[NukeNet] 150+ Organizations Slam NRC Over Security at Diablo Canyon Waste Casks

[Michael Mariotte]

NEWS FROM NIRS


Nuclear Information and Resource Service, 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite
340, Takoma Park, MD 20912

301-270-6477; nirsnet at nirs.org; www.nirs.org <http://www.nirs.org/> 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                    

July 5, 2007

Contact: Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS),
(301) 270-6477 ext. 14

 

 

150 ORGANIZATIONS SLAM NRC FINDING THAT NO TERRORIST THREAT EXISTS

AT DIABLO CANYON NUCLEAR SITE

 

Washington, D.C.--Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), in
coalition with the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility, has gathered
support from over 150 statewide and nationwide organizations for its
comments criticizing the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC)
"Finding of No Significant Impact" regarding the construction and
operation of a high-level radioactive waste outdoor storage site at
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, California. The
comments strongly challenged NRC's Environmental Assessment as woefully
inadequate in a post-9/11 world. 

 

In June, 2006 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ordered
NRC to revise its environmental assessment for the project to include
consideration of the risks of terrorist attacks against the facility.
San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace were the lead plaintiffs against NRC,
demanding protection against terrorist attacks on the proposed facility.

 

Other entities also filed separate comments critical of NRC's finding of
no terrorist risk at Diablo Canyon, including the State of Nevada,
Public Citizen, Beyond Nuclear and Riverkeeper.  

 

The coalition concluded that "NRC's Environmental Assessment for the
Diablo Canyon irradiated nuclear fuel storage facility completely fails
to demonstrate that the NRC made a 'fully informed and well-considered'
determination of no significant impacts...the National Environmental
Policy Act requires the NRC to go back to the drawing board and provide
an analysis that is understandable and scientifically supported."  

 

NIRS rebutted the testimony of the NRC, U.S. Department of Energy, the
industry's lobby firm Nuclear Energy Institute, and others who advocate
unsafe and insecure dry cask storage for high-level radioactive waste in
the absence of a long-term waste management plan.  

 

"A terrorist attack on high-level radioactive waste storage containers
at the Diablo Canyon atomic reactors could unleash catastrophic amounts
of deadly radioactivity downwind and downstream for long distances,"
said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist at NIRS. "These storage
containers must be fortified against terrorist attacks, but NRC is
derelict in its duty to protect public health and safety and the
environment." 

 

"The only real solution to the radioactive waste problem is to not make
it in the first place," said Kamps. "We need to shut down the Diablo
Canyon atomic reactors, for the sake of safety, security, and protection
of the environment and public health against the hazards of
radioactivity."

 

"For those wastes that already exist at Diablo Canyon, they need to be
fortified against attack and safeguarded against accident on-site, given
the nuclear establishment's utter lack of any safe, sound long-term
management plan," said Kamps.

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