Friday, Aug. 30, 2002 | 5:24 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION: Sept. 1, 2002
RED WING, Minn. -- A decade ago, Prairie Island nuclear plant operators here were running out of space in the 41-foot deep pool they use to store highly radioactive waste. And it was increasingly clear the federal government would not keep its promise to begin hauling waste away to Nevada's Yucca Mountain by 1998.
None of the nation's nuclear plant waste pools were designed to store the material long-term. So plant operators at Prairie Island turned to a solution adopted at other plants: 17-foot-tall steel "dry cask" waste containers.
"We were facing quite a logjam at that point," said Scott Wilensky, spokesman for Xcel Energy Co., which owns the plant. "It was becoming a very serious situation."
The company decided to build waste containers on a concrete pad a quarter-mile from the plant and won regulatory approval to build 48 so-called "dry casks." Construction on the project began promptly. But then the plan hit a snag.
Nobody had asked for the Minnesota Legislature's permission.
Political and court battles erupted, with the Legislature winning the final right to determine the fate of the waste. After an emotional debate that enveloped the issue -- during which a bill sponsor received a death threat -- the Legislature decided to allow 17 casks.
Now more controversy looms at Prairie Island because the 17 waste containers are full, and plant managers are scrambling to avoid closure in 2007. There is no more room for waste.
"I'm hopeful that we'll be able to keep the plant running, but the fact is, we just don't know," Xcel spokesman Wilensky said.
Over the years, the politically charged, often emotional debate about the fate of America's high-level nuclear waste has played out not just in Nevada and in Congress, but on local, state and tribal levels, too.
As scientists studied -- and politicians debated -- Yucca Mountain during the last 20 years, nuclear plants all over the nation have searched for somewhere to dump their waste.
Prairie Island's struggle is a dilemma shared by the nation's 72 commercial nuclear power plants.
The Minnesota plan illustrates the commercial nuclear waste problem in America -- 103 nuclear reactors producing 20 percent of the nation's energy each year, along with 2,000 metric tons of nuclear waste that no one wants.
Nuclear plant waste is actually bundles, or "assemblies" of 12-foot metal rods filled with solid, half-inch-long uranium dioxide pellets. The rods are placed in a reactor where a nuclear reaction is triggered. The intense heat produced generates steam and, ultimately, electricity.
The uranium rods are efficient for about 4 1/2 years and are then said to be "spent." The spent fuel, which is still highly radioactive, is then removed and put in a giant waste pool made of concrete, lined with steel. Water in the 60-by-20-foot pool at Prairie Island cools the waste and keeps radioactivity from escaping into the air.
The 29-year-old Prairie Island plant's two reactors produce 1,150 megawatts of electricity, enough to power homes for about 1.5 million people in Minnesota and neighboring states. The plant also has produced 630 tons of waste.
Nuclear plants were not designed to store that much waste because in the early days of commercial nuclear power beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, plant operators believed the United States would "reprocess" spent fuel. But President Carter banned fuel recycling in the late 1970s because the process separates out plutonium that Carter worried could fall into enemy hands.
By 1982, Congress adopted a new plan -- to bury the nation's waste. Lawmakers and the Energy Department set out to find a permanent geological repository.
As Nevadans well know, the department, President Bush and Congress this year officially chose Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as that spot. Waste could be shipped to Yucca from all over the nation as early as 2010, pending Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval.
Officials at plants nationwide cheered the Yucca approvals, but at Prairie Island the celebration was short-lived. In July, plant officials filled the last of the 17 waste containers, freeing up enough room in the waste pool for five more years worth of spent fuel.
By 2007 the plant could become the first in the nation to close because it has nowhere to put waste. Xcel officials are pursuing several avenues to keep the plant open, but no one is laying odds that any of the strategies will work.
"It's a very difficult question to guess at," Xcel's Wilensky said of the plant's future.
Company campaign
To be sure, plant officials are fighting to prevent plant closure, and they have several plans in motion to keep the plant operating beyond 2007. One strategy may be lobbying state lawmakers next year for more waste containers.
