By Roger Witherspoon A special inspection of the Indian Point 2 nuclear reactor found that more than a quarter of the stainless steel bolts needed to channel cooling water through active nuclear fuel rods were broken, distorted or “missing”, a finding that calls into question the effectiveness of the long term management of this and other ageing power plants. The inspection, which began March 7, concerned the 832 “baffle-former assembly bolts” which hold special metal plates

Byron Nuclear Power Plant By Roger Witherspoon After four years of increasingly tense internal discussion, seven Nuclear Regulatory Commission engineers have formally petitioned the governing Commissioners to either order the nation’s nuclear power plants to immediately correct a design flaw governing their reactor cooling systems or order them all to shut down. The flaw is in the original design of the electrical system, and has escaped notice for decades. According to the e

By Roger Witherspoon For more than a decade, it has been impossible for operators of the Indian Point nuclear power plant to stop highly radioactive reactor and spent fuel pool coolant from leaking into the groundwater and migrating to the Hudson River. And despite assurances from Entergy that this time will be different, there is no indication that the company has developed the ability to prevent the latest uncontrolled leaks from following the underground waterway into the

Gregory Jaczko: Shut Indian Point down By Roger Witherspoon The former head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said yesterday that emergency plans for a catastrophic event at the Indian Point nuclear power plant are not designed to ensure that residents will escape unhealthy doses of radiation and it would be best if the plant closes down. Gregory Jaczko, who led the five-member Commission during the triple meltdown of Japan’s Fukushima  Daiichi  nuclear station and resigne

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article The large black sailor was naked in the middle of a roped-off area below decks, and he was none too happy. “He kept saying ‘Not my boots, too. My wife just bought them for me.’ But they made him take them off anyway, and he was just there, naked. Then they made him scrub,” recalled Maurice Enis, navigator of the USS Ronald Reagan, one of the Navy’s newest aircraft carriers. “They gave him this really abrasive stuff that we us

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article To the US Government, Operation Tomodachi was just another big humanitarian aid and rescue mission in which the nearest Navy fleet and  many land-based personnel rushed to the aid of an ally in need. In this case, the northeast coast of Japan had been flattened by a massive earthquake and tsunami which destroyed infrastructure and killed some 20,000 citizens. Operation Tomodachi – named after the Japanese word for Friend – be

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article The Department of Defense has decided to walk away from an unprecedented medical registry of nearly 70,000 American service members, civilian workers, and their families caught in the radioactive clouds blowing from the destroyed nuclear power plants at Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. The decision to cease updating the registry means there will be no way to determine if patterns of health problems emerge among the members of the

By Roger Witherspoon The two utilities providing electricity to New York City and Westchester County have been ordered by the State Public Service Commission to plan for a future without electricity from the Indian Point nuclear power plants. In the first concrete action taken by a state agency to move towards a non-nuclear energy future in the lower Hudson River Valley, the PSC ordered Consolidated Edison and the New York Power Authority “to develop and file a contingency pl

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Federal regulators have launched a special probe to determine if officials at the Oyster Creek nuclear power violated rules and waited too long to declare an emergency alert as rising waters threatened critical reactors systems. Three inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission began a “special inspection” Tuesday into the alert called by plant officials as waters driven by the storm rose to 7.4 feet in the plant’s inta

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 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 For the past decade, Entergy and supporters have proclaimed that its twin Indian Point reactors are all that keeps the trains running, the street lights on and school buildings operating throughout New York City and neighboring Westchester County. Entergy, which actually provides about 5 percent of the electricity used in the area, can get away with its misleading advertising for only one more year.  The New York Power Author

By Roger Witherspoon Schenectady, NY – The 1,000-megawatt Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant could be shut down when its license expires in 2013 with no impact on either system reliability or the electricity needs of the New York City -Westchester County section of the state’s electric grid. But the region could face an electricity shortage and a stress on system voltage if its nuclear twin, Indian Point 3, closes when its license expires at the end of 2015 and no replacement

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 Gregory Jaczko resigned as head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Monday, ending months of open warfare with the staff and the other four commissioners over safety issues and a personal style often perceived as imperious. Jaczko’s departure stills the agency’s lone major voice pushing for increased safety measures at the nation’s 104 nuclear power plants despite the its long-standing aversion to imposing costly fixes on th

The statistics of nuclear reactor meltdowns are stark. Despite improvements in technology and upgrades in safety, on average one of the world’s 500 or so  nuclear power plants suffers a full or partial meltdown every other year. For the millions of people living within a 50 mile radius of a nuclear installation, their odds are 1/1000 of being affected by spreading radiation from an out of control reactor. Last June, as the world watched the metastasizing radiological disaster

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article “…EPA’s insupportable assumption that screening technologies are available at nuclear facilities, threaten the viability of existing plants and their daily contribution to cost-effective electricity….” Brief, Entergy Corp v US EPA 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals July 5, 2005 For much of the last decade Entergy Nuclear, the owners of the twin Indian Point reactors in New York, have battled environmental regulators from the state

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Articlle In a sense, it could fairly be said to have begun with patent number 252,386, issued January 17, 1882 to a young Black inventor named Lewis Howard Latimer. Latimer, the only inventor to work with both of America’s icons of modern technological development – Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell – patented the carbon filament which made the electric light bulb possible. By bringing high intensity light to the factory floor,