKERELL: First of all, I want to thank Mr. Sayor (sic), Mr. Tran, Mr. Moses, Mister -- Ms. Alferink, Alferink. Hope I got that right. And, I'm sorry, I didn't get your name -- for coming. They're from -- they came from Washington to Glen Rose. I'm sure that -- I don't know if that was a shock. I don't know where you came from, but I love Glen Rose.
I want to tell a story. In May of 1980, Somervell County Judge Sam Freas died of a massive heart attack the day before he was to hold court over the people that climbed the fence in protest of this plant. Judge Sam Freas was my uncle, my Uncle Sam. He was much adored. And I spent many, many, many days in Glen Rose with my cousins, at the Methodist camp,
61 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com walking in the dinosaur tracks before they forbade you to do that.
And I live in Fort Worth, have almost all my life, but Glen Rose is like Fort Worth to me. I have cousins here. I don't know where George is, but he was the mayor of Glen Rose at one time. And Judge Freas, my Uncle Sam, was adored. I don't know how old you guys are, but if you remember him, he was a fantastic person. And the stress of this plant killed him.
The first trial that he held was a mistrial. So Washington called him perpetually to make sure this plant got stood up. But what was going on with our family about this plant was that the contracts -- contractors were stealing us blind. They were taking -- they were not mixing the concrete correctly. They were not putting in the rebar correctly. The electrical wiring was brittle. The "this" and the "that", and it was awful. And the family joke was: The wind blows north.
But if that plant fails, it is the size of Pennsylvania. And that's why I'm here from Fort Worth coming back to Glen Rose that I totally love. So I'm not an outsider. I'm an insider. I will be impacted, and my children in Frisco and Wiley will be impacted
62 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com also. So please accept us.
Why aren't the women here? They don't know that 37 percent rise in childhood leukemia in a report from Europe of all of their power plants for anybody, any child living in a three-mile radius of that plant. I don't know. I know somebody has a farm within three miles of that plant, but that's a huge increase.
And as you know, because the Academy of National Sciences tells us, no amount of radiation, no amount of radiation is good. It all impacts your DNA, every bit of it. None is good. And that plant is emitting. And the women in this town need to know this, radiation every time they blow this stack. The men might know this if you work out there, but you haven't told your wife that you brought them to this town where the possibility of cancer is greater.
Now, it's crazy because our real problem in Texas is not energy. It's the threads that carry our energy. It is on a shoestring and a thin wire.
And if you know anybody in the industrial solar business, like I do, knows that the huge massive failure in energy in Texas, that is coming, is because of the distribution lines. So not putting solar and not putting some wind locally, on your house, and near
63 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com you, is probably one of the worst decisions you can make. And instead of standing up this in licensing it, we should be taking our money and making sure we have panels and maybe a geothermal system going down underground to heat and cool ourselves, because I like heat and cooling also.
Last thing is: You had two announcements in two -- in one newspaper about these meetings, Hood County. I have them right here if you'd like to see them. As I wrote mine, I -- and someone walked up and said, oh, you don't have to tell us within 50 miles.
Is that true, Mr. Tran?
MR. TRAN: I'm sorry?
MS. LAVONNE COCKERELL: Do you have to inform us of a meeting or the license renewal within a 50-mile radius of this plant, citizens, or is it just 10 miles? Anybody know?
MR. TRAN: Should I?
MR. KLUKAN: Sure.
MR.
TRAN:
It's a
part of the Environmental Impact Statement. We do consider 50 miles.
MS. LAVONNE COCKERELL: Okay.
MR. TRAN: However, like I said, because this is a
sizable
- city, there's a
generic
64 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com environmental statement. As I mentioned in our presentation, this is a site-specific environmental statement, so we try to get information more locally.
MS. LAVONNE COCKERELL: Okay.
MR. TRAN: So it's a -- it's a form of priority. That's how we focus.