"A number of state lawmakers have said publicly this plant is too important to shut down," said Scott Northard, site engineering director for Nuclear Management Co., the company that runs the plant. "We continue to evaluate all the options for spent fuel storage both here and off-site."
Several lawmakers already have introduced bills that allow for more dry casks. State Sen. Mark Ourada said the legislation has a good chance of passing next year. The measure is likely to draw controversy, but not like in 1994, he said.
"No. 1, it's been done now. You have the site there and it's been used very safely," Ourada said. "No. 2, Congress finally moved ahead and Yucca Mountain seems much more of a reality."
Plant officials say their best strategy for saving the plant may hinge on the controversial proposal by the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians in Utah to construct a temporary waste storage area on tribal land.
A group of eight nuclear utilities called Private Fuel Storage LLC, led by Prairie Island owner Xcel, has been working with the 112-member tribe and aims to ship waste from its plants to the site by 2005. The project is opposed by many in Utah, including its senators and governor.
But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is taking a close look at the proposal and could rule on a license for the site by the end of this year.
"We're optimistic that all the work we've done on PFS will result in a license to build and operate the (Goshute) facility," Northard said.
Company officials, along with others in the nuclear industry, also are said to be quietly mulling an option sure to draw fire from Nevada officials: lobbying Congress to again consider an interim storage site near Yucca.
Congress in 1999 rejected a temporary storage site near Yucca.
But if the Goshute option doesn't pan out, Xcel officials and those at other plants may consider asking lawmakers again to allow for a temporary site near Yucca where waste could be shipped until the permanent Yucca facility is open, insiders say.
It may be too controversial to pursue, Xcel's Wilensky said. But an interim storage site clearly "makes sense," Wilensky said.
In a final strategy, Prairie Island is leaning on the Energy Department in the form of a lawsuit.
Department officials can't do much to help the plant with its most immediate race to find waste space by 2007 -- but it can do a lot to ease the company's future pain and suffering. Xcel has sued the department -- U.S. taxpayers -- for roughly $1 billion for breaking its contract to begin removing waste by January 1998. That damage estimate is based on the assumption that the plant would be forced to close and lose future profits.
The lawsuit is tied up in court and it is difficult to say when the case will conclude, plant officials say.
Dinosaur eggs
Like the nation's other plants, Prairie Island has not offered media tours since Sept. 11, and waste pool tours were mostly off-limits even before the attacks.
But last month Prairie Island did allow a Sun reporter an up-close look at the 17 waste containers at its outdoor "Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation." The tour was given under the escort of two armed plant security officers, one clad in SWAT gear and toting a machine gun.
The 122-ton white containers, which a local Associated Press writer once likened to giant dinosaur eggs, are huddled in the middle of the concrete pad designed for nearly three times their number.
The pad is rimmed by two chain-link fences topped with razor wire, as well as strategically spaced boulders, which plant officials jokingly call "BDRs" -- big damn rocks, Nuclear Management Co. spokeswoman Maureen Brown said. The entire enclave is surrounded by a 30-foot mound of earth, obscuring it from any view.
The facility wasn't cheap -- it cost roughly $30 million to $35 million, Northard said. Ratepayers who pay for the plant's electricity picked up the tab -- the same ratepayers, plant officials note -- who have paid more than $400 million into a federal fund for Yucca Mountain during the last 19 years.
NIMBY
Virtually everyone in this neck of Minnesota has an opinion about Prairie Island's waste. Not surprisingly, most want it gone.
The most vocal opponent of the waste -- and the plant -- has been the Prairie Island Mdewakanton Indian community. About 200 tribal members live near the plant, a few as close as 600 yards.
The Mdewakanton are among the region's most avid Yucca supporters. The tribe operates a casino near the plant and their leaders scoff at Nevada officials who fear Yucca's economic impact on tourism. The nearby plant hasn't hurt their gaming business, they note.
Still, the tribe has been a vocal opponent of the Prairie Island plant since it was constructed, and leaders say plant officials have rarely been straight with them about waste issues.
The tribe adamantly opposed the dry cask waste containers.
