During Palisades refueling shutdown, flaws discovered in control rod drive housings

[FBaggins]

2. It's hardly "stunning" that Lochbaum would spin it that way.

You can perhaps be forgiven for not understanding it, but Lochbaum is either deeply ignorant of something that he should understand... or he does understand it and is intentionally dishonest.

Of course there's little to no mention of health impacts in the EIS... because that isn't what an EIS is for (thus it's "outside the scope&quot according to 10 CFR Part 51.

But 10 CFR Part 54 also requires public health and safety analysis in order to be relicensed. It just isn't part of the EIS - and there are separate hearings.

I understand the bureaucratic compartmentalization that can lead to an assignment of responsibility for investigating the heath consequences of plant operations to an agency different than the one responsible for licensing.

Ah! So you didn't fall for his implication that health impacts weren't considered as part of relicensing... you just misunderstood the "outside the scope of their assessments" (Lochbaum's wording... not necessarily that of the NRC) to mean that it was inclusive of all assessments (rather than those for the EIS) -and that some other agency must be involved.

That isn't the case. It's the NRC in both cases... but one is a part 51 hearing and the other is a part 54 hearing.

Is that less-than-efficient? Yup! Most of the government harmonized human health implications into environmental impact analysis some time ago, but that doesn't work when we're talking about the NRC. Remember that there are anti-nukes (Lochbaum being one of them) who have a vested interest in maximizing the number of hearings and the associated time involved. Any chance to delay a license or add an expense to the process is something that they'll support.