BEACON – The Clearwater environmental organization has announced its opposition to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s transfer of the Indian Point license to Holtec International.
When Indian Point’s last nuclear reactor is shut down in April 2021, the NRC has granted Holtec the okay to decommission the facility.
Clearwater said the NRC granted the transfer without addressing the concerns and objections of citizens’ groups and officials including New York’s congressional delegation, attorney general and governor.
Holtec’s record on nuclear plant decommissioning and spent fuel handling is “a sorry one,” said Clearwater. It includes:
Leveraging public moneys for its own profit without bringing any of its own to decommissioning work;
- Using a subsidiary structured to be able to declare bankruptcy and allow Holtec to leave decommissioning work at Indian Point half done and walk away without incurring liability, leaving the State and municipalities to bear the costs and risks;
- Using its own flawed and gouged casks for dry storage of spent fuel — casks whose design Holtec changed in safety-relevant ways without seeking NRC permission;
- A near-miss accident in transferring spent fuel to its dry casks, which could have resulted in a severe radiological release at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California;
- Indicating it would do nothing to remediate known radioactive contamination of groundwater and the Hudson, would remediate contaminated soil only superficially, and envisioned shipping highly radioactive spent fuel down the Hudson by barge;
- Cutting costs and corners, such as excluding trained union workers and hiring unskilled workers for safety-critical tasks like pipe fitting in order to save money.
