Mad Science: The Nuclear Power Experiment

by Joseph Mangano

  The dangers of the waste to the health of living organisms cannot be underestimated. strontium-90 seeks out bone and bone marrow, where the red and white blood cells of the immune system are formed. plutonium-241 enters the lung. cesium-137 disperses through the muscle and soft tissues in the body. The enormous volume of these poisons means that any breach of securing waste at any plant would cause enormous harm to humans, animals, and plants.

  The typical plant’s share of radioactive waste translates into the equivalent of hundreds of times more than that released in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and several times more than what was released by the 1986 meltdown at Chernobyl, which was a very new plant which had accumulated little radioactive waste, mostly in the reactor core. The plant with the largest volume of high level nuclear waste is Millstone, on the Long Island Sound near New London, Connecticut. Long Island is situated as close as eleven miles from Millstone. It is one of the most difficult places to evacuate, with a population of nearly three million people jammed into a relatively small strip of land – and the only land-based evacuation route running through New York City, the most densely populated city in the US.

  The following table presents a summary of the amount of high level radioactive waste stored at US nuclear power plants as of early 2011. The terms “metric tons” and “curies” may not be easily identifiable to all, but the numbers are staggering in their destructive ability.

  Alvarez R. “Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the U.S.: Reducing the Deadly Risks of Storage.” http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/

  spent_nuclear_fuel_pools_in_the_us_reducing_the_deadly_risks_of_storage. Accessed on May 24, 2011.ent_nuclear_fuel_pools_in_the_us_reducing_

  the_deadly_risks_of_storage. Accessed on May 24, 2011.

  The large majority of the waste (about 80%) is still stored in pools of water, at least twenty feet deep, inside the plant. But this type of storage was never designed to be anything more than a temporary solution for maintaining waste. With many reactors now having operated over thirty years, and about 30% of the fuel rods in the core placed in storage every twelve to eighteen months, fuel pools are reaching capacity at many plants.

  The need to continually cool the pools with water to avert a meltdown has become more critical as fuel rods accumulate. As devastating as the Chernobyl meltdown was, very little of the danger came from the fuel pools and virtually all the radioactive spent fuel from the new reactor was released from the damaged core. But a typical US reactor holds several times more radioactivity in its fuel pools than Chernobyl’s core. Loss of cooling water at the pools would cause a staggering number of casualties. In 2004, Union of Concerned Scientists staff member Dr. Edwin Lyman calculated deaths if the core and fuel pools at the Indian Point plant near New York City melted. Lyman estimated that, in the worst case, within fifty miles of the plant, 44,000 would die relatively quickly from acute radiation poisoning, while 518,000 would die from cancer in the decades ahead.

  As spent fuel pools filled, utilities complained to the NRC, which allowed them to “re-rack” the rods, a term that essentially means jamming more fuel rods into the pools than originally planned. But with no permanent destination for storage and with reactors continuing to produce waste, filling pools to their capacity has meant that utilities have had to make other plans.

  That plan involved moving the fuel rods from pools into dry cask storage. Dry casks are enormous steel cylinders into which the spent fuel rods are placed, surrounded by inert gas. The cylinders are placed into concrete and steel structures, making the total weight of each dry cask about 126 tons. About twenty-four fuel assemblies (roughly 2,400 fuel rods) are contained in each cask. They are stored outside on the grounds of a nuclear plant, some placed horizontally and some vertically.

  Utilities are not permitted to place high level waste into dry casks until they have been in spent fuel pools for at least five years, to allow some decay of the short-lived radioactive chemicals and some cooling of the red-hot waste to occur. But still, the waste inside the casks is hundreds of degrees, and dry casks are still considered a form of temporary storage. However, the NRC assures that “over the last twenty years, there have been no radiation releases which have affected the public” from dry casks.

  The first NRC license granted to allow dry cask storage occurred in 1986, at the Surry plant in southern Virginia. Since then, forty-six plants have obtained twenty-year licenses for what are known as Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations, virtually all of which are used for dry cask storage. Some, but not all, of these plants are now shifting waste from pools into dry casks. By 2011, about 20% of fuel at US nuclear power plants is contained in over 1,000 dry casks.

  Another option for handling used fuel is called reprocessing, a type of recycling of high level waste. This option has been employed in other nations, especially the United Kingdom and France, but was only used in the US from 1966 to 1972.

  Of all the health and safety concerns posed by radioactivity at nuclear plants, the problem of high level waste is probably the most worrisome. While there have been core meltdowns at various sites, including Santa Susana in 1959, Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and multiple reactors at Fukushima in 2011, high level waste still poses a greater concern in the long run. In a typical US nuclear plant operating for about thirty years, the amount of radioactivity maintained as waste is several times more than the radioactivity in the reactor core(s), even though only slow-decaying chemicals are in waste storage facilities.

