By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Robert Aleksick was emphatic. “FAC is like roaches,” he said, spreading his arms wide in a gesture of exasperation. “Where you see one, there are bound to be more hidden away.” Aleksick should know about these hidden pests. As president of CSI Technologies, Inc., he is one of the nation’s foremost experts on FACs, or Flow Assisted Corrosion, a condition of degradation on the inside of pipes carrying superheated, radioactive w

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article The Nuclear Regulatory Commission faces a Thursday deadline to challenge a landmark, unanimous decision by a three-judge Appellate Court panel in June which ordered the agency to develop site specific assessments of the environmental impact of meltdowns in the bulging spent fuel pools before extending the licenses of some 30 nuclear power plants. Immediately after receiving the June 8 decision the NRC asked the court for the

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Entergy Nuclear has asked federal regulators to override New York State’s weapons law to allow Indian Point guards to carry heavier weaponry on the nuclear site than standard commercial security guards. The request comes ten years after terrorists flew a hijacked plane directly over the twin containment domes on the Hudson River en route to a suicidal dive into the World Trade Center 25 miles to the south. In the interim, Ent

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article A federal court suit challenging the right of nuclear plant operators to store high level radioactive waste on site for 60 years or more was filed yesterday by the attorney generals of Vermont, New York, and Connecticut. The suit, filed in the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC., seeks to overturn a temporary storage rule adopted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Dec. 23, 2010. The NRC’s order, formally known as the Was

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Federal officials are investigating Entergy Nuclear Corps’ management of its massive steam generators following the latest in a series of mechanical failures which forced six plant shut downs in the last two years. Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors are specifically examining the cause of the Sept. 3 malfunction in a steam generator serving the reactor in Indian Point 2, which triggered an automatic “trip” or shut down.

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