nuclear-news

Dangers of USA’s spent nuclear fuel pools

A Safer Nuclear Crypt, NYT, By MATTHEW L. WALD,  July 5, 2011, The nuclear calamity at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant has refocused attention on the vulnerability of spent fuel pools at the 104 operating American nuclear plants.

Several members of Congress are calling for the fuel to be moved from the pools into dry casks at a faster clip, noting that the casks are thought to be capable of withstanding an earthquake or a plane crash, they have no moving parts and they require no electricity.

But transferring the fuel to dry casks involves risks of its own, some industry experts say. “It’s a very complex discussion,” said Neil Wilmshurst, a nuclear power expert and a vice president of the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility consortium. “Every time you move spent fuel, there’s always a risk of human error. How much of this do you want to do if you don’t need to do it?”

“We should not wait for an American meltdown to beef up American nuclear safety measures,” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, who advocates greater reliance on casks, said after the accident in March in Japan. “We must heed the lessons to be learned from the nuclear meltdown in Japan and ensure nuclear safety here.”…….

The discussion is unfolding amid a far broader and more divisive debate over nuclear waste disposal. A half-century after the American nuclear industry was born, the nation still lacks a dedicated repository for such waste ….

In 2005 the academy reported that terrorists could plausibly mount a successful attack on the pools and recommended that federal regulators evaluate whether more of the fuel should be moved to dry casks……

July 6, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes