But, not to worry! The envirowackos have not yet given up!A coalition of nine environmental groups said Monday afternoon that a defeat at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission earlier in the day would be only a temporary setback in its legal fight to halt construction of the nation's first commercial reactors in three decades.
The coalition is challenging the NRC licenses to build and operate two reactors at Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro, GA. It has asked the NRC to stop work at the $14 billion project while a federal appeals court in Washington decides the legal challenge to the licenses.
Coalition members say the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that crippled four commercial reactors in Fukushima, Japan, shows that Vogtle is more dangerous to people and the environment than was originally understood.
They got neutrons, man! And alpha particles!
Waynesboro is about 110 miles from the ocean as the seagull flies. It'd be one big honkin' tsunami to get that far...
The NRC says it had considered the Japanese experience when it issued the licenses in February after reviewing its task force report. "We ultimately accepted the staff's position that our regulatory approach and our regulated plants' capabilities 'allow the task force to conclude that a sequence of events like the Fukushima accident is unlikely to occur in the United States and [that] continued operation and continued licensing activities do not pose an imminent threat to public health and safety,'" wrote NRC Secretary Annette Vietti-Cook in Monday's unanimous commission decision.
Get that? Unanimous.
The commission denied the environmental coalition's request because it found that the challenge was not certain to win in court.