Transfer of fuel rods ‘not necessary’

Friday, Feb. 13, 2004 | 11:39 a.m.

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WASHINGTON -- The risks of storing more used radioactive fuel rods from nuclear power plants in onsite pools are less than previously thought despite the new specter of terrorism, Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials said Thursday.

This new study could diminish the Energy Department's argument that leaving waste onsite at nuclear power plants poses a strong enough threat that it needs to be moved to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site, critics of the proposal say.

Farouk Eltawila, who directs NRC's division of systems analysis and regulatory effectiveness, told a National Academy of Sciences panel that "previous NRC studies are overly conservative" and don't "take advantage of all the work that we have done the past 25 years."

The new classified study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, will be shown to the scientific panel today. The study shows that more spent fuel rods can be stored safely in pools of water next to reactors and that the storage facilities are well protected against potential terrorist attacks, Eltawila said.

The storage pools are typically about 25 feet wide by 20 feet high, constructed to allow for convective cooling and with racks for storing the rods.

The implications of the new study are that power companies would not have to spend money transferring the fuel rods to dry storage casks until they can be buried at a permanent repository now under construction at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

"Not only does it cost too much, it's not necessary," said John Vincent of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's top trade group.

But it also implies to some Yucca opponents that waste can just stay in the pools and on-site instead of coming to Nevada.

The Energy Department has used security as one of its top reasons for moving nuclear waste from commercial sites to Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, saying that leaving the material where it is posed a high security risk.

But Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, said the security threat was the department's way of "exploiting" the stronger security concerns after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"The real issue here is that it was never a real health and safety problem," Loux said. "DOE manufactured that to get more people to vote for Yucca."

The national repository idea, approved by Congress in 1982, stemmed from the need to have an "end game" for the nuclear waste and to provide a plan to build more nuclear power plants, Loux said.

Some of Nevada's congressional delegation said the study showed this threat was unfounded and said the risk of transporting the waste was a much more real threat.

"I have always supported dry cask storage for nuclear waste, because it is the safest possible storage method," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev, said. "This report proves, yet again, that we can store nuclear waste safely, efficiently, and economically at the site of our nuclear reactors."

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who is on a House Intelligence Committee trip overseas, released a statement saying that the Yucca Mountain Project "has never taken advantage of all the technological advances made over the past 25 years."

He said the Energy Department still needs to address the security issues of transporting nuclear waste and transporting "the most dangerous substance known to man past schools, hospitals, and communities is unwise, unsafe and completely unnecessary."

Adam Mayberry, spokesman for Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., said the congressman had not reviewed the study but called the report "encouraging in our fight against Yucca Mountain."

Although he hasn't yet seen the study, Princeton University professor Frank von Hippel called its conclusion an attempt to save electric power companies billions of dollars. He said allowing more high-density storage of nuclear waste will only heighten the terrorism risks.

"It's very sad," said von Hippel, a frequent critic of the nuclear industry and its regulators. "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been captured by the industry."

The National Academy panel is meeting this week at Congress' request to review the safety and security of commercial nuclear spent fuel until a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain is completed sometime during the next decade.

Von Hippel and German scientist Klaus Janberg pointed to their own research showing that the risks are greater than the NRC believes. They also noted that Germany and Switzerland require their spent fuel pools to be built inside containment buildings, a feature that the United States doesn't require.

Sun reporter Suzanne Struglinski and the Associated Press contributed to this story.