MS. LAVONNE COCKERELL: Right. So --
MR. TRAN: But again, like I'm saying, that we can have also a process where we -- people can request, and then that we have a process for which we can make a decision as far as in-person meetings and so on.
MS. LAVONNE COCKERELL: Right. But you do see the -- I taught school. I know policies and procedures. You do see the problem with that policy and procedure. Hood County is 15 miles from Glen Rose. There was never a public meeting announcement for the people of Glen Rose.
So we need to do a better -- It needs to be better, because you are us and we are you, and we're not -- I don't want to be contentious, but I do want to be specific. My neighbors didn't know about this. I posted it on my Facebook page, and everybody went, "What? What?" Because we all want clean energy and that is -- You may have a spick-and-span building,
65 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com but that is not a clean energy source, not in any way, shape or form.
Thank you very much.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
All right. After Suzanne, we will then have David Gray. And then David will be followed by Tom "Smitty" Smith.
So Suzanne, and David, then Tom.
MS. SUZANNE MABE: My name is Suzanne Mabe. I do live in Fort Worth.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: Hold it closer to your mouth, please.
MS. SUZANNE MABE: What? Now can you hear me?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE SPEAKER: You got it.
MS. SUZANNE MABE: Okay. Suzanne Mabe. I live in Fort Worth. I'm one of the founding members for Citizens for Fair Utility Regulation with Lon Burnam and my late sister Betty Brink. And they worked on this for a long, long time in the original unit, and it's interesting to see that we're having to go back over this again, and with all of the problems that occurred.
And I -- I want to take issue with the --
66 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com is it (indiscernible) saying this is clean energy. It may be not like coal and oil and gas and fossil fuels, but it's not clean when you have waste products that last for millions of years. And so that's -- that's a concern for me. And it's a concern.
I know it's been interesting listening to all the people in Glen Rose who have to work here and live here. And I can understand what a shock this would be to the community if they were just to shut it down, but we have, like, eight to ten years to look for other types of energy and something that -- more like solar and wind. And I read this in the paper the other day, that they were using methane out of the landfills. And so there's a lot of things out there that could be developed or improved in the last --
before the plant goes offline.
And I would like to have things like that included in a public hearing for the community and people. I'm not an engineer, I don't claim to be one, but there are a lot of things that concern just average citizens like myself, and we'd like for you to take those into consideration when you decide about having a hearing, because I think that would be real important to a lot more people as they find out about it, so...
67 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com But thank you for having this meeting and allowing us to speak. Okay.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Thank you very much.
And then after David, we will have Tom "Smitty" Smith.
MR. DAVID GRAY: Hello. I'm David Gray. I first want to point out that this is an EIS scoping meeting. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I have contested an EIS in Dallas. And, basically, they're only interested in things that might have an environmental impact. So it's good that you all have had a chance to express your feelings, pro and con, and whatnot, but tonight, these people only care about things that might have an environmental impact. So there might be a better forum for you to talk to the people who really care about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. And that might be a hearing.
In case of the safety review, there's no public meetings until after the review is issued, according to this flow chart.
The second thing I want to say is it's nice to hear that so many of the employees feel safe here at this plant. That may not be a big deal,
68 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com because 23 nuclear plants have been decommissioned over the last few decades. And only one new plant perhaps has been built in recent years.
The price of solar and wind energy compared to the long-term cost of running a nuclear plant, by that I mean not including the capital cost, just the operating expenses, is right now about the same. And the cost of wind and solar will continue to go down, in addition to batteries and other kinds of energy storage. So the day may come long before this license renewal is given that this group decides that they're not going to run this plant anymore. You think the people in Irving care what goes on here in Somervell County? I doubt it, not very much.
So the point is that your plant, and in particular as was pointed out
- earlier, the embrittlement, the decay, the -- all of the costs for repairs and the upkeep and the maintenance, will certainly become even worse over the coming years, and the cost to keep this plant open and running will be prohibitive, and the plant will be decommissioned, despite whatever people think about it.
