ALERTS -News 2003News 2002Did You Know?Newsletter Pages1 ,2 ,3 , |
CONNECTICUT
COALITION AGAINST MILLSTONE
Do we really want $9 billion in nuclear reactor loan guarantees
slipped into an emergency military appropriations bill? NUKEFREE.org
24 Years Later The Consequences of Chernobyl By KARL GROSSMAN
YOU are now paying for the NEXT 3 Mile Island
Harvey Wasserman March 27, 2010Indian Farmers Battle Against Nuclear Plant
Reuters 3/12/2010: US-Born Terror Suspect Worked at Nuclear Power Plants in New Jersey
The Associated Press: American-born terror suspect worked at nuclear power plants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland
NUCLEAR LOAN GUARANTEES AREN’T JUST GUARANTEES:
THEY ARE ACTUAL TAXPAYER LOANS NEWS FROM NIRS
From Ralph Nader - Ecology Party of Florida 2008 Presidential candidate:
"A generation of Americans has grown up without a single nuclear power plant being brought on line since before the near meltdown of the Three Mile Island structure in 1979. They have not been exposed to the enormous costs, risks and national security dangers associated with their operations and the large amount of radioactive wastes still without a safe, permanent storage place for tens of thousands of years." Read More >>>
Millstone 3 Update
January 4, 2010: Millstone Emergency Shutdown Enters Third Week
January 1, 2010: Millstone 3: Still Shut Down After 13 Days?
Happy New Year Connecticut from Dominion
The Nuclear Experiment Continues
The Millstone 3 nuclear reactor entered an emergency shutdown on December 19, 2009 and remains shut down on the first day of the new decade, according to the most recent information posted on the NRC website.
The NRC reported Millstone Unit 3 suffered an automatic reactor trip “due to an electrical fault on the main generator output circuit breaker.”
Opening of the atmospheric steam relief valves and the main condenser steam dump valves enabled unusual releases of radiological materials to escape to the air and surrounding residential community.
According to the NRC, the electrical fault caused the loss of one of two offsite power sources, requiring Dominion to put Millstone Unit 3 in cold shutdown.
On April 17, 2005, Millstone Unit 3 suffering an emergency shutdown because of “tin whiskers” growing on the circuit boards. The photo accompanying this posting captures steam - and invisible radiation - escaping from Unit 3 as it did for hours that day. The NRC permitted Dominion to restart Millstone Unit 3 without replacing defective board circuitry with identifiable tin whiskers.
As of December 21, 2009, the NRC reported that Dominion was still evaluating the cause of the recent electrical fault.
“Dominion continues to perform repairs on a Millstone 3 main generator output circuit-breaker that experienced the fault on December 19th,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan wrote in a December 31, 2009 email to the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone.
“This is a very large circuit-breaker and as such takes time to repair and test.”
December 28, 2009:
Millstone 3 Emergency Shut-Down Enters 10th day
AUTOMATIC REACTOR TRIP CAUSED BY A TURBINE/GENERATOR ELECTRICAL FAULT 12/19/2009
Joe Lieberman: The Senate's Most Notorious and Committed Socialist
"Independent" Senator Joe Lieberman is holding out against a public option in the health care reform bill. He says he must reject it because of its overtones of Socialism.
Yet the record reveals that Lieberman is the Senate's most committed Socialist - when it comes to loving and financing nukes of all kinds.
Right now he is doing the nuclear industry's bidding by trying to force through Congress an energy bill with unlimited taxpayer-backed loans for new nuclear power plants.
Such a bill is necessary for new nuclear power plants because Wall Street is shunning new nuclear investment like the plague, 60 years into the nuclear age, because of its high risks, high costs and because there is no place to store the radioactive waste.
Lieberman "conned" Connecticut as chairman of the Homeland Security Committee by supporting Dominion when it refused to implement a floating barrier to deter terrorists away from Millstone's intakes, as directed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Lieberman is Connecticut's Homegrown Hypocrite. He and his nuclear folly ambitions must be stopped.Call Lieberman now. Demand a stop to Nuclear Socialism!
860-549-8463
800-225-5605
202-224-4041
The "peaceful" atom leading to war with Iran
Background: The discovery of a second uranium enrichment facility in Qum, Iran prompted the government of Saudi Arabia to open its air space for potential Israeli air attacks on a growing number of nuclear infrastructure targets in Iran.
