nuclear-news

A video on Southern California Edison’s website describes what happens to the fuel rods, which remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years. It describes how the fuel is “enclosed in steel–lined, concrete pools filled with water called spent fuel pools, and sealed, stainless steel canisters that are housed in reinforced concrete structures — this is called dry cask storage.”

Edison, which operates San Onofre, announced Thursday that it has selected Holtec International to provide the stainless steel canisters that the utility will use to store the plant’s spent fuel from Units 2 and 3. Here’s how Edison, in a news release, described Holtec’s canisters:

“Holtec’s HI-STORM UMAX underground storage system features corrosion-resistant, stainless-steel fuel canisters topped with a 24,000-pound steel and concrete lid. The canisters will be encased in a concrete monolith.” But Donna Gilmore, who lives in San Clemente, about five miles from San Onofre, is worried the stainless steel casks are not robust enough for indefinite, long-term storage on the site.

The nuclear power industry has used the canisters for three decades but always with the understanding that the U.S. Department of Energy would take the waste when a permanent, long-term storage site was established. That solution, however, remains in political limbo with no permanent waste storage site on the horizon.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also ruled earlier this year that radioactive waste can be stored on nuclear plant sites indefinitely. “We’re looking at the waste sitting here for potentially hundreds of years,” Gilmore said, pointing from her home to the coastline below. “We don’t know how many years it’s going to sit here, and the NRC only certifies these casks for 20 years.”

Gilmore founded a website devoted to her research on how to decommission San Onofre safely. She was recently invited by the NRC to speak at a regulatory conference in Maryland.

She asked Mark Lombard, director of the NRC’s Division of Spent Fuel Storage, to delay Edison’s decision about which dry casks to use.

“Set higher storage standards now that we have this extended storage requirement,” she said at the hearing. “We need you to take the leadership role to raise the standards. Don’t worry about what we have now, what everybody owns. We have to think in terms of what we need.”

Gilmore said the casks used by most of the nuclear industry in the United States are stainless steel and less than an inch thick. Casks already in use in Europe, she said, are cast iron and are up to 20 inches thick. U.S. companies are going with the thinner casks because they are cheaper, Gilmore said……………….