Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
10/16/2015
A group of Democratic House lawmakers introduced on Tuesday a bill aimed at requiring the expeditious removal of spent nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools to dry cask storage. Reps. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), Bill Keating (D-Mass.), and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) submitted the “Dry Cask Storage Act” (H.R. 3587), which would require nuclear operators to move spent fuel to dry cask storage within seven and a half years, and those that do not comply must expand their emergency planning zone out to 50 miles.
“Putting spent fuel into cooling pools is necessary in the short-term, but nuclear facilities are piling too much fuel into these pools for too long in order to delay more costly moves toward long-term storage,” Engel said in a statement. “I am troubled by the crowded storage pools I’ve seen at Indian Point, where radioactive waste is so concentrated that if disaster struck, large amounts of radioactive material could be released just 24 miles from New York City. Dry cask storage isolates smaller, less dangerous amounts of radioactive waste inside units that are less vulnerable to disruptive events. It’s time America’s nuclear plants remove the unnecessary risk they are posing to nearby people and environments by moving cooled fuel rods out of pools and into dry casks.”
The House bill follows a similar bill introduced in the Senate earlier this year by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). The Senate’s “Dry Cask Storage Act of 2015” accompanied two other pieces of legislation that would enhance and expand safety and security regulations for reactor sites undergoing decommissioning and for the storage of spent nuclear fuel at operating nuclear plants. Under the Senate’s bill, the reactors would have to gain Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approval for a plan that would require the safe removal of spent nuclear fuel from the wet pools and placement of that spent fuel into dry cask storage within seven years of the time the plan is submitted to the NRC.
The NRC, though, determined last year that the expedited movement of spent fuel to dry cask storage would only provide a marginal safety increase. Following a staff analysis, the Commission voted that the current practice of storing spent fuel in wet pools adequately protected public safety. The issue was originally considered as part of its lessons learned from the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster, but the Commission said the cost of transfer greatly outweighed the marginal safety enhancement added. Nearly 50,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel rods are being kept in on-site pools across the country.
Neither bill is likely to see movement under Republican leadership this Congressional session.