Ironically, "atoms for peace" have often led to wars. In 1980, Iran attacked Iraq's partially-built Osirak reactor, but French engineers repaired the light damage quickly. The very next year, Israel bombed Osirak before it could be loaded with fuel. These attacks set the precedent for future conventional military pre-emptive strikes against commercial or research atomic facilities, as a non-proliferation tactic. In 1984, Iraq initiated several years of attacks against Iran's partially-built Bushehr reactor complex, inflicting severe damage on the facility. The following year, Bennett Ramberg published Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy: An Unrecognized Military Peril. In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. bombed Iraqi research reactors at Tuwaitha, possibly causing radiological releases. In 2007, Israel bombed an atomic reactor being secretly constructed by North Koreans in Syria. Last year, Ramberg warned about the radiological consequences should the Dimona reactor, at the heart of the Israeli nuclear weapons manufacturing complex, be bombed.
Our view: Uranium is a currency whose coin has flipsides of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Potential nuclear targets for Israeli air attacks in Iran now include the perpetually "nearly finished" Bushehr nuclear power plant and at least the Natanz and the Qum uranium enrichment facilities. Such an attack on Iran carries the increasing risk of a rapidly widening regional war, potentially globally. The Bushehr site is now known to be protected by Russian ground-to-air missile batteries.
What you can do: Call your Congressional representatives and tell them that the proliferation of "civilian" nuclear technology principally through nuclear power plants and uranium enrichment destabilizes world peace through both pre-emptive wars and the growing risk of nuclear war.www.beyondnuclear.org October 1, 2009
Keep It Shut! (Posted 7/21/2009)
Millstone 2 sprang a dangerous radioactive leak inside the containment that has kept the 882-megawatt nuclear reactor shut since July 3, 2009.
Connecticut's nuke-loving Department of Public Utility Control declared Millstone 2 "no longer used and useful" 10 years ago but pressure from the Governor's office and the Attorney General's office has kept this lemon of a nuclear reactor operating under very unsafe conditions.
Allowing Millstone Unit 2, with its aging, cracking parts, to restart would represent an act of supreme recklessness.
Put safety first Dominion and shut Millstone 2 for good.
Dominion Pinpoints Unit 2 Reactor Leak
By Patricia Daddona Published in The Day on 7/15/2009Letter to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Opposes "Clean Energy Bank" Funding for New Atomic Reactors www.BeyondNuclear.org
Study Shows Trillions of Dollars in Excess Costs If U.S. Builds 100 Nuclear Reactors www.BeyondNuclear.org
Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass: "Ridding the World of Nuclear Weapons" (Letter to the Editor, The New York Times 6.1.2009
Gina
McCarthy’s Nomination Is Stalled -
For the Wrong Reason
Ernest J. Sternglass, Ph.D. writes an open letter to:Dr. Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy 2/7/2009
CHILD LEUKEMIA DEATH RATES INCREASE NEAR U.S. NUCLEAR PLANTS
New York ~ 11/11/08 ~ Leukemia death rates in U.S. children near nuclear reactors rose sharply (vs. the national trend) in the past two decades, according to a recent study DECEMBER 23, 2008
VICTORY!
The Connecticut Supreme Court today (May 20, 2009) swept away 10 years of poor decisionmaking and finally ruled that every citizen in Connecticut has standing to bring suit to protect the environment - just like the statute says.
This is GREAT NEWS for the community surrounded by Millstone. It is GREAT NEWS for the fish. And it is GREAT NEWS for all who believe that conscientious citizen participation can make a difference.
The powerful decision clears the way for an inquest in the Superior Court into the conduct of the high-level personnel of the Department of Environmental Protection who for years have allowed Millstone to operate outside the law.
Read the decision here:
http://www.jud.state.ct.us/external/supapp/Cases/AROcr/CR291/291CR55.pdf
Urgent Plea of the Niantic River Winter Flounder To Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers:
SAVE US FROM EXTINCTION!
URGENT: STOP THE UNLIMITED NEW NUKES LEGISLATION
(posting courtesy www.nirs.org 5/14/09)
STOP BILLIONS FOR NEW NUKES!
