PPSA Hearing is OVER

December 10th, 2024

An hour in utility futility! The Power Plant Siting Act annual hearing is over. Comment period? Here’s how:

The most important thing I see is that as of this legislative session, THE POWER PLANT SITING ACT NO LONGER EXISTS! Minn. Stat. Ch. 216E was the Power Plant Siting Act:

But now? It’s all been repealed and renumbered, and RENAMED under a different chapter:

And permitting statutes were repealed, amended, and then renumbered and sent over to a new “Chapter 216I.” Click that link to check it out.

What does it mean for siting and permitting if the Power Plant Siting Act is repealed? Kinda don’t want to think about it.

Grant Merritt in the STrib:

Counterpoint: Case still powerful against nuclear energy

It would be unsafe and costly for Minnesota to reverse the moratorium. 

By Grant J. Merritt April 13, 2022

In response to “Times change. Minnesota nuclear moratorium must end” (Opinion Exchange, April 11), there are five reasons to retain Minnesota’s moratorium on building any more fission nuclear power plants.

The first is that ever since the Atomic Energy Commission began promoting them back in the post-World War II days, and over the ensuing 75 years, no acceptable storage locations have been found for the radioactive wastes.

The second reason is that these plants are prone to accidents, such as we had at the Monticello NSP nuclear plant on Nov. 19, 1971, when 50,000 gallons of radioactive water flowed into the Mississippi River. This caused the commissioner of the Minnesota Health Department to close the water intakes in the metro due to the threat to human health. That catapulted the accident into national news. Serious accidents occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant followed by the Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear plants.

The third reason to oppose any more of these plants here or elsewhere in the U.S. is the threat of terrorism, now being experienced at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.

The fourth reason is that licensing nukes is difficult due to opposition by many people, even though the U.S. government has preempted state regulation of potential exposure to water discharges. Thanks to action by former Gov. Wendell Anderson when he was a U.S. senator, air emissions are not preempted, so the state can hold hearings on air emission permits, which would no doubt be hotly opposed.

The final reason for continuing the moratorium is that building nuclear power plants is so excessively costly that the nuclear plant that was well underway to being built on the Savannah River in South Carolina was abandoned by voters.

For these reasons the Minnesota Legislature should not reverse the nuclear moratorium.

Grant J. Merritt, of New Hope, is a retired attorney. He was executive director of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, 1971-75.

In-person meeting tonight — MASK UP!

READ THE DRAFT SUPPLEMENTAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT AND REGISTER YOUR THOUGHTS!

Xcel still has not disclosed what cask they plan to use. They also have said they don’t need a NRC license amendment, but the Xcel testimony in the rate case says otherwise. See p. 56-58:

Be there, or be square!

Dept. of Commerce – EERA announces release of the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for Xcel’s proposal to change storage casks (to what? Who knows, Xcel ain’t sayin’), and two meetings for comment.

In person meeting? MASK UP!!!

And here’s the SEIS:

Here’s the poop on comments:

Get to work, the SEIS is 132 pages, but in format-lite!

FYI, Xcel’s “plan” is linked here:

Change in Prairie Island nuclear casks?

Nuclear Spent Fuel Storage

December 21st, 2020

In December, 1994, after the tumultuous legislative session from hell, and the resulting “1994 Prairie Island Bill, Ch. 641, SF 1706,” I noticed a sign up on the window of Kenyon City Hall, looking for someone to represent the City at a Northern States Power (now Xcel Energy) group to “select a site for nuclear waste” somewhere “in Goodhue County,” away from the nuclear plant site. December 14, 1994 was the first meeting of the group, which met over I think 6 months, a most bizarre series of meetings, culminating in NSP’s selection of “Site P” in Florence Township as its preferred site. At that meeting, this truckdriver realized that the seals on the TN-40 casks needed to be replaced. When I asked about that, they had no plan. Oh my, that got my attention — it was clearly not a well thought out plan.

A few nuclear spent fuel documents floated up recently, and here they are:

NUREG-2224 Dry Storage and Transportation of High Burnup Spent Nuclear Fuel

In I think May, 1995, they started filling up casks and putting them on a pad at Prairie Island, and meanwhile, the NSP group’s meetings ended, the Environmental Quality Board formed an official Citizens Advisory Task Force on nuclear waste, with the task of reviewing the NSP application to the EQB for a site permit. The Task Force ended and issued this report:

At that time, I was spending a lot of time learning about casks, paying attention to anything that came up, with particular interest in whether casks could indeed be unloaded.

Trans Nuclear casks were used at Prairie Island, they’re also at Arkansas Nuclear 1, somewhere else to… Here’s a miscellaneous dock from TransNuclear (it has another name now):

Transnuclear Handouts – Part 3 of 6 – 10/07/09 Public Meeting https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0927/ML092790437.pdf

Around that time was the “Point Beach Ignition Event” where they left the zinc assembly in the boric acid solution in the cask overnight until the next shift came in, and then tried to weld it. Zinc + boric acid = hydrogen. BOOM! Clue: “Gas ignition event” = EXPLOSION! The cask lid bent up a few inches (it was 9″ thick!!), the wedges holding assembly basket in place blew out onto the floor…

OOPS!

And then there’s the 3 Stooges cask unloading at INEL, this is H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S:

Putting this up for future reference – a permanent repository!!!