The US House Representative and the Senators need to take this mess to the floor for an emergency provision to end the use of this reactor. Lake Michigan has not been kind to the shoreline and there is sincere danger at the center of this dismantling.
The reactor must be removed. There is no sense in anything nuclear where this is located.
At one time decades ago the reactor was a very distant energy source and pollution in the lakes was common and still dangerous. But, since this reactor was built the character of the shoreline has changed and provides a significant GDP to the states surrounding them. The reactor is now considered a huge mistake with little insight into the potential of the Great Lakes to be tourist havens. The reactor must come down sooner than later and that is a fact. The federal government needs to step in to end this disaster of an energy source.
By Carol Thompson
Covert Township - A blockade of I-beams sunk deep into the beach (click here) serve as a stark barrier between industry and recreation along Lake Michigan's southern shore.
On one side is Van Buren State Park, where visitors swim, boat and sunbathe on the stretch of Great Lakes sand. On the other is Palisades Power Plant, a nuclear energy facility that has produced electricity for decades and has become a new source of controversy.
Palisades is slated for closure in the spring. Its owner, New Orleans-based Entergy Nuclear, seeks to transfer Palisades to a New Jersey company that is gobbling up shuttered nuclear plants, promising to decommission them swiftly and on a strict budget.
But environmental groups and Michigan's top law enforcement official doubt the company can fulfill those promises. Holtec International's plans raise "significant health, safety, environmental, and financial concerns for residents of the state," Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel wrote to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a February petition.
As part of decommissioning Palisades, Holtec intends to let nuclear waste sit in storage on the site abutting Lake Michigan. And if the company gets approval to build an interim storage facility in the southwest United States, it could ship that waste on barges over the storied Great Lake.
Covert Township - A blockade of I-beams sunk deep into the beach (click here) serve as a stark barrier between industry and recreation along Lake Michigan's southern shore.
On one side is Van Buren State Park, where visitors swim, boat and sunbathe on the stretch of Great Lakes sand. On the other is Palisades Power Plant, a nuclear energy facility that has produced electricity for decades and has become a new source of controversy.
Palisades is slated for closure in the spring. Its owner, New Orleans-based Entergy Nuclear, seeks to transfer Palisades to a New Jersey company that is gobbling up shuttered nuclear plants, promising to decommission them swiftly and on a strict budget.
But environmental groups and Michigan's top law enforcement official doubt the company can fulfill those promises. Holtec International's plans raise "significant health, safety, environmental, and financial concerns for residents of the state," Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel wrote to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a February petition.
As part of decommissioning Palisades, Holtec intends to let nuclear waste sit in storage on the site abutting Lake Michigan. And if the company gets approval to build an interim storage facility in the southwest United States, it could ship that waste on barges over the storied Great Lake.
