Will Florida Power And Light (FPL) Ever Be Held Accountable For Its Failed Cooling Canal System For Two Aging Nuclear Reactors In South Florida? ... by gimleteye

Southern Biscayne Bay and a national park is a sacrifice zone for toxic water seeping out of FPL's cooling canal system from two aging nuclear reactors.

Environmental groups (including Friends of the Everglades, of which I am a volunteer board member) have sued under the Clean Water Act, for FPL's ongoing pollution.

Pollution, by the way, that the State of Florida under Gov. Rick Scott and his predecessors essentially ignored despite binding, legal agreements. Scott and his Cabinet, especially Ag. Secretary Adam Putnam, ignored the appeal of citizens and rubber-stamped a siting plan for two NEW nuclear reactors at the same Turkey Point location despite legitimate concern about the impacts of climate change and sea level rise in one of the lowest floodplain areas in Florida.

In the meantime, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering a license extension to two outdated reactors at Turkey Point. Because of the NRC's compartmentalized mandates, it has not -- to date -- incorporated a full review of the failed cooling canal system in its consideration of the license extension request. The environmental groups, led by Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, just submitted a detailed letter to the NRC, explaining why.

The letter serves as a good background on the cooling canal controversy, free of FPL's polished spin.

f Sacetasfoe Nrcscopingcomments Tp3&4 062118 on Scribd

FPL Pollutes and Loots At Turkey Point ... guest blog by George Cavros

George Cavros has been active in state and local energy issues for over a decade. He is also an adjunct professor of Energy Law.

FPL Pollutes and Loots at Turkey Point
September 29th, 2017
Clean Energy, Energy Policy, High Risk Energy, Nuclear › George Cavros, Southern Alliance For Clean Energy

You make a mess, you clean it up.

That’s a basic lesson that’s taught to us by our parents at an early age. Yet, executives at Florida Power & Light (FPL), the state’s biggest power company, have apparently forgotten that lesson over time. It wants its customers to pay more than $200 million over the next ten years for cleaning up a mess – created on its watch – at its Turkey Point plant in south Florida.

Polluting

The company operates a ten square mile cooling canal system for its aging Turkey Point plant 3 & 4 reactors. FPL is the only utility in the country to use this system for cooling water for power generation. The miles of canals are unlined, and due to the porous geology of south Florida, water from canals has leached underground to form a plume of hyper-saline and contaminated water spreading westward in the Biscayne Aquifer towards drinking water wells and eastward into Biscayne National Park. The Biscayne Aquifer is the sole drinking water source for Miami-Dade County and the Keys.

Last year, FPL entered into a “consent order” with the FL Dept. of Environmental Protection for a plan to clean up it’s mess. An expert say that this plan won’t even solve the problem (more on that later). Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) filed a Clean Water Act lawsuit last year asking a federal judge to find that FPL violated its environmental discharge permit and require a remedy that stops the source of the pollution. A hearing is scheduled for next year.

Looting

There’s more. FPL has filed a request with the Florida Public Service Commission to recover more than $100 million from its customers next year for alleged clean-up expenses and investments that it has already racked up. It will seek to ultimately recover over $200 million dollars from families and businesses in its territory. Yes, it wants its customer to pay. Let that sink in for a moment. This request is especially shameless given that FPL earned record profits last year – taking home $1.7 Billion.

A Commission hearing in the Environmental Cost Recovery Docket is scheduled for October 25th in Tallahassee to determine whether these costs were “prudently” incurred. If not, FPL will have to cover the costs to clean up its own mess.

A history of negligence at Turkey Point

Expert testimony, filed in the docket by the Office of Public Counsel, establishes a historical trail of FPL negligence and concludes that the Company’s clean-up plan – the one for which it wants customers to pay – won’t achieve its goal. FPL knew, or should have known, about the spreading pollution since 1978 – but failed to act on it for decades. Is FPL’s inaction in the face of a spreading pollution prudent? The expert specifically found:

- There are data & studies from 1978 that showed impacts to groundwater from the cooling canals;

- FPL should have known by 1978, but certainly by 1992, that it had a growing problem on its hands;

- FPL appears to claim that 2013 is the first time it discovered the plume was expanding;

- FPL and its consultants either ignored or turned a blind eye to data showing a growing problem.

The evidence of FPL’s failure to address the pollution mess over decades at Turkey Point is compelling, but FPL has oversized influence in Tallahassee and disputes the claims. That’s why Florida Public Service Commission needs to hear from FPL customers. Expect the legal fireworks to fly at the October 25th Commission hearing. SACE, along with other consumer parties, will be opposing FPL’s attempt to loot customers.

After all, families and businesses served by FPL shouldn’t have to pay for the Company’s negligence. FPL should clean up its own mess.

Oh What A Deal! Will City of Miami capitulate to Florida Power and Light? We hope NOT ... by gimleteye

It is still a question to be addressed at Thursday's city commission meeting, but judging from the fine print of an exhaustive agreement, the City of Miami will "only" pay $27 million as its portion of the cost to bury high voltage power lines along US Route 1; part of the infrastructure program ratepayers will otherwise shoulder for two new nuclear reactors that FPL is aiming towards the lowest lying floodplain in Florida.

