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Orange County Page 5 of 6 WHEREAS, the Orange County Board of Commissioners, through the work of Dr. Gordon Thompson and Diane Curran, Esq., has established to the satisfaction of the scientific community the potential for combustion of spent nuclear fuel rods during low water conditions in the spent fuel rod storage pools; and WHEREAS, the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant already has the largest quantity of pool-stored spent nuclear fuel rods in the United States; and WHEREAS, the expansion of the pool storage of fuel rods at Shearon Harris nuclear power plant would be vastly increased by the addition of one or two new reactors, and associated fuel rod storage pools at the facility would only exacerbate the consequences of a fuel rod fire; and - spent fuel rods at Shearon Harris nuclear WHEREAS, the vastly increased quantity of pool stored s p power plant will serve to enhance the attraction of this facility for terrorist attack; and WHEREAS, regardless of the safety and security findings made by NRC inspections of the plant, NRC and Progress Energy policies and procedures promote inadequate security measures to protect the plant and spent fuel pool storage area from terrorist activities culminating in fire and airborne release of toxic nuclear waste materials; and WHEREAS, absent terrorist attack, approximately 50 percent of the risks of catastrophic nuclear plant failure (as calculated by the NRC) are associated with fire-related accidents; and WHEREAS, information has been presented to the community at large and the Orange County Board of Commissioners as to ongoing problems with fire safety practices at the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant; and WHEREAS, Progress Energy has indicated that it will take seven to ten more years to bring the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant into compliance with the NRC's adopted fire safety standards and regulations; and WHEREAS, Progress Energy has indicated that it has or will apply to the NRC for a twenty year extension of its operating license for the Shearon Harris plant while the plant is not in compliance with existing fire safety standards and regulations; and WHEREAS, Progress Energy is in the process of evaluating, permitting, designing and constructing two nuclear power reactors at the Shearon Harris nuclear power plant while the existing plant is not in compliance with existing fire safety standards and regulations; and WHEREAS, The permanent storage facility for spent nuclear fuel rods and other high level radioactive waste at the proposed federal Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada appears to be no closer to fruition than it was twenty years ago and will probably not be available for another twenty years, if ever; and WHEREAS, the Orange County Board of Commissioners and the community have grave concerns about the NRC's objectivity in evaluating the nuclear power industry's proposals and programs related to the concerns outlined above; and WHEREAS, numerous technical reports and papers by environmental groups, the utilities themselves and the NRC have shown that additional power generation capacity in this region may be mhtml:file://S:\Minutes\20080731.mht 9/11/2008