Nuke security study could affect Yucca fight

Suzanne Struglinski

Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004 | 11:15 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- An ongoing study examining the security of nuclear waste stored at power plants could support Nevada's arguments against Yucca Mountain or it could give the Energy Department more reason to move nuclear waste to Nevada faster.

Nevada officials want the nuclear waste kept at nuclear power plants rather than sent to the proposed federal storage site at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Energy Department has used the possible security risks of on-site storage at the plants as one of its reasons for pushing to get the Yucca Mountain repository done by 2010.

At last week's first meeting of a 15-member National Academies of Sciences panel, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said other analyses on spent nuclear fuel storage pools at power plants are overly conservative compared with more up-to-date data.

Farouk Eltawila, head of systems analysis and regulatory effectiveness, told the panel that since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, more security measures have been put in place. Eltawila also reminded the panel of the "robust" construction of the pool holding the used nuclear fuel. NRC is in the midst of its own study looking at the security of spent fuel pools.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said the comment "concurs with what I've been saying for some time now" that the best place for the waste is the spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants until an alternative to Yucca can be found.

"I urge the Department of Energy to take advantage of this safe and fiscally responsible method rather than rushing to transport (nuclear waste) across the country to Nevada."

Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Mitch Singer said the report in no way changes the need for Yucca.

"It doesn't change anything from what we've said all along," Singer said.

He explained that the industry has always known on-site dry cask and fuel pool storage systems were safe but that "it was never meant to be there on a permanent basis."

He said the academy declared that a geologic repository was the best way to store the waste forever, and the industry still believes that ultimately burying it underground is the safest way.

Kevin Crowley, Board on Radioactive Waste Management director, who is also leading the study, said a classified version of the report is set to be done in June and the panel hopes to release an unclassified version within six months.

If the study found that nuclear waste cannot be stored safely on-site, the department would have another reason to move the waste to Yucca, but if the study finds the waste is fine where it is, Nevada's arguments against the site could be stronger.

David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the department's security argument is a weak one.

"I don't know why DOE tried to make that argument, it never made any sense," he said.

At operating plants spent fuel cannot be moved out of the pools for least five years, Lochbaum said.

So even if Yucca does open, there would still continue to be nuclear waste stored at nuclear power plants around the country. Opening Yucca would mean there would be "the existing number of pools plus one," Lochbaum said. "They are not reducing (the number of storage sites), but increasing it by one."

The Energy Department was supposed to take the waste in 1998 but failed to complete a repository on time, forcing the nuclear utilities to continue to pay for the plan to store the waste while paying for their own temporary storage on site. The nuclear industry maintains it can safely store the waste but the on-site options are not designed for permanent disposal.

Craig Nesbitt, spokesman for Exelon, which operates 10 nuclear power plants in three states, said the logistics and long-term planning associated with having to build more on-site storage should not have to be done "when you can safely store it in one place."

"It doesn't have to be done, but we're saying that it should be moved," Nesbitt said.

It can cost a nuclear plant up to about $15 million to build a dry cask facility on site, with each dry cask costing about $1 million, experts have said.

The key question, Nesbitt said, is: "Do you want this material scattered or in one place?"