The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) will hear oral argument relating to the Victoria County Station Early Site Permit (ESP) proceeding on March 16-17 in Victoria, Texas.
The ASLB is the independent body within the NRC that presides over hearings where the public can challenge proposed licensing and enforcement actions.
Oral arguments will begin at 9 a.m. CDT on Wednesday, March 16, in the Theatre Victoria at the Leo J. Welder Center for the Performing Arts, 214 N. Main St. in Victoria. The session will continue at 9 a.m. CDT on March 17. The session is open for public observation, but participation will be limited to authorized representatives of the groups taking part in the proceeding (Texans for a Sound Energy Policy [TSEP], the applicant – Exelon Nuclear Texas Holdings – and NRC staff involved in the proceeding).
Early arrival is suggested to allow for security screening for all members of the public interested in attending. NRC policy prohibits signs, banners, posters or displays in the hearing room.
Exelon submitted an ESP application March 25, 2010, seeking approval of the Victoria County Station site, which is approximately 13 miles south of Victoria. The ASLB is considering whether to grant TSEP intervenor status. The group has submitted several objections, or contentions, challenging Exelon’s application. The ASLB will hear oral argument on whether TSEP’s contentions meet the NRC’s requirements to be admitted for hearing under the NRC’s jurisdiction.
Documents related to the Victoria County Station ESP application are available on the NRC Web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/esp/victoria.html .
Documents pertaining to the ASLB proceeding are available in the agency’s electronic hearing docket at: http://ehd1.nrc.gov/EHD .
More information about the ASLB can be found at: http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/organization/aslbpfuncdesc.html.
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I doubt that this will show up on your web site since I see that you do not publish any view but those of “progressive”. However, in reading information on your site I see that we (me being conserative) and you have some mutual agreements. That said, I feel that you are dismising nuclear outright without a proper perspective. 1. last 10 years accidents, 47 Windfarms, 6 Nuclear. The Navy has and is using nuclear for over 50 years, 1 lost sub, no other accidents. Cost to generate electricity, Wind/Solar can not compete with nuclear or oil based generators. Cost to build equalivant output of solar/wind beyond our current national debt, and you still have outages during no wind or lack of sunlight. That said, I do believe we need technology that reduces out dependence on oil and coal, Nuclear is one but not the only one. Fusion is another but you killed that with your fear mongering thinking it was Nuclear. Nuff Said, you need to education your selves on facts, not political positions.
Roger, I do not appreciate your derisive tone and immediately casting aspersions on our blog. Here your comment has sat for over 48 hours. No one has edited it (although they should for grammar and spelling) or sent it down the memory hole. We do not censor our comments unless the content is explicit, violent, hateful, abusive, or spam.
And yes we have a specific view of nuclear energy, thought is not based AT ALL on politics. We are a 501c3 non-profit and do not engage in politics. We oppose nuclear because it is expensive, risky, more heavily subsidized than any renewable resource, an industry propped up by crooked lobbying money and campaign donations, and produces volumes of toxic waste. Do you have a reactor design for fission that is scalable for a utility-size project and can produce energy at a price the market can bear? All this talk of fission and “2nd Gen” nuclear reactors is more science fiction than reality- THOSE are the technologies of the future while solar, wind, geothermal, and efficiency exist now and are competitive. A utility-scale solar plant is actually cheaper than building a new nuclear reactor- so why lock ourselves into this resource when we see what the risks are and we KNOW how expensive they are?
As for educating ourselves on the facts of nuclear they are these:
1- we have one of the most regulated and generally robust nuclear industries in the world (Japan’s) on the brink right now. Are these types of risks tolerable to you? They are not to me.
2- Nuclear can only exist as an industry thanks to massive government subsidies. They receive a production tax credit and construction on new reactors are so risky Wall St won’t touch them- unless the Feds pony up expensive loan guarantees which the CBO says only half of which will ever get paid back. Right now they want $36 billion in loan guarantees for more nuclear. We’d be better off flushing $18 billion down the toilet. Toilets don’t create nuclear waste.
