ML111390461

Licensing Board Disclosure That the Board Received Attached Letter and E-mails within the Past Week in the Matter of Pilgrim License Renewal

ML111390461
Person / Time
Site:	Pilgrim
Issue date:	05/19/2011
From:	Young A M Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel
To:
SECY RAS
References
50-293-LR, ASLBP 06-848-02-LR, RAS 20338
Download: ML111390461 (8)

Text

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD Before Administrative Judges:

Ann Marshall Young, Chair Dr. Paul B. Abramson Dr. Richard F. Cole In the Matter of:

ENTERGY NUCLEAR GENERATION COMPANY AND ENTERGY NUCLEAR OPERATIONS, INC. (Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station)

Docket No. 50-293-LR

ASLBP No. 06-848-02-LR

May 19, 2011

Disclosure

This is to notify the parties, pursuant to 10 C.F.R. § 2.347(c), that the Licensing Board received the attached letter and e-mails within the past week.

FOR THE ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD

________________________________ Ann Marshall Young ADMINISTRATIVE JUDGE Rockville, Maryland May 19, 2011 1

1 Copies of this Disclosure were filed with the agency's EIE system for service to the parties on this date.

Administrative Judge Ann Marshall Young Atomic Safety Licensing Board US NRC Mail Stop T 3723 Washington, DC 20555-0001 725 Long Pond Road Plymouth, MA 02360 May 6, 2011 Re: Letter to the Editor appearing in the May 4, 2011 edition of the Old Colony Memorial newspaper and its on-line web site Wicked Local in Plymouth, MA It is finally becoming clear and well understood by Plymouth residents that we are host to a permanent waste disposal site. This letter was written in an unusual way to convey that truth.

-

K A LOOK AHEAD Sometimes it's important to look at the future. The scene; thousands of years from now in the coastal community of Plymouth Massachusetts.

As they have for eons, people visit Plymouth to enjoy the ocean vistas. At one location, passersby look beyond a tall fence to the ocean's edge where thousands of greying concrete casks line up row after long row like so many headstones in a cemetery.

This place and its history have long been forgotten except in cautionary fables told to children and by the special priesthood of humans and robotic sentinels that patrol and will continue to patrol this forbidden place until the end of time. Thousands of years ago, in the 21st century, residents obtained energy from an ancient type of nuclear power before they moved to renewable sources. It was here at the ocean's edge that one of those plants stood. It only operated for one generation and its history is now shrouded in the mists of time but its legacy is still warm and alive in those thousands of containers of radioactive rods. Few are aware of the devil's bargain made so long ago to power the lives of residents for a short time and there is little awareness of the fact that it was their own government who promised Plymouth residents that they would take this dangerous legacy away and give it to someone else. Of course, no one else then, nor thereafter, wanted it and so it remains at great cost, slowly cooling, where it was born, at the ocean's edge, watched eternally by the special nuclear priesthood and its sentinel companions.

Sincerely, Tucker, Katie To:

Subject:

Abramson, Paul RE: apologies From: Mary Lampert [1]

Sent: Friday, May 13, 2011 4:31 PM To: Abramson, Paul

Subject:

apologies

Dear Judge Abramson:

It happened.

I inadvertently sent you an email a minute or so ago. Your address is directly above another "Paul" that I intended to send the email to instead of you. Unfortunately, I could not fly through the air and intercept it. I do not know how to handle this mistake. Apologies and hope your back is better.

Mary Lampert 1 Tucker, Katie To: Abramson, Paul

Subject:

RE: Markey asks NRC for answers on Pilgrim, and NEPA/Safety Analysis From: Mary Lampert [mailto:mary.lampert@comcast.netl Sent: Friday, May 13, 2011 4:26 PM To: Ray Shadis Cc: Kevin Kamps; Abramson, Paul

Subject:

FW: Markey asks NRC for answers on Pilgrim, and NEPA/Safety Analysis Add to Seabrook & Davis Also as an aside 5 operators canned at Pilgrim cause of scam mess From: Freedhoff, Michal [2]

Sent: Friday, May 13, 2011 3:10 PM FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Giselle Barry, Rep. Ed Markey, 202-225-2836 Eben Burnham-Snyder, Rep. Ed Markey, 202-225-6065 Markey Asks NRC for Answers on Pilgrim Nuclear Event Tuesday Incident Raises Further Questions on Environmental and Safety Analysis of us. Nuclear Plants, Markey Writes NRC WASHINGTON (May 13,2011) -On Tuesday this week, the Pilgrim nuclear power plant located 38 miles from Boston, Mass. experienced an apparent accidental incident while trying to restart the nuclear reactor core. A team of investigators will be sent to the plant to review the event on May 16. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.)

today asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for answers on this incident, and on whether the full suite of safety and environmental analysis following the Fukushima disaster is being applied to new nuclear power plant licenses or licenses to extend existing plants. In a process known as "scramming," the Pilgrim power plant went into emergency shutdown mode after the chain reaction in the nuclear core registered higher than expected power and neutron activity levels indicating that the nuclear chain reaction had started to spin out of control. 1 "Thankfully, the Pilgrim plant incident was immediately and successfully addressed, but it is yet another reminder that the price of safety is eternal vigilance," said Rep. Markey. "I am concerned that our nuclear regulators are not taking into account all of the new knowledge gained following the Fukushima meltdown to analyze licenses to build or extend the life of nuclear power plants." Rep. Markey asks NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko to explain whether his agency is considering "new and significant" information about the potential hazards and safety of nuclear power plants following the Japanese meltdown, as the law requires when analyzing the potential environmental impacts of a catastrophic accident at or terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant. The NRC has approved four licenses to extend the life of nuclear power plants since the meltdown in Fukushima, and is currently reviewing an extension for the Pilgrim plant, but has yet to require any new environmental analysis to be performed that takes into account the circumstances, nature and duration of the radiation that has been released in Japan. As Rep. Markey notes in his letter, the NRC has not fully subsumed or analyzed lessons from the ongoing incident at Fukushima before granting the license extensions.

