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Spent nuclear fuel crisis at closed Kewaunee nuclear plant

Outcry prompts expedited plan to move fuel at Kewaunee nuclear plant Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel by Thomas Content 6 July 14 The Kewaunee nuclear power plant stopped producing electricity more than a year ago, but it left behind highly hazardous waste that has no place to go.

Radioactive rods of used nuclear fuel are cooling in a large storage pool inside the reactor, located east of Green Bay on the shore of Lake Michigan. Plant owner Dominion Resources Inc. wants to speed up plans to empty the pool and put the rods in more secure long-term storage.

Under Dominion’s plan, all of the spent fuel will be moved from the pool by the end of 2016. The rods will be encased in 24 concrete casks, each standing 18 feet tall, that will be moved from the reactor building to a concrete pad outside, said Dominion spokesman Mark Kanz.

Once they’re relocated, it’s unclear how long the radioactive remnants of the nuclear industry will stay in the casks. That’s because the federal government has no long-term plan for disposing of the waste now stored at scores of reactors around the country. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, Wisconsin has 1,430 tons, or about 2%, of the nation’s spent fuel.

Dominion hired NAC International of Atlanta to build and fill the casks, and move them from the Kewaunee reactor building. Terms of Dominion’s deal with NAC haven’t been disclosed, but the company told federal regulators that it will spend $103 million through 2016 to manage the spent fuel.

The company accelerated plans to remove and encase the spent fuel to address concerns raised by members of the local community, Kanz said.

Last year, residents and officials in the Kewaunee County Town of Carlton criticized Dominion after the company said it would take the full 60 years allowed by the federal government to decommission the power plant.

Taking that long to shutter the plant would cripple efforts to attract economic development to the area, they said………

A nuclear safety watchdog group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the risk to the public is decreased when the spent fuel is placed in concrete casks rather than keeping it in spent fuel pools………

The project is being paid for by the customers of three Wisconsin utilities — the former co-owners of the power plant. Those customers paid surcharges over the years into a decommissioning fund.

The value of that fund is less than Dominion says it needs to spend, at $649.3 million at the end of 2013. Dominion says the money is being invested so that it will grow over time and that there should be sufficient money available to pay for the decommissioning.

Dominion has also committed $60 million from its Virginia-based parent company toward the project, in the event funds in the decommissioning fund run short.

Wisconsin’s electric utility customers wouldn’t end up having to pay more, because Dominion bought the plant from Wisconsin utilities and took responsibility for decommissioning at that time.

When Wisconsin regulators approved the sale of the Kewaunee Power Station in 2005, they ordered Dominion to return any unspent decommissioning funds to state ratepayers……

As the stalemate in Washington over waste storage continues, the stockpiles of stored spent nuclear fuel enclosed in concrete casks are multiplying. How long the concrete casks will stay at the Kewaunee, Point Beach and La Crosse reactors in Wisconsin is very much up in the air.

Dominion’s plan calls for concrete casks to start being shipped to the control of the federal government within seven years — but that timeline may be merely wishful thinking, said David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ nuclear safety project.

“I likely have a better chance of winning the lottery than spent fuel leaving Kewaunee site in 2021 — and I don’t buy lottery tickets,” he said.  http://www.jsonline.com/business/outcry-prompts-expedited-plan-to-move-fuel-at-kewaunee-nuclear-plant-b99302369z1-265974071.html

July 7, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes