Congressional Briefing: “Decommissioning Nuclear Power Plants: What Congress, Federal Agencies and Communities Need to Know”
WHEN: Monday, July 16 2018 | 2 PM – 3:30 PM Eastern
Live webcast will be streamed at: www.eesi.org/livecast
WHERE: Room HC-8, U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, D.C.
WHO:
- Mayor Al Hill, of Zion, Illinois, home of the decommissioned Zion Nuclear Power Station
- Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar, Institute for Policy Studies; former Department of Energy Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment
- Geoffrey H. Fettus, Senior Attorney for Energy & Transportation, Natural Resources Defense Council
- Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist, Beyond Nuclear
- Bob Musil (moderator), President and CEO of the Rachel Carson Council; former Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility
Contact: Dave Kraft, Director, Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS), (773)342-7650 (o); neis@neis.org
Amaury Laporte, Environmental and Energy Study Institute, (202) 662-1884 alaporte@eesi.org
WHAT:
Illinois has more reactors (14) and high-level radioactive waste (>10,000 tons) than any other state. As the Nuclear Age draws to a close and we enter the Age of Decommissioning, we find huge technical misunderstanding and regulatory inadequacies about what constitutes environmentally responsible action to dismantle these inevitably closing reactors, and deal with the radioactive waste storage, transport and disposal problems they leave as their legacy. The Illinois community of Zion has already experienced firsthand the devastating effects of decommissioning done wrong or thoughtlessly.
The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to a briefing on the urgent need to safely decommission nuclear power plants, which are increasingly shutting down. The United States is facing a significant wave of nuclear plant closures for which it is unprepared. Most of the existing U.S. reactor fleet will inevitably close over the next two decades, as plants near the ends of their operational lifespans. Decommissioning is the process of dismantling the closed plant and securing or removing radioactive waste while lowering the site’s residual radioactivity to safer levels. Getting decommissioning right is critical to communities’ health and safety, while getting it wrong could pose an existential threat.
Leading scientists, policy experts, NGO advocates, and local elected officials with experience of decommissioning will speak at the briefing. It will cover the impacts of decommissioning, current decommissioning options, waste storage vs. transport, thorny unsolved problems and best practices, financing and liability, a just transition for communities and workers, how communities and states can and can’t weigh in on these issues, and how they should inform the fast-changing legislative and regulatory landscape.
This briefing is co-sponsored by Beyond Nuclear, Ecological Options Network, Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition (IPSEC), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS), Nuclear Resource and Information Service (NIRS), Riverkeeper, Safe Energy Rights Group, Unity for Clean Energy (U4CE), and others.
Contact Amaury Laporte at alaporte@eesi.org, (202) 662-1884
** NEIS was founded in 1981 to provide the public with credible information on the hazards of nuclear power, waste, and radiation; and information about the viable energy alternatives to nuclear power. For more information visit the NEIS website at: http://www.neis.org
