Statement prepared for NRC Commissioners Stakeholder Meeting, 11/9/99
By Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist
I regret to inform you that concerned citizens, consumer and ratepayers advocates, and public interest and environmental organizations across the United States regard the NRC with growing distrust, skepticism, and outrage. This is based on the NRC’s poor performance in protecting public health and safety and the environment from the dire threats posed by the nuclear power industry, as well as the NRC’s purposeful evisceration of any meaningful public involvement in its decision-making.
From dry cask storage to decommissioning, from high level radioactive waste disposal to the proposed release of radioactively contaminated materials, NRC has created the illusion of public involvement, while locking the public out of any real role in decision-making.
Take the precedent-setting dry cask storage at Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan – a good example of the NRC serving as the lubricant for the nuclear power industry, at the expense of genuine public involvement. NRC’s first ever generic licensing of dry cask storage has made it impossible for the public to intervene to protect public health, public safety, and the environment. Adjudicatory public hearings are denied. Environmental Impact Statements are circumvented. Thus blocked by NRC, the public was forced to file for an injunction in federal court against the loading of the casks at Palisades in 1993. To avert the injunction, Consumers Power Company and NRC officials perjured themselves before the judge, promising that if problems developed, casks could and would be promptly and safely unloaded by simply reversing the loading procedure. The fourth cask loaded in the summer of 1994 proved defective. Forced to acknowledge serious technical obstacles that prevent safe unloading, Consumers Energy has still not unloaded that cask, more than 5 years later. The Court of Appeals decision instructed the concerned citizens to address their concerns to the NRC via the 2.206 petition process. But the NRC routinely rejects these petitions, and is not required to respond to them in a timely fashion. The NRC sat on the Palisades dry cask petition for 18 months before finally rejecting it. All the while, Consumers Power proceeded to load 9 more casks, despite the unresolved concerns. Once the petition was rejected, concerned citizens were left with no further recourse. The illusion of public involvement via this petition process has grown rather thin.
The NRC’s summer 1997 rubber stamping of the secretive, yet-to-be-demonstrated unloading procedure at Palisades, and NRC’s servile handling of the suspicious dry cask storage office fire following the hydrogen burns in June, 1999, has further driven home the lesson that the NRC and Consumers Energy are unaccountable to the public. The token public meetings conducted answered no questions, raised troubling new ones and served merely to intensify public concern and outrage about the suspicious and disconcerting goings-on at Palisades.
Similarly, NRC allows decommissioning to proceed under a plant’s general operating license, through a series of amendments rather than a regulatory process, as if dismantling and dumping highly contaminated materials is just another run of the mill maintenance activity. NRC’s thumbs up to industry’s fly-by-night decommissioning shams allows the nuclear utilities to save money by increasing harmful worker and public exposures to radioactivity, with untold health consequences in the future. Adding insult to injury, NRC agreed to concerned citizens’ request for a hearing on the decommissioning of the Fermi 1 nuclear plant in Monroe, Michigan – but not until the year 2025, long after the fact, with no meaningful way to effect the outcome. The NRC says it wants public involvement – but actions speak much louder than words.
In the early 1990’s, environmental groups, public interest organizations, and Native American tribes entered into a negotiated regulatory rule-making process with NRC on the flow of information to the public about disposing high level wastes at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Meetings were held every few months over a couple year period. The negotiated regulatory rule was published in the Federal Register. This rule was subsequently rejected by NRC, and replaced with a worse rule – from the public’s perspective – than had ever been brought to the table during the participatory process. Thus betrayed, these public groups refused to participate any longer, and the process fell apart. Not a good basis for public trust as NRC enters into the Yucca Mountain licensing process. Yet this pattern of public betrayal has continued up to today.
It’s interesting to note the connection between the enhanced participatory rule-making on residual radioactivity in 1993 which led to the NRC’s 1997 decommissioning rule, and the NRC’s present attempt at “consensus-building” on a radioactive release rule.
The NRC’s 1997 decommissioning rule – which gutted meaningful citizen advisory groups, allows for the same or higher exposures to radiation from a closed than from an operating nuclear power plant, and does not protect groundwater to EPA standards – was much worse in the eyes of concerned citizens, public interest groups and environmental organizations than anything the NRC brought to the table during the so-called participatory process. To put it simply, NRC betrayed the public’s trust.
Now, the NRC and the very same contractor involved in that previous betrayal are seeking to “build consensus” on a radioactive release rule. You must forgive us for being distrustful, but once bitten, twice shy. The public interest and environmental communities have made clear in many ways over many years their position that radioactive materials must be isolated, not released into the marketplace. Yet the sense of being ignored by NRC persists. The three supposed public participatory meetings held thus far have not appeared to present a meaningful option for preventing radioactive releases. The clear impression exists that many decisions have already been made. Why would our organizations take part in token exercises, chasing after the illusion of public participation, when NRC has already predetermined its decisions? If the NRC truly desires public input, we call for at least an 8 month extension of the public comment period. Rushing through the Scoping without real public knowledge and opportunity is unacceptable.
In conclusion, unless NRC opens up to genuine public involvement in decision-making, its image will worsen as an illegitimate, rogue agency doing the bidding of the nuclear industry at the expense of public health and safety, the environment, and democracy.