In return for this "great" deal? The City of Miami will agree to drop its lawsuits against FPL. Up until this point, the city's legal department has been a credible protector of taxpayer and citizens -- unlike the City of Coral Gables -- in the uproar over installing high voltage power lines along one of the busiest residential and business districts in South Florida.

It's insanity, and you may have a chance to express your objections and opposition at the Thursday meeting of the Miami City Commission. Please read this action alert from Miami Waterkeeper:

Dear All,

We have recently become aware that the City of Miami is considering settling with FPL on the transmission line suit. Unfortunately, this settlement also would require the City to dismiss other critical suits against FPL, including challenging FPL's 1) application to license and operate two new nuclear power plants at Turkey Point, 2) the siting challenge for the 2 new plants, and 3) their ability to charge the public for the construction of the new plants that will likely never be build. The settlement would also require that the City not get involved in other ongoing cases against FPL. And, all this when the City has been making great progress on these issues against FPL and is one of the biggest dogs in this fight.

All in all, it seems like a terrible deal for the citizens and for the environment and a big win for FPL. 

The City Commission is voting on this item at this Thursday's commission meeting (3500 Pan American Drive, Miami, FL 33133). There is an opportunity for public comment at 9am and before the item is heard. 

Agenda item: http://miamifl.iqm2.com/Citizens/Detail_LegiFile.aspx?Frame=&MeetingID=1648&MediaPosition=&ID=2686&CssClass=

Full Agenda: http://miamifl.iqm2.com/Citizens/Detail_Meeting.aspx?ID=1648

We would like as many people as possible to show up to give public comment at both the 9am comment session and before the item is heard. We also ask that people contact the Commissioners to ask them to vote against this settlement. Commissioner Russell is already voting no. 

Please also share on social media:

"Tell the City of Miami not to give in to FPL at the commission meeting this Thursday at 9am (3500 Pan American Drive). We need them to stay in the fight for our community's health and safety -- and for the environment too! Call your commissioners (http://www.miamigov.com/home/cityofficials.html) today!" 

​Please share with others so that we can get a critical mass in attendance!​

Thank you,

-- 

Rachel Silverstein, Ph.D.

Executive Director & Waterkeeper

Miami Waterkeeper

www.miamiwaterkeeper.org

Exxon Shareholder Resolution On Climate Change Breaches The Denialists ... by gimleteye

This afternoon, the most incompetent president in U.S. history will reverse course on climate change, the most important threat to security in the history of civilization.

Trump, every day, demonstrates the bleak mismatch of solution to need. Yesterday, there was irony in the win by shareholders of ExxonMobil, the world's biggest fossil fuel producer, requiring highly paid executives to pay attention. By 60%, shareholders voted for disclosure of climate change threats to ExxonMobil's businesses. (In a repetitive pattern, network television did not even feature this important news.)

The ExxonMobil resolution was similar to one my wife and I proposed to NextEra Energy in 2016, which garnered 35% of shareholder votes.

NextEra, the parent company of Florida Power and Light, is one of the largest electric utilities in the nation. It is extraordinarily powerful as well. NextEra has a huge portfolio of wind and solar, but FPL is often at cross-purposes to the public interest: Turkey Point's failed cooling canal system for its nuclear reactors is a prime example. Tactics of delay, of false narratives delivered with calm assurance, are the company's stock-in-trade. It hires the best lobbyists and lawyers and uses its influence to promote a favorable public image in spite of its immensely destructive practices in legislatures and with other community decision makers. Just like ExxonMobil.

Shareholder resolutions are the only available tools to reach management behind high, smooth walls. Resolutions are non-binding to executive management, but the careers are at risk if they ignore them entirely.

Corporate America -- except for energy producers and their political hacks -- is slowly turning toward what common sense ought to dictate: that in the face of climate change, business as usual is an unacceptable risk.

The bright fact is that our politics are reacting too slowly or, in the case of Trump and the Republicans, moving in hard reverse. History is not kind to fools, but the closer climate change comes to imposing real sacrifice, the more fools seem to be elected to high office.

The reason: power wants first and foremost to protect itself. Judeo Christian values turn out to be straw for the animals to lie on. Tragic but there's hope when younger generations of voters realize the United States is being left behind in the rush to higher ground; literally and morally.

FPL: time to replace failed cooling canal system at Turkey Point nuclear plant with conventional cooling tower, now

FPL Exec Summary & Photo Update by Alan Farago on Scribd

FPL: Replace failed nuclear cooling canals in Homestead with conventional cooling towers ... by gimleteye

FPL Turkey Point's 150 mile "radiator coil" cooling canals for nuclear reactors that is leaking

Laura Reynolds published a fine summary of the FPL Turkey Point cooling canal issue, below. A few observations: 1) FPL is spending millions in ratepayer money against the interest of ratepayers, like the anti-solar constitutional amendment that was strongly rejected by Florida voters in November, 2) FPL will continue to spend ratepayer money against the interest of ratepayers, to avoid fixing its Turkey Point fiasco once and for all.

FPL delivers reliable, affordable energy to Floridians, but the corporation has no right to use South Biscayne Bay, a national park, and valuable coastal real estate as its sacrifice zone.

