Resisting 20 More Years at Perry

Beyond Nuclear has joined with the Ohio Nuclear-Free Network to challenge Energy Harbor’s (formerly, FirstEnergy Nuclear) application for a 20-year license extension at the Perry Nuclear Power Plant, on the Lake Erie shore in Ohio, northeast of Cleveland (pictured above). If approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the 20-year extension would allow Perry to operate for a total of 60 years, until the year 2046.

Attorney Terry Lodge, based in Toledo, serves as legal counsel for the environmental coalition. He submitted a petition to intervene and hearing request on behalf of the two groups, and their members/supporters, on November 28, 2023, as well as an appendix of exhibits.

The three contentions raised by the environmental coalition in its intervention cover: very serious earthquake and related risks (such as erosion) at the Great Lakes shoreline atomic reactor; Energy Harbor’s utter failure to satisfy National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requirements for a “hard look” at reasonable alternatives to the 20-year license extension; and the worsening, cumulative, and synergistic risks of tritium contamination of groundwater, and Lake Erie, from an additional two decades of “routine releases,” both planned and unplanned (leaks, spills, etc.), at the age-degrading Perry atomic reactor.

Expert witnesses on behalf of the environmental coalition include geologist Julie Weatherington-Rice, Ph.D., as well as electrical utility economics expert Ned Ford.

On December 22, 2023, Energy Harbor (formerly called FirstEnergy Nuclear, before its involvement in the largest bribery scandal in Ohio history) filed its response to the Ohio Nuclear-Free Network/Beyond Nuclear petition/request.

On December 26, 2023, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff filed its response to the petition/request.

On January 2, 2024, our environmental coalition’s legal counsel, Terry Lodge of Toledo, Ohio, filed our Reply to Energy Harbor and NRC challenges to our petition and request.