May 2014
In This Issue...
Our Members

First Parish UU Church, 
Social Justice & 
Action Committees:




Opinion:
Enron-style price gouging is making a comeback
By David Cay Johnston, May 2, 2014
Wall Street makes naked attempt to jack up electricity prices in New England...

Read the full article at Aljazeera America →
Notable Upcoming Events
5/10:  Plymouth Town Elections: Vote YES on Ballot Question 1
Saturday, May 10, 2014  Find voting locations →

As many of you know, member group Concerned Neighbors of Pilgrim (CNP) have worked with the Plymouth Board of Selectmen to draft a ballot question concerning nuclear waste storage. Ballot Question 1 will go to a vote on May 10th in Plymouth.

Question 1 calls for Plymouth's town leaders to ensure that Pilgrim's nuclear waste is transferred from wet pool to dry cask storage quickly and in the safest way possible.

For the full language of the ballot question, or to find out where to vote, visit: capecodbaywatch.org/2014/04/vote-yes-on-1/
5/11:  Mother's Day Action at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station
Sunday, May 11, 2014  /  1:00 pm
Gather at St. Catherine's Chapel Park
95 White Horse Road, Plymouth 

Pilgrim Coalition member group Cape Downwinders is organizing a Mother's Day Action at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. Gather at St. Catherine's Chapel Park at 1:00 PM for speakers, music and poetry. Then march down Rocky Hill Road to Pilgrim Nuclear gates for a solemn vigil.

For more information: http://capedownwinders.org/img/140511MothersDayPilgrimAction.pdf
Pilgrim's Cancers: 'Tobacco Science' versus fact    By Mary Lampert, Pilgrim Watch
Industries that can harm the public have "tobacco scientists" and lobbyists to promote their message. The Pilgrim nuclear plant is no exception, and denies the pattern of radiation-linked cancers and disease around it.

A review of Massachusetts Cancer Registry data shows that Plymouth (from 2002-2009) has a statistically significant increased level of leukemia, at a 95 percent probability level. This means that there is, at most, a 5 percent chance that the difference between the observed and expected cases of leukemia is due to chance. There also is a statistically significant increased level of prostate cancer, another radiation-linked disease.

To read the full article, visit:
http://plymouth.wickedlocal.com/article/20140423/OPINION/304239995
Pilgrim hit on safety record
By Christine Legere, Cape Cod Times, May 2, 2014
PNPS
Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station has been rated among the nine worst performers in the country because of its number of unplanned shutdowns last year. On May 1st, the public attended a forum to discuss the plant's record and wanted to know why federal regulators aren't applying more pressure on the owner to make it safer.

To read the full article and quotes from this forum, visit: http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140502/NEWS/405020342
3,100 Petition Signatures Presented to Plymouth Selectmen
Petitions signed by more than 3,100 citizens and local businesses were presented to the Plymouth Board of Selectmen Tuesday night, by Pilgrim Coalition member group Concerned Neighbors of Pilgrim (CNP). More than 80 percent of the signatures came from Plymouth residents and 41 local businesses also signed on.

The petition states that "Entergy's long-term storage of high-level radioactive waste in our community poses a risk to our families, homes, businesses, and economy," and urges Board Members to use their authority to ensure that Entergy's dry cask storage project is sited, designed, built, and operated in the safest manner. It also asks Town officials to ensure Entergy pays for all costs incurred by the Town in connection with its long-term nuclear waste storage at Pilgrim.

"We commend the efforts from the Plymouth Selectmen on this issue so far. As we continue to face the stark reality that our town will be a de facto nuclear waste dump for the indefinite future, we are only asking that the Board continue to engage in this important issue and do all they can to protect public safety and the fiscal well-being of the town. The more than 3,100 signatures we have collected just goes to show that there is support in the community for their efforts," stated CNP President Heather Lightner.

While dry cask storage does not come without risk, it is a safer method of storing spent nuclear fuel as compared to wet pool storage - if "done right." CNP has been working for the past year to raise awareness in the community about the issue of nuclear waste storage, and to see that it's done in the safest, most responsible way possible.

Hand-writing is on the wall for Pilgrim!
Associated Press, April 23, 2014
HARTFORD, Connecticut - Connecticut's nuclear power plant won permission to use warmer water from Long Island Sound for cooling at one of its two units in Waterford, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced Monday.

The Millstone 2 plant may use water as warm as 80 degrees Fahrenheit, up from 75 degrees, said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is considering a similar request for Millstone 3.

Millstone 2 shut down for nearly two weeks in August 2012 because the water was warmer than the 75-degree limit. It was the first shutdown of a nuclear power plant on an open body of water. Water is used to cool key components of the plant and is discharged back into the Sound.

In response, the federal agency issued an emergency license amendment, allowing Millstone to use an average temperature of several readings. It still was not enough to prevent the plant from shutting down.

The NRC said it found that the plant's safety equipment and systems would continue to function without problems using the higher temperature limit. The change to Millstone's license is intended to prevent an "unnecessary plant shutdown" in severe hot weather, the agency said.

