Nuclear safety at Oconee Nuclear Station near Seneca SC
November 15th , 2022
8:00 pm ET
The November Sierra Club Wild Activist Grassroots Team Call will be Tuesday,
November 15 at 5:00pm PT, 6:00pm MT, 7:00pm CT, and 8:00pm ET.
First, Athan Manuel, DC Lands Director, will discuss the
current political scene in Washington, DC.
Environmental lawyer Diane Curran, nuclear engineer Jeffrey Mitman, and
Conservation Chair of the Foothills Group of the South Carolina Sierra Club Frank Powell will talk about nuclear energy safety in South Carolina. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is allowing the Oconee Nuclear Station to operate for an additional 20 years without updating the safety standards. The area is now experiencing small earthquakes, and the nuclear plant sits below two dams where
flooding is a possibility. The Sierra Club and Beyond Nuclear are working to update the safety standards.
As one of the country’s leading environmental and nuclear safety advocates, Diane Curran has stopped unsafe nuclear projects and won significant safety and environmental protection measures before the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and federal courts, on behalf of state and local governments, citizen groups, and individuals. Diane’s areas of legal expertise include the Atomic Energy Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act Diane’s court victories include two ground-
breaking cases establishing new environmental requirements for nuclear reactor licensing.
Jeffrey T. Mitman is a Nuclear Engineering and Probabilistic Risk Analysis Consultant. He worked for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for 16 years as a senior reliability and risk analyst, now retired. He participated on the NRC evaluation of the Jocassee Dam issue from 2009 through 2016. In 2011 he participated in the NRC mission to Tokyo to support and advise the US Ambassador to Japan. He supported the complaint to the US Office of Special Council on NRC’s handling of dam risk. Previous to this, he worked at the Electric Power Research Institute for 12 years as a
project manager on outage management and probabilistic risk assessment. Before that
he worked for General Electric for 10 years as a startup engineer, shift technical
advisor, and construction/quality control engineer. Jeffrey received a BSE in Nuclear
Engineering from the University of Michigan.
Frank Powell retired after 40 years as a professor, 37 years at Furman University. His retirement opened up the opportunity to re-engage in the work of the Sierra Club. For 6 years he was chair of the Foothills Group of the South Carolina Chapter and is currently the Conservation Chair. He lives with his wife Jane next door to the Oconee Nuclear Power Station and is continuing to examine the role of nuclear energy in meeting our future electricity needs.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://sierraclub.zoom.us/j/97483013430?pwd=NDR2enZGd2xkc3dFNk9EY0pIZ2lVZz
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Meeting ID: 974 8301 3430