That is the bottom line for its commitment to an antiquated cooling canal system does not work. FPL is spending millions of ratepayer dollars to argue otherwise and chasing band-aid, Hail Mary passes to defeat a disaster its hubris created.

What FPL should do: commit to building conventional cooling towers for its existing nuclear reactors. Please, FPL: give ratepayers and the natural environment of South Florida a break.


FPL’s Flawed Remediation Plan Won’t Solve Turkey Point’s Pollution Problems
October 21st, 2016 Laura Reynolds

Update: Since Laura’s blog post below, the Palm Beach Post’s Susan Salisbury reported on the concerns with FPL’s flawed clean-up plan in her “Protecting Your Pocketbook” blog/column. Find it here.

Last week Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and Tropical Audubon Society filed an amended complaint to the Clean Water Act challenge filed this past July to officially add Friends of the Everglades and update the complaint with some of the new data and science that has now been collected and analyzed. You may be asking yourself what our additional concerns could possibly be because isn’t FPL extracting the pollution plume and fixing the problems?

FPL Turkey Point update and the November election ... by gimleteye

Earlier this year, the pollution crisis exploded at FPL Turkey Point. Science revealed what environmentalists had been complaining about for many years; that pollution was contaminating underground aquifers serving south Dade, threatening the Florida Keys and Biscayne Bay.

Only a few years ago, environmentalists had strongly opposed the "up-rating" of the aging nuclear facility and now their fears were realized: the super-hot, saline conditions were radiating beyond the boundaries of the nuclear plant, underground.

The bad news triggered a hurried response from GOP leadership in Florida, as afraid for the political outcome of regulatory failure in November as for fixing the crisis itself.

Fixing the crisis would require a commitment to de-comission the failed cooling canal system and to replace it with cooling towers, standard at every other nuclear reactor facility in the U.S.

In the past, it paid politically to bury all the ways the cooling canal system at Turkey Point violated binding agreements between FPL and the state. How FPL and its parent company, NextEra Energy, did this -- beyond campaign contributions to incumbents who are part of the protection racket -- is to make sure that when government regulators test water quality, that testing is designed to reveal positive results the polluter seeks instead of science that might tilt politics in the direction of protecting people not corporate profits.

For example, for many years FPL steadfastly opposed the use of a radioactive isotope produced by Turkey Point reactors in assessing its water pollution by regulators, even though that isotope -- called tritium -- is scientifically established as a true marker of water contamination sources.

FPL needed a fast plan to deflect public criticism or else its political protectors would face jeopardy at the polls, so earlier this summer -- after an emergency field hearing in Homestead headed by incoming state senate president Joe Negron -- FPL and the state came up with a quick fix that will cost the company, and ratepayers, at least $200 million.

When Negron came to Homestead, he was flanked by two fellow Republican state senators who are influential members of the Miami-Dade GOP delegation, Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, a former FPL lobbyist, and Anitere Flores, supportive of FPL until the crisis blew up.

The electoral optics were clear: "we are going to fix this problem" was the message, delivered by Michael Sole, FPL's top environmental officer in Florida, past director of Gov. Rick Scott's environmental agency, and current board member of the Everglades Foundation.

The so-called "fix" helped deflect attention away from the jeopardy to Republicans in November.

This week, the primary civic group challenging FPL at Turkey Point on the cooling canal crisis -- the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy -- said the state plan won't work. The 160 mile long cooling canal system is leaking through underground fractures and convection routes through the soft and porous aquifer, according to a report of new data.

Voters should care about the bad public policy and politics that continues to permit pollution from one of the most powerful corporations in Florida.

This issue alone is a reason to vote for Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Democratic state representative who is running against Diaz de la Portilla for the state senate. Rodriquez has been one of the most vocal critics of FPL on Turkey Point, in sharp contrast to DLP.

Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat running against incumbent state senator Anitere Flores, has a long record of civic involvement on behalf of the environment and Biscayne Bay.

Florida taxpayers, FPL ratepayers, and citizens deserve better than our current Republican leadership. A vote for Jose Javier Rodriguez and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is a step in the right direction.


FPL’s Turkey Point fix won’t solve pollution problems, group asserts
Susan Salisbury
Palm Beach Post
October 27, 2016

Just weeks after Florida Power & Light began work to clean up an underground plume of extremely salty water and other toxins stemming from its Turkey Point nuclear plant, a clean energy advocacy group says the plan will not work.

“The solutions that FPL and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection have proposed will not stop the pollution. It will only clean up the old pollution,” said Laura Reynolds, a consultant for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.

In fact, new findings provided by Miami-Dade County indicate water from the cooling canals is likely seeping into Biscayne Bay, Reynolds said this week.

My first encounter with FPL's Turkey Point ... by gimleteye

My parents were snowbirds. In the early 1970's they bought a small single family home on Sister's Creek in Marathon. It was built before zoning codes in the Florida Keys required elevation above flood levels. Two small bedrooms. Louvered windows and a sliding door that opened onto a narrow strip of natural, white sand beach -- rare for the Keys -- a beyond, on the other side of the tidal creek, the green mangrove fringe.

At the mouth of the creek, within sight, an expansive sea grass flat. From the porch you could see -- a few hundred yards away -- where a truck tire had lodged in the sea grass. In those years it held a single permit. A large, thirty pounder who would circle the tire reliably like guarding a nest. Try as he might, my father could never catch that fish. It existed, I imagine with forty years distance between us, as a demarcation of the human realm and the miraculous.