( courtesy NukeFree.org ) April 28, 2009Three Mile Island at 30: Reactors and Infant Health
Al Gore: Nuclear power is not the answer to our energy and climate crisis
The Obama Transition Watch reprint courtesy of www.BeyondNuclear.org
Loan guarantees sought by nuclear industry for reactor construction amount to ‘preemptive bailout,’ with expected default rate of 50 percent or higher
ALERT - ALERT - ALERT
BIGGEST GIVEAWAY TO NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY EVER
NATIONAL CALL-IN DAY: WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17
- Courtesy of BeyondNuclear.org posted August 29, 2008
The main road providing access to the Millstone Nuclear Power Station in an emergency - Route 156 (Rope Ferry Road) - was closed to traffic in both directions on the morning of Friday, August 22, 2008, because of a mechanical problem with the Niantic River Bridge, according to the Connecticut Department of Transportation.
In the event of fire or other emergency at Millstone, there was "No Exit" for residents and "No Entrance" for emergency response.
The breakdown of the Niantic River Bridge was not factored in to the decisions to license or relicense Millstone.
Another flaw in Millstone's emergency planning exposed in real time.
Operating a nuclear power plant in a populated residential area near Amtrak's Northeast rail service and I-95 is a mistake.
The risks are too high.
Join the call to shut Millstone now.
In Memoriam
In loving memory of Joseph H. Besade
December 1, 1936 - August 16, 2003
We miss your smile, your outrage, your righteousness, your ever-present videocamera, your indignation about all the "corruption and collusion," your boundless energy, your wit and humor. You were our model public citizen and your spirit continues to inspire each and every day.
Eternal love and peace,
Your Friends at the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone
8/13/2008 - by: Thomas D. Williams, t r u t h o u t | Report
Is Nuclear Whistleblower Being Scapegoated?
Why Were No Criminal Charges Brought Over Millstone's "Lost" Spent Fuel Rods? - Davis-Besse ‘deception’ trial to begin
Posted on August 8, 2008 by gregornot on WorldPress.com
Industry - New Nukes Not Ready for Prime Time" 7/25/2008 By HARVEY WASSERMAN CounterPunch
Millstone Unit 2 nuclear reactor remains shut down for the fourth day since critical feedwater pumps failed during a test at 100 per cent power, according to the NRC.
The latest shutdown is the third for Unit 2 in a month.
The Coalition is investigating the causes of the failures at Unit 2 leading to shutdown.
The Connecticut grid has reported no blackouts or brownouts during the seasonally hot weather while Millstone Unit 2's 880-megawatt reactor is unable to generate electricity.
Millstone Unit 2 was manually tripped to a shutdown at 11:46 A.M. on Saturday, June 28, 2008, when two critical feedwater pumps quit during a test of the system while Unit 2 was operating at 100 per cent power. It was the third unplanned shutdown for Unit 2 in one month.
As of Monday, June 30, 2008, the NRC reported Unit 2 was still shut down, at zero power.
See the schematic diagram (Click Here) provided by David A. Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC, to explain this latest Millstone Unit 2 shutdown - from the information provided by Dominion and the NRC.
The Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone honors the good citizen who contacted us on Saturday, June 28, 2008, to report her eyewitness account of alarming clamorous noises and unusual steam eruptions from Millstone, audible and visible from her beachside property at Point O' Woods in South Lyme five miles due west of Millstone.
We contacted the Office of Emergency Response at NRC headquarters in Rockville MD and were told that at 11:47 AM - just as reported by the concerned resident of South Lyme - Millstone Unit 2 nuclear reactor suffered an unplanned shutdown when critical feedwater pumps failed.
The Coalition is investigating this event - the latest of dozens of unplanned
"scrams" at Millstone Unit 2. Just last month, Unit 2 suffered two other unplanned shutdowns within two days.
When a nuclear reactor undergoes an emergency shutdown from 100 per cent power to zero in less than a second, it is subjected to intense changes in pressure and heightened challenge to all systems; such shutdowns are accompanied by releases of steam which may be radioactive.
The good citizen of South Lyme wishes to remain anonymous at this time. We respect her decision.
Through this tribute, we honor and thank her for her vigilance and concern for her community.
Millstone operators manually shut Millstone Unit 2 on Saturday, June 28, when they discovered the steam generator feed pumps had shut down during a test of the turbine stop valve at 100 per cent power, according to Diane Screnci, NRC spokesperson.
The emergency shutdown created "a roaring sound similar to a jet that lasted about 30 seconds," according to a resident of Old Lyme who observed steam shooting into the sky from Millstone Unit 2 from her beachside home at 11:47 A.M. after the jet roar stopped and reported the frightening event to the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone.
"As soon as it stopped, a white cloud of what I'm assuming was steam - shot up from Millstone. It lasted a few seconds followed by another shot of steam," according to the Old Lyme resident, who said she can see the Millstone radiation stack from her home across the Long Island Sound from Old Black Point.
