ML20151B268

Comment Opposing Proposed Rule 10CFR50 Re Licensing of Nuclear Power Plants Where State &/Or Local Govts Decline to Cooperate in Offsite Emergency Planning

ML20151B268
Person / Time
Site:	Three Mile Island, Seabrook, 05000000, Shoreham
Issue date:	02/24/1987
From:	Babbitt B AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED
To:	Zech L NRC COMMISSION (OCM)
References
FRN-52FR6980, RULE-PR-50 52FR6980-00097, 52FR6980-97, NUDOCS 8807200307
Download: ML20151B268 (2)

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""'" February 24, 1987 Admiral Lando W. Zech, Jr.. Chairman Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D.C.

Dear Chairman Zech:

Re* Consideration of Amendments to 10 CFR Part 50, Changes of Emergency Planning Rules The primary responsibility of government is to protect the health and welfare of its citizens. The proposed action by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to permit the granting of a full-power license without adequate, legally certain and fully tested state and local emergency plans, undermines that responsibility and places in jeopardy the lives and property of the people living near nuclear power plants at Seabrook, New Hampshire and Shoreham, Long Island.

In 1979, as a member of the Commission to Investigate the Accident at Three Mile Island (Kemeny Commission). I argued that it is essential that state and local governments develop emergency response plans before nuclear power plants are permitted to operate. My argument prevailed within that Commission.

In its October 1979 report the Kemeny Commission found that "the response to the emergency (at Three Mile Island) was dominated by an atmosphere of almost total confusion."

Many key decisions were made by individuals in state and local governments "who were not in possession of accurate information." They had relied in good faith on the Nuclear "

Regulatory Commission and the plant owners.

The Kemeny Commission stated forcefully: "Before a utility is granted an operating license for a new nuclear power plant, the state within which that plant is to be sited must have an emergency response plan." Moreover -

because different kinds of accidents yield different 8807200307 070224 PDR PH PDR 50 52FR6980 , ,7 s cst d ' y

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I T Bruce Babbitt Letter to the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission page 2 radiological consequences. "all local communities should have funds and technical support adequate tor preparing the kinds of p"lans necessary to meet a broad range of possible accidents.

Every other report on the accident at Three Mile Island, including the Rogovin Report prepared for the NRC, reached the same conclusion. We learned something important from the accident at Three Mile Island and those lessons have been written into the laws of the United States and the regulations of the NRC.

But the accident at Three Mile Island does not stand alone. There is the disaster at Chernobyl. There is your own recent staff projection, made public earlier this month, that there is a twelve percent to forty-five percent likelihood of a core meltdown in the next twenty years.

When an accident occurs, and both science and history suggest it will, local policemen, sherriff's deputies, bus drivers, volunteer firemen and community leaders will direct the evacuation. In other words the community will lead itself, as it does in every other matter of life and death.

The only possibility of safely responding to a nuclear accident is for the local community to have planned and practiced how it will react to protect itself.

If a community and a state government decide not to prepare evacuation plans, that is their choice to make. It is their lives, their community, their responsibility. You can't evacuate a community from Washington.

At immediate risk are the people of New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Long Island. In the long run, we are all at risk; those who reside around the 100 nuclear power plants that exist in this nation and those others who want to believe that an agency of the United States can act rationally and with care for our citizens.

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Bruce Babbitt

, Letter to th,e Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

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,(The changes in emergency planning rules being considered are contrary to law and common sense. I cannot urgeiyou strongly enough to set aside this proposed rule and ,

provide the people of New Hampshire, New York and Massachusetts precisely what they have a right to expect:

that safety does not come second, but first.

Sincerel .

A,, N

.;' Bruce Babbitt t

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