My father was an avid flats fisherman. Through him, now gone five years, I experienced Florida Bay and Biscayne Bay in the last years where the momentum of marine biology accumulated over thousands of years still provided a prism through which a remarkable biodiversity expressed itself. Those were the good old days, although the crusty old timers we met at dawn breakfast at the Wooden Spoon, across from the tiny, open air Marathon Airport, spoke of the 30's, 40's and 50's as though they were yesterday too.

What we were still able to experience on Florida Bay in 1972, occasionally when the conditions were mysteriously right -- the explosion of marine life in one of the world's most pristine, unique ecosystems. The Everglades.

Because of college and work, my visits to Marathon in those years were winter drop-ins. I still remember the exotic fragrance of oleander stepping off the commuter plane from Miami in the warm dark.

Harry Spear, my father's longtime guide, had a sixth sense for finding fish on the flats. On cold, windy days, when the Atlantic and Gulf were unfishable, Harry had a reliable backup plan. In the magic hour between night and day, we would gas up and trailer Harry's Dolphin skiff up US 1 to Card Sound Road in Key Largo about an hour away. We'd put in at John Pennekamp, Harry pointed the skiff north towards the creeks opening to the bay as daylight broke.

It was on such a morning I first experienced the flats surrounding the Arsenicker Keys, less than a mile off Turkey Point. Can't tell you the exact date, but my recollection is that it was before the two nuclear reactors were fully operational. What I can attest is that the southern portion of Biscayne Bay reliably held some of the largest bonefish anywhere in the United States. In other words, they were well fed by a remarkable estuarine environment that flourished in the interaction between salt water and fresh water coursing through wetlands along the southern fringe of the bay. Before Turkey Point.

The turtle grass meadows in the southern part of Biscayne Bay were astonishingly green and lush. Here is a short video clip made in the Bahamas that shows what the bay bottom looked like:


It was mesmerizing to stand at the bow of the skiff, staring down through a narrow column of water into the thick carpet of sea grass. Today the bay bottom, in exactly the same area, is arid as a desert.

There is not a trace of marine wilderness that held abundant shrimp and crabs and pelagic predators called grey ghosts. These rare species stood for thousands of years of evolution that brought the first fishermen and settlements to south Florida. And they are mostly gone, now.

Biscayne National Park, established by presidential order in 1968, has not been able to protect these fragile areas. For decades, Florida Power and Light has asserted Turkey Point is a good corporate neighbor. According to FPL, it is a steward of the natural environment, but the company has obstructed for decades a close analysis of both its direct impacts and the indirect effects of the nuclear facility on 30,000 acres surrounding the FPL facility called the Model Lands. Long ago, these wetlands were understood to be critical to the health of the southern portion of Biscayne Bay; providing an abundant source of fresh water critical to marine habitats.

Today, FPL claims 800 employees in the Homstead area. Its executives are among the highest paid in the state of Florida. For all the economic blessings FPL confers, these cannot make up for what has been lost and what FPL is obligated, by binding legal orders, to help recover. Joe Podgor, a former director of Friends of the Everglades, put it very well when he said many years ago, "Saving the Everglades is a test. If we pass, we may get to keep the planet."

Forty years ago, this test began to be administered right here in our backyard.

FPL's Mike Sole Tortured Me for an Hour with Jabbering. By Geniusofdespair

The chocolate chip cookies they provided at the meeting were very good but you had to hide them if you wanted to bring them in. That was the highlight of the meeting yesterday in Homestead. The hour and half in traffic to get there was SOOO not worth it. The icing on the cupcake: WE are going to pay the $50 Million for fixes for FPL's Cooling Canal fiasco that is increasing salt water intrusion to our drinking water. Yes we will be shelling out the bucks for their stupid strategy!

Mike Sole droned on and on for an hour as the apologist for FPL and he got light ball questions from the panel. It was such a colossal waste of time. The Miami Herald wrote an article. Read it.

I took Photos, Gimleteye left early.

The combined panel of State Senators and Representatives

Apologist Mike Sol from FPL also on the Board of Directors of the Everglades Foundation (former head of DEP)

From Jenny Staletovich of the Miami Herald:
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, who asked for the county report that revealed the radioactive tracer tritium in the bay, said the canals were “poorly conceived” when they were created in the 1970s, should be abandoned for more modern technology. Cava pointed out that canal conditions worsened after nuclear reactors were uprated to increase power output. While tritium has been detected at levels well below health standards, its presence indicates the canals also are likely leaking water tainted by high levels of ammonia and other contaminants into the bay.

The uprating project was only supposed to increase water temperatures by about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit but canal temperatures following the expansion spiked, forcing the reactors to twice power down as they approached operating limits.

University of Miami hydrologist David Chin, in a report to the county, concluded the increased power caused the problems. But FPL blamed a regional drought, along with algae and sediment collecting in the canals after they were briefly shut down during the expansion.

“The plant needs to be modernized,” Cava told lawmakers, pointing to more modern reactors which rely on cooling towers. “The technology is not revolutionary. It’s already been adopted. It’s not even cutting-edge technology.” Cava also took state environmental regulators to task for not acting faster.

