Objection to N-storage nuked

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators ruled Thursday that a radioactive waste storage plan can go forward at a California nuclear power plant without further study of whether it's safe from terror attacks.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 3-1 to deny the novel objection from the activist group San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, which had won a federal court ruling forcing NRC to consider its arguments.

The decision backs PG&E's plans to store spent nuclear fuel in above-ground casks at its Diablo Canyon power plant near San Luis Obispo. Dry cask storage is increasingly common at nuclear power plants around the country.

Mothers for Peace had contended there wasn't sufficient study of whether the casks planned for Diablo Canyon could withstand potential terror attacks while protecting human health and the environment, but the NRC said no more study was needed.

"The NRC staff and PG&E provided essentially uncontradicted evidence that the probability of a significant radioactive release caused by a terrorist attack was low, and that the potential latent health and land contamination effects of the most severe plausible attack would be small," commissioners wrote in their order.

NRC staff studied what they said were plausible attack scenarios that couldn't be made public for national security reasons and concluded that even the worst-consequence scenario would result in such a low dose of radiation that it wouldn't cause health problems for plant neighbors.

Commissioner Gregory Jaczko dissented, contending that NRC staff didn't address potential attack scenarios raised by Mothers for Peace and made insufficiently supported assumptions that the probability of a terror attack was low.

"Combining this with the fact that the agency's message all along has been 'trust us to have looked at this information that we refuse to give you access to,' I would say the agency is standing on a very weak foundation to reject" the position of Mothers for Peace, Jaczko wrote.

Mothers for Peace spokeswoman Jane Swanson said her group would consider all options for how to respond to the ruling. Citing Jaczko's dissent, she contended that the NRC has yet to fulfill its court-ordered obligations.

"The court ruled that the NRC staff must study the environmental effects of a terrorist attack. The NRC has not complied with that order," Swanson said.