Environmental coalition replies to NRC & Holtec at Palisades zombie reactor

[Yard sign design by Michigan Safe Energy Future-Kalamazoo Chapter and Shut Down Palisades Campaign; photo by Kevin Kamps]

An environmental coalition has replied to attacks (“Answers”) filed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Holtec Decommissioning International on November 4, 2024, against/to the coalition’s October 7, 2024 request for a hearing and petition to intervene, in opposition to Holtec’s scheme to restart Palisades. Holtec would like to zombify both the operating license, which Palisades’ previous owner Entergy officially terminated on June 13, 2022, as docketed by NRC at that time, as well as the atomic reactor itself, which Entergy closed for good on May 20, 2022.

See the coalition’s November 12, 2024 Reply, here.

(On November 18, 2024, coalition counsel Terry Lodge also submitted to all parties in the proceeding PETITIONING ORGANIZATIONS’ NOTICE OF FILING OF SECOND SUPPLEMENTAL DECLARATION OF ARNOLD GUNDERSEN.)

(On November 22, 2024, Holtec filed a Motion to Strike. The environmental coalition has till Monday, December 2, 2024 to respond.)

The coalition is comprised of: Beyond Nuclear; Don’t Waste Michigan; Michigan Safe Energy Future; Nuclear Energy Information Service; and Three Mile Island Alert.

The coalition’s legal counsel are Wally Taylor of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Terry Lodge of Toledo, Ohio. Its expert witnesses are Arnie Gundersen, chief engineer at Fairewinds, and Dr. Mark Jacobson, professor at Stanford U.

Some of the coalition’s legal standing declarants — all members/supporters of the five coalition groups — live within less than a mile from the Palisades zombie reactor, namely, in the 120-year old Palisades Park Country Club resort community of cottages on the Lake Michigan shore in Covert Township, Van Buren County, Michigan, the zombie reactor’s immediate neighbors to the south; all live within 50 miles, across southwest Michigan and northern Indiana.