USA’s rapidly accumulating, highly toxic radioactive nuclear wastes

There are 104 U.S. commercial nuclear reactors operating at 64 sites in 31 states that are holding some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet in onsite spent fuel pools.

Occupy the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission), 29 Sept 12, And we thought Fukushima was bad? Check out what is in our backyards. Spent fuel is dangerous stuff. If something bad happens at a plant, it is not just the fuel in the reactor has the potential to be released in the atmosphere. SCARY. NOT FEAR MONGERING. REALITY PEOPLE, REALITY

Reactor operating cycles in the US have been doubled from 12 to 24 months in order to generate more electricity. As a result, more spent fuel with higher radioactivity
and thermal heat is being offloaded into evermore- crowded pools during each refueling outage. This
places a strain on pool cooling and cleaning systems
making spare pumps and heat exchangers operate for
periods far longer than originally intended.

Spent Nuclear Fuel Stored in U.S. Reactors

There are 104 U.S. commercial nuclear reactors operating at 64 sites in 31 states that are holding some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet in onsite spent fuel pools. The pools, typically rectangular or L-shaped basins about 40
to 50 feet deep, are made of reinforced concrete walls
four to five feet thick and stainless steel liners. Basins
without steel liners are more susceptible to cracks and
corrosion. Most of the spent fuel ponds at boiling water
reactors are housed in reactor buildings several stories
above ground. Pools at pressurized water reactors are
partially or fully embedded in the ground, sometimes
above tunnels or underground rooms.

According to estimates provided by the Department
of Energy, as of this year this spent fuel contains
a total of approximately 12 billion curies of long-lived
radioactivity (Table 1).6 Of the 65,000 metric tons estimated
by the Nuclear Energy Institute to be generated
by the end of 2010, 75 percent is in pools, while the
remainder is in dry storage casks. Several of these reactors
are located in earthquake zones (Figure 5).

The Energy Department provided this estimate
in 2002 to project the amount of spent fuel that
would be placed in a geologic repository — a failed plan
predicated on the presumption that such a site would exist. There is more

CONSEQUENCES OF A SPENT FUEL FIRE

For the past 30 years, nuclear safety research
has consistently pointed out that severe accidents could
occur at spent fuel pools resulting in catastrophic consequences.

A severe pool fire could render about 188
square miles around the nuclear reactor uninhabitable,
cause as many as 28,000 cancer fatalities, and spur $59
billion in damage, according to a 1997 report for the
NRC by Brookhaven National Laboratory done for the
NRC.

If the fuel were exposed to air and steam, the
zirconium cladding would react exothermically, catching
fire at about 800 degrees Celsius. Particularly worrisome
is the large amount of cesium-137 in spent fuel
pools, which contain anywhere from 20 to 50 million
curies of this dangerous isotope. With a half-life of 30
years, cesium-137 gives off highly penetrating radiation
and is absorbed in the food chain as if it were potassium.
As much as 100 percent of a pool’s cesium 137 would
be released into the environment in a fire, according to
the NRC.

SUMMER OF 2002

In the summer of 2002, the Institute for Policy
Studies helped organize a working group including experts
from from academia, the nuclear industry, former
government officials, and non-profit research groups
to perform in in-depth study of the vulnerabilities of
spent power reactor fuel pools to terrorist attacks. By
January 2003, our study was completed and accepted
for publication in the peer-review journal Science and
Global Security.19

We warned that U.S. spent fuel pools were vulnerable
to acts of terror. The drainage of a pool might
cause a catastrophic radiation fire, which could render
an area uninhabitable much greater than that created by
the Chernobyl accident (Figure 14).20
In addition to terrorist acts, there are several
events could cause a loss of pool water, including leakage,
evaporation, siphoning, pumping, aircraft impact,
earthquake, the accidental or deliberate drop of a fuel
transport cask, reactor failure, or an explosion inside or outside the pool building.

Industry officials maintain
that personnel would have sufficient time to provide an
alternative cooling system before the spent fuel caught
fire. But if the water level dropped to just a few feet
above the spent fuel, the radiation doses in the pool
building would be lethal — as was demonstrated by
the loss of water in at least two spent fuel pools at the
Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station.

The NRC and nuclear industry consultants
disputed the paper, which prompted Congress to ask
the National Academy of Sciences to sort out this controversy.

In 2004, the Academy reported that U.S. pools
were vulnerable to terrorist attack and to catastrophic
fires.

To reduce this hazard we recommended that all
U.S. spent fuel older than five years should be placed in
dry, hardened storage containers, greatly reducing the
fire risk if water was drained from reactor cooling pools
(Figure 15).

Dry Storage Costs

As of fiscal year 2010, only $7.3 billion has been
spent out of a total of $25.4 billion collected by 2010,
leaving $18.1 billion unspent.29 This large unexpended
balance could more than pay for the storage of spent
reactor fuel older than five years at all reactors.

Safely securing the spent fuel that’s currently in crowded pools should be a public safety priority of the highest degree
in the U.S. The cost of fixing America’s nuclear vulnerabilities may be high, but the price of doing too little is incalculable.

www.ips-dc.org/files/3200/spent_nuclear_fuel_pools_in_the_US.pdf