Indian Point and the “Undue Risk”

This story was produced in collaboration with the New England Center for Investigative Reporting

Repairing the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex in Japan after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami addresses only part of the problem. Three of seven damaged cooling pools that store spent fuel rods are still emitting radiation there. The spent fuel rods, exposed to the air,  released large amounts of radiation after the tsunami knocked out the cooling system; it is a graphic example of the risks inherent in onsite spent-fuel storage.

It is a storage method replicated at the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant on the Hudson River in Buchanan, New York, which sits on the Ramapo Fault line and is the focus of much concern.  Cooling pools for spent fuel are also used at the Millstone Nuclear Power Station near New London, Ct., Salem Nuclear Power Plant in South Jersey, and Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Tom’s River, N.J., a plant with the same design as Fukushima.  And it’s a storage method some scientists want banned in the United States.

Fukushima Spent Fuel Rod Pool, Unit 3 (courtesy: japantoday.com)

David Lochbaum with the Union of Concerned Scientists tells InvestigateNY, “At Indian Point and reactor sites across the US, spent fuel is stored in poorly protected, poorly defended locations. That translates into elevated and undue risk.”

Lochbaum says U.S. citizens have spent billions of dollars on a  proposed repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada to isolate irradiated fuel for 10,000 years into the future. This proposal was killed for good with the Federal Budget that passed this month, though the plan officially fell apart last year when the Obama administration, under considerable political pressure from opponents, canceled plans for the nuclear disposal facility.  That decision came despite the fact that electric ratepayers have contributed $18 billion toward building the national repository through a special assessment included in their monthly bills, according to a 2010 accounting.

In testimony before the U.S. Senate a few weeks after the accident in Japan, Lochbaum testified,

After being discharged from the reactor core, the irradiated fuel awaits transfer to a federal repository, which does not yet exist. Between those two time periods—when irradiated fuel is treated as a highly hazardous material and nuclear plant owners and the U.S. government undertake expensive and extensive efforts to protect the American public from this material—irradiated fuel sits in temporary spent fuel pools with almost no protection. For unfathomable reasons, irradiated fuel is considered benign after it is taken out of the reactor core and before it is placed in a repository.

David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project at the Union of Concerned Scientists, waits to testify at a hearing on Capitol Hill on March 30, 2011

As the volume of spent fuel grew over the years, scientists began warning the pools could be more dangerous than the reactor because they now held more radioactive material. Without a national storage site, plant operators, with the blessing of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, packed more and more spent fuel rods into the pools.

“There used to be space between them. The assemblies were so far apart they could not go to critical mass. Then they took out the racks. The walls of the pool now have material that prevents a reaction. It’s the same size pool with many more rods,” Lochbaum says.

DRY CASKS

Another alternative for storing spent fuel is in what are known as dry casks,  concrete bunkers approximately 20 feet high, 10 feet wide and 20 feet deep, with walls and roof areas up to five feet thick. Spent fuel rods are placed in a steel canister capable of holding 32 fuel assemblies and the lid is welded in place. The canisters weigh up to 40 tons fully loaded. The loading procedure occurs under water.

Says Lochbaum, “It’s not widely known, but there was irradiated fuel stored in dry casks at Fukushima. While the irradiated fuel in the reactor cores on Units 1, 2, and 3 overheated and failed and the irradiated fuel in the spent fuel pools on Units 3 and 4 overheated and failed, the irradiated fuel in the dry casks came through unscathed.”

Clay Turnbull, director of the New England Coalition on Nuclear Power, says it costs plant owners about $1 million per dry cask.  “It’s a lot of money to move them around. If you need 50 casks, that’s $50 million at least,” Turnbull said, adding that nuclear plants operate on a tight profit margin so any additional costs are a disincentive.
Power plant officials insist that economics has nothing to do with fuel remaining in wet storage for so long. “When we opened, the expectation was the fuel would be taken in 25 years and reprocessed,” said Ken Holt, a spokesman at Millstone. “We were not that big. We never thought we would have to contain fuel for the full life of the plant,” Holt said.
Still, Holt acknowledged cost is an issue. “Both are safe. But there is a cost element to dry cask and it is a fairly heavy cost and a major factor in why we have not pulled fuel sooner.

NRC RESPONDS

But The NRC says that irradiated fuel is as safe in spent fuel pools as in dry casks.  “Let me begin by saying public health and safety is protected by the safety and security features associated with storage of spent fuel in either pools or casks,” said Diane Screnci, an NRC spokeswoman.
“The NRC, after careful study of the safety and security issues, concluded that fuel is safely stored in wet pools or dry storage casks. There is no justification, from a safety or security viewpoint, for removing fuel from pools and loading it into casks in order to return to low density racking,” Screnci said.
The details of the NRC’s studies on storage pools are not available to the public due to national security concerns.
A nuclear reactor is surrounded by six to nine inches of steel, and sits within a containment dome some three to four feet thick. But a spent fuel storage pool at a pressurized water reactor, like Indian Point, Millstone  in Connecticut and  Salem in New Jersey, is located outside the containment dome and housed in a traditional steel industrial building.

At a boiling water reactor, like Fukushima Daiichi in Japan and, the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Plant in Toms River, N.J., the pool is several stories above ground level, within the containment dome.

Nationally, the nation’s 104 nuclear power plants are now storing some 63,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods, according to 2010 numbers compiled by the Nuclear Energy Institute.  Indian Point is storing at least 903 metric tons of spent fuel.

RELICENSING INDIAN POINT

Indian Point supplies up to 30% percent of the electricity used by New York City and Westchester County. Reactors two and three were built in the 1970s and were slated for a 40-year-life.

Governor Andrew Cuomo opposes Indian Point’s re-licensing, and he believes the state can make up for its electrical capacity if it is closed. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is in the no-license renewal camp as well.

“Whether or not you support the relicensing of Indian Point, we can all agree that we must answer the health, safety, and environmental questions affecting the nearly 20 million people living in close proximity to the facility, before making any relicensing decisions,” Schneiderman said in a letter to the NRC March 18.

New York Attorney General Schneiderman

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has signed off on a scientific review of Indian Point’s renewal. Yet the plant, which sits on the Ramapo fault line and evidently near a second, newly discovered faultline, is one of 27 plants in the country under additional seismic review.

The renewal is in the public comment period, the last phase before the NRC formally acts on Indian Point’s application. Public hearings have yet to be scheduled.