Editor’s note: This commentary is by Crea Lintilhac, who is a director of the Lintilhac Foundation, a Vermont family foundation providing funding for clean water, renewable energy, and land use management. She is a member of the board of the Vermont Journalism Trust, VTDigger’s parent organization.
A report released by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and published in a recent issue of the Journal Science, says that after the meltdown of three nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant on March 11, 2011, officials feared much worse. They were anticipating that spent fuel stored in pools at the site would catch fire and send radioactive smoke across a much wider swath of eastern Japan, including Tokyo. By a stroke of luck, the scientists say, that did not happen, but they warn that the near miss at Fukushima is a warning that spent fuel accumulating at U.S. nuclear power plants is also vulnerable and a similar scenario could play out at a U.S. nuclear plant.
Scenarios were mapped of radioactive plumes that could spread across the Eastern Seaboard in various directions based on historical weather data for the whole region.
“We’re talking about trillion dollar consequences,” says Frank von Hipple, a nuclear security expert at Princeton University, who led the modeling of a hypothetical spent fuel fire at a Pennsylvania nuclear plant (Peach Bottom). The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) concluded that an area the size of New Jersey would be contaminated and about 3.5 million people displaced in the event of a major fire at the Peach Bottom spent fuel pool.
Nuclear safety expert, Arnie Gunderson of Fair Winds Associates points out that the Vermont Yankee fuel pool still contains more highly radioactive waste than was held in any of the fuel pools at Fukushima.
Vermont Yankee closed on Dec. 29, 2014, and within the past two years six states have shut down nuclear plants. Many other reactors are approaching retirement.
Nuclear safety expert, Arnie Gundersen of Fairewinds Associates points out that the Vermont Yankee fuel pool still contains more highly radioactive waste than was held in any of the fuel pools at Fukushima. He also argues that the state ratepayers should control decommissioning funds, not the utility, because it is their money.
He writes in a document submitted to the NRC that “In delaying the start of decommissioning, the utilities have requested and received exemptions from the NRC that allow them to eliminate radiological emergency planning and drastically reduce on-site security around hundreds of tons of high level nuclear waste, all in the name of saving money.”
Recently, Entergy Vice President Michael Twomey told Vermont state legislators that if the process of decommissioning the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant isn’t complete in 60 years the company is fully within its rights to walk away, and if challenged, would litigate. The owners may take up to 60 years from the day the reactor closes, to complete decommissioning, leaving the reactor and fuel pools mothballed until then and the local communities at risk. This is the option favored by reactor owners who are petitioning the NRC for cost cutting measures as they pour resources into efforts to circumvent regulations for the dismantlement and decommissioning of permanently closed reactors.
For a long time the NRC has considered whether to compel the nuclear industry to move most of the cooled spent fuel now held in densely packed pools to concrete containers called dry casks. Such a move would reduce the consequences and likelihood of a spent fuel pool fire. As recently as 2013, NRC concluded that the projected benefits do not justify the roughly $4 billion cost of a wholesale transfer.
We need a different road map for U.S energy policy. As aging and dangerous nuclear power plants close, we must demand prompt and safe decommissioning including the expedited transfer of spent fuel to dry cask storage. This should happen without extended cleanup and mitigation costs passed to ratepayers and taxpayers. We need leadership to guide us to a carbon-free, nuclear-free energy future.
