Junk Plant IP: Corporate Concierge Regulations and Oversight

To me this looks like the malicious gaming of evaluations by NRC employees. It going on everywhere. The more complicated and hyper technical the evaluation, the more easy it is to game the result. The calculations of risk perspectives itself is so complicated and hyper technical, most NRC employees can't explain it. This is fertile ground for fraud and corruption. The more they talk to you, the further they take you down tbe rat hole of explainable complexity. Say moderate violation where they come number to punish a utility, it riddled with secret hyper technical assumption. I always said to become a nuclear professional, it is almost like learning a completely new language. They is very precious few outsider who understands the obsolete language. This is how congress allows them to remain utterly without accountability. Violation becomes nothing but papper whipping and nobody ever has the incentive to change their behavior. Nobody ever goes to jail over this. This all derives from tremendous pressures from their senior managers and congress to gain power and campaign contribution. It is causing the compromise of their integrity and it is severely damaging their souls and careers.

I don't know, look at Fukushima, even with three devastating meltdowns and tremendous financial pain, it is just not enough to change the hearts and souls of the Japanese nuclear regulators. They just quickly swing back to their old habits. It is a flaw in western democracy itself. It is just a huge mismatch of resources between safety side and the profit centered side. It is in all of our hearts, between doing good and being selfish, between feeling good and doing work. Everyone is all wrapped up in feeling better than accepting the joy of being/feeling normal. It is too easy to compromise our souls in search of artificially feeling better.  Feeling better is a derision from life itself. Right, look at our massive illegal and legal drug problem, addiction and the worst booze abuse.  

I don't think we can advance as a society without easily controlling the atom. It is metiphore of all highly complex systems and high consequence/high value endeavors. We got amazing high tech stuff in the corners of societies all over the world, but we are stuck in this planetary development stage. We are so much bigger than this. I think all the strife we see in USA is a result of being struck in this planetary development stage. How many decades have we been struck and how many heads just turned away? What would the hand of god look like if he had to unstuck us? I don't think it will be bliss. Aren't you sad for god or the cosmos? Aren't you sad for the position mankind has place him in?

Honestly, it's as if we have no appreciation for the value life itself. Most of us can't imagine life as miraculous, most of us all live life in dire poverty of every kinds, and every breath of life is a terrible burden? Even the so called wealthy among us. We are never satisfied with just being. You know god is crying for us upstairs. Who disconnected us from life?

Nuclear Power is really a brain management game.                  

Indian Point To Get New Exam From NRC 

Posted on: May 5, 2016.

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Roger ConnorNews Anchor
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will conduct a new analysis of Indian Point’s safety upgrades.
Indian Point Nuclear Power Facility
NEW YORK – Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman on Wednesday applauded a decision by Commissioners of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to require NRC staff to conduct a re-analysis of the impacts caused by severe accidents at the Indian Point nuclear power facility and potential upgrades needed to protect the public against such accidents.

NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman 

“I am heartened that the NRC Commissioners agreed with my office that Entergy and NRC staff have systematically undercounted the costs and impacts associated with severe reactor accidents at the Indian Point plant,” Attorney General Schneiderman said. “The Commissioners’ decision requires the NRC staff to do what should have been done years ago: provide an accurate account of cost-effective upgrades at this aging nuclear plant that can prevent or minimize severe accidents. While some might prefer to treat severe accidents as impossibilities, the millions of people who live and work near Indian Point deserve nothing less than a full and fair assessment of the plant upgrades needed to protect them against such accidents.”
In today’s unanimous decision, the Commission reversed an earlier administrative ruling, and found that NRC staff’s analysis of severe accident minimization at the Indian Point facility violates the National Environmental Policy Act. The decision directs NRC staff to redo its analysis, and consider additional severe accident minimization at Indian Point. NRC staff had relied on data from other sites, including sites surrounded by farmland, instead of site-specific data for Indian Point. The ultimate source of the data used by NRC staff could not be found – but the agency went on using the data without substantiation.
In its decision, the Commission explained that “[w]hile typically we decline to second-guess the Board on its fact-specific conclusions, here the decision contains obvious material factual errors and could be misleading, warranting clarification.” The Commission found that New York State’s evidence and legal arguments were persuasive and had the potential to materially affect the analysis of severe accident minimization measures and their cost-effectiveness for Indian Point. 

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo 

Governor Andrew Cuomo: “Today’s decision by the NRC Commissioners to reverse an earlier administrative ruling, and to require a reexamination of the impacts caused by severe accidents at Indian Point and potential upgrades reaffirms our long-standing position that the aging nuclear power plant needs to be retired. Clearly, this facility poses too great a risk to the millions of people who live and work nearby. We will work closely with NRC staff and continue to monitor Indian Point’s daily operations to ensure that a proper analysis is done regarding any unacceptable dangers to ensure that the public is protected at all times.” 

Wednesday’s decision by the NRC Commissioners represents a significant event in the history of the Indian Point site.
The Attorney General’s office has worked to improve Indian Point’s accident preparedness, and ensure the protection of public health and the environment of the surrounding region. After Entergy submitted an application to the NRC to renew the operating licenses for an additional 20 years, the Attorney General’s Office submitted Contention 12, which argued that Entergy’s environmental report failed to accurately model the cleanup and decontamination costs for a severe accident in the area surrounding Indian Point, which includes the New York City Metropolitan Area.
In 2010, NRC released its final supplemental environmental impact statement for Indian Point – a document that continued to fail to properly analyze and disclose to the public severe accident risk and mitigation. In response, the Attorney General’s Office submitted expert testimony, reports, legal briefs, and over 100 exhibits demonstrating the inadequate analysis of severe accidents and severe underestimation of the costs of a severe accident at Indian Point. Entergy and NRC Staff challenged the State every step of the way, repeatedly lodging challenges to the Attorney General’s arguments. 

In November 2013, the Board’s resolved Contention 12 in favor of NRC Staff and Entergy. Almost immediately, Attorney General Schneiderman filed to a motion to reopen the record and for reconsideration of the contention, which the Board denied. The State appealed the Board’s decision on Contention 12 to the NRC Commissioners, and briefing on the appeal was completed in 2014. Today’s decision is in response to the appeal by Attorney General Schneiderman.
The Indian Point facilities are located 24 miles north of New York City, 35 miles from Times Square, and 38 miles from Wall Street. The facilities are 6 miles from one of the reservoirs that make up the New York City drinking water system. According to Entergy, approximately 19 million people will live within 50 miles of Indian Point by 2035. Indian Point has the highest surrounding population of any US reactor; Indian Point has more than twice the surrounding population as the next nuclear plant site.
The initial 40-year license terms expired in September 2013 for Indian Point unit 2 and December 2015 for Indian Point unit 3. 

This matter is being handled for the Environmental Protection Bureau by Assistant Attorneys General John Sipos, Kathryn DeLuca, and Laura Heslin, with the assistance of Environmental Scientist Jodi Feld. The Environmental Protection Bureau is led by Lemuel M. Srolovic and is part of the Division of Social Justice, which is led by Executive Deputy Attorney General for Social Justice Alvin Bragg.