"It's just not a safe place to store waste," tribal treasurer Alan Childs said.
Other locals didn't much like the idea of above-ground waste containers, either, said Kay Kuhlman, administrator for the Red Wing town council. But many locals embrace the plant as vital to the community and accepted the casks as the only way for the plant to keep operating, she said.
"There were a lot of people locally saying, 'We don't want this stored in our backyard,' " Kuhlman said. "But in the end it's really an economic issue."
Prairie Island not only powers the homes of Red Wing residents, it has been a good neighbor, donating $160,000 for a city business park pro- ject and $25,000 for an aquatic center, Kuhlman said.
More importantly, the plant employs about 700 workers. And it still accounts for about 42 percent of Red Wing's tax base, although state officials have begun devaluing the plant as it nears a possible 2007 closure, which has reduced tax revenues, Kuhlman said.
"They have provided stability for the area and really made a commitment to hire local people," Kulhman said. "These are good jobs."
Back in 1994, most Red Wing residents assumed the 17 waste containers would give the plant the storage room it needed until Yucca Mountain opened, Kuhlman said.
"Nobody even considered the possibility that (the plant) would go away," she said.
Lawmakers certainly didn't, several said.
"Everyone walked away from that session thinking, 'We just resolved that issue unless something unforeseen happens,' " said state Sen. Steve Murphy, who works for Xcel and whose support for the waste containers in 1994 prompted an activist to dump a dead raccoon on his driveway. "It's just taken longer than most folks thought it would to open the Yucca Mountain site."
Local environmental activists, who have battled the plant on a number of issues, hope the plant's waste storage dilemma will cause its demise.
"The waste issue is the lever that we have to guide our decision-makers toward a more responsible energy future," said George Crocker, who led the Prairie Island Coalition in a fight against the dry cask containers.
Crocker said while plant workers, along with city and county officials, led an effective campaign to erect the dry casks, many people opposed the temporary waste site.
"Throughout the entire state of Minnesota there was adamant and organized opposition," he said.
Environmentalists say there is no easy solution to the waste problem at Prairie Island or any other plant. They object to everything: storing waste on-site, shipping waste and burying it at Yucca Mountain. They would prefer that the plants close, and the waste stay where it is until there's a better option.
"There's no choice there," Crocker said. "It's not a matter of what I want, or what the environmentalists want, or the Indians want. We are bound by the physical realities that the plant has created."
In the near term, Crocker advocates closing Prairie Island and investing in renewable energy sources.
"One of the first rules of good management is when you find that you have dug yourself into a hole, stop digging," he said.
But what should be done with the waste stored in dry casks and pools? When pressed, Crocker said the concept of a geologic repository "has merit." But Yucca is not a good place for one, he said. Until the nation can find a safe burial site and devise a safe transportation plan, Minnesota is stuck with the radioactive material, Crocker said.
"Waste that is sitting in those casks now is destined to stay there for a long time," Crocker said.
Hope for plant
The battle over waste at Prairie Island will continue, and likely intensify in the next five years.
"My gut feeling says that the plant will not close," state Sen. Murphy said, "because it is so important to the economic vitality of the state. Environmentally, nuclear is one of the better energy options we have in this country."
Still, opposition is certain. Prairie Island Mdewakanton leaders vow to either fight more casks, or to negotiate for some benefits.
The tribe does not receive electricity or property tax benefits from the plant, despite its proximity. Few if any of the tribe's members work at the plant because they feel ostracized, Childs said.
"This tribal community has not benefitted one penny from having that plant here," Childs said.
Jim Pumarlo, editor of the Red Wing Republican Eagle, has watched controversy swirl around the plant's waste issues for years. He predicted that plant officials would find a way to keep operating. If they fail, he said, "I don't think Red Wing would die, but you would have a real exodus of people."
The whole waste predicament has been a vexing one for locals who rely on the plant in a number of ways, Kuhlman said.
"It is a frustration among local people with the federal government over what are they going to do with the stuff," Kuhlman said. "Of course, you may see it very differently in Nevada, but the community here is extremely supportive of Yucca Mountain. We think it's the best long-term solution."
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