ML060540079

2006/02/05-Comment (47) of Rita Pickette Strongly Objecting to Entergy'S Push to Uprate Aging Vermont Yankee Facility for a 20% Increase in the Production of Electrical Power

ML060540079
Person / Time
Site:	Vermont Yankee File:NorthStar Vermont Yankee icon.png
Issue date:	02/05/2006
From:	Pickette R - No Known Affiliation
To:	NRC/ADM/DAS/RDB
References
%dam200606, 71FR1774 00047
Download: ML060540079 (1)

Text

February 5, 2006 TO: Chief, Rules and Directives Branch Division of Administrative Services Office of Admission U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, DC 20555-0001 0,// / -X /72 9 7)dF Cf ,__CD Cl)RE: Federal Register:

January 11, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 7) Pages 1774-1776 As a resident within a 50-mile radius of the 33-year-old Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, I object strongly to Entergy's push to uprate this aging facility for a 20%increase in the production of electrical power. An independent safety assessment is, at the very least, in order.In America in the past year, the neglect of aging infrastructures (levees and mines)has resulted in hardship and death. Vermont Yankee has already displayed many signs of aging: a cracked steam dryer, steam valves that no longer meet original leak-prevention criteria, an aging condenser, a fire that was the result of "inadequate preventative maintenance...

and failure to monitor age-related degradation" (from Vermont Yankee's own assessment of the event).I am concerned that the uprate will cause;An An An An increase increase increase increase in the likelihood of a nuclear accident in the amount of radioactivity released in such an event in radiation exposure for workers in the amount of nuclear waste that is produced While Entergy pursues short-term profits by squeezing the last possible dollar out of this aging plant, it is the people and the environment around this plant that will be left, at the end of the day, with spent radioactive contol rods. Will Entergy assume responsibility for the containment of this radioactive waste? Temporary dry-cask storage along the Connecticut River, a river that flows through Massachusetts and Connecticut to the Long Island Sound, is hardly adequate.If New Englanders were asked to reduce electrical consumption by 20% in order to avoid this uprate, I believe they could rise to this challenge.

Will we be offered this choice? ',I) *95/ rg/O Ad,-_ ~e,= tic x M-0/_3 p4,; /M C4A ?,4-fgX) '/Vr-,9- 1b-6 e S