Nuclear waste piles up

In an effort to preserve profits, nuclear power-plant operators in New England are stuffing more and more spent nuclear fuel rods into already crowded storage pools that many believe are more dangerous than the reactors.

The spent-fuel pools at New England's oldest plants now hold up to five times more fuel than they were designed to handle.

The dramatic increases in the number of rods per pool have been approved by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, partly because a national disposal site for nuclear waste has not been established.

Experts tell the The New England Center for Investigative Reporting this federally sanctioned "re-racking" has allowed plant operators to avoid millions of dollars in costs by delaying when the nuclear fuel rods have to be moved to safer but expensive dry cask storage, which involves sealing the material in giant concrete urns.

Now, though, the operators are running out of time. The NRC estimates that by 2015, many of the nation's spent fuel pools, particularly in older plants like many in this region, will run out of room. Then, operators will face an unpleasant choice: Move waste into dry casks to free up space in the pools, or shut down their plants.

While the NRC insists the practice is safe, stuffing pools to their limit is inherently dangerous, scientists and engineers say. They warn that the sheer volume of radioactivity in the pools, often far more than what is in a reactor, could turn an accident or natural disaster into a cataclysm. Also, they worry that the storage pools make tempting targets for terrorists.

"The New England plants are older, and the issues with older reactors are mostly ignored. These plants are like the canary in the coal mine. They never intended to put lifetime storage into the plants," said David Lochbaum, a former nuclear plant operator and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that has sounded the alarm over nuclear safety.

The Japanese nuclear disaster - spent fuel rods in pools at the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors were exposed to the air and released large amounts of radiation after a tsunami knocked out the cooling system - is a graphic example of the risks inherent in onsite spent-fuel storage. And the Japanese pools that caught fire held much less waste than many of the New England pools.

A 1997 study by the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island concluded that a pool fire at a plant like Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Connecticut or Pilgrim Nuclear Generating Station in Massachusetts could kill 100 people instantly and another 138,000 people eventually. Some $546 billion in damage would result, the study said, and 2,170 square miles of land could be contaminated.

Waste accumulates

Nationally, the nation's 104 nuclear power plants now store some 63,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods, according to 2010 numbers compiled by the Nuclear Energy Institute.

In New England, the four operating nuclear power plants are storing at least 2,900 metric tons of spent fuel, according to current figures provided by two plants and 2002 data available for two others, which is the most recent available. The Indian Point Energy Center nearby in New York state is storing at least 903 metric tons of spent fuel.

New England's plants have re-racked their spent-fuel storage pools many times over the last few decades. In many cases, the stored spent-fuel rods are now packed closer together than ever before - nearly as close as they were positioned inside the reactor.

The storage pool at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station was originally licensed to hold 600 spent fuel assemblies. There are now 2,935 assemblies in the pool, or 932 metric tons of radioactive waste.

At Millstone Nuclear Power Station in Waterford, Conn., the pool at the Unit 3 reactor was originally licensed to hold 756 assemblies. It now holds 1,040 assemblies, or 449 metric tons of waste, and is licensed to handle up to 1,860 assemblies. (next page »)