I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The federal regulators that are considering granting a license for DTE Energy’s proposed Fermi 3 nuclear reactor have agreed to investigate quality assurance violations associated with plans for the new reactor.
Last fall the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a notice of violation to DTE for failing to have a plan to ensure that work done by contractors met standards.
According to the NRC, quality assurance (QA) comprises all planned and systematic actions that are necessary to provide adequate confidence that a structure, system, or component will perform satisfactorily in service. Attributes of a QA program include procedures, recordkeeping, inspections, corrective actions, and audits.
In June 15 ruling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing board responded to a petition by a coalition of environmental groups by agreeing to hold a formal hearing on the issue of quality assurance violations.
“Quality assurance requires high-grade components and building practices, and is essential for ensuring the safety of this potentially catastrophic electricity source,” Terry Lodge, the environmental coalition’s attorney said in a statement. “Indifference to quality assurance has led to such catastrophes as the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, Space Shuttles and airplanes crashing to the ground, and has already played into nuclear near-misses, as at Davis-Besse, Three Mile Island, and Fermi 1.”
Nuclear engineer and former nuclear industry executive Arnie Gundersen told Michigan Messenger back in January that DTE’s failure to implement a quality assurance plan calls into question all of the work that went into the Combined Operating License Application that DTE filed in September 2008.
Gundersen, who testified in support of the ASLB filing by the environmental groups, said that much of the engineering work and analysis that went into the application should be redone.
“You have no assurance that is was done right because the people doing the work were also overseeing the work.”
Last August the ASLB agreed to hearings on how DTE will deal with the storage of radioactive waste, how the plant will impact the local watershed and its potential impact on the local Eastern Fox snake population.
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