Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
2/21/2014
A set of 34 activist groups is petitioning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to halt all reviews of new licenses and license renewals due to new findings the NRC staff reported in its Expedited Spent Fuel Transfer Proceeding that said a small nuclear reactor pool fire could render 9,400 square miles uninhabitable and displace 4.1 million Americans on a long-term basis. The Commission is currently considering the expedited transfer of spent fuel pools to dry cask storage as part of its lessons learned analysis of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, but the main concern of this week’s petition deals with broader considerations than that deliberation is contemplating. “The same information that they have on spent fuel pool risks—if they analyze it during a licensing case—would come out differently because the considerations in a licensing case are much broader,” lead attorney for the petition Diane Curran told RW Monitor this week. “They consider other factors beyond safety, such as what does it do to the whole fabric of society when you have to evacuate an enormous area and people can’t move back for a couple decades. Now that might not necessary be related to people getting cancer, but it certainly has a huge socioeconomic effect. These broader considerations should be brought to bear on licensing decisions,” Curran said.
The information cited by the petition stems from a NRC report on the impact of a reactor pool fire at Peach Bottom Nuclear Station that said an earthquake would not affect the pool, although the potential for an accident did exist. The group is arguing that this is information that has not been considered in previous licensing reviews, and under the National Environmental Policy Act, “new” and “significant” information bears re-consideration. “This information is ‘new’ because no EIS for reactor licensing, GEIS for reactor re-licensing, or EA for standardized design certification has specified the size of the area that could be contaminated or the number of people who could be displaced for an extended period of time by a high-density spent fuel pool fire,” the petition said. “The information is ‘significant’ because it undermines the NRC’s conclusion in environmental studies for reactor licensing and re-licensing that the impacts of spent fuel storage during reactor operation are insignificant. Such widespread contamination and long-term displacement of people could have enormous socioeconomic impacts, as witnessed by the effects of the Fukushima accident.”
NRC Asked to Redo EIS on High-Density SNF Storage
The group’s petition is requesting that the NRC re-do the environmental impact study on high-density spent fuel storage, as well as asking for the stop of any license renewal until that EIS is updated “to ensure compliance with NEPA.” While these demands may seem similar to those cited in the Commission’s Waste Confidence rule, a determination that spent fuel pools could safely store used fuel for 60 years after a reactor’s operating life, Curran argued that this has more to do with spent fuel pool storage with operating generators, compared to pool storage at shutdown reactors at the center of Waste Confidence concerns. “In terms of spent fuel pool storage, the risks are even greater when the reactor are still operating because if there is a concurrent accident in the reactor or if a reactor accident occurs and affects the pooling system, there are more moving parts when a reactor is operating,” Curran said. “Also, you can have a situation like you saw at Fukushima where radiation from a reactor accident contaminates the site and you can’t get access to the pool. We think it’s more dangerous during the period when the reactor is operating and it warrants a different review.”
The NRC said this week that it will consider the petition. “The petition will be reviewed on its merits, and if the staff agrees that the petitioners have presented relevant new information then we will take steps to initiate a rulemaking,” NRC spokesman David McIntyre said.