So I submit that this EIS, you do an economic analysis of the future of this plant, include in that what it's going to take to decommission it.
69 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Think about what that means. They have to dismantle this plant. All of that stuff is radioactive. What is going to happen to it? Where is it going to go? Is it going to stay here? Is it going to be spread around? Well, that's a big issue that I think this Environmental Impact Statement has to cover in some detail.
And I think that the public should have a bigger voice in this. I don't know what the right forum is, but as far as the EIS goes, that is an important part of this discussion.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Okay. Thank you.
So after Tom, we will go to Rita Beving, and then -- Is Rita here? Okay.
And then we'll go to Mavis, Mavis Belisle.
Okay. Great.
All right. With that, I'll turn it over to Tom.
MR. TOM "SMITTY" SMITH: Good evening, everybody, and thanks for coming out. My name is Tom Smith. I'm better known as "Smitty". And I have a lot of concerns about the additional 20-year licensing that's being proposed almost a decade before it has to be and before we know what's really going on with the
70 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com conditions inside this plant.
I'm an aging man. I see my friends die and get sick because of very predictable diseases.
Their arteries, just like pipes in an old plant, get full of crap, and all the sudden, their circulation systems don't work nearly as well. Those arteries burst in their systems and leak. They get shaky. I'm an old man, and I'm starting to get shaky. And I'm concerned every day about embrittlement, and I see it bringing down my friends.
This sort of stuff, the impact of aging, needs to be studied long before the relicensing decision is made, and certainly before the reports are going to be final in the 2030 era.
I was around when this plant was first being considered and licensure discussed. One of the issues that was raised in those days was seismic activity. And the NRC just doesn't often stop construction of a plant because somebody has raised issues, but there was such significant concerns that even the NRC listened. And what they did was, they said because of concerns about the pinch points between the parts of the plant crushing those wires and stopping the ability to control those plants, that they're going to put all the wiring in sway trays as a
71 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com way of compensating potential seismic activity.
That's worked. But what we see now today is quaking across Texas is increasing, not because of the geology of the state, but because of manmade earthquakes due to fracking and waste disposal.
And as much as we keep telling ourselves we have our emissions in control in the air, it's getting worse because they're sticking all that stuff underground. And our oil and gas industries persist to continue to inject substances that cause quaking.
That brings me to another very big concern. That dam was built in 1973. It's an earthen dam with a limited lifetime. There are a lot of sedimentation going on behind that dam. The D -- TCEQ in their inspections said that this is a high-risk dam because of aging. And we've got a lot of fracking quaking going on in that area. What happens if that dam bursts?
The other problem that is going to affect this place and this dam is climate change. Probably the most prevalent concern most of us have these days is drought. We're in one. That water level keeps dropping, and our ability to cool the systems is hit by global warming. But there is the other problem:
Severe flooding. That's one of the weird things about
72 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com this global warming stuff, folks, like periods of long droughts followed by severe rain and out-of-control flooding. And that's happening all over Texas.
Now, one of the things that I think I also am known -- am notorious for, is pushing my cars beyond their reasonable lifetime, thinking that I can just keep putting more money into them and they'll run another 10,000 miles or 20,000 miles. Last six months I put $1500 in the emission controls on my car. I went back today because the light came back on, and jokingly, the contract -- my mechanic said, "Oh, just put a piece of black tape on it; it will continue to run for another couple years."
I got up here today and had to go to a mechanic's place because of the gas smell coming out of that car.
I'm asking myself, is this kind of like what's going to happen with this nuclear plant? Are we going to run it and keep pouring money into it and more money into it before it has to be shut down? How much more money and how many more safety risks, just like gas smell coming into my car, are we going to encounter because of an aging reactor? And the investors saying we can continue to run it and push it and push it. I hope that doesn't happen, but that's a
73 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com high risk of failure we know is going to happen because the Texas energy market's about to change dramatically again and give incentives to people who run nuclear plants because they're so-called reliable and they're going to give them premiums to keep on operating plants longer than their natural lifetime.
