NRC experts fail to ease concerns over spent fuel

NRC experts fail to ease concerns over spent fuel



By Christine Legere

Posted Feb 25, 2020



Advisory panel, public question safety of storage at Pilgrim site.

PLYMOUTH — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent five experts to Plymouth on Monday to offer assurances that the spent fuel from Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s 46 years of operation would be stored there safely and securely.

Their efforts were unsuccessful, based on questions and comments that followed their presentation to the public and the advisory panel for the plant’s decommissioning.

The federal regulators talked about the composition and durability of the heavy dry casks being used to store the radioactive fuel waste, which must bear a certificate of compliance from the NRC.

Casks are made of steel canisters encased in a little more than 2 feet of concrete. Each is filled with 68 spent fuel assemblies and placed on a cement pad outside the plant. Pilgrim’s spent fuel pad, off Rocky Hill Road, will have 61 canisters once all the radioactive fuel is removed from a pool where much of it is now cooling.

Currently there is no national repository for storing the fuel, so it will remain in Plymouth until interim storage sites or a permanent site open.

In a PowerPoint presentation, the regulators laid out how casks are periodically inspected, with lids removed and samples taken to determine damage or radiation leakage. A device called an inspection crawler, equipped with cameras, travels along the exterior of the metal canister, where it can pick up every irregularity, they said, right down to a wrinkle in the paint.

Jack Priest, the state Department of Public Health’s representative on the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, asked whether every cask was checked or just a sampling and was told a small number are sampled.

Panelists and the public were surprised that the cask certificates of compliance could be renewed and remain valid for up to 80 years.

Duxbury resident James Lampert asked where the oldest casks filled with spent fuel are in the U.S. and was told casks at Surry Power Station in Virginia date back to 1986. “The NRC’s database is 34 years old and, on the basis of that, they’re saying, ‘Let’s go 80,’” Lampert said.

Kevin O’Reilly, vice chairman of the advisory panel, asked whether there was a “prescribed fix for a defective cask.”

John McKirgan, branch chief for Nuclear Safety and Security, said that situation has not yet arisen in the U.S. If there is a problem, the NRC does not tell the plant owner how to fix it, but it does require the plant owner “to bring the cask back into compliance,” he said.

Security was a big concern among panel members and the public. Federal regulators said the casks are “hardened” targets, meaning they are difficult to penetrate.

“It’s not a site you would easily breach or attack,” one NRC member said.

NRC representatives said guards around the fuel storage pad would be equipped with the latest weapons.

Sean Mullin, chairman of the citizens advisory panel, remained unconvinced. “I have a great deal of concern about security,” he said. “No amount of automatic weapons or fences with razor wire is going to work.”

Fellow committee member Daniel Wolf questioned the reason for all the armed guards “if the fuel is so securely stored.”

Darrell Dunn, NRC’s senior materials engineer, said the armed guards were to discourage would-be attackers.

To a second question from Wolf, a former state senator, the NRC conceded there were no limitations on airspace over the site.

A longtime plant watchdog argued that the possibility of a terrorist attack was not being adequately addressed.

“The U.S. government has warned the threat of terrorism is real,” said Mary Lampert, president of Pilgrim Watch. “Military weapons available today can penetrate the canisters and the concrete, and they can be shot from a mile and a half away.”

Lampert said Holtec would win some goodwill from the public by pledging to protect the fuel casks with a gravel and earthen berm, “which is literally dirt cheap,” and to maintain cybersecurity at the site even though the reactor is no longer operating.

Diane Turco, president of the anti-nuclear group Cape Downwinders, was also critical of the NRC’s presentation “that all was going well in the nuclear waste world.”

“It was more than disturbing to hear the NRC staff sugarcoat their presentation about nuclear waste storage at Pilgrim,” Turco said after the meeting. “They reinforced the NRC’s inability to honestly address real safety issues.”

A written comment from Pilgrim Watch said: “Although the NRC came to Plymouth to assure us that NRC’s regulations and oversight guarantee spent fuel stored in dry casks here is perfectly safe today and will remain so into the distant future, they failed.”