I have already blogged about the issue of the accumulating spent nuclear fuel rods at U.S. reactors. It is estimated that at the current rate, the spent fuel pools at the operating reactors in the U.S. will be full in five years. The old style casks that have been used for the temporary storage of spent fuel at operating reactors have been found to be inadequate. Some are leaking and others may be in the process of building up hydrogen gas which could explode. The new design for spent fuel casks won’t even be tested for four years. With no permanent storage for spent nuclear fuel until 2048 at the earliest, the problem of dealing with spent nuclear fuel is becoming very serious very quickly.
In addition to the problem with spent nuclear fuel at operating reactors sites, there have recently been articles about problems with closed reactors. When a reactor is shut down, everything is disassembled in a process known as decommissioning. This includes the spent fuel pools. Currently, the spent fuel from decommissioned reactors is stored on site in the old style, unsafe dry casks rated for a twenty year lifespan.
When everything at the reactor is decommissioned, this included all the equipment for handling radioactive materials. In order to move the spent fuel to new casks for storage on site or transport, the new casks must be constructed and equipment will have to be brought to the site to handle the spent fuel. This will be an expensive and time consuming process as the old casks continue to deteriorate. Some of the casks contain a newer type of fuel known as high burnup fuel is disintegrating faster than the older type of fuel which will make handling the contents of those casks even more difficult than the casks with the older fuel.
If and when the new casks are constructed and filled with the old fuel, the next problem is what to do with them. Many of the old closed reactors are in highly populated urban areas with dense traffic. Recently the United States Department of Energy was caught using parade permits with lax safety rules to transport radioactive materials from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation through the town of Richland, Washington to a contractor’s facility. Can we trust them to be more conscientious in the transportations of thousands of casks of spent fuel from decommissioned reactors sites?
Since Yucca Mountain was ruled out as a permanent repository, the new plan at DOE is to create several regional repositories. This will be a difficult and time consuming process because any potential site will require extensive evaluation and there will be political resistance to any potential site.
This is a very important topic that must have a full debate in the public arena. As more and more reactors are passing their original intended lifespans, there will be more and more spent fuel that will have to be dealt with. So far all we have are some half formulated possible ways of dealing with this serious situation. Whatever plan is eventually chosen, you can guarantee that the U.S. taxpayer will be expected to shoulder a lot of the burden of cleaning up this nuclear waste nightmare.
Reactor pressure vessel being carted away from closed reactor site:
