Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Denies Mass. Appeal to Consider Fukushima Plant During Pilgrim Relicensing

The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has denied an appeal by the Commonwealth to consider late-filed contention from Massachusetts based on events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan in March, but the state does have the option to appeal to the ruling to the five-member, presidentially appointed Commission that oversees the NRC.

"The criteria for the admission of late-filed, or non-timely, contentions in such proceedings is strict," NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said.

The state filed four concerns with the ASLB in June regarding the relicensing of the 39-year-old Pilgrim nuclear plant. The board rejected three of the four contentions in an 82-page decision.

The state had four contentions in its June filing: "a motion amounting to a request for a stay of this proceeding (Stay Request); (b) a motion to admit (Motion to Admit) a new contention challenging the Entergy SAMA analysis because of asserted new information regarding both Spent Fuel Pool (SFP) accidents and severe accident probabilities based upon the events at Fukushima (Fukushima Contention); (c) a request for a waiver of the provisions of our regulations providing that SFP issues are outside the scope of a license renewal proceeding such as this (Request for Waiver); and (d) a motion to supplement the bases of its proposed contention to address the NRC’s Near-Term Task Force Report on lessons learned from Fukushima (Motion to Supplement)."

The ASLB denied the stay request and the waiver, but granted the third contention and denied the motion to admit information from the Fukushima lessons "finding the Commonwealth has failed to satisfy the requirements for reopening" under the regulations.