It additionally has relied upon software that assumes that the plume of radiation released from a nuclear power plant accident or attack would only last 1-4 days, a scenario that "borders on the absurd in light of the duration of ongoing releases from the Fukushima Daiichi reactors and spent fuel pools," writes Rep. Markey to the NRC. Rep. Markey therefore asks the NRC to "immediately suspend action on all pending licensing decisions until the full range of safety lessons and environmental consequences associated with the Fukushima meltdown are fully understood and properly applied to U.S. nuclear power plants, and that [the law's] requirements for the inclusion of any new and significant information are fully complied with." The full letter from Rep. Markey to the NRC is available HERE. Rep. Markey also released a report yesterday detailing several concerns about NRC safety regulations following the Fukushima event. That report is available HERE. 2 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION In the Matter of )

)

ENTERGY NUCLEAR GENERATION CO. )

AND )

ENTERGY NUCLEAR OPERATIONS, INC. ) Docket No. 50-293-LR ) (Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station) )

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE I hereby certify that copies of the foregoing Licensing Board DISCLOSURE in the above captioned proceeding have been served upon the following persons by electronic mail this date, followed by deposit of paper copies in the U.S. mail, first class, and NRC internal mail.

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel

Mail Stop - T-3 F23 Washington, DC 20555-0001

Administrative Judge Ann Marshall Young, Chair E-mail: Ann.Young@nrc.gov

Administrative Judge Richard F. Cole E-mail: Richard.Cole@nrc.gov

Administrative Judge

Paul B. Abramson

E-mail: Paul.Abramson@nrc.gov Katherine Tucker, Law Clerk katie.tucker@nrc.gov

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of the General Counsel Mail Stop: O-15 D21 Washington, DC 20555-0001

Susan L. Uttal, Esq.

E-mail: Susan.Uttall@nrc.gov Andrea Z. Jones, Esq.

E-mail: axj4@nrc.gov

Beth N. Mizuno, Esq.

E-mail: beth.mizuno@nrc.gov

Brian G. Harris, Esq.

brian.harris@nrc.gov Brian Newell, Paralegal

E-mail: Brian.Newell@nrc.gov

E-mail: OGCMailCenter.Resource@nrc.gov U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of Commission Appellate Adjudication Mail Stop: O-16C1 Washington, DC 20555-0001

E-mail: OCAAMail.Resource@nrc.gov U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Office of Secretary of the Commission Mail Stop: O-16C1 Washington, DC 20555-0001

E-mail: hearingdocket@nrc.gov

Docket No. 50-293-LR Licensing Board DISCLOSURE 2 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation Mail Stop: O11-F1 Washington, DC 20555-0001

Lisa Regner Senior Project Manager Division of License Renewal

E-mail: Lisa.Regner@nrc.gov Pillsbury, Winthrop, Shaw, Pittman, LLP

2300 N. Street, N.W.

Washington, DC 20037-1128

David R. Lewis, Esq.

E-mail: david.lewis@pillsburylaw.com Paul A. Gaukler, Esq.

E-mail: paul.gaukler@pillsburylaw.com Jason B. Parker, Esq.

E-mail: jason.parker@pillsburylaw.com Entergy Nuclear 1340 Echelon Parkway Mail Stop M-ECH-62 Jackson, MS 39213

Terence A. Burke, Esq.

E-mail: tburke@entergy.com Office of the Attorney General Environmental Protection Division One Ashburton Place, 18 th Floor Boston, MA 02108

Matthew Brock, Assistant Attorney General E-mail: matthew.brock@ago.state.ma.us Jennifer Venezia, Paralegal

E-mail: jennifer.venezia@state.ma.us

Duxbury Emergency Management Agency 668 Tremont Street Duxbury, MA 02332

Kevin M. Nord, Fire Chief & Director

E-mail: nord@town.duxbury.ma.us Town of Plymouth MA Town Manager's Office 11 Lincoln Street Plymouth, MA 02360

Melissa Arrighi, ActingTown Manager

E-mail: marrighi@townhall.plymouth.ma.us Pilgrim Watch 148 Washington Street

Duxbury, MA 02332

Mary E. Lampert, Director E-mail: mary.lampert@comcast.net Duane Morris, LLP Town of Plymouth MA 505 9 th Street, NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20004-2166

Sheila Slocum Hollis, Esq.

E-mail: sshollis@duanemorris.com

Docket No. 50-293-LR Licensing Board DISCLOSURE 3 3 Town of Duxbury Nuclear Advisory Committee

31 Deerpath Trl.

North Duxbury, MA 02332

Rebecca Chin, Vice Chair E-mail: rebeccajchin@hotmail.com

[Original signed by Nancy Greathead]

_________________________________

Office of the Secretary of the Commission Dated at Rockville, Maryland

this 19 th day of May 2011