Me: The DEP said they issued a violation not just a warning letter to FPL.

County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava

Engineer Ed Swakon (a former Division Chief at DERM) and Rock Miner Steve Toricse

What everyone was doing except those listening

DEP Speaker Paula Cobb

Rep Rene Garcia asking a softball question.

Mayors Cindy Lerner (Pinecrest) and Philip Stoddard (South Miami) taking notes.

Lee Hefty of Derm Speaking

State Rep. Katy Edwards doesn't look happy to be back in Homestead.

Not only couldn't you bring cookies and water into the meeting, you couldn't bring solar panels. Jonathan Ullman of Sierra Club tried.

This is so typical (from the Miami Herald):
But when asked by Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez, D-Miami, if the state had ignored an administrative law judge in February, DEP deputy secretary Paula Cobb complained that the judge overstepped his authority.

"The department did not sidestep the findings of the administrative law judge," she said. "The administrative law judge tried to dictate the exact actions…and honestly I need every tool I can get."

Andrew Korge to Senator Flores: Give Back FPL Money. By Geniusofdespair

Flores will be a speaker at the meeting today on FPL's Nuke polluting cooling canals in Homestead.

Her oppenent Andrew Korge said in a letter, Flores should return thousands of dollars in campaign donations to Florida Power & Light.

He said State Senator Anitere Flores has failed to address the contamination of Biscayne Bay from Florida Power & Light’s nuclear plant at Turkey Point.

“Many of your constituents have been sounding the alarm about industrial wastewater from Turkey Point leaking into Biscayne Bay for years,” Korge writes, “But it was only last month, during an election year incidentally, that you took even the slightest action...”

FPL employees and affiliates donated $5,800 to the Flores campaign in 2015 says Korge, in addition to $55,000 to the Florida Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee PAC and more than $3 million in recent years to the Florida Republican Party.

April 29th Cooling Canal Meeting: State Putting the Screws on FPL (Election Year). By Geniusodespair

I know it is a royal pain in the ass to show up on a Friday night, in Homestead of all places, but the State Committee is coming to us so we have a duty not to let them see we are actually a bunch of lazy citizens. Buck up and show up because the Tallahassee Senate Committee will be in Hudstead. You don't want all the FPL citizen plants (FPL always digs a bunch of them up in Hudstead - I once saw a pregnant woman testify on how great the nuke plant is) to do all the commenting do you?

 If they see a big crowd they will worry about Anitere Flores seat (with redistricting she has to contend with pesky green people) and perhaps do some of what was reported in the Miami Herald today in a front page article:

Florida Cites FPL for cooling canal violations

In a notice to FPL officials Monday, the Department of Environmental Protection gave the utility 21 days to provide any information about how the 40-year-old canals have seeped into the Biscayne aquifer over the years and enter negotiations to come up with a clean-up plan. If the two sides fail to agree, the agency may come up with its own measures in 60 days, the notice said.

DEP Water Resource Management Director Frederick Aschauer also warned FPL that a new problem — in March Miami-Dade County detected canal water in Biscayne Bay — may be violating other state laws, for which the utility may be liable for damages.

This is the largest cooling canal system in the world. Note the size of the plant next to the canals.

The one thing that makes me happy: The Tallahassee Senate Committee will probably be stuck in Homestead for dinner and lodging. The bad thing: They will be very cranky by the time Citizen Comments come up. Can you imagine 200 people commenting. They might urge you to submit your comments in writing for the record (like any of those will be read). Those comments will be left on a dusty shelf never to be seen again.

The Miami Herald comes through on NUKE Dangers. By geniusofdespair

The Miami Herald has a Lengthy article about the Chernobyl disaster. I have to admit I am very proud of the Miami Herald for printing this when FPL is in all out public relations war to regain your trust at the FPL NUKE plant that is leaking tainted water into Card Sound, our pristine Biscayne Bay and causing saltwater intrusion into our aquifer (I.e. Our drinking water).

The Miami Herald finally comes through for the citizens in its last two articles (see my post yesterday about the first article):

Ruined Chernobyl nuclear plant will remain a threat for 3,000 years

30 years since Chernobyl may seem like a long time, but it’s really just the start

Below reactor’s ruins is a 2,000-ton radioactive mass that can’t be removed

How do you protect a site for as long a time as Western civilization has existed?

Too lazy to read the excellent article in the Miami Herald? I know you are, you rascals.

Well then watch this damn video. I posted it in 2008. It is the best example of what happened at Chernobyl and best of all NO DIALOGUE just music but it is all there.



After watching my video I can't imagine you not going back to read the Miami Herald article peppered with photos for those who need images to read.

FPL - The Company is a colossal mess and what a bunch of liars on the Nuke Plant. By Geniusofdespair

Eric Silagy CEO of Florida Power and Light tries to defend the indefensible...

Note how the tritium is moving into Biscayne Bay

FPL tries to defend itself but the proof is in the pudding according to the Miami Herald:

Records show FPL had been warned for years about problems and even conducted its own research in 2010 that concluded its key fix — adding millions of gallons of brackish water to freshen the super salty canals — would likely make the plume worse. After overheated canals forced the plant’s two reactors to partially power down in 2014, the utility pushed state regulators and water managers repeatedly to add more water, solutions that would allow it to continue operating under Nuclear Regulatory Commission limits but potentially increase the extent and speed of saltwater seepage from the unlined canals.