It's not just nukes. It's the gas plants. It's the coal plants. But they're going to be chasing the money.
My friends in this area have done a good job operating this plant, but if you're getting paid to keep on running a plant beyond its natural lifetime, of course you're going to do it.
So I'm asking y'all, slow this process down, do your aging and embrittlement studies, look at that dam, make sure this plant is really up to snuff and going to operate. And don't be stupid like me.
Don't keep putting good money after bad in a vehicle or a nuclear plant that is no longer capable of working. We have made these mistakes before in this country, and we've all paid the price, and this is not a mistake we should make again.
As Karen and others said, we have another eight years to safely turn this thing off and to repurpose this economy and this community, create new
74 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com jobs, and to create new wealth, and not imperil this community and, unfortunately, a much larger swath of Texas if something goes wrong.
Thank you for your time.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
Next up we have Rita. Um, and then, again, we have Mavis and then Charlotte Connelly. Is Charlotte here? Okay. Good.
MS. RITA BEVING: Good evening. My name is Rita Beving, and I'm here tonight representing Livable Arlington, and we're a nonprofit organization focused on the effects of oil and gas operations in the Barnett Shale and have been for more than eight years.
One thing I want to bring out tonight for those of you who may not be familiar, go google D Magazine and look for an article called "Cloud Over Comanche Peak" from 1987. It discusses when senior engineers quit Comanche Peak project because of safety concerns.
But the reason I'm here tonight is Comanche Peak affects a 19-county area with 2.1 million residents, most of those residents in Tarrant County. Our organization has members and supporters
75 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com who live within the 50-mile radius of Comanche Peak in Fort Worth, Grand Prairie, and Arlington. The NRC needs to give more scrutiny to this plant, carefully weigh the risks that this aging plant may have.
Within the application, there's more than a hundred pages of tables addressing issues that need to be addressed, cracking, component fatigue, the loss of materials, erosion are all noted. There are 71 instances where the aging management review results suggest that further evaluation is recommended. That evaluation needs to happen with resolution before this permit is granted.
Our group's concern is earthquakes and seismic activity. The applicant, Vistra, stated no earthquakes have been felt at the site since the beginning of site selection activities in the Sixties.
That does not mean earthquakes that have occurred during this plant's operation have not contributed to its aging.
We had a senior oil and gas geologist map at least a dozen earthquakes within 30 miles of the plant that happened within three years, in close proximity, in close succession, and no doubt due to deep injection.
The applicant has noted 18 earthquakes
76 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com within a 50-mile radius of the plant; yet, we discovered these earthquakes in a three-year period.
Those quakes, indeed, were minor, 2 to 3.3 magnitude.
This type of frequency is concerning. Additionally, these low magnitude earthquakes are within or proximal to a karst adjacent to Comanche Peak. And I am giving where the karst is and where these earthquakes are to the NRC this evening.
Livable Arlington was able to map 1400 active or permitted wells within a 20-mile radius of the plant, and more than 5,000 wells within a 50-mile radius. With more injection or more -- with more fracking, you have more injection. With more injection, you have more potential for earthquakes. I live in Farmers Branch, Texas, where the deep injection in Irving shook our house. I did experience it.
The NRC would do well to examine the relationship of fracking, wastewater injection, and the risk of seismic activity in relation to the structural integrity of the plant.
I'm also going to give the NRC another document tonight, a 37-page memo from Luminant to the NRC after the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan had its disaster. Go -- Luminant says there's no evidence of
77 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com historical or modern earthquake causing earthquake-induced geological failure within this type region. "Failure" is the operative word. Though no failure has yet occurred, that doesn't mean that earthquakes and the increase of those earthquakes, the increased fracking in the Barnett, won't affect this plant.
On page 4 of this memo at the top of the page, the applicant, Vistra, determined that the maximum potential earthquake would be an intensity of 7 on the Mercalli scale. This level of magnitude can cause significant damage to this aging plant. The level of the earthquake in Syria and Turkey was 7.8.
