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Friday, March 18, 2011
Ind. Law - Still more on "Indiana rethinking nuclear energy plans"
Updating what is now a series of recent ILB posts on the history and future of nuclear power in Indiana, see this long story by Vicki Urbanik in yesterday's Chesterton Tribune headed "Nuclear plant in the Indiana Dunes? Japan's crisis brings back memories." Some quotes:
The time period was 1967 to 1981, when NIPSCO proposed its Bailly I nuclear power plant to be built next to the existing coal-fired plant at Dune Acres.The anti-nuclear fight inspired [Herb] Read and other Save the Dunes Council supporters to form the Concerned Citizens to bring legal challenges to the project. The appeals went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1977, the Bailly Alliance, a coalition of citizens, environmentalists, labor, and others was formed to take the fight public. The group leafleted, picketed, rallied, testified in Washington, and otherwise fought tooth and nail to keep a nuclear plant out of the Indiana Dunes. The group’s efforts culminated in a 1981 march and rally of 2,000 people in the adjacent Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. * * *
The estimated cost of the project had risen from less than $100 million in 1967 to more than $1 billion in 1981.
Ultimately, NIPSCO was required to refund $81 million spent on the project obtained by what the Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana said was an illegal rate increase for the incomplete plant.
According to Read, NIPSCO sold its reactor to a company in Japan.
The reactors that exploded in Japan this week were the same type that NIPSCO proposed here, GE boiling water reactors.
Read said the issues now unfolding over the safety of nuclear power were the same ones debated nearly 30 years ago here.
The efficiency of the coolant, the health effects of radiation leakage, and the numbers of people who could be harmed were among the concerns argued here just as they are now in Japan.
In the Bailly fight, opponents tried to argue that the efficiency of the cooling would be a problem, but that argument wasn’t allowed in testimony, he said.
Estimates of the area’s population were also skewed, Read recalled, citing a map that identified one area near the plant as “forest cover.”
Read said in actuality, the area included an apartment building, and he submitted photos of that building to the NRC. But the NRC determined that his photographs weren’t legitimate, since the official map showing the forest cover was prepared by a professional mapmaker.
Bailly I was ultimately stopped after one particular delay over the proper foundation for the plant. Read said NIPSCO found that it couldn’t drive the pilings down to bedrock -- as the opponents had predicted -- and proposed resting the foundation pilings in sand and clay.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 18, 2011 06:52 AM
Posted to Indiana Law