At the time, the company was still publicly insisting its canals were “definitely a closed system” not impacting any other source of water.

The end result, say environmentalists and others who pushed FPL to move faster over the years, are patchwork fixes and shortsighted solutions they say have failed to deal with broader problems caused by the 44-year-old canals.

“They’re band-aids,” said Steve Torcise, whose family has operated a rock mine just west of the canals for 90 years and earlier this year won a legal fight demanding the state overhaul a management plan that allowed FPL to add more water without fully addressing the impact on the plume. An administrative judge in February faulted the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for being too weak and not citing FPL.

Turkey Point Nuke Plant - Don't you wonder where all the Nuclear Waste is kept?
Well there is a video on it 1,074 Metric Tons of toxic nuclear waste is stored in pools above ground at sea level.

County Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava said:

“Their first order of business has to be to do no harm to our community and to our environment,” she said. “They want to be known as being good stewards, so it’s especially incumbent upon them to set the example.”

Video by Engineer Ed Swakon explaining the salt water intrusion:

From the Miami Herald

FPL: Consistently Bad. By Geniusofdespair

Longtime environmental activist Laura Reynolds of Conservation Concepts wrote an Op Ed in the Miami Herald about the FPL pollution problems and - beyond belief - now they are going for a rate hike:

For Florida Power & Light to downplay the contamination at its aging Turkey Point nuclear reactors is self-serving and misses the point. Why should customers take any solace in FPL’s “Trust us — we’ll fix it” approach when the reactors’ cooling canal system has been leaking for years, and most recently has been made worse by FPL itself?

The Turkey Point power plant is a sprawling complex with two nuclear reactors located a few miles south of Miami and owned and operated by FPL. Turkey Point is the only nuclear power plant in the United States located on the borders of two national parks. It has a cooling canal system that is different from any other nuclear power plant cooling system in the country.

The leaking industrial wastewater facility is not a new problem. But recently new data revealed a direct connection from the groundwater plume to the surface waters of Biscayne National Park. A recent Miami-Dade County report and an ongoing University of Miami study found elevated levels of tritium, which is a radioactive isotope that comes from nuclear power production, in groundwater up to 4.7 miles west of the facility and up to 2.1 miles east.

Read more

Reply to the Propaganda ad by FPL. By Barry White

  Previous blog by Eye on Miami, response by Barry White:

Mr. Silagy, are we to ignore the up to 100 million gallons per day of freshwater from the L-31E canal which the South Florida Water Management District has authorized FPL to withdraw and the over one billion gallons of it which it has used to bring the canals down to a very low but ultimately unsustainable level?

And, while the tritium you speak of, at that level is of more subtle harm to humans (see below), it is very harmful to mollusks and other sea life. But, more importantly, as a tracer, it confirms, what has already been well
documented, that water from the Turkey Point Cooling Canal System, classified by the State of Florida as an industrial waste facility (IWF) into which FPL dumps every type of noxious chemical, including the cleansing chemicals for the reactors, is flowing not only to the west, but also to he east into Biscayne National Park and into the Biscayne Bay Estuary carrying with it ammonia and phosphorus.

The energy of the beta particle emitted during radioactive decay of tritium is the lowest energy of any radioactive isotope. This means that your dead skin cells will absorb the particle before is causes any damage to living tissue, so exposure to elevated (above natural) levels of tritium outside the body is not of much concern. However drinking water with elevated levels of tritium could be a cause for concern because then the beta particle produced during decay is adsorb by living human tissue where it can cause damage to cells.

Nitrogen (ammonia) and phosphate are two key nutrients required to fuel algal growth and phytoplankton blooms in aquatic ecosystems. Elevated beyond natural levels, nutrients harm seagrass beds and corals by promoting the growth of algae and microgalgae that smother sea grass and choke out light preventing effective photosynthesis and ultimately die-off of seagrass beds. In Southeast Florida, plant and algal growth in the bay ecosystems is phosphate-limited and reef ecosystems nitrogen-limited. Thus, in Biscayne Bay, our greatest concern would be unnatural elevation in phosphate in nearshore waters. Elevation in phosphate is predicted to foster algal blooms that damage or kill seagrass beds in Biscayne Bay, the health of which are critical for a functioning marine ecosystem. For this reason, the leaching or flushing of phosphate from the Turkey Point Cooling Canal System into Biscayne Bay appears to represent a direct threat to the marine ecosystem health of Biscayne National Park.

So, what your Miami Herald public relations full page ad, paid for by your stock holders according to the ad,  did not say is far more important that what it did say. 

Bottom line, with which FPL is well acquainted: the Turkey Point Cooling Canal System is an insult and tragedy to the Turkey Point Wetland and to the wild life and ecology of the entire area (crocodiles have abandoned the canals) by increasing salt water intrusion directly and indirectly, by threatening the water supply for the entire Florida Keys, the agricultural and rock mining interests, the fishing industry for which Biscayne Bay is the nursery, and befouling the freshwater supply for two million people. What part of FPL’s facts and pride does this fit into?

