Nuclear
Waste Now Stored Outside Reactor
Aug
29 - Milwaukee
After
decades of national debate over what to do with spent nuclear fuel, and with no
resolution in sight, the Kewaunee nuclear power plant in northeastern
So
over the past week, Kewaunee workers have begun storing radioactive waste in
casks on the grounds of the reactor, a short distance from the shores of
After
a practice run a few weeks ago, workers moved spent fuel into the first of the
25-ton, 16-foot-long casks and then transferred the cask into a concrete vault
outside the building Aug. 22, said Mark Kanz,
spokesman for the Kewaunee Power Station. A second cask was transferred
Thursday.
An
expert on nuclear waste from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's regional
office in
The
casks were designed to be temporary storage for nuclear waste. This year,
however, the Obama administration announced it was not going to move forward
with plans to develop a permanent storage site at
Instead,
Energy Secretary Steven Chu said he would appoint a commission to investigate a
variety of alternatives for long-term nuclear waste disposal. In the meantime,
"The
NRC has said that it can be done safely. That buys us time to formulate a
comprehensive plan in how we deal with the nuclear waste," he said.
The
federal government is obligated by law to accept the used reactor fuel from 104
commercial power reactors, but as yet it has no place to put it. The spent
fuel, growing at the rate of 2,000 tons a year, now is being held in pools and
above-ground concrete containers at reactor sites.
The
halt to the
"The
administration is gaining a reputation for being less than supportive of
nuclear power," he said.
The
Kewaunee plant is owned and operated by Dominion Resources Inc. of
Customer
costs
Wisconsin
electricity customers have paid more than $344 million over the years to the
federal government to help pay for the
With
the two transfers completed at Kewaunee this week, Dominion has no plans to
transfer more spent fuel to its concrete storage facility until next year, Kanz said. The 25-ton cylindrical storage containers are
ready to be shipped to another resting place for radioactive waste if and when
the federal government designates a spot for the spent fuel.
Disposal
of spent nuclear fuel is a responsibility the federal government agreed to
handle years ago. Dominion was the first nuclear operator to move nuclear fuel
assemblies into dry casks, more than 20 years ago, at its reactor in
"All
of this belongs to the federal government because it's their
responsibility," Kanz said. "Until they
decide to take it and do something with it, we need a place to hold onto it.
Our spent-fuel pool is getting full, so this is also a good option."
The
dwindling storage space in the spent-fuel pool inside the Kewaunee plant was
among the factors that led
The
Nuclear Regulatory Commission later required Wisconsin Electric, which now
operates under the trade name We Energies, to use a different kind of storage
container for the used but still radioactive nuclear fuel.
Some
Recycling
research
As
part of its review of options for nuclear waste, the federal Energy Department
will explore the possibility of recycling nuclear fuel so it can be reused by
nuclear plants, Chu told Congress this year.
Wisconsin
has a stake in the demise of the Yucca Mountain proposal, environmental groups
say, because before the Nevada site was selected by Congress, a stretch of
northern Wisconsin was once considered a potential storage site.
"Once
Yucca was canceled, there is officially nothing to do with this waste. It is
just going to sit at the reactors, including the reactors in
The
issue of what to do with used nuclear fuel is at the
heart of a debate that's expected to be resurrected this fall in
One
proposal would relax
The
Nuclear Energy Institute and Dominion have both been lobbying in
PROS
The
Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined that it is safe for radioactive
spent nuclear fuel to be stored in reinforced concrete bunkers near the nation's
nuclear reactors. The systems have been in use for more than 20 years, the NRC
says, adding, "dry cask storage systems are designed to resist floods,
tornadoes, projectiles, temperature extremes and other unusual scenarios."
CONS
Opponents
of nuclear power criticized the
The
Associated Press contributed to this report.
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