Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
6/26/2015
Changes are needed in the nation’s management of spent nuclear fuel at reactor sites, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said late last week in a letter to Senate leaders. Healey wrote the letter in support of legislation introduced earlier this year by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) that would require nuclear reactor sites to move fuel from wet to dry storage. According to Healey, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s failure to address spent fuel safety has left the public at risk to an accident. “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has long had an obligation to develop meaningful long-term solutions to the current on-site storage of nuclear waste in facilities across the country, yet it has failed to do so,” Healey wrote. “Its failure to act poses risks to public safety and the environment.”
She added, “More than 40 years after the federal government licensed the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth, MA and the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, VT (located less than ten miles from the Massachusetts border), a permanent nuclear waste repository remains out of reach. It is unacceptable.”
Boxer, along with Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.), introduced a series of bills earlier this year aimed at preventing the reduction of safety and security regulations for reactor sites undergoing decommissioning and for the storage of spent nuclear fuel at operating nuclear plants. The Senators, who each have commercial reactors in their states, introduced the bills last session, but they did not see any movement. They are not likely to see movement this session, either.
Two of the three bills, the Safe and Secure Decommissioning Act of 2015 and the Nuclear Plant Decommissioning Act of 2015, deal with increasing safety at the decommissioning site while increasing local stakeholder involvement in the decommissioning planning process. The third bill, the Dry Cask Storage Act of 2015, calls for the removal of spent fuel from pools to dry cask storage as soon as the fuel is ready. 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
NRC Says Storage Is Safe
The NRC, in early 2014, voted not to require the expedited transfer of spent fuel from wet to dry storage, citing the relatively minimal safety impact the change would have. 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. The bill includes funding to help utilities implement the transfer.
Citing the NRC’s effort, a spokesperson with the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said this week that storage of spent fuel at reactor sites was safe. “The NRC considers both dry storage and pool storage to be safe. When the NRC last considered this issue, the nuclear industry estimated the cost of expediting the transfer of spent fuel into dry storage to cost $3.8 billion,” EPW spokesperson Kristina Baum said in response to the letter. As to whether the committee would hold a hearing on the bills, Baum remained non-committal. “We’ll keep you posted as we confirm any future plans,” she said.
