Mitigation strategies and security issues with spent fuel pools dominated the questions posed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at a briefing held yesterday to discuss the NRC staff’s recent report that recommended that spent fuel pools need not expedite transfer of used fuel to dry cask storage. The line of questioning from a majority of the commissioners indicated that they had no problem with the staff’s findings. The NRC’s draft study on spent fuel pools, released in June, concluded that U.S. spent fuel pools were not in danger from severe earthquakes and that calls for moving the spent nuclear fuel to dry casks would not provide any “substantial safety enhancements.” “When I think about this matter overall, it sounds to me that one issue that is at the core of a lot of the concerns is this issue of mitigation,” Commissioner William Magwood said.
Those in attendance critiquing the study pointed to the lack of quantitative estimates for mitigation strategies as well as a failure to project different scenarios that were not included in the study. While forces of nature were accounted for, human intervention, especially in cases of terrorism, were not properly vetted, opponents to the study said. Commissioner William Ostendorff offered a different opinion on security concerns. “I feel the need as a Commissioner here at a public meeting to state that I respectfully disagree with your statement of concern about terrorist attacks because your statement leads one to believe that there are no precautions being taken from a physical security perspective,” Ostendorff said. “There is a significant body of protection that is classified that does provide very robust physical protection for spent fuel pools that are part of the protected area of our licensees.” The NRC conducted the study in response to the Fukushima disaster in Japan in which damage to the spent fuel pool led to the release of contaminated materials.
