Got a light?

Here are a couple matchbooks put out by Consumers Power Company to promote their two nuclear plants: the early Big Rock Point plant, a small 67 MWe General Electric Boiling Water Reactor in northern Michigan that operated from 1962 -1997, and the still operating Palisades Nuclear Plant, a 778 MWe plant of Combustion Engineering design, in South Haven Michigan. Palisades received its operating license in 1971 and a renewed license in 2007 for 20 additional years of operation beyond the original license term.

During my first years at the NRC I worked on what was then the largest civil penalty case brought against an operator -- a $450,000 fine (penalties in 1980 were allowed up to $5000 per day per violation) against Consumers Power for not properly isolating a line after a maintenance operation which could thereby compromise containment integrity in case of an accident, a condition not discovered for over a year. Compare that to the $155, 000 penalty assessed on the operator of Three Mile Island 2 after the 1979 accident! The case was settled for half the proposed penalty.

 And here's another gem -- a cigarette lighter from Northern States Power in Minnesota.  This probably depicts the Monticello Plant, the first reactor built by NSP (now under Xcel Energy), though the artist's depiction doesn't quite match what you find you see in modern photographs.

Let's light up with nukes!