Radioactive Waste 78 - Senate Committee Grills Nuclear Industry Representative
Last week, the United States Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee convened a panel of specialists to answer questions about the safety and security of decommissioned nuclear reactors. Barbara Boxer, the Democratic chairwoman of the committee asked the specialists whether the spent fuel stored on-site at decommissioned reactors was being properly secured. The fact that five nuclear reactors have been chosen for decommissioning recently elevates the importance of the question. The on-site spent fuel is kept in pools that must be cooled, cleaned and closely monitored. Critics of the nuclear industry say that such spent fuel pools are vulnerable to accident or attack.
As Ms. Boxer said, “The reactors may be shut down, but the risk of an accident or attack have not gone away.” In light of the fact that an accident or an attack could lead to a fire that could release large amounts of radiation, she suggested that the fuel should be taken from the pools and stored in concrete and steel dry casks on-site. These cask would be safer than the spent fuel pools but the current cask design must be improved to prevent gas buildup that could cause explosions.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry experts claimed that there was sufficient oversight and security already in place to assure the security and safety of the fuel in the pools. Ms. Boxer raised questions about the spent fuel stored at the closed San Onofre nuclear power station. She asked if the experts were concerned about the fact that there were twenty six hundred fuel assemblies stored in pools designed to hold sixteen hundred fuel assemblies. The experts assured her that they considered the spent fuel at San Onofre to be safely secured.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the Federal government failed in its promise to have a national nuclear waste repository operating by 1998. The Yucca Mountain Repository project was cancelled a few years ago and the best current estimated for opening a functional repository is 2050. The nuclear industry in the United States is in decline and the cost of storing spent fuel on-site is rising. Nuclear reactor operators have been paying a fee for each fuel assembly into a fund for the creation of a national repository. Citing the failure of the Federal government to keep its promise to open a repository in 1998, the operators are demanding a refund of the fees they have paid that now amount to billions of dollars. Even so, the projected cost of dealing with current spent nuclear fuel has risen past the money that is now in the fund. Critics of returning the money point out that if the money is taken out of the fund now, future growth of the fund through interest payments on investment would be prevented.
Senators Boxer, Markey and Sanders are sponsoring legislation to force the operators of nuclear reactors to apply the same standards of security, safety and emergency preparedness to closed reactors that are currently required for operating reactors. The industry experts claim that in about fifteen months, the spent fuel in a pool would be cool enough so that an accident or attack would not result in a dangerous release of radioactive materials. They complained that maintaining full-scale emergency capacity at a close reactor would cost twenty million dollars a year and would deplete their decommissioning funds
The nuclear industry has convinced a Federal appeals court that the collection of fees should stop because there is no longer a functioning program for a national nuclear waste repository. The collection of fees ended last week. There have been efforts to start a new project to site and construct a repository but Republicans have demanded that the Federal government complete the work necessary to open a repository at Yucca Mountain.