Barry J. White
President - Citizens Allied for Safe Energy, Inc/CASE - Miami

Floridia Power And Light Tries to SNOW Miami Dade County's Saavy Citizens with a full page ad on Nuke Plant. By Geniusofdespair

 Florida Power and Light defends itself against brutal assaults by its evil neighbors: Us. When a company has to place an expensive full-page ad in a newspaper, that should tell you something about that company.

Between all the Fish Kill posts of Gimleteye, I posted a warning that you should watch out for phony letters supporting Nuke Power, written by greenwash groups. There is another letter today by Bill Johnson supporting FPL --- Bill is the fired Enterprise Florida head. What a tool. The CEO of FPL is also an Enterprise Board Member. No surprise there.

Here is FPL's Full page ad in the Miami Herald. FPL: The stupid people don't get the Herald so who is this ad geared to?  I cut out the sun for space but you would think they might use it for energy instead of as a subliminal message to you that a star shines over their dumb ass company:

Hey FPL, how about the 14 million gallons you are pumping daily from the aquifer into your toasty hot cooling canals. The Florida Cabinet just approved that atrocity.

WARNING: Watch Out for Those Phoney Letters to the Editor Supporting Nukes. By Geniusofdespair

The Clean and Safe Energy Coalition is a public relations campaign for new reactors. How can a public relations campaign have members? Only in crazy land Florida.

CASEnergy Coaltion was started in 2006, funded by the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) industry group, and headed by former Bush Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Todd Whitman and former Greenpeace activist Patrick Moore. I wrote about this greenwash group in 2013.

Luz Weinberg, an ineffective former Aventura Commissioner wrote a letter today for them. Actually, they probably wrote it for her and she signed it as a "Member". Shame on you Luz Weinberg! Shame on you.

Kevin Doyle wrote a similar letter in the Sun Sentinel for Consumer Energy Alliance. Their website says: "CEA maintains several campaigns to engage voters on public policy that seeks to increase domestic energy production of all kinds" (except solar).

EDUCATE YOURSELF! Always looks up the group writing letters. They always have nice sounding names. FPL is all upset by their bad press and I suppose is enlisting these groups and their shills to clean up their image.

On a bad note: The evil Florida Cabinet just approved aquifer water for Turkey Point's cooling canals.

FPL Radiation Leak Trouble At Turkey Point. By Geniusofdespair

 No surprises here....Turkey Point is forever our turkey.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Hearing in Homestead, continues today ... by gimleteye

Yesterday in Homestead Florida, there was an extraordinary public hearing involving the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (The hearing continues today. See yesterday's post for further info.) It was extraordinary although one would need a super-wide angle lens to capture anything out of the ordinary.

The setting: a Hampton Suites Inn by the side of the Florida Turnpike. The Hampton Inn -- the first mid-price national hotel chain to begin offering a free continental breakfast and free local phone calls -- sits in former farmland covered to insta-gro sprawl. There are no landmarks to memorialize the battle to protect the areas zoning that once stretched from the Turnpike to the edge of the nearby, once pristine waters of Biscayne National Park a few miles away. It is all Denny's, Waffle House, and strip malls plus, a few miles away sequestered on thousands of acres of wetlands two nuclear reactors owned and operated by one of the nation's most powerful corporations, Florida Power and Light.

In the lobby of the Hampton Inn, incidental travelers pay bills, children rub sleep out of their eyes or are already transfixed, thumbing hand held computer games, while the adults complain or gather coffee and free complimentary breakfasts, busy and oblivious to a small sign indicating direction of a conference room and "NRC Hearing".

Inside the conference room, a raised dais covered in white tablecloth, microphones and computer screens await three judges from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. On the level below, a court reporter. An information technology specialist. A row for the hearing participants. On one side, three representatives of Florida Power and Light -- a monopoly that supplies electricity to South Florida. Sitting next to them, the single expert witness for citizen plaintiffs of C.A.S.E.; a local grass roots group, Citizens Alliance for Safe Energy. On the other side of FPL representatives, staff members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission whose work -- an environmental assessment of the FPL application to up-rate its Turkey Point nuclear reactors, Units 3 and 4 -- has been challenged by CASE. In a row behind these participants: on one side, two representatives of CASE and a team of NRC attorneys representing NRC staff.


There is also an armed deputy in the room, according to the advice and warning of the presiding judge -- Michael Gibson* -- that no members of the public can bring weapons into the hearing room. So 2016.

There are no members of the public in the hearing room, perhaps an even more extraordinary point since what is at risk and the purpose of the hearing involves the massive volume of fresh or partly salty water that FPL has been permitted to withdraw from the drinking water supply serving all of Miami-Dade County. Few people understand or know that because FPL's cooling canals for its nuclear reactors at Turkey Point have failed, the corporation sought and obtained permission from the state of Florida to pump water as a way of putting out the "fire" in the cooling canals whose temperature was allowed to rise to 100 degrees.

The state of Florida regulates how much water Miami-Dade County, Florida's largest, is allowed to withdraw safely from the aquifer. Today, nearly half the allowed withdrawals -- about 360 million gallons per day -- are allocated to FPL for the corporation to cool its superheated canal system; a 168 mile looped system like a gargantuan car radiator -- that is failing its purposes designed in the 1960's and implemented by FPL in the 1970's.