  There are numerous scenarios in which high level waste can harm the public. In particular, spent fuel pools, which still house the large majority of the waste, are problematic. Any loss of cooling water – from mechanical failure, act of terrorism, or natural disaster – will expose the extreme heat of spent fuel rods to air – the same air that people breathe. Buildings in which pools are located do not have containment structures like the buildings housing the reactor core. Any exposure of non-cooled fuel rods that melt will cause fires and explosions and can escape into the environment – a scenario like that at Fukushima in March 2011, which lost cooling water to two of its spent fuel pools after an earthquake and tsunami extinguished power needed to generate cooling water. The image of a “dry” fuel pool at Fukushima reported by journalists and government/industry officials is a chilling one.

  Storing high level radioactive waste at nuclear plants presents a huge security challenge. Damage to the fuel pool building from a terrorist attack could result in an enormous disaster. The image of a plane hijacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001 flying directly over the Indian Point nuclear plant on its way to the World Trade Center in New York City is particularly disturbing. The spent fuel pools at Indian Point are built into a small hill on the grounds that could potentially allow direct impact from a crashing airplane. With seventeen million persons living within fifty miles from the plant, the ensuing environmental catastrophe could potentially be the worst in US history.

  Dry casks are seen as preferable to fuel pools by some, but they also pose a threat to public health. The casks are placed outside a nuclear plant at ground level, and are visible to those at or near nuclear plants with this type of storage. While they are not as hot and radioactive as spent fuel pools, radioactivity in dry casks is still hundreds of degrees, and the casks contain huge amounts of these deadly chemicals. They are large and strong, but many contend would be no match for a fast-moving airplane of much greater size. And over time, as reactors continue to operate, dry casks will contain more and more spent fuel.

  Such monumental safety problems posed by temporary storage raise the question of why most of the radioactive waste produced by nuclear plants is even there, instead of being stored in a safe, permanent location. The answer is that over sixty years after the atomic age began there is no safe or permanent solution to the waste problem, with none in sight for the foreseeable future, with the distinct possibility of such a solution never being reached.

  Nuclear weapons plants in
the US began operating in 1943, and power plants first started in 1957. From the outset, the fission process generated huge amounts of highly radioactive waste, regardless if the reactor was used to make nuclear weapons or generate electricity. Even before reactors started, scientists knew this waste would be produced, but no plan for maintaining waste was made.

  At first, such as plan was seen as an obstacle to the breakneck pace of creating nuclear weapons for World War II and for the Cold War arms race. Atomic bombs were needed as fast as possible to ensure national security, and lack of a plan for radioactive waste, while a problem, would not be allowed to stand in the way of this goal. Planning a system of permanent waste storage wasn’t a priority. But ignoring the issue didn’t mean the need for a long-term plan would go away.

  The waste problem at nuclear weapons sites was handled in a very slipshod manner, and the extent of the resulting contamination is staggering. Of all the weapons plants, Hanford in southeastern Washington State accumulated the most waste. Today, there are 53 million gallons of high level liquid waste stored in 177 underground tanks. About a third of them are leaking their toxic contents into the soil and ground water, and are moving through the groundwater to the Columbia River. In addition, 25 million cubic feet of solid radioactive waste is strewn across Hanford, a mess that will take decades more to clean up. The Santa Susana plant was only used for research, not to produce weapons or generate commercial electricity. Still, enormous amounts of radioactive waste in the environment were allowed to accumulate at the site, and have yet to be cleaned up (see Chapter 5).

  Nobody wanted responsibility for developing a permanent plan for storing waste. Private utility companies that owned reactors operated as individual, local entities, not a united group with a national focus. They placed used fuel rods into pools and continued working, willfully oblivious to the eventual need for a permanent waste repository. Knowing this, Congress assigned the AEC the responsibility of managing radioactive waste as part of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. Three years later, the National Academy of Sciences produced a report recommending geological disposal in deep underground sites. The report cheerfully stated: “The Committee is convinced that radioactive waste can be disposed of safely in a variety of ways and at a large number of sites in the United States.”

  However, the report also featured a dire warning about the magnitude and danger of the task, one that was to prove prophetic over the next half century: “The hazard related to radioactive waste is so great that no element of doubt should be allowed to exist regarding safety.”

  The NAS report also recommended that salt deposits were the most secure means of burying waste. This did not stop the AEC from considering a variety of disposal methods, including storage under polar ice sheets, under sea beds, in deep boreholes and wells, in outer space, and melted into lava. Ultimately, the AEC rejected each of these approaches and concentrated on finding an area with ample salt that could be used for storage.

  The 1957 NAS report cited several locations with ample salt deposits, including sites in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Texas. After scouting various potential sites in these areas, the AEC decided to focus on “Project Salt Vault” at an abandoned salt mine near Lyons, Kansas, a town of 4,500 people about seventy miles northwest of Wichita. Site preparation began in 1963, and two years later, the first canisters containing spent fuel assemblies were placed into the mine. The project inserted and removed assemblies for the next several years, and in 1970, the AEC announced that the Lyons site was being considered as the permanent site for radioactive waste.

