nuclear-news

Particularly dangerous wastes in new nuclear plant design

Expert fears problems with new area nukes

TimesLeader By Rory Sweeney 17 Sept 09

WILKES-BARRE – The French-designed nuclear reactor that PPL Corp. is proposing to build at its Bell Bend site in Salem Township is untested and could create more problems than it solves, according to a French nuclear consultant…….

So far, there have been no versions of the reactor completed. Two are far into construction in France and Finland, while another two just began in China.

Yves Marignac, the executive director of the energy-information agency WISE-Paris, said the U.S. Evolutionary Power Reactor that PPL hopes to build is basically the design marketed in other countries by France-based Areva as the European Pressurized Reactor.

While the reactor is designed to be safer and pull more energy from its uranium fuel, Marignac said it also increases the potential for catastrophic failures and creates radioactive waste so concentrated that a way to dispose of it hasn’t been found yet.

Although the reactor was designed to reduce the probability of accidents by a factor of 10, he said, “Complexity might be an enemy of safety.”

The reactor is also designed to be more efficient, but it creates more-concentrated radioactivity, he said. . It’s “hotter and more radioactive, so it would be more problematic to keep it on site,” Marignac said.

Because the United States doesn’t have a permanent storage site for high-level nuclear waste, each facility has to keep its used fuel on site either in pools or in dry storage.

http://www.timesleader.com/news/Expert_fears_problems_with_new_area_nuke_09-17-2009.html

September 18, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | antinuclear, AREVA, nuclear, radiation, radioactive