New York – Judge Upholds NRC Waiver for Hudson Valley Nuclear Plant

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    Indian Point nuclear power New York – A federal judge has upheld the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s exemption from its fire-protection rules for the Indian Point nuclear power plant in the lower Hudson Valley.

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    The exemption lets Entergy keep using material that protects critical electronic cables found to withstand fire for only 27 to 48 minutes instead of the one hour normally required. That flaw in the material was discovered in 2005.

    U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska concluded the NRC did a comprehensive safety evaluation that meets the underlying purpose to prevent, control and promptly extinguish fires and protect reactors. She found nothing arbitrary about the commission’s safety decision and the court should defer to it.

    The company said even a half-hour is sufficient with other safety measures at the plant.

    The 1980 rules require duplicate systems to ensure shutdowns in an emergency, either with redundant cables and equipment that can resist fire for three hours or else one-hour of resistance along with fire detectors and an automatic fire suppression system.

    Former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, who sued along with several environmental groups, said the ruling continued a pattern of courts refusing to scrutinize the NRC. He likened the agency to federal regulators who had oversight of Wall Street before its so-called “meltdown.”

    “The chances of meltdown at Indian Point remain small, even with these safety violations,” Brodsky said. “But the consequences are enormous, as we have learned from events in Japan.”

    According to Preska, the chief of the NRC’s Fire Protection Branch in 2007 requested detailed information on exemption revisions and the specific areas including combustibles. Entergy amended its exemption request for one area to a fire barrier rating of 24 minutes.

    The commission concluded that potential ignition sources in the area had only “combined fire severity of less than 10 minutes,” the judge wrote. Also, the cables were jacketed with asbestos, any fire would be quickly detected and there were suppression systems to put it out.


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    3 Comments
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    Aryeh
    Aryeh
    13 years ago

    Radioactive, burning asbestos. What could possibly go wrong?

    kollelfaker
    kollelfaker
    13 years ago

    #1 asbestos? with the heat it would burn up as for radioactivity remember 3 mile island nothing escaped there is no reason to assume the worst here as well but of course we could all live in the dark with no electricity