Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
5/16/2014
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) reiterated her desire for the expedited transfer of spent fuel to dry cask storage while chastising the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for granting safety and security regulation exemptions for reactors undergoing decommissioning during a hearing on nuclear reactor decommissioning held this week. Boxer has been vocal about the risk posed by over-storage of fuel rods in spent fuel pools at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, a site, she claims, that is especially vulnerable due to its close proximity to a fault line. “Make no mistake—the reactors may be shut down, but the risks of an accident or attack have not gone away,” Boxer said at the hearing. “While NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane co-authored a paper that found that the long-term land-contamination consequences of a spent fuel fire ‘could be significantly worse than those from Chernobyl,’ NRC has taken no action thus far to ensure appropriate levels of protection are in place.”
According to Boxer, while San Onofre’s spent fuel pools were designed to hold 1,600 spent fuel assemblies, they currently hold more than 2,600. “That overcrowding puts them at risk of serious safety consequences if they experience an accident or terrorist attack,” she said. Boxer pressed Mark Weber, NRC deputy executive director for operations, materials, waste, research, state, tribal, and compliance programs, during the hearing on whether this news troubled him, with Weber responding that the NRC ensures safety so the pools are safe.
GOP Members Question Any Changes
Several Republican committee members, though, questioned the need for changes. Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.) put his support in the current NRC regulations, saying they have his full confidence. Ranking Member David Vitter (La.) questioned why any change was necessary, especially in light that the NRC staff did not support the expedited transfer. “We will hear calls for the NRC to accept changes to the framework that the Commission’s own employees have criticized and opposed, even going so far as noting that further investment of time and money into these issues is wasteful,” Vitter said in his opening statement. “I am completely supportive of regulatory efforts that are necessary and make sense, but our current process is successful and there is no urgent need to deviate from that path.” Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.) echoed that sentiment of questioning why there was a need to deviate. “It’s a proven process,” he said.
Boxer, Markey Introduce Legislation
Boxer, along with Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), introduced two pieces of legislation this week aimed at adding safety enhancements to spent fuel storage. The first bill, the “Safe and Secure Decommissioning Act of 2014,” would prohibit the NRC from issuing exemptions from its emergency response or security requirements for spent fuel stored at nuclear reactors that have permanently shut down until all of the spent nuclear fuel stored at the site has been moved into dry casks. “In my home state of California, the San Onofre nuclear plant has closed permanently, and this legislation will help guarantee that this facility, and others like it, are safely decommissioned and are no longer a liability for local communities,” Boxer said in a statement.
The second bill, the “Dry Cask Storage Act of 2014,” calls for the removal of spent fuel from pools to dry cask storage as soon as the fuel is able. The reactors would have to gain NRC-approval for a 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. The bill would also include funding for utilities to complete this process. “Experts agree that a spent fuel pool accident could have consequences that are every bit as bad as an accident at an operating reactor,” Markey said in a statement. “In Massachusetts, Pilgrim nuclear plant’s spent fuel pool contains nearly four times more radioactive waste than it was originally designed to hold. Nuclear waste must be moved to safer storage now before the next nuclear disaster occurs.”
The NRC is currently considering the expedited transfer of spent fuel to dry cask storage as part of its lessons learned from the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster, but in a Commission meeting held earlier this year, most of the commissioners indicated they were against the transfer requirement, saying the cost of transfer greatly outweighed the marginal safety enhancement added. The bill includes funding to help the reactor implement the transfer.
