PG&E didn't find spent fuel rods, it tells NRC

PG&E didn't find spent fuel rods, it tells NRC

New York (Platts)--2Jun2005


Pacific Gas & Electric has not found used nuclear fuel material from a
California-based nuclear power plant after a yearlong investigation, the
utility said in a final report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

PG&E's said its probe on the location of pieces of a used nuclear fuel rod
from the Humboldt plant located near Eureka, Calif., started last June when
the utility told the NRC that there were conflicting accounts on the location
of three 18-inch nuclear fuel segments.

The utility's "exhaustive" investigation points to two possible locations for
the used nuclear material--they were either stored in Humboldt's used fuel
pool in 1968 or were shipped to an out-of-state nuclear waste facility the
following year.

It is likely that the nuclear material remains in disintegrated form in the
used fuel pool, said Greg Rueger, PG&E's senior vice president for generation
and chief nuclear officer.

"Unfortunately, the condition of the apparently cut fuel rod fragments--after
nearly 40 years of storage in a container within the used fuel pool under
other irradiated material--makes conclusive positive identification very
difficult," said Rueger in a statement.

Though there is no physical evidence to support it, the utility said it cannot
rule out the possibility the rods were shipped to one of three other
facilities?the New York-based Nuclear Fuel Services fuel reprocessing
facility, the Barnwell, SC, low-level radioactive waste facility or the
Hanford, Wash., licensed low-level radioactive facility.

PG&E has "established two reasonable possibilities for the location of the
used fuel," said a spokesman.

The utility should have not misplaced the spent nuclear fuel but "it's a sin
of the past," said David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of
Concerned Scientists. 

The NRC has required all plants with spent nuclear fuel to upgrade their
tracking systems for these materials. The missing fuel segments pose no safety
risk, added Lochbaum.

This story was originally published in Platts Electric Power Daily
http://electricpowerdaily.platts.com

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