Peach Bottom nuclear power plant could run out of spent fuel storage space in 2019

Jul 20, 2015

For Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station employees, however, working near tens of thousands of used fuel rods --- still lethally radioactive --- is business as usual.

Some of those rods have been in the fuel pool since 1976, according to Krista Connelly , spokeswoman for the southern York County power plant.

But with nowhere off-site to store the fuel, Connelly said Peach Bottom is running out of places to put it.

In its current configuration, Peach Bottom has enough storage space in its existing spent fuel pools and its dry cask storage facility to accommodate normal refueling operations until 2019, Connelly said.

In addition to posing problems for power plants, the Union of Concerned Scientists say the lack of a national storage site also poses safety risks, while a few business owners are proposing solutions to the growing storage problem.

Nuclear Waste Policy Act

When Peach Bottoms two boiling-water reactors went online in 1974, the industry hadnt developed a plan for where to put the high-level radioactive waste.

In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, mandating that the Department of Energy establish a place to store the spent fuel. The act set a deadline of 1998 for the project to start moving waste from power plants to storage at Yucca Mountain , Nevada .

That date came and went. The Department applied to the NRC to authorize construction in 2008 but canceled the project in 2010 before the NRC completed its review.

Throughout the process, plant operators have been stuck with the task of managing ever-increasing stockpiles of used fuel.

How does fuel storage work?

When workers remove depleted fuel from a reactor, its still hot and radioactive. That fuel goes into an above-ground pool of circulating water, about 40 feet deep, located in a building near the reactor. The water helps to cool the rods and keeps radiation contained.

After several years, the fuel rods are cool enough to move to dry casks, big steel containers rated to withstand missile strikes and remain intact for 100 years or longer. The casks are stored outside on a concrete pad, designed to absorb earthquakes, within the power stations high-security perimeter.

No long-term plan

Mike Callahan , a nuclear industry consultant who leads efforts to remove fuel from closed power plants, said dry casks are a fairly recent storage option, a result of the governments failure to build a central repository.

Plants were constructed with the spent fuel pool with the understanding that the Fed would be transporting that fuel away, Callahan said. That never happened.

Ryan Nawrocki , spokesman for U.S. Rep. Scott Perry , R-York County, said Congresss biggest obstacle is that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid , D- Nev , has blocked development of Yucca Mountain .

The home state senator can exert a great deal of influence over what happens in their state, Nawrocki said.

Reid, in a statement on his website, said he opposed the Yucca Mountain site because it would pose a threat to human health and safety. Yucca Mountain , which is 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas , is simply not a safe or secure site to store nuclear waste for any period of time, Reid said.

But with Reid set to retire in 2016, Nawrocki said, its possible that there will be a renewed effort to build there.

Safety concerns

As a result of the impasse, plant operators have had to get creative in finding ways to store the spent fuel.

Callahan said engineers analyzed their spent fuel pools to see if they could fit more fuel rods in them than what the pools were designed to hold.

Neil Sheehan , Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman, said the NRC did its own studies and authorized the technology, which has more than doubled most fuel pools capacity.

At Peach Bottom, Connelly said, the fuel pools can now store 3,819 fuel rod assemblies, with each assembly containing 92 rods. The two pools at the power plant — one for each reactor — contain 2,848 and 2,781 fuel rod assemblies, making the pools about 75 percent full.

Everett Redmond , director of fuel cycle and technology policy at the Nuclear Energy Institute , said fuel stored in the pools is just as safe as fuel stored in casks. Sheehan also said that both methods are considered to be safe.

The Union of Concerned Scientists would like to see more fuel moved to the casks, however, a step they say will decrease risk.

Dave Lochbaum , the director of the Unions nuclear safety project, said that the 2011 Fukushima disaster proved the advantages of dry cask storage compared to spent fuel pools.

Citing NRC records, he said that after the disaster, the NRCs biggest problem was keeping the Unit Four spent fuel pool from melting down and releasing radiation.

Lochbaum said that, during the earthquake, water sloshed out of the spent fuel pool, and the fuel rods caused the remaining water to boil. The Unit Four reactor exploded, punching a hole in the building and risking damage to the nearby spent fuel rods, which would have caused radiation to escape the site.

Had there been a release of radioactivity, there would have been no barrier to prevent it from threatening people downwind, Lochbaum said.

The only good thing about the blown up reactor building, Lochbaum said, was that it allowed emergency crews to shoot water into the fuel pool by helicopter.

In contrast, Lochbaum said, dry casks that were submerged by the tsunami remained fully intact and posed no safety concerns.

Other storage options

Though experts may disagree about the safety of spent fuel pool storage, they all agree that removing the waste from the power plants is a priority.

Every year, Peach Bottom and other power plants across the country sue the federal government for breaching the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Thomas Kauffman , NEI spokesman, said those 72 lawsuits have resulted in $3.7 billion in federal tax dollars paid to power plants.

Lochbaum said that, even if the government were to fund and initiate construction at Yucca Mountain today, it would take decades before the facility would be ready to accept the fuel.

In the meantime, Chuck McDonald , spokesman for Waste Control Specialists , said his company is pushing for another solution: interim storage at his facility in Texas .

McDonald said the company has been storing low-level radioactive waste there for more than 20 years. Now, its seeking the needed permissions to transport and store the high-level waste that comes from power plants.

Its a move he said would free up space for plants and cut federal lawsuit costs.

If we could get this interim storage facility going — the federal government is already spending $500 million a year in those damages — it would actually be a tremendous savings to taxpayers. McDonald said.

Waste Control Specialists isnt the only company, either, Redmond said. At least two other companies have written proposals for launching interim storage facilities.

Meanwhile at Peach Bottom, Connelly said, the company is discussing how it might be able to store more waste at its facility.

Were definitely looking at what our options would be if we have to continue on site, she said.

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