French nuclear reactor in Maryland won't go forward
Planned third reactor at Calvert Cliffs is canceled
TAKOMA PARK, Md. -- A 60-day reprieve to allow French-owned UniStar to find a US partner for its proposed third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs, MD, expired with no reprieve from the commissioners at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), sounding the final death knell for the long troubled project.
On August 30, the NRC had given UniStar, wholly owned by French governmental electric utility, Électricité de France (EdF), 60 more days to comply with the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) in order to be granted a license for a third reactor at Calvert Cliffs.
After the original US partner, Constellation Energy, exited the deal in 2010, EdF remained the lone applicant. The AEA forbids control and domination of a US reactor by a foreign entity. EdF had hoped to build an Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR), a French Areva design, originally targeted for six US nuclear sites.
“The clock ran out on French nuclear expansion plans in the US,” said Paul Gunter, Director of Reactor Oversight at Beyond Nuclear, one of four groups that filed contentions to the NRC in 2008 to block the Calvert Cliffs EPR. “Electricity companies have lost their appetite for exorbitantly expensive and increasingly risky atomic power,” he said. “The new reactor fiasco is over in Maryland and the termination of the proceeding means that the other EPR projects are as good as dead in the US,” he said.
Areva had originally planned for seven EPR reactors at six US sites, in Idaho, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas with Maryland being the “reference application” for the others. UniStar’s lawyers had appealed to the NRC to keep the licensing process open.
The EPR, a new, untested design, already has a lamentable history in Europe. The EPR reactors under construction in Flamanville, France and Olkiluoto, Finland, are years behind schedule and enormously over-budget and the design has been challenged by safety authorities in France, Finland and Britain. A second EPR in France slated for Penly has been canceled.
“While fighting, in France, against the construction of an EPR nuclear reactor at Flamanville, which EdF presents as a showcase for overseas sales, CRILAN rejoices at this commercial failure of EdF and Areva in the US and congratulates the American organizations who have led a legal fight against this project for five years,” said Paulette Anger of CRILAN - Comité de Reflexion d'Information et de Lutte Anti Nucléaire - a French watchdog group based in Normandy that opposes the Flamanville reactor and the continued operation of the La Hague reprocessing plant.
In November 2008, three national safe energy groups - Beyond Nuclear, Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and Public Citizen - and the local citizens group Southern Maryland Citizen Alliance for Renewable Energy Solutions - formally petitioned the NRC licensing board for a hearing opposing the Calvert Cliffs 3 application. The joint petition included the contention that EdF, as the dominate owner of the third proposed reactor, was in violation of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 as amended and NRC licensing regulations, which prohibit controlling foreign ownership of a US nuclear plant.
More information and links are found here: http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/calvert-cliffs-cola/cc3_11012012_proceeding-terminated.pdf
www.BeyondNuclear.org • http://www.s323409623.onlinehome.fr/crilan/ • http://observ.nucleaire.free.fr
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Beyond Nuclear works to end nuclear power and nuclear weapons. With a strongly rooted commitment to citizen action - and in the wake of the devastating Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan - Beyond Nuclear is empowering grassroots communities around the country to shut US nuclear reactors. This summer, through our campaign to “Freeze our Fukushimas,” we will organize town hall meetings, media campaign, actions, petitions and protests to ensure that the 23 US reactors identical in design to those at Fukushima are closed. More at www.beyondnuclear.org.
Planned third reactor at Calvert Cliffs is canceled
TAKOMA PARK, Md. -- A 60-day reprieve to allow French-owned UniStar to find a US partner for its proposed third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs, MD, expired with no reprieve from the commissioners at the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), sounding the final death knell for the long troubled project.
On August 30, the NRC had given UniStar, wholly owned by French governmental electric utility, Électricité de France (EdF), 60 more days to comply with the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) in order to be granted a license for a third reactor at Calvert Cliffs.
After the original US partner, Constellation Energy, exited the deal in 2010, EdF remained the lone applicant. The AEA forbids control and domination of a US reactor by a foreign entity. EdF had hoped to build an Evolutionary Power Reactor (EPR), a French Areva design, originally targeted for six US nuclear sites.
“The clock ran out on French nuclear expansion plans in the US,” said Paul Gunter, Director of Reactor Oversight at Beyond Nuclear, one of four groups that filed contentions to the NRC in 2008 to block the Calvert Cliffs EPR. “Electricity companies have lost their appetite for exorbitantly expensive and increasingly risky atomic power,” he said. “The new reactor fiasco is over in Maryland and the termination of the proceeding means that the other EPR projects are as good as dead in the US,” he said.
Areva had originally planned for seven EPR reactors at six US sites, in Idaho, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas with Maryland being the “reference application” for the others. UniStar’s lawyers had appealed to the NRC to keep the licensing process open.
The EPR, a new, untested design, already has a lamentable history in Europe. The EPR reactors under construction in Flamanville, France and Olkiluoto, Finland, are years behind schedule and enormously over-budget and the design has been challenged by safety authorities in France, Finland and Britain. A second EPR in France slated for Penly has been canceled.
“While fighting, in France, against the construction of an EPR nuclear reactor at Flamanville, which EdF presents as a showcase for overseas sales, CRILAN rejoices at this commercial failure of EdF and Areva in the US and congratulates the American organizations who have led a legal fight against this project for five years,” said Paulette Anger of CRILAN - Comité de Reflexion d'Information et de Lutte Anti Nucléaire - a French watchdog group based in Normandy that opposes the Flamanville reactor and the continued operation of the La Hague reprocessing plant.
In November 2008, three national safe energy groups - Beyond Nuclear, Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and Public Citizen - and the local citizens group Southern Maryland Citizen Alliance for Renewable Energy Solutions - formally petitioned the NRC licensing board for a hearing opposing the Calvert Cliffs 3 application. The joint petition included the contention that EdF, as the dominate owner of the third proposed reactor, was in violation of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 as amended and NRC licensing regulations, which prohibit controlling foreign ownership of a US nuclear plant.
More information and links are found here: http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/calvert-cliffs-cola/cc3_11012012_proceeding-terminated.pdf
www.BeyondNuclear.org • http://www.s323409623.onlinehome.fr/crilan/ • http://observ.nucleaire.free.fr
---
Beyond Nuclear works to end nuclear power and nuclear weapons. With a strongly rooted commitment to citizen action - and in the wake of the devastating Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan - Beyond Nuclear is empowering grassroots communities around the country to shut US nuclear reactors. This summer, through our campaign to “Freeze our Fukushimas,” we will organize town hall meetings, media campaign, actions, petitions and protests to ensure that the 23 US reactors identical in design to those at Fukushima are closed. More at www.beyondnuclear.org.
Paranoia has killed the only real clean source of electricity. Congratulations Greenies - you've succeeded in stopping us from being energy independent and clean.
