The Palisades Saga

My Palisades to Salem pump impeller addendum to my 2.206 just came up on the NRC web site.

June 6:

Chairman at Cook and Palisades...Palisades is the the 4th worst plant in the USA. I believe this worsened in the last few months.

Despite the stances by Upton and Macfarlane, Kevin Kamps, of Beyond Nuclear, argued Macfarlane’s stop at Palisades marked the fourth visit to the plant by an NRC commissioner in two years, the most for any U.S. reactor. One of several watchdog group representatives who met with Macfarlane Thursday in Benton Harbor, he issued a statement afterward in which he called for the NRC to address “the potentially catastrophic risks’’ of spent fuel rods stored in “faulty dry casks’’ on the Lake Michigan shoreline.

Ok, let say the chairman target plant to visit was the cook plant. She would just say she is visiting Cook, and that be the end of it. If the target was Palisades...the NRC would know the outsiders would think the problems are Palisades are worsening because of the visit. So they thought up deluding the effect by her visiting both plants.

This is just like the NRC, who goes out of the way to protect the bad actors...like they got into all this trouble through no fault of their own and they are victims of the community.

My 2.206

Critique of inspection

Nuclear Regulatory Chair Hears Concerns About Plants in West Michigan

BENTON HARBOR, Mich. (June 5, 2014) – A group of concerned citizens and environmental groups met today with the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to discuss two plants in west Michigan.

The closed-door meeting was held at the Courtyard Marriott in Benton Harbor with Chairman Allison MacFarlane.

The conversation focused on the Donald C. Cook site in Bridgman and the Palisades Plant in Covert Twp.

Palisades has been in the spotlight since its 2007 purchase by Entergy because of several problems.

Bette Pierman, a Democratic candidate for Michigan’s 21st District Senate seat, told FOX 17 she had concerns about the Palisades facility.

“There are failing infrastructure problems right now,” said Pierman. “There’s leaks that have been going on. Some of them since 2007 – recorded and reported.”

The most recent reported leak at the plant involved 70 gallons of oil, which officials said did not pose a threat to any bodies of water.

During a planned refueling outage between January and March of 2014, workers discovered a piece of metal – an impeller blade – lodged in a reactor vessel. It was determined the object wasn’t a hazard.

“That’s not the issue,” Pierman said. “The issue is that they’ve got failing equipment that continues to fail and they’re not taking care of the problem.”

Nuclear power is considered a clean energy, with greenhouse gas emissions on par with energies like solar, hydroelectric and wind.

With more than half a dozen leaks at the Palisades plant since 2012, people like Kraig Schultz, with Michigan Safe Energy Future, are raising concerns about safety and what would happen in an emergency.

“It’s not an option for any of our nuclear power plants to fail,” Schultz said. “The consequences of a disaster on U.S. soil is something we cannot allow to happen.”

While the NRC declined an on-camera interview on Thursday, Rep. Fred Upton and MacFarlane will be touring the Palisades plant before answering questions from the media on Friday.