Vermont Yankee: What to do with spent fuel?

Vermont Business Magazine, Aug 01, 2004 by McQuiston, Timothy

They vehemently disagree on whether this is that site,

Nuclear power plants were first built in the United States in the 1950s. Because of the spent fuel issue, the federal government eventually promised (1978) that a permanent repository would be provided to keep the plants running. While a new reactor hasn't been ordered since 1978, the United States still has the most reactors (104) and the most electric output of any country in the world. France is second.

Total nuclear power generation in 2002 was a record 780.1 billion kilowatt hours, or about 20 percent of the country's electric energy requirements. Entergy runs 10 reactors at eight sites with a maximum capacity of 8,000 megawatts. Vermont Yankee has one reactor with a capacity of 535 megawatts. The uprate would increases output by 20 percent.

The Vermont Yankee spent fuel pool is licensed for 3,353 spent fuel assemblies. As of November 2003, there were 2,787 assemblies stored in the pool. The reactor itself contains 368 assemblies.

All the spent fuel at all the reactors in the US is currently stored onsite, either in the original spent fuel pools, or in dry casks.

In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act which called for the spent fuel to be stored at a deep geologic site. The US Department of Energy plan was to have two repositories, one in the East and one in the West. Subsequently, the DOE decided it would be too costly to site and operate two facilities, so it recommended that it operate just one repository for all of the spent fuel. In 1987, the Act was amended to focus solely on Yucca Mountain, NV. This site was supposed to be open for business in 1998.

The three finalists were sites in Texas, Washington state and Yucca Mountain. In 2002 Congress, based on the recommendation from the Bush Administration, approved the Yucca Mountain site.

In doing so, it overrode a veto by Republican Governor Kenny Guinn, a personal friend of President Bush. Along with Guinn, both Democratic US Senators from Nevada voted against the site, as did Vermont Independent Senator Jim Jeffords. Vermont's other senator, Patrick Leahy, voted in favor of the site.

While everyone, it seems, agrees there should be a federal repository and everyone agrees storing the spent fuel forever locally is a bad idea, and everyone agrees that geology is ultimately the most important safety feature of any site, even under the rosiest scenarios, Yucca Mountain would not be ready to accept spent fuel before 2010.

Vermont Yankee, because it was one of the first in line to ship its spent fuel to a

federal repository, is still near the head of the list to ship its waste once the facility opens. Vermont Yankee spokesman Rob Williams said. "The DOE estimates 2010 as the first year they would be in a position to begin accepting waste. Vermont Yankee is early in the queue which means it is likely that DOE could begin receiving some of the VY spent fuel within the first three years after 2010."

What is still In question is whether the spent fuel connected to a license extension would receive the same priority status.