FPL has gone to extraordinary lengths, over a period spanning decades, to obscure from the public and from state investigators the extent to which the cooling canal system has failed, and yet the company sought and obtained from the NRC approval a few years ago to "up-rate" and to produce more power from the aging facility. FPL -- which markets to its ratepayers the reliability of low-cost energy it supplies as a way to garner public good will -- is also in the process of obtaining approval for two new nuclear reactors at Turkey Point, and if those reactors are approved by the NRC, Turkey Point would be the largest nuclear reactor facility in the United States.

Operating nuclear power facilities is extraordinarily complex, and the two dozen or so judges employed by the NRC are testament to the difficulties administering how producing nuclear power reveals through laws of unintended consequences.

For example, FPL has based another part of its marketing strategy on what a good steward it is of the environment. It showcases an endangered species, the American crocodile, that nests and breeds in the Turkey Point cooling canals. One of the unintended consequences of the up-rate sought by FPL and approved by the NRC is that it doesn't breed there, anymore.

The main unintended consequence that the NRC staff ignored or sped past in its environmental assessment, required by federal law, is the impact of highly saline water from the canals, sinking through the aquifer and spreading in all directions to eventually threaten drinking water supplies in South Dade, farmland, outstanding state waters and a national park.

It is taking an extraordinary effort to surface these concerns to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Public involvement is regulated by a set of arcane rules and meeting the threshold for those rules is no walk in the park. But for C.A.S.E., and the three citizens participating in the Homestead hearing -- Barry White, Michael Hatcher, and Philip Stoddard (a FIU professor of biology and mayor of South Miami) -- the FPL "up-rate" plan that required the allowable temperature in the cooling canals to be raised from 100 to 104 degrees would have sailed through.

CASE leaders, left to right: Barry White and Michael Hatcher

Three citizens pitted against one of the most powerful corporations in the nation. The subtle demonstration of that power is the absence of expert witnesses in support of the citizens; from Miami-Dade County, or the state of Florida, or the federal agency that is charged with protecting America's national parks, the U.S. Department of Interior, or any of the fully staffed environmental organizations like the Everglades Foundation whose headquarters directly overlook a deeply threatened Biscayne National Park.

That is how defending the environment works in 2016, in the United States of America. And that is extraordinary.



From the website of the NRC: Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel Members

Michael M. Gibson
B.A., University of Oklahoma (1972)
J.D., University of Oklahoma College of Law (1975)
Judge Gibson was appointed to the Panel as a full time legal member in July 2008. Previously, Judge Gibson served as lead trial counsel in complex environmental and toxic tort litigation for both private companies and the Environmental Protection Agency during a span of thirty years. The Chambers US Directory, which lists the top lawyers in the United States based on independent professional research, listed Judge Gibson as an expert in the field of environmental law. Judge Gibson also taught environmental law and policy as an adjunct professor. He has published numerous law review articles on environmental law, as well as a treatise, Environmental Regulation of Petroleum Spills and Wastes (John Wiley & Sons 1993; supp. 1994; Supp. 1995). His legal experience includes serving with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (1975-1982), the U.S. Justice Department (1983-1987), and as a partner with several law firms including Jones Day (1987-2008).

Rethinking Nuclear: Can We Change the World’s Cumulative Carbon Emissions Soon Enough? ... by gimleteye

I am a fierce critic of Florida Power and Light's Turkey Point nuclear plant and of the lobbyists who steamrollered permitting through Miami-Dade County and the State of Florida.

The first issue is the manifest failure by local and state government to hold FPL accountable for its malfunctioning 1000 mile long cooling canal system in Homestead for 1960's era reactors that should have been retired, years ago. (Instead, the State of Florida permitted them to increase power output, leading in part to the spectacular failure of the cooling canal system today.)

Over many years, FPL has violated consent agreements holding it accountable for the cooling canals; which are neither protecting Biscayne National Park nor the underlying aquifer as the corporation agreed to do. Local elected officials, including Mayor Carlos Giminez, have been next-to-useless. The second issue concerns the effort by FPL to license two new nuclear reactors at Turkey Point and its heavy-handed tactics in Tallahassee this year.

Nevertheless, somewhere inside the NextEra juggernaut (the holding company for FPL) there must be engineers and scientists who understand perfectly well that new nuclear at Turkey Point -- within the service lifetimes of the planned reactors -- is an idiotic exercise that imposes unlimited liability on taxpayers. Why? Because with sea level rise, the rate base of FPL will be severely disrupted.

The only form of energy development that makes sense in Florida is solar and providing consumers with solar choice. It is no secret what is preventing an honest dialogue about Turkey Point from take place in South Florida: salaries and compensation based on earnings at FPL in the ranks of top executives.

One can be pro-nuclear and still object to nuclear power at Turkey Point for the reasons described above. A rationale argument for nuclear power was recently made, in easily understandable language, at Harvard Business School. Take a few minutes to watch it on youtube, here:

Uploaded on Jun 27, 2015
Harvard Business School 2015 Reunion presentation delivered by Joseph B. Lassiter, Senator John Heinz Professor of Management Practice in Environmental Management, and Ray Rothrock (MBA 1988), Partner Emeritus, Venrock; Chairman & CEO, RedSeal.