As oil and gas operations ramp up, there is no guarantee that its extraction or deep injection won't affect this plant. What was not known in the Eighties and Nineties about deep injection is known now.
And that also relates to the security of Squaw Creek Reservoir. The NRC should closely examine the possible consequences of earthquakes on this plant's structural integrity. As I said, with more injection and more fracking, so does the frequency and magnitude of seismic activity.
Thank you.
78 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com (Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Right now we have five speakers left, so it's -- even if we hold to that four minutes, we're going to go over. I'd like your indulgence, just a little time to go over, make sure everybody that wanted to speak gets an opportunity to do so. Okay. So, you're here by your own free will, so if you don't want to stay past 9, it's up to you, but we're going to keep going just for those that are like, "I haven't got a chance to speak yet," we're going to go over the time limit.
So without any further delay with me talking, we're going to go next to Mavis, and then Miss Charlotte, and then to Linda, Linda Hanratty.
So, Mavis. Mavis, do you want me to --
Here, I can come to you.
MS. MAVIS BELISLE: Now, see if I can handle the microphone, my notes, and my glasses at the same time.
My name is Mavis Belisle. I live in southwest Dallas County, in the city of Dallas, about 60 miles -- 65 miles from Comanche Peak. I found out about Comanche Peak in 1976. It was under
79 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com construction in the site on what was called the bicentennial walk. Most of the places on the bicentennial walk were nuclear reactors -- not nuclear reactors, I'm sorry -- nuclear weapons facilities or large military bases that had nuclear weapons. I didn't understand why a power plant would be a part of that, so I began trying to understand nuclear power.
And I learned a lot more than I really wanted to know.
One thing I learned, among other things, other than some minds, most things don't improve with age. So specific things I'm asking for in this renewal consideration, I'm going to just call it that, one of the issues in the original licensing was what they call "bad pours" in the concrete. Bad pours meant that there were voids left within the concrete itself. And I would like to be sure that this includes an analysis of the effect of aging on those bad pours, those gaps in the concrete.
In the other intervention, I worked for a little -- briefly with an organization called CASE, Citizens Association for Safe Energy. And a part of the settlement of that case, which was more than a little controversial, the president of CASE, Juanita Ellis, was -- it was a financial settlement, but also Juanita was brought onto an association with Comanche
80 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Peak for a number of years, and I believe it was five, in which she would have access to the plant and more access than the general public would have.
Juanita is now dead, but I would like the questions that she raised in that five years to be made public and publicly available so we would know what concerns she had even in those early years of operation of Comanche Peak that we may need to also consider in terms of any solution.
Finally, Comanche Peak is not the only nuclear reactor in Texas. There are two. There is another reactor with another site with two reactors in South Texas. While the waste may be able to be stored here at Comanche Peak, South Texas, Matagorda Bay on the Gulf of Mexico, when the sea level rises, that may not be even above water, let alone a safe place to store those fuel rods. And one of the places logically that they might be stored could be Comanche Peak. And what would be the impact of that additional waste should those waste and fuel rods be moved to Comanche Peak?
Thank you. I hope you take these things into consideration here with the extension of this.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Thank you.
81 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Up next we have Charlotte. Oh.
MS. CHARLOTTE CONNELLY: Thank you. My name is Charlotte Connelly. I've been asked to mention that Vistra spent over a million dollars lobbying in 2022, and that begs the question of why they felt the need to spend over a million dollars on lobbying.
And I would just like to mention that it's possible that the NRC really has no choice in this matter because the federal government needs nuclear power in order to create nuclear bombs. So I'm not fond of either, but that's just me.
Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. All right. Thank you very much.
Next up we have Linda, and then John or --
John Dreyfuss, and then we will finish with Nannette Samuelson.
