Of all the e mails I have been writing all these years this is hardest one. I still don’t know where to begin.

First my thanks to John Flaherty for driving me there and participating.

 

As I said before, the self-congratulating statements from both sides of the tables, operation of the plants (right) and prudent oversite  practices  (left) for the most part of the evening were of course designed  to impress the public and the press. It never fails.    True to form, The “Sunbeam” Salem County ’s news paper barely mentions the presence of the public.It’s always the same.

Read:

http://www.nj. com/news/ sunbeam/index. ssf?/base/ news-3/120962463 9118130.xml&coll=9&thispage=1

 

The reason I find it so hard to write this is because I was not at my best., I lost my cool, I got angry and the longer I looked into the blank stares from both sides of the room as I  recited what   I consider

Salem ’s worst problem the angrier I got. My problem was that I had to  repeat the very same statement I gave 30 years ago during the final hearings to grant PSE&G an operating license. ( a mere formality).My statement then and now was never printed in the press. The reason, as I told these Gentlemen is because you can not find it . You can try any search engine, it is not there. You only find it by going into the original documents as I did, And there it is, laid out complete with graphs and maps, No reporter as   far as I know has ever done so , or colluded in keeping this quiet.

So , after they did not deny that a 4^th reactor on Artificial Island is a possibility, I laid into them.

 

Artificial Island is so named because there was no land. The Island was build from dredging    the Delaware River .

.On examining  the ground on which these reactors were build I found , to my horror that

borings down to 100 ft reveal no ROCK BOTTOM.

In the documents, the drillings are divided by 35 ft intervals :

1^st 35ft  Sand and Gracel

2^nd 35 ft Gravel and sand

The last 35 ft. are described as “Vincentown formation” . Looking it up I found it is simply more gravel.

 

Did they reject the site. NO

They simply constructed thousands of cement piling 75 ft  into the ground on which now rest 3 nuclear reactors one cooling tower, spent fuel pools and all necessary auxiliary buildings.

Yes, the phenomenon of “liquefaction” namely the possibility of the soil turning to Jello in case of an earthquake was under consideration but also dismissed.

( I remembered at this point the 7 nuclear reactors in Japan , destroyed last July by only a 6.8 quake)

 

 

When Regulators and the Regulated Collaborate as we have seen at Wednesday’s meeting the blame for such plunders end in a dead end . Who will stand up and take responsibility?

In a, private conversation with NRC after the meeting. I asked the gentlemen: Is there no outrage or concern at the agency ?  With a sad, rather sympatric look he said :”I was not with the NRC inthose days”

 

Important to note here: I asked PSEG if the State of New Jersey allows CWIP  (Construction work in progress) All five Gentlemen looked at me as if they did not understand the question. I never got an answer.

(CWIP meansthat the company is allowed to bill the consumer for all the cost from the beginning, of construction , if the plant is never finished the consumer not the company absorbs the loss. Delaware , during the planning of Summit allowed CWIP, which was my major concern as an intervener since I knewthat the HTGR was not a working technology at the time as proven by it’s prototype)

There was much more, and maybe more later.

F

PS: As for press coverage, a few years ago I talked to a New Journal reporter about this problem ,the subsequent article on the reactors he said “she CLAIMS they sit on a mud pile” No Sir had you bothered to check you would have found that I did not “CLAIM” I was stating a fact.