I transcribed one of the speakers from this ... that's all I have time for, but I thought it was worth posting. - Judy

From Tues. 12/21 C-SPAN2

Dr. Judith Johnsrud

Director of Environmental Coalition on Nuclear Power

... I'm very pleased to be here and thank you for coming. My name is Judith Johnsrud, and I am a board member also of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. I am a geographer by profession, specializing in the geography of nuclear energy. And it's a reasonable question why do we need a World Atomic Safety Holiday, WASH.

There are tens of thousands of nuclear bombs still and 433 reactors scattered around the globe. They are among the most unforgiving of modern hazards. We believe that together they pose the single greatest threat tot he safety of people and the env as our clocks tick inexorably to 1/1/2000 which arrives ready or not in 10 more days. Governments and communications media have done a good job of averting pblic fears and panic and for that they are to be congratulated. But we contend that in doing so they have not conveyed the magnitude of devastation that even one reactor or weapons control failure would cause. And you have in your packet, I believe, some documentation that's fairly old but it indicates the numbers anticipated by the Dept. of Energy of early deaths and subsequent injury and latent deaths resulting from a single reactor accident.

Thus, we are asking for a true emergency response, namely a presidential executive order to de-alert or stand down all nuclear weapons and to place nuclear reactors on standby during the critical rollover period. It is the embedded history of nuclear energy regulation and of the Dept. of Energy's weapons program that underlies the concerns -- and I believe confirms them -- the concerns of the prior speakers.

First the U.S. NRC does accept the utilities' readiness assurance as sufficient. But readiness is not the same level of preparedness as compliance, as Paul Hunter has stated. Nor are the vendors required to certify compliance of their components....

At the PJM Interconnection the electric grid interconnection which serves Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Md. Del and the DC, a staff member informed us yesterday that to their knowledge, and I quote, not a single electric generating station in the country is compliant. In my state of Pennsylvania we were denied access to the reports on readiness from the NRC that were submitted to our public utility commission. We really can only conclude that grid realiability which is a major key for nuclear safety is not assured.

Now, if offsite grid power is lost for any extended time a reactor must have onsite power for its computer-controlled safety grade and non-safety grade systems and components. And in response to my questions at an NRC meeting a few months ago, the staff stated that the longest successful operation of reactor emergency diesel generators (EDG'S) was 8 days, 8 days at Turkey Point reactor in Florida during Hurricane Andrew. That the NRC requires only a 7 day diesel fuel supply on site and that the EDGs are tested for operability for a maximum of 24 hours. Impacts of severe winter weather on EDG startup and operation compound these concerns about the effects of a full station blackout.

A good many years ago I served as the representative of Harrisburg PA citizens in the licensing of Three Mile Island. The Atomic Licensing and Safety Board forbade us from cross examining witnesses about the probability or the consequences of severe accidents. The board ruled that accidents more severe than the safety systems were designed to withstand were beyond the scope of the proceeding and therefore could not be questioned. This was because NRC staff engineers' risk assessments had concluded that severe accidents were highly improbable events. These were based on a single failure criterion, not on consideration of multiple failure modes. Yet three months into commercial operation, multiple interacting and human failures caused the TMI accident. Other U.S. reactors share this faulty history.

Now, regulatory history. Now 20 years later, many of the TMI safety lessons learned have been ignored or forgotten as the NRC has increasingly relaxed its regulatory and reporting requirements. Aging reactor components and systems compound the accident potential should computer or electric grid failures occur on January 1 or on crucial dates thereafter.

And I think we need to recall the Chernobyl accident of 1986, for now, radiation related health damage, latent illnesses and deaths are increasingly being reported by scientists and physicians from Russia and the Ukraine. These real deaths and injuries are beginning, unfortunately, to confirm the DOE's [Sandia?] Labs radiation injury and death estimates for major nuclear reactor accidents. Those estimates were done 20 years ago.

The potential for unanticipated computer related loss of control of nuclear weapons or reactors is, moreover, a worldwide phenomenon. There is still time for the United States to take precautionary measures of weapons stand-down and reactor stand by. And that prudence is precisely what the Y2K World Atomic Safety Campaign is today urgently requesting of our government. Thank you.

-- Anonymous, December 21, 1999

Answers

Thank you for taking the time to transcribe this Judy. Good job. Really interesting stuff. I wish they would do as she requests.

Victoria

-- Anonymous, December 22, 1999

The conference can be vioewed online at www.cspan.org

-- Anonymous, December 22, 1999