Who is targeting Turkey Point? Why? Part II 1

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  1. “what mattered was that FP&L was violating its permits by discharging water containing contaminants from a part of the plant in which discharges were not allowed.”

    As I have commented on here before. If a facility were to take water out of the river running through, or next to, their property with a portable pump and simply aim the hose back into the river, according to the EPA they are guilty of plant discharges that are not allowed or in-accordance with their permits, thus could be fined. In fact, they could be fined for spraying water from the public/city water system! Unless, the Environmental Impact Statement and/or other permits for the facility explicitly allow this action. At least that was the EPA and NRC interpretation of the law when I was in the regulatory compliance group. I seriously doubt if it has ever been interpenetrated in the favor of the industry since then. Does the FP&L discuss the fact that some minor quantity of Tritium will be released and the expected quantity of this release and the various sources as a consequence of the normal process of operation? Then, if the source of this “allowed contaminate” is different from or not described in the permits, they could still be found in violation. Some of this is not from the EPA rules themselves but from the ratcheting of the interpretation of the rules by lawsuits from environmental lawyers, often in collusion with EPA employee activists.

    1. @Rich

      Did you see the part where I linked to the NRC’s disposition of a similar comment during the EA for the extended power update? The NRC and EPA have already weighed in to support interpretation that a system like the CCS isn’t discharging anything because it has no direct contact or pipes. Minor seepage or other interaction is both expected and allowed.

      1. Read that and other concerns about the CCS on the internet. There appears to be an ongoing attack on the FP&L CCS, I.e. Miami Dade lawsuit, NRC AO – December 2014 – http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML1502/ML15026A548.pdf Are you going to discuss those? As I said this appears to be another Ratchet job, or a great desire to shut TP down. Just keep making it more costly to operate.

  2. When they built the nuclear plant a few decades ago, why did they make the cooling canal system rather than use the effectively infinite heat sink of the Atlantic Ocean?

    1. @ Jim Baerg
      Its a good question, but will probably take a marine ecologist to adequately answer. The Atlantic shelf slopes rather gradually, Florida waters tends towards warm. I don’t know myself, but won’t dismiss the possibility of there being good reason.

      1. @Jim Baerg

        Though I am generally a big supporter of once through cooling for power plants located on large bodies of water like the Great Lakes, the Hudson River, or the oceans, I believe that using a closed loop cooling canal system for Turkey Point was probably the right call.

        It isn’t actually on the Atlantic Ocean. It borders the Biscayne Bay, which is a shallow body of water with max depth of less than 20 feet. When I was growing up in South Florida, my grandmother used to take us to Matheson Hammock, about a dozen miles north of Turkey Point, but on the same body of water. It was so shallow that even as a kid, I could walk far enough away from shore so that Grandma almost couldn’t see me any more.

        If you go to Google maps and turn on the satellite photo view, you can see how shallow the bay really is. The mangrove shorelines and the off-shore keys are now quite unique, even though they used to be almost ubiquitous features of my home state. That plant played a big role in protecting a small piece of what used to be a tropical paradise – before it became a megalopolis.

  3. In California no new plant can be built with once through cooling for discharge into any river or the Pacific. All have to have cooling towers or air cooling. This includes the dozens of combined cycle gas turbines built at plants that had at one time a license to discharge into a water way.

    Existing once-through cooling is now high regulated for inland water ways due to fish kills. There is some basis for this so I don’t hold a blanket condemnation of these regs except for ocean cooling because as Rod noted, it is effectively an infinite heat sink.

  4. “Of course, non aquatic species like birds, snakes, turtles and crocodiles are free to come and go into the CCS as they please. Winds, water vapor, pollen, seeds and leaves are not prevented from flowing across the surface boundary of the open canals.”

    “The opposition is calling for remedies like lining the canal system, flushing out the existing inventory (with an unspecified source of clean water and an unspecified discharge location), or shutting down the power plant.”

    On whim, I followed Rod’s link to National Geographic’s U.S. Crocodiles Shed “Endangered” Status. While no longer “endangered”, the american crocodile is still listed as “threatened”:

    “Florida is the only U.S. state where the crocodiles are found.

    “The move means that the species is no longer in imminent danger of extinction in the United States but is still protected by federal law.”

    “(U. Florida researcher Frank) Mazzotti attributes most of the comeback to habitat protection by federal, state, and local wildlife management agencies, as well as some corporate allies.

    “A significant chunk of habitat is provided by Florida Power and Light Company at their Turkey Point plant,” he said.

    “The nuclear plant’s cooling canals, built on crocodile habitat, are now managed as a croc-friendly refuge.”

    Okay, so we’ve got a managed artificial wetlands. It is home to a federally protected species. The wetlands is largely responsible, if not key, to it’s survival.

    And Southern Alliance for Clean Energy wants to drain this swamp and pave it over with non-permeable material e.g. concrete and asphalt. Then re-fill it with fresh water free of its former biological “contaminants”.

    Right. Have they filed an EIS with EPA? Does the Audubon Society know?

    1. @Ed Leaver

      Does the Audubon Society know?

      Unfortunately, the Tropical Audubon Society is part of the actions against Turkey Point. The current members of the organization probably have no idea of their history and the important role that FP&L, under the leadership of McGregor Smith played in protecting the habitat of the southern part of Biscayne Bay from “visionary” South Florida developers.

  5. The USAF water survival training school used to be at Homestead, right next to the plant. Spent a week or two there in 1975. A lot of us went thru the school until Andrew lawn mowed Homestead in 1992. Cheers –

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