Urge NRC to Better Protect Stored Nuclear Waste

Today, thousands of tons of nuclear waste—in the form of highly radioactive “spent” nuclear fuel rods—are stored at nuclear power plants throughout the country. These nuclear fuel rods remain vulnerable to a terrorist attack or accident.

To NRC Commissioners
Dear Commissioners,

I am writing to encourage the NRC to take steps to increase the security and safety of nuclear waste stored at civilian nuclear reactor sites, which remains unacceptably vulnerable to a terrorist attack or accident.

More specifically, I urge you to support a rule change that would strengthen the protection of nuclear waste stored in dry casks against foreseeable threats, such as sophisticated terrorist attacks, which might emerge over the next several decades. Please accept provision (11) of the rulemaking petition submitted by the C-10 Research and Education Foundation, which outlines this change.

Those upgrades could include a combination of physical measures, such as putting spent fuel casks into enclosed buildings, using earthen embankments or other barriers, and other measures such as insuring that intruders will be denied access to independent spent fuel storage installations.

In addition, the current practice of allowing the rods to be stored in wet pools where they are densely packed together poses a dangerous security risk. In the absence of a place to permanently store the waste underground, the NRC should require plants to promptly transfer spent fuel from the pools to dry casks as soon as the fuel has cooled enough. This would reduce the likelihood of a spent fuel fire due to accident or terrorist attack and the amount of radioactive material that could be released by such a fire.
 

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