Millstone spokesman Ken Holt said the peak in warm water is the end of August or early September after a few months of a hot summer. However, the Arctic blasts that characterized the past winter could help keep the Sound a bit cooler into late summer, he said.

"It would be closer to what it was 30 years ago," Holt said.

Millstone, owned by Dominion Resources Inc. (NYSE: D), provides half of Connecticut's power. New England's four nuclear power plants in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont accounted for one-third of electricity generated in the region last year, according to ISO-New England, the region's power grid.

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, speaking in Hartford to a group of energy industry executives, regulators, state officials, environmentalists and others, said after his talk that the overheated Long Island Sound is evidence of climate change. He called it "one of those examples of what we are beginning to see already."

The issue of climate change, he said, is settled: "We don't have time."
Advocate Reflections
The following are the remarks of a member of the Pilgrim Coalition to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the May 1 forum in Plymouth.
Sara Altherr and grandchildren
I'm Sara Altherr, and I live in Kingston, 8 miles from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. Is it true that no one from the NRC is recording this session in which the public is able to ask questions?

The letter announcing this event says that tonight's public meeting, to discuss the NRC's assessment of Entergy's Pilgrim Plant, will have a "separate session to respond to questions on specific performance issues at the plant and the NRC's role in ensuring safe plant operations." I wish to speak on the latter part - the NRC's role in "ensuring safe plant operations."

The NRC's motto, prominently displayed on it's website and stationery is "Protecting people and the environment."  Having read the NRC's letter to Entergy outlining the issues of concern in 2013 and listening to the Entergy's response tonight, I am wondering again about how the NRC can say that we are indeed safe and the NRC is protecting us.
 
I wish that somehow ordinary people like me, who live in this beautiful, historic, irreplaceable place, could do something to shake up this large bureaucratic agency, which, I fear, itself inhibits dealing with the real, overriding issues pertaining to the safety of "people and the environment" here in Southeastern Massachusetts.

For tonight's meeting we were asked to comment on, or question, an NRC document which uses an "action matrix" with jargon like "Degraded Cornerstone", "Crosscutting Themes", and a chart which puts indication of performance in little green and white boxes.  I'm sure this works for the NRC and Entergy, as it compartmentalizes the problem and creates a convenient checklist that everyone can use to make themselves feel as if something is being done.  But I am not at all reassured.

To my mind, this sort of compartmentalized thinking, limits creative thinking and makes everyone involved lose sight of the overriding safety issues.  The matrix doesn't include anything outside those little green and white boxes - already determined perimeters which have been created through a bureaucratic process so long they have lost their meaning.  These "performance indicators" do not take into account important issues like the effect of climate change or sea level rise, the fact that there is no federal repository for nuclear waste as was promised when this plant was built - and we may be living with nuclear waste stored in Plymouth until at least 2092. And, of course, what we now know about the "unanticipated" disaster at Fukushima.  What about the fact that Entergy has deemed itself a "dry site," thus removing itself from NRC scrutiny, yet is planning to build it's new dry cask storage pad only ___ above sea level and currently stores low-level nuclear waste in barrels at ___ feet, behind a crumbling berm?  What about the fact that Entergy determines the siting of it's new dry cask storage facility based on it's own determination of the risk of an earthquake or storm surge - without independent study?  What about the fact that there is no protection from a terrorist attack from the sky. There is no no-fly zone above the Pilgrim plant, and the NRC is not addressing that.

I think the NRC's attempts to protect the public of Boston and Southeastern Massachusetts and the environment are woefully lacking.  If our interests had truly been considered, I believe that Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station would never have been re-licensed.

Instead of looking at charts with little boxes, I ask you, representatives of the NRC and your bosses - the Commission itself - to look "outside the box" and exert some leadership to counter the nuclear industry's pressures on the agency.   I hope you will open your minds and focus a bigger picture - the fact of the plant's age, the location of this reactor at near sea level, the fact that it is incredibly vulnerable to terrorist attack from the air, and the increased possibilities of an unanticipated nuclear accident there, as shown at Fukushima and Chernobyl.

Perhaps the only really safe solution is to retire the reactor.  Whatever you do, though, please remember that there are those of us who - having done a lot of research - sincerely believe that the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station is a serious and urgent threat not only to our lives and property, but to that of our children and our children's children.
See what else is happening online: www.pilgrimcoalition.org/calendar

Our member groups are always hosting events, gatherings, and forums for the public. 
We invite you to join us-come out and have some fun and find out what's going on!

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About the Pilgrim Coalition...
We are a non-partisan network of citizens and organizations dedicated to raising awareness of - and reducing - significant risks to public safety, health and our environment arising from the continued operation of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, located in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Make a Donation >>  Help us grow by making a secure, tax-deductible donation online today. Checks can also be made out to the Pilgrim Coalition and sent to us at c/o Jones River Watershed Association, 55 Landing Road, Kingston, MA 02332.

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