Nuclear expansion gets OK to drink deep from Savannah River Savannahnow.com By Mary Landers, 13 Dec 14 A massive water withdrawal permit issued for nuclear reactors under construction at Plant Vogtle will allow the nuclear power plant to pull an additional 74 million gallons of water a day from the Savannah River.
When the reactors come on line later this decade, the nuclear plant will use more river water than the cities of Savannah and Augusta combined.
The Georgia Environmental Protection Division issued the approval after the agency received more than 250 comments about the draft permit. By the agency’s own count 243 of those letters requested the permit be denied or delayed.
Despite the public outcry, EPD changed almost nothing in the final version of the permit, which was signed Dec. 5 and made public Tuesday on the EPD website.
“It seems to me they are just going to do what they wanted to do anyway,” said Kurt Ebersbach, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. “While they’re happy to observe the process, it was not meaningful to the decision.”………….
Environmentalists have argued that water usage is an additional hidden cost of nuclear. A massive volume of water is needed for cooling, with a loss of up to 88 percent to evaporation in the process………………http://savannahnow.com/news/2014-12-12/nuclear-expansion-gets-ok-drink-deep-savannah-river
