nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

After Pilgrim Power Station closed, the area is left with a nuclear graveyard

After Pilgrim closes, a nuclear graveyard, Boston Globe 14 Oct 15  “…….Unlike the closing of other kinds of businesses — like a retail store or factory — there is no sense of finality in Entergy’s decision to pull the plug on Pilgrim. If anything, it raises more questions, offers few answers, and will demand vigilance by federal regulators, state leaders, and local officials. For starters, Pilgrim remains online now and could keep generating power for nearly four more years. That’s a concern, especially since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last month lowered the plant’s safety ranking following unplanned shutdowns and chronic problems with pressure valves, demoting it to one of the three worst-performing nuclear power facilities in the United States…….

Mohl said a permanent shutdown could come as soon as spring 2017 — if a scheduled refueling is scuttled — but even then, Pilgrim will hardly be history: Decommissioning takes decades. The most immediate worry is the security of several thousand spent fuel rods that sit in a water-filled pool built in the 1970s. Entergy has started transferring some rods to fortified concrete casks that can hold 360,000 pounds apiece. It’s unclear how the shutdown will affect that process, which, like everything associated with nuclear power procedures, is agonizingly slow. So-calleddry cask storage has been used at other commercial nuclear plants for nearly 30 years, but the antinuclear coalition Cape Cod Bay Watch says the siting of the containers at Pilgrim, some only about 200 feet from the Atlantic Ocean, makes them vulnerable to the effects of climate change. However the old fuel is stored, it is staying put for a long time in what will become a nuclear graveyard — the government’s much-maligned plan to build a central waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada lost federal funding years ago….

October 16, 2015 - Posted by | general

No comments yet.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

« Previous | Next »