Ms. Screnci said the roaring noise heard by the Old Lyme resident may have been caused when atmospheric dump valves opened to release steam to the atmosphere; however, she said she had no information as to whether the emergency shutdown led to unusual releases of radiation to the atmosphere.
The Coalition will monitor the incident. Visit www.MothballMillstone.org for updates.
10th Anniversary!
Nader at No Nukes Protest
Posted by The Nader Team on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 11:20 AM
The NRC reported that Millstone Unit 2 was in start-up mode at 1 per cent power on May 28, 2008.
The experiment is on . . . Will Millstone Unit 2 ascend to full power without another unscheduled shutdown and heightened risks to the public?
The Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone will obtain all documents related to these events that the NRC chooses to make public. Stay tuned to this website.
Did Dominion Violate NRC Rules and
Endanger the Public Health and Safety for Profit?
The first event - possibly triggered by a lightning bolt - shut down onsite generation of electricity. Offsite power from the grid via the RSST was fed to Unit 2 to keep the critical reactor safety systems and reactor coolant pumps operating.
Did Dominion fully understand the cause of the May 22 shutdown before it attempted to restart Unit 2?
Dominion’s spokesman, Peter Hyde, is quoted by The Day in its May 25, 2008 article (“Officials Probe Power Loss at Millstone”) fo9llowing the second unplanned shutdown as saying:
“We’re still trying to ascertain what this is all about.”
On May 24, while Millstone Unit 2 was at only 1 power cent power, another electrical disturbance - the failure of the RSST - triggered another automatic shutdown. This time, Unit 2's shutdown was complicated by a loss of offsite power.
Luckily, backup systems functioned to prevent a meltdown.
Seventy-two minutes into the second crisis, workers cross-connected a power supply from Millstone Unit 3, which was operating at 100 per cent power - as a back-up for the electricity supplied by the emergency diesel generators.
As of May 27, 2008, the NRC’s website reported Millstone Unit 2 was still shut down.
David Lochbaum, nuclear engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists based in Washington DC, addressed these disturbing events in an Issue Brief he released on May 27, 2008 entitled “Millstone 2 Events.” To see Mr. Lochbaum’s insightful “Brief” and accompanying graphic displays click here.
Mr. Lochbaum notes that the NRC fined the Salem Nuclear Power Plant in New Jersey a then-unprecedented $850,000 fine in 1983 involving failures to fully understand precipitating causes of an unscheduled reactor trip prior to attempts to restart the reactor.
As a result of the Salem errors, the NRC issued Generic Letter 83-28 to all nuclear power plant owners, mandating that they FULLY UNDERSTAND the causes of unscheduled nuclear reactor trips BEFORE restarting the reactors. .
Did Dominion violate the NRC mandate?
Did Dominion put profit ahead of safety?
STOP $544 billion for nuclear energy!
Lightning Strike Shuts Millstone Unit 2
Three Mile Island 29 Years Later: Nuclear Safety Problems Still Unresolved
CLASS I EMERGENCY DECLARED AT MILLSTONE
Hartford Courant: "Challenge Dominion"!
Millstone
Downwinders: Inhale Deeply - Until March 31
Snow and rain caused a malfunction in the Millstone meteorological tower
and associated instrumentation for measuring gaseous radioactive releases
to the environment for at least seven days in January, according to
a report Dominion filed with the NRC on January 30, 2008.
While
New London Slept . . . [1]
All hell was breaking loose at Millstone
Order this new book by Joseph Mangano <Click Here>
Settlement Offered to Some Residents Near Pa. Nuke Fuel Plant 2/01/2008 Read more>>>
An Inquest into the Activities of The New London Day
The playground at the Southwest Elementary School in Waterford, Connecticut, is in the shadow of the Millstone Nuclear Power Station radiation-release stack.
Since 1978, due to the pioneering research of Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass and others, it has been known that developing fetuses, young children and the elderly are especially vulnerable to the effects of exposure to low-level ionizing radiation, which Millstone continuously releases to the air and water. Continue>>>
By BOB AUDETTE, Reformer Staff Saturday, January 12
IN RELICENSING NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS;
Millstone Relicensing Debacle Cited
Does Mr. Steward have rocks in his head?
