By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Eleven nuclear power plants in the direct path of Hurricane Sandy – including all four in New Jersey – are on special alert status with additional federal monitors and plans to shut down if the winds or waves exceed safe storm limits. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission dispatched extra monitors this past week end to augment the two full-time resident inspectors at each plant to ensure that proper procedures are followed as the

By Roger Witherspoon In an unprecedented move, the environmental agencies of New Jersey and New York have begun forcing scores of their largest water users to either retrofit their plants with modern cooling systems which won’t kill billions of fish annually or cease operating. Environmental analysts in the two states have found that these facilities kill more than 20 billion juvenile and mature fish annually in New York and another nine billion in New Jersey.  These operati

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Entergy Corporation’s low key announcement might well have been posted on Craig’s List: For Sale: Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Used, unpredictable radioactive leaks, occasional fires, poorly run, financially indebted, locally unpopular, politically shunned and currently not working. $180 Million – Or Best Offer. “Selling an old nuclear plant is like trying to build a new one,” said economist Mark Cooper of the Universi

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article A series of wide ranging, federal inspections of the twin Salem nuclear power plants has found extensive decay and cracks as long as six feet in the concrete containment buildings, corrosion of the buildings’ steel liners by decades of leaks from radioactive and acidic water, and “aggressive” groundwater penetration throughout the power complex. In addition, inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found that PSEG Nu

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Nuclear safety experts warn that a proposal to increase profits at the Hope Creek nuclear power plant by adding cobalt fuel rods to its 100-ton uranium fuel mix could jeopardize the structural integrity of its entire spent fuel pool and should be changed or scrapped. In addition, the presence of Cobalt could complicate the delicate balancing of heat within the reactor core which is essential to ensuring the even burning of th