MS. LINDA HANRATTY: My name is Linda Hanratty, and I live approximately 40 miles from the plant, so that means I get no tax benefits, but, apparently, I get risks. And I think the other speakers have said all kinds of things. I had notes, but all my notes have been covered.
82 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com But I think the most important thing that on this and also on the waste is that you want us to comment on things before we get any knowledge, before you survey the plant to know what's wrong with it, that you figured out that the dam is okay, and that --
and the cost associated with.
And so I just -- I think this process is crazy. And it's also crazy that you have one hearing
-- one public meeting, and no hearings unless we ask for them, and I'm asking for it now, and nothing in Tarrant County where most of the population would be affected. And there's over -- probably over 500,000 people in Tarrant County alone within the 50-mile radius. And then you've got the other counties, surrounding counties, and they've grown so much since this plant was started. I think those people need to be considered.
Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. JOHN DREYFUSS: Good evening. I know we're getting late here. I don't have any formal remarks to put out. I did just want to let you know I am John Dreyfuss. I do work at the plant, Senior Director of Organizational Effectiveness. I have been through this license renewal process before, and I
83 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com will tell you, I was going to talk about the people process oversight. I'm not going to go into a lot of that, other than from an oversight standpoint, I will tell you that this is not a game. The NRC puts us through a very grueling review, and there are a number of people dotted in the room here that have been working on this for years now. And I'm very proud of the work that they've done. And I think that it will pay dividends and, you know, we hope that it will come to a positive resolution for licensure renewal, but we have to go through this process.
The other thing I really did want to talk about was people. First of all, community. I can't tell you how much I appreciate having officials here speak on behalf of the plant. Having -- we had, what, half a dozen or more employees talk. We could have had 300 people here. We just wanted to make sure there was some representative, community, you know, people that volunteer and work here, live here. And I'm really proud of that, too.
And, again, the partnership that we have with the local officials, with the County, both Somervell and Hood
- County, that's incredibly invaluable to us. It's not about the taxes we pay and it's not about this and that. It's about having that
84 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com relationship, having that friendship. If we need something, we can reach out and we can ask for some help, and they can reach out and reciprocate and we will help, we will help them, too. So it really is about the relationships that we have.
And the final thing is on safety. You've heard about it a little bit. I can't impress enough upon you folks how deeply people care about their community, about the safety of their community. You know, 2300 plus megawatts, 2 million homes are powered. That's all great. It's really about that contract that we have with our community to keep it safe. And that's what we do. And I can't tell you how well and how deeply people, you know, have that engrained. It is the way that we operate. It's the way we think about it, and it's the way that we live.
So I appreciate the time. I'll yield my time back to others that want to speak.
Thank you.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
So our last speaker will be Hood County Commissioner Samuelson.
COMMISSIONER NANNETTE SAMUELSON: Hello.
I'm Nannette Samuelson, Commissioner 4, Precinct 2, in
85 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com Hood County. I wasn't planning to speak tonight. I'm just here to learn and listening to what's going on.
One of the things that I wanted to say was there was a -- Actually, someone said something that was incorrect, so I wanted to correct that. And someone said that Hood County was 15 miles away.
Actually, Hood County borders Somervell County, and my precinct is right at the border of Somervell County, and actually part of the Comanche Peak Reservoir is in Hood County. So it's -- I think that whoever was doing that map was mapping it to the courthouse, which is quite a ways away, but my precinct is right here.
And I want to say that I took office in January, but even before January, knowing that I was going to take office, I came down and spoke with some of the folks here at Comanche Peak. They walked me through a little bit of the plant and told me all the history. And, actually, my father, back in the Eighties, worked for Brown & Root, so he was out here as a quality control engineer.
I'm, as I said, I'm just here to listen.
And, actually, the reason that that posting was in the Hood County News is because I asked for it to be. One of my big things in taking office was communicate, communicate, communicate, and I wanted to be sure
86 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com people knew about it. And, actually, John Dreyfuss was a speaker at Commissioners Court on February 14th and went through this. It's livestreamed. It's also on YouTube. I communicate that through Nextdoor and Facebook so that everyone in Hood County that follows those things knew about this meeting tonight.
