Huge WIN For Mothball Millstone

CONNECTICUT COALITION AGAINST MILLSTONE
www.MothballMillstone.org

CONNECTICUT SUPREME COURT
TAKES ON MILLSTONE NUKE WASTE APPEAL

For Immediate Release October 16, 2007

Contact:
Nancy Burton
203-938-3952

Whether the Siting Council acted illegally in allowing Dominion Nuclear Connecticut, Inc. to build an above-ground onsite storage facility for Millstone high-level nuclear waste will be decided by the Connecticut Supreme Court, the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone announced today.

An appeal of the decision, taken by Coalition director Nancy Burton and her husband, William H. Honan, who owns property in Mystic 10 miles downwind of Millstone, was filed with the Appellate Court earlier this year.

However, in a notice issued on October 10, 2007, the Supreme Court announced it had transferred the appeal to itself for argument later this fall, Burton said.

“The Supreme Court acted on its own motion,” said Burton.

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court has apparently determined that the issues raised in this appeal are important and are of statewide significance,” Burton said.

Among the issues on appeal are whether the Siting Council acted properly in refusing to consider the environmental consequences of a terrorist attack on the facility, which is designed to contain millions of curies of radiation.

Other issues are whether Superior Court Judge George Levine correctly excluded evidence that Dominion deliberately disabled its perimeter security system as a cost-saving measure, while it represented to the Siting Council that the site was protected by a state-of-the-art security system.

Another issue is whether Edward C. Wilds, radiation director for the Department of Environmental Protection, who served as a designee on the Siting Council, should have disclosed that he was taken on a Dominion junket to a Virginia nuclear installation where above-ground nuclear waste storage had already occurred.

“The Siting Council rubber-stamped Dominion’s application,” Burton said. “The public interest was not served.”