ML20215K531

Informs That Because Plants Adjudicatory Hearings Currently Before Nrc,Comments on Merits of Plant Issues Would Be Inappropriate,Per Encl Recipient .Served on 870506

ML20215K531
Person / Time
Site:	Seabrook, 05000000, Shoreham
Issue date:	05/05/1987
From:	Carr K NRC COMMISSION (OCM)
To:	Gondek J AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED
References
CON-#287-3377 OL, NUDOCS 8706250356
Download: ML20215K531 (1)

Text

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, [a na,,,#'o, UfelTED STATES 9 , 3 y g _g. 3 l t yT ,,-

e i NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION i

!c h W A$HINGTON. O C 20555 CC(X[ T( ~

., May 5, 1987 OFFICE OF THE COMMISSION E R l

OFFL. . .

00ChElihi . wi' BR:.NCa l Mr. John Gondek  !

Box 443 SERVED MAY -61987 Belchertown, Massachusetts 01007 1

Dear Mr. Gondek:

l i

Thank you for your recent letter concerning issues related to the Seabrook and Shoreham plants. Because those plants are currently the subject of ,

adjudicatory hearings before this agency, it would be inappropriate for me i to coment on the merits of the issues related to those plants. I can assure you, however, that public health and safety is the paramount consideration in my decisions on the licensing of new plants and the  ;

continued operation of existing plants.

I appreciate your views on the Cormiission's responsibilities.

Sincerely, t

g JJ AW Kenneth M. Carr Commissioner cc: Seabrook Service list Shoreham Service list 8706250356 870505 .

DR ADOCK 050 2 .-

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t April 22, 1987 Commissioner Kenneth Carr Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D. C. 20555 '

Dear Commissioner Carr.

I don' t write many letters, but I feel compelled to do so now because you folks down there at the NRC seem to be on the~ verge of i making a serious mistake by allowing the Seabrook nuclear power plant to open.

How can you possibly choose to expose millions of people to nuclear disaster while contaminating another part of the earth with radioactive poisons that will endure for hundreds of centuries? No thinking, moral human being who looks at all the facts concerning nuclear power would ,

ever want a nuclear plant situated anywhere, let alone at a major human population area. And it's total lunacy to consider opening one on a popular seacoast, crowded with human beings, and next to the only interstate highway that reaches into Maine, where countless millions drive by each year.

Can you not see that horrible accidents are inevitable with nuclear power, that such a complicated technology is easily defeated by-mechanical and electrical failure as well as human error? Were your eyes not open when the Three' Mile Island accident occurred in 1979, or ,

the Chernobyl disaster last year? Must the ultimate accident occur  !

before you admit that nuclear power was a mistake'from the beginning? Ei Do you not understand that the use of nuclear power must come to an  ;

end, that your primary responsibility is to. protect the people of this country, and not the investments of those who chose to ignore all the warning signs over the yeapt?

Why do you persiot in pushing such a deadly system on us, especially when you, as experts who.have studied the facts, should realize the great dangirs involved? How shall you explain-to the crippled survivors, anc' the relatives of the dead, that you saw no harm in what you were permitting? How do you know that you will not be treated as nuclear criminals, no different than the war criminals who have been hunted down and prosecuted for their great crimes against humanity?

FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, PLEASE OPEN YOUR EYES! SEE THE TRUTH! '

STOP THESE PLANTS! DON'T WAIT UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE!

You must understand the magnitude of what you are doing. The lives and well-being of aillions of people are far more important than any l

-amount of money poured.into these ill-conceived projects.- Those  ;

utilities who stand to loue financially from backing nuclear power should be thankful that their losses can.only be measured in dollars, and not in terms of human. suffering.and death. Just because they have spent billions,'they.think that gives them a right to open. Well, this i is America! You invest your. money in the hopes of a big return and sometimes you lose - your shir t!

f Congress can easily lift the' liability limits from a nuclear power accident, and there probably isn't a plant out there that would.be able to buy all the insurance they would need. This industry can't even j stand or. Its own feet economically, so why should tae mis guided souls who invested in it be supported by the taxpayers? Even the electric 1 utilities themselves recognize that nuclear power is a very bad choice; it's no coincidence that dozens of. nuclear plants have been cancelled and no new ones started in nearly a decade.