With tritium leaks exceeding federal drinking water standards, poisons washing ashore to the public beach from the nuclear power plant, its blatant security lapses and firing of whistleblowers, and facing a residential neighborhood plagued with a cluster of fatal brain cancers, Mr. Steward's blind advocacy for new nuclear power is antithetical to the public interest and well-being.
We invite Mr. Steward to sensitize himself to the everyday health and safety perils of Millstone and join us this new year to work to phase out antiquated and costly nuclear power in Waterford and develop sane solutions to our energy needs.
Time to rock the reactors, Mr. Steward.
And so have the “news” writers of southeastern Connecticut’s biggest daily, The New London Day, gone on a reckless, ad feminam binge.
Read the obituaries that you publish at a high fee, Mr. The Day. Read the flyers put up in the communities you purport to serve with their desperate appeals for help for young victims of brain cancer and thyroid cancer. Infants, young children and young adults are suffering and dying in your midst from supposedly rare medical conditions.
When does the word “rare” lose its original meaning and take on a new meaning such as “not uncommon” or even “common”?
When a newspaper compromises objectivity and recklessly censors the facts about the known dangers of environmental exposure to radiation from nuclear power plants to our most vulnerable populations - the young, the unborn and pregnant and lactating women - it has lost any claim to speak for the well-being of the community.
Educate yourself, Mr. The Day.
Read the official report issued by Congress in 2006 through the National Research Council of the National Academies (“Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation: BEIR VII - Phase 2"), http://darwin.nap.edu/books/030909156X/html.
Read “Science for the Vulnerable: Setting Radiation and Multiple Exposure Environmental Health Standards to Protect Those Most at Risk,” issued on October 19, 2006 by the Institute for Environmental and Energy Research, http://www.ieer.org/campaign/report.pdf,
Stop censoring the truth and shooting messengers. Aspire to honor and integrity. Stop betraying the community you have the privilege of serving.
By John P. Gregg Valley News Staff Writer
On December 17, 2007, Nancy Burton, Director of the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone, filed a complaint in the Connecticut Superior Court charging The Day and its reporter, Patricia Daddona, with publishing a libelous article about Millstone on December 15, 2007 on the front page. Attorney General Richard S. Blumenthal is also a named defendant.
The Day was served with an electronic copy of the complaint early on December 17, 2007, affording it ample opportunity to publish an article acknowledging it is a defendant in a libel lawsuit involving Millstone for its December 18, 2007 isssue.
Instead, The Day put a blackout on the news to keep its 100,000 loyal readers in southeastern Connecticut in the dark.
You can read the complaint here:
Nancy Burton v. Patricia Daddona et al.
12/17 (Reuters)
By Jason Leopold - t r u t h o u t - Report 11/5/2007
CONNECTICUT SUPREME COURT
TAKES ON MILLSTONE NUKE WASTE APPEAL
Millstone T-shirts for sale -
$20 plus postage.
To pre-order, send an email to info@MothballMillstone.org
Domenici
slips nuclear loan provision into farm legislationNo new nuclear power
plants have been built in the U.S. in decades, primarily because nuclear
power is simply too risky to receive financing from the private market.
But we're in danger of seeing a rebirth of nuclear power, with dozens
of new plants across the country, if the nuclear industry gets its way
and gets taxpayers to foot the bill with $50 billion worth of loan guarantees.
Friends of the Earth has been fighting to remove these loan guarantees
from the energy bill, but this week a member of our policy team found
that Senator Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), the nuclear industry's biggest congressional
ally, has slipped this loan guarantee language into an amendment to the
farm bill. Send a message to Congress about these guarantees at Friends
of the Earth Action's nonukeloans.com.
What if an accident or a terrorist strike occurred at Millstone? Would I-95 and Route 1 really accommodate a full-scale evacuation of the 139,205 people who live within 10 miles of Millstone?
Won't you follow NY Attorney General Andrew Cucomo's lead and hold a community forum in New London County. The community would like to hear about your plans to bring Millstone into compliance with the law or shut it down.
If the nuclear experiment had worked, the nuclear industry wouldn't need government subsidy.
But the technology is so dangerous and the potential consequences of an accident so catastrophic that no private company will insure them or invest in them without government - that means YOU, the taxpayer - guarantees.
The Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone has contacted each member of the state's Congressional delegation to educate them and their staffs on this issue.
We have let them know we are counting on them to block the "new nukes subsidy."
You can help by contacting them yourself.
Here is the number that will connect you to your own Representative: (202) 224-3121.
Let them know you are watching their votes on this issue.