Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
5/30/2014
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 4-1 this week against expediting the transfer of spent nuclear fuel from storage pools to dry cask storage. In a draft study issued last year, NRC staff determined 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.” A majority of the commissioners agreed that the added safety benefit did not match the extreme costs that expedited transfer would require. “Commission approval of this recommendation is consistent both with the analysis conducted and with the Reliability Principle of Good Regulation, which requires that regulation be based on the best available knowledge from research and operational experience and that systems interactions and uncertainties be taken into account so that risks are maintained at an acceptably low level,” Commissioner Kristine Svinicki said in her voting comments.
NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane was the only commissioner that wanted to keep the matter open so other natural disasters and other security scenarios could be studied further. “In my view, the staff has not adequately explored the issue of spent fuel management in the pool and as a result, I do not have adequate information on which to base a view on the need to require approaches that may lead to some form of expedited transfer of spent fuel from pools to dry casks,” Macfarlane wrote in her voting comments. “The staff has not properly explored all potential initiating events, in this case only considering seismic initiators.” She said in her voting comments that a more “holistic” analysis of events that could cause pool drainage is needed. Before her appointment as NRC Chair, Macfarlane had previously written a paper in 2003 that criticized long-term spent fuel pool storage.
‘Staff’s Findings Are Not Wholly Unassailable’
Macfarlane, along with Commissioner William Magwood, alluded in their votes to comments made in the NRC staff report 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 economic and social impact of this possibility could change the cost-benefit analysis of fuel transfer, Magwwod said. “I note that staff’s findings are not wholly unassailable,” Magwood, who voted to close the issue, said in his voting comments. “Using currently accepted (and probably overly conservative) models for health effects and land contamination, a spent fuel pool accident has the potential for effects that would be more geographically widespread than those following the reactor accidents the staff methodology was originally designed to evaluate. This fact makes it reasonable to question some aspects of the staff’s cost benefit analysis.”
The issue of a pool fire accident as outlined in the staff’s findings is the topic of a petition filed by a group of 34 environmental activist groups. The petitioners are asking for the halt to all reviews of new licenses and license renewals due to new findings. 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. The NRC noted last month that is has received the petition, and it is currently under consideration.
Senators Criticize Vote
The Commission’s vote, though, was met with some criticism from lawmakers, including Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). “I am deeply troubled by the NRC’s vote today to allow reactor operators to leave dangerous nuclear fuel in spent fuel pools for an unlimited period of time, rather than requiring them to put the fuel into safer dry cask storage,” Boxer said in a statement. “The NRC itself has raised concerns about the catastrophic consequences that a fire in a drained spent fuel pool could cause. Earlier this month, a wildfire came within a half mile of the now-closed San Onofre nuclear plant, which is storing most of its spent fuel in pools rather than in dry cask storage.”
In a separate statement, Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said, “Overcrowded spent nuclear fuel pools are a disaster waiting to happen. Experts agree an accident at one of these pools could result in damage as bad as that caused by an accident at an operating nuclear reactor. It is time for the NRC to post the ‘Danger’ sign outside the fuel pools and begin to swiftly move spent fuel to safer storage now before a disaster occurs.” Markey and Boxer, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), introduced legislation last week that would ensure that every nuclear reactor operator complies with an NRC-approved plan that would require the safe removal of spent nuclear fuel from the spent fuel pools and place that spent fuel into dry cask storage within seven years of the time the plan is submitted to the NRC.
Edwin Lyman from the Union of Concerned Scientists also criticized the NRC’s vote. “This is a deeply disappointing and shortsighted decision,” Lyman said in a statement. “The four commissioners failed to acknowledge the serious risks posed by overcrowded spent fuel pools. Perhaps what’s most disturbing, the four commissioners relied heavily on a flawed and incomplete analysis that was criticized by members of the NRC’s own staff. For an agency that purports to make decisions based on the best technical information, it makes no sense for the NRC to block further research into the many questions raised by this analysis unless it is afraid of the answers it might find. More knowledge is never a bad thing,” he said.
Industry Stresses Pools Are Safe
The Nuclear Energy Institute, for its part, maintained that the spent fuel pools were safe. “The NRC staff also has concluded that expediting the transfer of used fuel to dry storage ‘would neither provide a substantial increase in the overall protection of public health and safety, nor sufficient safety benefit to warrant the expected implementation costs,’” NEI spokesman John Keely said. “The industry agrees with the NRC staff and commissioner evaluations and maintains multiple measures to ensure the safety of used reactor fuel, even under extreme conditions.”
