RESEARCHERS CRITICIZE SPENT FUEL POOL STORAGE

Two researchers from a 2003 study criticizing the storage of spent fuel in pools re-asserted their claims that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should quicken the process of moving the spent fuel to dry cask storage. The researchers, Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, and Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, co-authored the original 2003 critique along with current NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane, who was a researcher at MIT at the time. Their study concluded that air-cooling would be “relatively ineffective” in a dense spent fuel pool after water loss and recommended all spent nuclear fuel be moved to dry casks. The two researchers warned that the pools were at risk for a terrorist attack or water loss that could result in a fire. NRC’s draft study, 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.” The NRC conducted the study in response to the Fukushima disaster in Japan. The Commission plans to make a ruling later this year on the findings.