So I just wanted to kind of clear up a couple of things of how close Hood County is, and, you know, we -- One of the things that has kind of come down through the, I guess, communication of what happened in the past is that we've all been good neighbors with -- Comanche Peak has been a great neighbor for Hood County. And I'm here to learn and make sure that everyone in Hood County knows what's going on, so thanks.
(Audience clapping.)
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
So I thank you for your patience, everyone. As far as I'm aware, that exhausted our list of registered speakers.
Just two quick things: A couple of you mentioned requesting a hearing. I would ask, there is a section on the NRC website, public website. It's called Adjudicatory Hearings. I ask you to review that section. That gives you kind of a user's guide,
87 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com if you will, to how hearings work at the NRC. Okay.
So I would ask you to look at that page on the NRC's website. Okay.
Second of all, a lot of you brought up frustrations with this meeting and prior meetings.
Send in those comments using the Public Meeting Feedback Form or, you know, send them to the address box that were put up on the slides. "You want this to be livestreamed. You want this to be YouTubed." I'm not trying to put ideas in your heads, but I'm just saying if you have these ideas or a suggestion how you'd like these meetings to go, let the commission know, okay, because that's how -- this is one of the reasons we put this up is because we want your feedback.
So thank you all very much for coming out this evening and for speaking.
With no further ado, I'll turn it over to John Moses for closing comments.
MR. MOSES: First, I want to -- First, I'd like to thank the staff, and also I'd like to thank everyone here and those of you who came in early and had to leave before the end of the meeting. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for sharing your input, your comments, your
88 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com feedback for us so we can make this a more effective, engaging and participatory process. We sincerely do appreciate your comments and feedback and suggestions.
As we've talked about a couple times, we're in the midst of the scoping process for the environmental impacts as part of the license renewal.
And we have until March 13th, you can submit comments.
If you didn't come tonight, you can submit those in writing by email or in writing on regulations.gov.
We'll take those comments. And, of course, you can always mail them in by post mail if you'd prefer that.
Our team will go through those comments that we heard today as well as the ones we've already heard and the ones that we may hear between now and March 13th.
If you do go to regulations.gov, I'd point out if you haven't picked up one of the little handy cards, feel free to do it. It's Docket No.
NRC-2022-0183, and we will compile the comments that we receive. The team is going to evaluate those comments and consider how to incorporate those, that feedback, those comments, those questions, into the draft of our Environmental Impact Statement.
As we discussed earlier, we anticipate issuing that draft Environmental Impact Statement in
89 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com the fall, about September or so. And once that's made, once that's completed, we'll have another comment period for you to take a look at, give feedback on the draft Environmental Impact Statement.
And so that's another round for you to share your feedback, your comments, your concerns on the environmental aspect.
Likewise, you can share any comments you have or might have on safety. We'll take those back as well.
So we appreciate today's questions. We've heard a lot of different perspectives, and that's actually what we hoped we would hear, is the different perspectives so we can take those back and look at those. That's the point of the process for us why we do license renewal; are there any issues that we had to consider, or, are there issues that we're considering that we need to look at in a different way. That's really the kind of core of what we're talking about for the Environmental Impact Statement.
Even though this is the scoping meeting, like I said earlier, we do have our safety team representative, and we will consider any safety comments that you have made, and they'll take -- his team will take it back and consider those as part of
90 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com their safety assessment of the application.
So that's kind of all I have here for tonight. And we really appreciate your time, your participation, and your attention. And I hope you have a wonderful evening and safe trip home.
Thank you.
MR. KLUKAN: Thank you, everyone. Have a good evening. Thank you for coming out.
And we can end the transcript. Thank you.
(Meeting concluded at 9:10 pm.)
91 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1716 14th STREET, N.W., SUITE 200 (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20009-4309 www.nealrgross.com