Vermont Yankee Fuel Pad Hearing

To move fuel from the fuel pool to dry casks, Entergy must build a concrete pad for the dry casks. To build this pad, they need a Certificate of Public Good from the Vermont Public Service Board.  The hearing is this week: Docket 8300.  Docket and all the prefiled testimony.  The hearings are Tuesday February 23 and Wednesday February 24.  They are listed on the Eventspage of the Public Service Board. 

While the hearings are public (people can attend), the public usually cannot speak.  To speak at a hearing, you have to have your testimony approved as "relevant" by the Public Service Board.  Many factors make up "relevance." For example, following the links within the docket above, you will see that the first "prefiled testimony" under each name is usually a description of the person's qualifications (resume).

SAFSTOR Matters Video

Martin Cohn of Entergy hosts a TV show on the decommissioning process.  Once a month, he interviews someone  about the SAFSTOR process, and "SAFSTOR Matters" appears on community TV.

In the most recent video, Cohn and Joe Lynch of Entergy discuss the status of the decommissioning, including the new fuel pad.  Worth watching, for some straightforward, low-key explanations.  You can see previous videos in the series at the SAFSTOR Matters page of Brattleboro Community TV.  (Energy Collective, 2/23/2015)

Connect:  

Authored by:

Meredith Angwin

Former project manager at Electric Power Research Institute. Chemist, writer, grandmother, and proponent of nuclear energy.

Save Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant

PRESIDENT'S CORNER

By Norris McDonald

Michael Shellenberger recently invited me to attend a 'Save Diablo Canyon' presentation to "get the facts about risk of premature closure." The presentation was in San Luis Obispo and I drove from Long Beach up the Pacific Coast Highway to get there.  The 4 1/2 drive was well worth it.

Not only did Michael put on a great presentation, approximately 200 people showed up to hear it.  Evidently PG&E has become less than enthusiastic about operating the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant.  Michael rallied the workers and unions at this meeting to press upper management to commit to supporting this invaluable facility.

For many years, I wanted to get engaged with the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant.  I have toured 12 plants all over the USA and the world.  But after the nuclear power plant renaissance fizzled, I significantly cut back my pro-nuclear work. Specifically, I wanted to get involved in the plant relicensing, as I did with other facilities, but the old mojo just was not there.  I moved to California a little over a year ago and Diablo just was not on my radar screen.  And then Shellenberger contacted me.

Michael's presentation was full of specifics about the facility and the energy situation in California. His due diligence is thorough and anyone attending the presentation, which included numerous slides and charts, would be completely up to date on the current status of the facility. The bottom line is that Michael was a catalyst for the plant workers and unions to organize more enthusiastic support for the plant.  Specific instructions on organizing, publicity generation, internal advocacy and more were provided by Michael.  There was strategizing over dinner and over beers.  It was an impressive afternoon, evening and morning.

Group Photo at Save Diablo Canyon Presentation

I had plenty of time to process all of the information on the drive back down Pacific Coast Highway. I expressed to Michael that I felt a bit ambivalent about a company that was not 100% behind the operation of its power plant.

I accepted Michael's invitation to join Friends of Diablo Canyon Governing Board.  I also accepted his offer to serve on the Advisory Board of his new group Environmental Progress.

Stay tuned.  We will see where this goes.

Save Diablo Canyon. org

California Natural Gas Leak Reportedly Plugged

Southern California Gas Company has announced that a blowout at a natural gas well that gushed uncontrollably for 16 weeks and drove thousands of residents from their Los Angeles homes has been plugged.

The well still needs to be permanently sealed with cement and inspected by state regulators.  This marks the first time the leak has been under control since it was reported Oct. 23.

The leak is expected to cost the company, a division of Sempra Energy, at least $250 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

That figure could climb much higher because it only accounts for costs of capping the well and relocating about 6,400 families. It does not include potential damages from more than two dozen lawsuits, penalties from government agencies and expenses to mitigate pollution.

The upscale Porter Ranch community in the San Fernando Valley could begin to return to normalcy after schools were closed and about 6,000 families were uprooted as they complained of headaches, nausea, nosebleeds and other symptoms as an intermittent stench wafted through the area.

While the gas was invisible, public health officials blamed their woes on an odorant added to gas so it can be detected and have said they don't expect long-term health impacts.

The leak at the largest underground gas storage reservoir in the West was declared an emergency by the governor. At its peak, the leak was estimated to contribute about a quarter of the state's climate-altering methane emissions, leading some to call it the worst environmental disaster since the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The blowout happened in a 60-year-old well that was built to pump oil from porous rock a mile-and-a-half below the Santa Susana Mountains. After the oil ran dry in the 1970s, the field of 115 wells was reused to store natural gas.

When demand and prices were low, gas was injected at high pressure in the ground. It was piped out during cold months or to fuel gas-run electricity plants during energy spikes.

SoCalGas has paid to relocate residents in hotels, apartments and houses.  Some folks have said they don't want to move back, and many are concerned about what the incident has done to the value of their homes. The company is facing more than two dozen lawsuits, some of which seek class-action status.  (AP, 1/11/2016)

Does the Clean Water Act Regulate Discharges of Pollutants to Hydrologically Connected Groundwater?

The Clean Water Act (“CWA”) prohibits the discharge of pollutants into “waters of the United States” without a valid National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (“NPDES”) permit. The statute offers notoriously scant guidance as to what “waters of the United States” actually means. As a result, whether the CWA applies to a given water body is often the subject of controversy and confusion. The EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Clean Water Rule—currently beset by political, legal and legislative challenges—attempts to clarify this important term. But the Clean Water Rule is silent on an important question that continues to divide federal courts: does the CWA apply to releases of pollutants into groundwater that eventually migrate into waters of the United States?

Federal district courts have held that the CWA governs discharges into groundwater that is hydrologically connected to jurisdictional waters of the United States and would permit CWA jurisdiction over groundwater discharges in far more limited circumstances. Still other courts view the CWA as inapplicable to groundwater, no matter its ultimate connection to surface water bodies. (Marten Law)