Hudson River Sloop Clearwater: PSC must convene an oversight board to review Indian Point’s decommissioning plans

The recent announcement that the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) approved the transfer of Indian Point’s licenses to Holtec International makes it urgent that the Commission convene a Decommissioning Oversight Board (DOB) immediately to review the company’s decommissioning plans.

The DOB should be comprised of all State agencies with jurisdiction over various aspects of decommissioning, together with independent scientists and experts in relevant fields, and a diverse group of representatives of affected communities, including environmental justice communities, environmental and citizens’ groups, business, labor, and first responders.

It’s important for the DOB to meet now, with its first order of business being to review Holtec’s proposed Post-Shutdown Activities Report – their actual plan for decommissioning, site remediation, and radioactive waste management. The plan is deficient in many respects and the DOB will need to get ahead of the many thorny problems that Holtec’s approach raises. Board members must have adequate time to study these issues thoroughly, and the DOB must submit its recommendations before PSC takes any action on it.

The PSC approved the license transfer subject to an agreement jointly negotiated by the state of New York, environmental organizations, Entergy (the former license holder) and Holtec.

Clearwater opposed the license transfer given Holtec’s problematic track record and lack of qualifications. While the joint agreement improves the prospects for a financially and environmentally responsible decommissioning process, it fails to adequately address many of our questions and concerns about Holtec’s plans. These include removal of spent fuel from the fuel pools less than three years before it has cooled sufficiently to move (especially high burn-up fuel, which requires seven or more years of cooling), the lack of rigorous onsite and offsite radiation monitoring needed to protect workers and the surrounding community, superficial remediation of soils contaminated with radioactivity, and no remediation of radioactivity leaking into the groundwater and the Hudson, serious quality assurance, performance and safety problems withHoltec’s dry storage system for spent fuel, and Holtec’s intention to ship high-level radioactive waste (which may include highly irradiated spent fuel) by barge down the Hudson, past New York City, to its consolidated interim storage facilities in New Mexico.These and other issues related to Indian Point decommissioning raise serious safety concerns calling for diligent examination by the DOB. At the federal level Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversight has been extremely lax, granting exemptions on request and effectively rubber stamping whatever Holtec proposed whether or not it violated existing regulation, or in some cases, existing law. These important issues need review by the DOB before Holtec resolves them on its own terms.

We call on the PSC to empanel the DOB now and convene its first meeting quickly.

About Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. Launched in 1969 by folk singer and activist Pete Seeger, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater has been at the forefront of the environmental movement as a champion of the Hudson River. To date, more than half a million people have experienced their first real look at an estuary’s ecosystem aboard the Sloop Clearwater. Clearwater has become the grassroots model for producing positive changes to protect our planet.

For more information, visit www.clearwater.org.Hudson River Sloop Clearwater or call (845) 265-8080.