State urges nuclear storage resolutionMay 29 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Andy Metzger Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, Mass.
Hoping for federal action on nuclear waste storage policies, Attorney General Martha Coakley and Senate President Therese Murray are lobbying members of the U.S. Senate to address some nagging, unresolved issues. "The federal government has long had an obligation to develop short- and long-term solutions to the current on-site storage of nuclear waste in facilities in Massachusetts and other states," Murray and Coakley wrote in a letter Friday. "Its failure to act has cost taxpayers, and we believe poses great risks to public safety and the environment." Plants such as the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station on the Cape Cod Bay shore in Murray's hometown of Plymouth are accumulating spent nuclear fuel because the federal government has not met its obligation to store it, according to Murray and Coakley. When nuclear plants were constructed in the 1970s, officials believed the U.S. government would establish a place to store nuclear waste. In 1982 Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. By January 1998, the federal government had entered into contracts with licensees to take the waste in exchange for fees, according to the letter. That has not happened, and with nowhere to put the waste, power plants have had to make do by adding more storage. In addition to plants that are in operation, decommissioned power plants -- such as Yankee Rowe in Rowe, Connecticut Yankee in Haddam Neck, Conn., and Maine Yankee in Wiscasset, Maine -- store spent fuel and waste on site. "More than 40 years later, a permanent repository still has not been constructed. As a consequence, spent fuel continues to be stockpiled ever more densely at individual plant sites, primarily in exposed spent fuel pools, thereby increasing the risk of core melt or catastrophic fire by terrorist attack, as acknowledged in a 2006 National Academy of Sciences Report, or by earthquake and other natural disasters, as occurred (core melt) at the Fukushima Dai-ichi site in Japan involving four nuclear power plants," Murray and Coakley wrote in their letter. Diane Turco, of Harwich, co-founder of the anti-nuclear group Cape Downwinders, applauded the efforts of Murray and Coakley. "They're saying the waste is not safe until it's in a central repository, but Entergy, (the owner-operator of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station), is saying it's fine," Turco said. "Once again, we have the state looking out for public safety, and Entergy saying everything is fine. Why is a corporation being allowed to put the public at risk for profit?" Murray and Coakley are both urging passage of a nuclear waste policy update, which for years has involved a protracted fight between the federal government and residents of central Nevada, where lawmakers seized on a mountain as the place to put nuclear waste. In the bill that would establish new siting requirements, Coakley and Murray are urging clear requirements for a National Environmental Policy Act review. While Massachusetts officials are primarily concerned with the Pilgrim plant, and with the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station -- just up the Connecticut River from the town of Northfield -- storage of nuclear waste has been a contentious issue for neighbors of Yucca Mountain, Nev., for decades. According to a March 2011 report by officials in Eureka, Nev., the federal Department of Energy was determined to make the mountain home to America's spent fuel and nuclear waste. "Throughout the process for siting and licensing the Yucca Mountain repository, DOE and the Congress failed to recognize the critical role of public trust and confidence or to establish decision-making processes that would ensure a fair and trustworthy result," the report said, noting that the selection of Yucca Mountain through a 1987 law was political. The report said the DOE had "conflicting roles of both license applicant and primary reviewer of the environmental impacts of the proposed facility and related transportation impacts." Exploratory tunnels were built into the mountain in the 1990s to the consternation of the local rural population who had been subjected to nearby nuclear weapons testing decades earlier, according to a website run by local Eureka government. President Barack Obama halted work at the site. Coakley and Murray said they prefer the "more consensual approach" in the federal legislation, though they have some suggestions for improvement. They oppose a provision that would require entities to settle lawsuits with the federal government as a condition of waste removal, and language they said links permitting for temporary storage to progress on the larger storage plan. Electricity customers have been footing the bill for storing spent fuel and waste, including at decommissioned plants, and power companies have successfully sued for relief, with Vermont Yankee securing nearly $160 million for the benefit of ratepayers. Coakley and attorneys general from Vermont, Connecticut and New York also filed a petition with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- which approved a license renewal for Pilgrim last year -- asking the regulators to "expand its review of waste storage alternatives as mandated by a recent appeals court decision and federal law." Times staff writer Christine Legere contributed to this report. http://www.energycentral.com/functional/news/news_detail.cfm?did=28771263 |