nuclear-news

The vulnerability of USA’s spent nuclear fuel cooling ponds

Three-quarters of that waste is stored in water-filled cooling pools like those at the Japanese plant, stored outside the thick concrete containment barriers that block the release of radioactive material in an accident…..”The spent-fuel pools are currently holding, on the average, four times more than their designs intended,”

Japan Disaster Raises Questions About Backup Power at U.S. Nuclear Plants, NYTimes.com, By MIKE SORAGHAN   March 24, 2011 In the United States, most spent fuel remains on site at nuclear plants because the country has not developed a facility to store it.The United States has 71,862 tons of the waste, according to a recent analysis by the Associated Press (Greenwire, March 23).

Three-quarters of that waste is stored in water-filled cooling pools like those at the Japanese plant, stored outside the thick concrete containment barriers that block the release of radioactive material in an accident. The rest is encased in “dry casks” constructed of steel and thick concrete.

“The spent-fuel pools are currently holding, on the average, four times more than their designs intended,” said Robert Alvarez of the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies……

Spent-fuel pools, NRC’s Burnell said, must be built to withstand the strongest earthquake at their site and are therefore as robust as any structures at a reactor.

“These factors preclude the need for specific containment structures for the pools,” he said.

The Union of Concerned Scientists’ Lochbaum says the federal government should require spent fuel rods to be stored in dry casks. He said it could take a terrorist attack or other catastrophe to expose the danger of keeping so much spent fuel at the plants to get policymakers to act. “Why don’t we do it now,” he said, “and skip the step where a bunch of Americans get killed?”…..

March 26, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes