http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/another-us-nuke-bites-the-dust
[links in on-line article]
Thursday, 15 October 2015 07:02
Another US Nuke Bites the Dust
The chain reactor operator Entergy has announced it will close the
Pilgrim nuke south of Boston. The shut-down will bring U.S. reactor
fleet to 98, though numerous other reactors are likely to face
abandonment in the coming months.
But Entergy says it may not take Pilgrim down until June 1, 2019—nearly
four years away.
Entergy is also poised to shut the FitzPatrick reactor in New York. It
promises an announcement by the end of this month.
Entergy also owns Indian Point 2 and Indian Point 3 some 40 miles north
of Manhattan. Unit 2’s operating license has long since lapsed. Unit 3’s
will expire in December.
Meanwhile California’s two reactors at Diablo Canyon are surrounded with
earthquake faults. They are in violation of state and federal water
quality laws and are being propped up by a corrupt Public Utilities
Commission under fierce grassroots attack. With a huge renewable boom
sweeping the state, Diablo’s days are numbered—and hopefully will shut
before the next quake shakes them to rubble.
Meanwhile, like nearly all old American nukes, both Pilgrim and
FitzPatrick are losing tons of money. Entergy admits to loss projections
of $40 million/year or more at Pilgrim, with parallel numbers expected
at FitzPatrick. The company blames falling gas and oil prices for the
shortfalls.
Owners of King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes and Gas) facilities hate
renewables. But in fact the boom in wind, solar, increased efficiency
and other Solartopian advances are at the real core of nuke power’s
escalating economic melt-down.
The plummeting prices of green power are fast undercutting the economics
of America’s aging reactor fleet. They are also chopping into the use of
coal and gas, whose costs are rising. Renewables are essentially free at
the margin. So green power voids the “baseline” function of both nuke
and fossil fuel generators.
The situation at Pilgrim has long been critical. Nearly a
quarter-century ago the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was forced
to advise Pilgrim’s owners (back then it was Boston Edison) that the
plant did not meet basic safety standards. The nuke opened in 1972. The
commission recently renewed its license for 20 more years.
But its fire protection apparatus has long been illegal. Entergy
recently announced it would hire two new employees whose job it would be
to watch for fires!
Various estimates confirm Entergy would have to spend tens of millions
merely to bring Pilgrim up to basic code. The NRC has labelled it one of
the nation’s most dangerous nuke.
So the announcement that it will shut down has been widely welcomed
throughout the region, especially by activists who’ve fought 40 years
and more to get it down.
But the idea that this ancient, substandard reactor would operate nearly
four more years has people shaking. “They want to gamble with the health
and safety of the public for these coming years,” says Paul Gunter of
Beyond Nuclear. “It’s not right.”
There is unfortunate precedent. At Vermont Yankee, Entergy trashed a
decade’s worth of agreements with the state and went to court to stay
open despite a host of safety and fiscal violations.
Oyster Creek’s owners cut a deal with the state of New Jersey to operate
seven additional years despite being in violation of water quality
standards.
Indian Point 2’s lack of a license has been ignored by the NRC. The NRC
is expected to do the same when Unit 3’s license expires in December.
It’s presumed that Entergy will want special dispensations for
FitzPatrick if it decides to announce a shut-down there.
FirstEnergy wants Ohio to hand it a massive bailout to keep Davis-Besse
open despite extremely dangerous safety violations and millions in
operating losses. Exelon wants millions in public bailouts from the
state of Illinois for five money-losing reactors that are also falling
apart.
So Entergy’s decision to shut Pilgrim is welcomed by safe energy
activists everywhere as part of the rapid collapse of the atomic power
mis-adventure.
But across the U.S. some two dozen Fukushima clones still operate. The
entire industry is a decayed, money-losing tombstone for the failed lies
about “too cheap to meter.”
So it’s great another shut-down has been announced. But four more years
of yet another decayed, increasingly dangerous and hugely unprofitable
reactor being kept open is not acceptable.
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