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"No New Nukes for Illinois," Activists Demand

Activists from all over Illinois converge on a public meeting about a proposed new Exelon nuclear reactor plan
Illinois Activists Tell NRC: Pull Plug Early on Exelon’s New Nuke Plans

CLINTON—Safe-energy activists from across Illinois will converge on a public hearing today to give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) a very pointed message: “no new Exelon nukes” at Clinton, IL -- or elsewhere.
“Another Clinton reactor must NOT be built!” maintains Carolyn Treadway, member of the central Illinois organization, No New Nukes, which for the past three years has opposed Exelon plans to construct a new reactor next to the Clinton-1 reactor downstate. “No more reactors should be approved or created until [nuclear] waste and security issues are completely resolved and a wide range of safe energy sources are fully developed,” Treadway continued.
The NRC is holding a public meeting tonight on the topic of whether Exelon should be granted an “early site permit” (ESP) for a potential new reactor at the Clinton reactor site sometime in the future.
“Neither Exelon nor the NRC staff has made a rational, unbiased or compelling case arguing in favor of this reactor at this time,” states David Kraft, Director of the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, an Illinois nuclear power watchdog organization. “It’s been nothing but a perfunctory dog-and-pony show up to this point, with the nation’s nuclear power watchdog morphing into an Exelon lapdog on the issue,” Kraft asserts.
Criticism of the NRC’s failure to regulate comes from other unexpected quarters as well. Oscar Shirani, an award winning professional engineer and former Exelon employee has been critical of Exelon’s lack of quality assurance programs, and of what he sees as NRC’s deliberate cover up of this deficiency. “NRC is blessing the Exelon’s willful violation of the code of federal regulation by its new procedures,” at its Dresden and Quad Cities reactors, Shirani maintains. “How does NRC allow nuclear Mafias like Exelon/ComEd to continue running these plants now for another 20 years, and to allow the same company to build other reactors [at Clinton]? Shame on NRC that did not learn anything from nuclear disasters like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Davis Besse, Nuclear Power Plant in Ohio,” Shirani criticized.
The voluminous Environmental Impact Statement for the ESP took criticism from other quarters as well. A former demographer at Illinois State University, Roy Treadway maintains that, “the quality of the [demographic] data in the [EIS-ESP] report may be of questionable accuracy….While a demographer at Illinois State University I directed the development of these projections [of population around the Clinton reactor] from 1990 population data, which Exelon used in this ESP report. I also know they are terribly out of date and no longer accurate,” Treadway testifies. “One wonders if the accuracy of the data in the rest of the report were gathered in as sloppy a manner.”
Numerous other criticisms of both Exelon’s proposed plan and NRC’s biased evaluation of it include:
• Inadequate and inaccurate projections of both energy efficiency and conservation, and renewable energy resources as alternate means to meet energy needs, instead of building a risky, expensive and hazardous nuclear reactor
• NRC’s refusal to consider any mention, discussion or analysis of the risk coming from terrorist threats, even though the Clinton site is both only 27 minutes flight time from the world’s busiest airport at O’Hare Field, and has a very vulnerable earthen dam holding the essential cooling water for the reactor at Clinton Lake
• Totally inadequate analysis of the long-term impacts of high-level radioactive waste storage onsite, pending the opening of the long-awaited federal repository for permanent geological disposal of the wastes
• NRC’s ignoring of a recently completed study showing high correlational links between the operation of the Clinton-1 reactor, and infant mortality figures
• The current and projected glut of electric power in the Region, and the highly negative effects opening a new 1,000 MW reactor would have on expanding the more environmentally and health friendly renewable energy options in the region
• Exelon’s historic and present-day incompetence at reactor operation, and its demonstrated willingness to deny unfavorable information about things like tritium leaks to neighboring communities (like at Braidwood) unless either forced to do so, or caught hiding the information

“Taken as a whole this record argues strongly against a new Exelon reactor anytime soon in Illinois,” maintains NEIS’ Kraft. “The energy need is not pressing; and Exelon has shown itself to be a ‘bad neighbor’ on the health and safety matters that count for local communities. For these reasons, we strongly urge NRC to save both Exelon and Illinois lots of money and time by short-circuiting this ill-conceived process now, early on, before more resources are squandered on another loser reactor,” Kraft urged.
The NRC public comment meeting is scheduled for:
Wednesday, November 8, 2006
6-10 P.M.
Clinton Junior High School
701 Illini Drive, Clinton, Illinois

The Federal Register notice for this event can be read at the following url:

a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20061800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2006/pdf/E6-16555.pdf

Contacts: David A. Kraft, Nuclear Energy Information Service, (773)342-7650; neis (at) neis.org
Carolyn Treadway, No New Nukes, (301)451-4503 carolyn (at) gracefulllife.com

Nuclear Energy Information Service
“Illinois’ Nuclear Power Watchdog for 25 years”
Office and Mail: 3411 W. Diversey Avenue, #16, Chicago, IL 60647-1245
(773)342-7650; -7655 fax www.neis.org neis (at) neis.org

NEIS was founded in 1981 to provide the public with credible information on nuclear power hazards; and with information about viable alternatives to nuclear power
 
 

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