1 Nuclear energy has never lived up to any of its promises.

Too cheap to meter, they said in promoting it. Safe and reliable was the cry in succeeding years. We can't live without it, they now say.

All wrong, every last bit of it.

For you people at the NRC to favor the opening of these plants, you  !

are creating the appearence that you have been bought off--a charge you l will have to defend yourselves against when the day of recriminations is  !

at hand. How can you bet your, futures on more than 100 aging nuclear reactors--time-bombs, every one of them? Surely one of them is going to go off sooner or later, especially the way you've allowed them to keep running despite all their problems.

What possibly can you be thinking of that can outweigh the enormous

-inherent dangers in this technology? Why count yourselves among the last foolhardy supporters of a bankrupt system whose horrible legacy is only beginning to unfold? .

Real human lives are at. stake here, lives just as your own. Never has the evidence been so clear. No man of any conscience can ignore it, and those of you with important decisions to'make shall be held fully.

responsible. If you cannot face up to the nuclear industry now, then how will you be able to face yourselves in the mirror in the years to come? -

Let's stop playing games with the rules. . Whc6 state and local governments say there's no way to evacuate the people in the event of an ,

accident, believe them--they know what they're talking about. To concoct regulation changes to exclude their approval of evacuation. plans i is pure stupidity. To suggest that the evacuation zones can be shrunk to one mile, when all the evidence from Chernobyl dictates that they  ;

should be expanded to hundreds, is criminal.

Did just 31 people die in the Soviet Union as its government says, or was it more than 15,000 as claimed by Soviet physicist'Igor Gerashchenko in a recent hearing of the Helsinki Commission?- His figure was just for the two biggest hospitals in Kiev--what about all the other hospitals in the region? What about those who never made it to.any hospital? What-about all those who only recently have begun'to feel ill from the accumulated effects? And what'about all those.the  !

world over who will sicken and. die in the' years to come from the {

radiation released? The actual death toll 1from.Chernobyl OR ANY NUCLEAR  !

POWER PLANT could-easily.be'in;the hundreds of thousands with millions of other lives ruined by sickness and grief, a fact so horrifying in its f dimensions that no sane person could ever support opening.any new l

. plants. l

e k

Everything man has ever built breaks down. and the more powerful the forces we try to harness, the more likely things will go wrong in a big way. Witness the Challenger disaster as well as the catastrophe at )

Chernobyl. As someone who makes a'living from software design and l implementation, I know quite well that countless unforseeable ,

possibilities exist in any complex system. Have you forgotten the hydrogen bubble that threatened to blow open the Three Mile Island 3 reactor? We should siever have tried to use so complicated and dangerous a technology to do something as simple and safe as boiling water. l 1

You have it in your power to prevent Seabrook and other nuclear i boondoggles like Shoreham from ever opening. Do your job and turn back j these plants. Stand up at last for a sane nuclear policy.

In addition to preventing the opening of any more nuclear reactors, l you should immediately shut down all those with any questions whatsoever about their safety. If we can get these plants closed before the next big accident, then we can all breathe more easily. There is enough non-nuclear electrical generating capacity to meet all our national needs, particularly if conservation, including load leveling, is maximized.

The only short term problem is getting the electicity from those areas with an excess to those without enough through new transmission lines.

Somehow, as a society, we must come to grips with the deadly remains of all the nuclear power plants, and keep them insulated from the surrounding environment for the next 300 centuries. What a mark against us in this nuclear age that we should be leaving behind poisonous legacies many times worse than all the ages before.

Governments often fail in their actions like children, but historically, they have been gradually learn.ing the lessons of moral understanding. The nuclear lesson is surely one of the biggest and most costly, but the sooner it is learned, the better the world will be.

Please find the courage to do what's right.

Sincerely, vohn ondek

";x 3 f,s Belchertown, Massachuse 01007 Cootes of this letter are being sent to each member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the President, the Governors of Massachusetts, New York, and New Hampshire, members of Congress, and selected newspapers.

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