With a television news camera in the courtroom, and several other reporters waiting around, Carolina Power & Light dropped its trespass case in Wake County District Court January 11 against three anti-nuclear activists who were arrested last October 17 during a protest at the utility's downtown Raleigh headquarters.

Arrested for trespass were the Rev. Carrie Bolton, lawyer Lewis Pitts and N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network (NC WARN) director Jim Warren. The three sought a signed commitment by utility executive William Cavanaugh to hold public safety hearings on CP&L's plan to expand high level nuclear waste storage pools at its Shearon Harris nuclear power plant. They sat down in the doorway after being refused entrance to the company that has spent an estimated $2 million to prevent such hearings.

The activists represented widespread public opposition to the expansion, which would make Shearon Harris the nation's largest repository for bundles of highly radioactive spent fuel rods. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already approved CP&L's plan. Under the new plan, two additional pools would go on line, for a total of four.

Because of long delays in the federal government's promise to open a national disposal site for high-level radioactive waste, utilities throughout the country have had to resort to on-site storage of the waste. With no federal plan on the horizon, the spent fuel rods could be kept on site at Shearon Harris for many years.

Due to heat from the energetic radioactive decay of the fuel rods, the pools must use continuously moving water to cool them. A loss of cooling water could result in a major nuclear accident.

NC WARN has called on CP&L to use a method of dry cask storage as a less-risky means of storing the fuel rods.

The district attorney said in an affidavit that perhaps the activists "did not know the boundaries" of the property. "Therefore since the protest was otherwise peaceful and nonviolent [the charges] should be dismissed."

Bolton said she was ready to go to trial. "Nobody believes CP&L dropped this case over a technicality about where we were sitting," she said. "This was damage control to prevent further exposure of the regional safety risks of CP&L's gigantic waste expansion at the Shearon Harris Nuclear Plant."

Said Warren, "We're happy to have the victory over CP&L. We're not done with this by any means."

For more information, contact NC WARN, P.O. Box 61051, Durham, NC 27715-1051, (919)490-0747, NC-WARN@pobox.com.