COVERT (WKZO-AM) — A frequent critic of the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant and Entergy, the company that owns the facility, says, even after it closes in 2018, the plant site will remain dangerous
Kevin Kamps, who is with anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear, said it will be up to local, state and federal officials to make sure the aging electrical generating plant is properly decommissioned. Kamps said the end of operations at the plant won’t change the fact that there will still be the need to store nuclear waste with spent fuel rods sitting in pools and stored in casks.
He says his organization “is going to be pushing hard to get the fuel out of the pool and into hardened onsite storage which is a big upgrade from the casks they are using now,” which he says is “a big upgrade.”
He says Entergy drained the fund that was accumulated by former plant owner Consumers Energy that was to pay for the long term retirement of the plant.
He alleges that Entergy “pocketed that as profit at the time and now they are going to put back some fraction of that back in.” He claims they are taking shortcuts whenever they can and local governments had best do their homework and stay on top of the company for the safety of their own community.
He says it’s essential that facilities are left in place to handle the spent nuclear fuel that still sits at the site near Covert, just in case one of those dry casks fails.