  The AEC had made a poor choice. Probably the greatest danger at the Lyons site was the presence of a nearby hydraulic mine that had used considerable amounts of water. A waste site would have to be devoid of water (the rationale for the Project Salt Vault) for many thousands of years. Any contact of the super-heated waste with water could corrode the canisters holding the waste, and could create steam containing deadly radioactive gases and particles that would be shot into the air, breathed by humans, and enter the food chain.

  Opposition from local citizens and leaders was fierce. “The Lyons site is a bit like a piece of Swiss cheese,” said Kansas geologist William Hambleton. When the AEC persisted, political leaders in Washington were called in to help. Congressman Joe Skubitz angrily made the case against the Lyons salt mine in particular, and against the idea of a permanent disposal facility in general: “The Federal Government cannot compel a sovereign State to do itself and its citizens possible irreparable injury if its officials refuse to be stampeded.”

  In August 1971, an amendment by the two US Senators from Kansas blocked action on the Lyons site until a safety panel independent of the AEC could give its assent. Several months later, the AEC gave up on the site. It continued the search for an acceptable salt formation throughout the 1970s in various states. But all posed problems, and as time went on, Congress became increasingly nervous. Large volumes of waste were accumulating at nuclear plants, the plan to reprocess waste had been abandoned, opposition was encountered at every site examined by the AEC, and the nation’s growing anti-nuclear sentiment prompted a four-year debate in Washington. Seeing that progress towards a permanent waste storage site would need legislative backbone, Congress passed the National Waste Policy Act (NWPA) in 1982.

  The NWPA mandated that the Energy Department (the successor to the AEC) choose two waste burial sites, in the eastern and western parts of the nation. The first site – the western one – was to house 70,000 metric tons of high level waste. The proposed sites for a second repository – in the East – included the upper Midwest, northern New England, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Strong local opposition was met in each of the proposed areas; it was clear that nobody wanted the monster of permanent nuclear waste stored in the backyard.

  The following year, Congress passed another law naming Yucca Mountain, Nevada as the site of choice, and dropped the idea of a second repository. Yucca was a logical choice to some; it was located in a remote area close to where nuclear weapons had been tested. Others pointed to geological flaws, and to the fast-growing Las Vegas area just eighty miles to the south. Numerous legal actions were attempted. Local opposition was strong – Nevada was no different than any other state – and leaders denied needed state permits. The federal government countered by passing a 1992 law dropping the requirement for state permits. The legislative battle continued, fought largely on partisan grounds, as the Energy Department began preparing the Yucca site. In 2000, Democratic President Bill Clinton vetoed a measure that would have sped up the schedule for Yucca. The administration of his Republican successor George W. Bush succeeded in enacting approval legislation and submitting a license application. Finally, in 2010, Democrat Barack Obama’s Energy Department withdrew the application for the repository, and penciled in zero dollars in the federal budget for continuing work. For the moment, at least, the partially built repository at Yucca Mountain is dead, leaving the nation with no plan for permanent high level waste disposal.

  Obama’s Energy Secretary Dr. Steven Chu epitomized the consistent lack of progress in creating a permanent solution for high level waste storage, when he made a public statement in 2009. His comment could have been made six decades earlier, symbolizing a back-to-square-one attitude. The regional waste sites he mentioned have been proposed in the past, but they have evoked a strong not-in-my-backyard response.

  So the real thing is, let’s get some really wise heads together and figure out how you want to deal with the interim and long-term storage. Yucca was supposed to be everything to everybody, and I think, knowing what we know today, there’s going to have to be several regional areas.

  The road to Yucca Mountain has had a rocky experience, and the idea of it or any other permanent waste site is very much in doubt. Still, the site may eventually be used in the future. The idea of starting over in the search for a permanent waste site, after over half a
century of efforts, would evoke a groan from even the most ardent opponent of Yucca. But the true lesson of the permanent waste repository experience is that there is no “good” way to permanently store high level radioactive waste, especially in the enormous amounts generated by US nuclear power reactors.

  Of all the obstacles to a “safe” means of storage, perhaps the most daunting is the length of time that these poisons must be kept from living things. Most of the waste is made of cesium-137, plutonium-241, and strontium-90, which will decay and disappear in 300 to 600 years. But this is an extremely long time to maintain a foolproof system. In the period 300 to 600 years ago, the United States did not even exist as a nation. What life will be like on earth and in Nevada 300 to 600 years down the road is anyone’s guess – a guess that makes plans like high level waste disposal a dangerous gamble.

  Even if US nuclear plants ceased operations today, and somehow the high level waste was maintained safely for hundreds of years, the problem wouldn’t be solved. Dozens of other radioactive isotopes with longer half lives would remain in massive amounts, and their slow decay rates would require complete segregation from all forms of life for many thousands of years – a length of time that makes hash of any predictions and plans.

  The problems of Yucca Mountain or any other site are multiple. There is no known underground site on earth without a geological risk. Water infusion is a common one. Earthquakes represent another (both water seepage and earthquake potential have been cited as reasons to reject Yucca Mountain). There are other geological concerns over such a vast amount of time. The changing climate of the earth may create new threats.