3- The only places where nuclear exists as a major industry are where the government either incredibly subsidizes and regulates the industry (US/Japan) or runs them outright as a socialist operation (France/Germany, etc). You mention the military– which in economic sense is a government monopoly run 100% by public money for the benefit of the public, which is the definition of socialism. If the only way to make nuclear work is to have it be a socialist operation– no thank you. Let the military have it. They have the discipline to keep it from killing everyone. It seems the private sector run for profit does not.
4- The levellized cost of building new nuclear reactors at STP or Comanche Peak here in TX means that the electricity they will produce will cost, according to the companies’ own estimates, just south of 20 cents a kWh. Can you afford that? My family can’t. Putting solar on my rooftop costs a LOT less than that.
5- These same nuclear companies (NRG / NINA) have been sued by their own business partners for fraud and misrepresentation about how much the reactors will really cost. What does that tell you?
6- No nuclear reactor in the United States has come in on time and on budget. You may have forgotten but when they built STP 1 & 2 it was not only years late and far over-budget, but it bankrupted Houston Power and Light, who then got bailed out by the City of Houston and Texas ratepayers with their “stranded costs.”
Given these, I hope I’ve answered your claim that solar and wind are not cost-competitive with nuclear. And the cost of deployment more than the current debt? I’d also like to see that citation- for the price of just the STP expansion, you could put solar on the roofs of most of the homes in San Antonio. And the price of solar and wind is going down, down, down- while nukes keep going up and up.
As for your claim about no energy when there’s no wind or sun, I’d like to remind you of the rolling blackouts last month, during which time our renewable resources performed perfectly. We have enough land space that pretty much someplace in the state is windy or sunny- we have more renewable potential than any other state and greater than most countries.
And you say there have been “accidents” at 46 wind farms. Citation, please? And can you also show me where wind farms have done things such as leaking radioactive tritium into the water supply like what has happened at Vermont Yankee and Excelon’s Illinois reactors?
Let’s assume you were right about cost and the nuclear industry wasn’t one of the biggest welfare queens suckling off the teat of federal largesse- all I see with building new nuclear is risk. Risk, Risk, Risk, Risk. Risk in construction- Risks so large Wall St, who loved subprime mortgage-backed derivatives, says nuclear construction is too risky. WALL ST. Then if they do get built, utilities will have to raise rates in order to cover the cost of generating electricity- you risk your rates going up because nuclear costs more than double the next cheapest resource. Risk to your pocketbook. Double-risk when these ventures go belly up and their corporate lobbyists start sniffing around for a bailout- after all, they need a return on the investment they made with all those campaign cash bribes, right? So, that’s your taxes, or worse, debt. The risk of their operation having something bad happen in the general course of creating electricity- a tritium leak, radionucleides emitted into the air, etc. And then risk when these reactors have something catastrophic occur. And then the risk of decommissioning and disposing of all the toxic radioactive waste. All to smash atoms to boil water and put steam through a turbine. Too much risk for me. But if you like living dangerously and expensively, continue to be pro-nuclear.
Windmills do not melt down.
The publication of “KILLING OUR OWN,” by Harvey Wasserman reveals the shocking traditional culture of deception practiced since the first Atomic atmospheric bomb test and stringently documents the amoral nuclear industry that has arisen since the first Trinity test. It is a remorseless sociopathic military industrial corporate state, that permits a plant whose front end fuel mining process shamefully contaminates water, air, soil and earth of the community that mines it – there’s one not far from Victoria, and the Navajo tribe in Arizona and New Mexico. The amoral destruction of a community should not be more surprising than the appalling lack of foresight with hundreds of thousands of years of care of high level spent waste required by future generations, currently stupidly stored in reactor pools in the Bayside, Texas STP 1&2 plants, already leaking tritium, near the path of massive hurricanes like Ike. If they survive, they will regret their ancestors appalling immorality, to pass on this lethal poisonous legacy to them at their cost. Wasserman reveals in depth the intentional exposure of U.S Servicemen, then denied treatment of their illnesses, the death of thousands of sheep loaded with radioactivity denied by the Atomic Energy Commission.This early development of the culture of deception set the precedent for the withholding of a 4 billion cost overrun by CPS from the Mayor & City Council of San Antonio. This petitioner calls for an immediate halt by the NRC to the issuance of any permit extensions to ANY nuclear plants, or the construction of any new ones in Texas or the world. The radioactive cloud is on it’s way here.