COLUMBIA GENERATING STATION
Steam rises from Energy Northwest's Columbia Generating Station, the region's only commercial nuclear power plant, near Richland, Wash., in a 2003 file photo.
(The Associated Press)
The growing stockpile of spent nuclear fuel at the Northwest's lone commercial nuclear plant poses a safety risk to the public in the event of an earthquake, according to a study sponsored by anti-nuclear groups.
The study of spent fuel storage at the Columbia Generating Station is the latest of several commissioned by the Physicians for Social Responsibility and Heart of America Northwest. They collectively suggest that the plant is an expensive and dangerous way for the Northwest to generate electricity, and that it ought to be closed.
The study was authored by nuclear critic Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies. Officials at Energy Northwest, the utility consortium that operates the plant, say it is riddled with data errors and fear mongering. They also suggest its backers are extrapolating earthquake risks from recent seismic data that doesn't apply to the plant site.
The 1,200 megawatt boiling-water reactor is located on the Hanford nuclear reservation near Richland, Wash. It opened in 1984 and has since generated some 368,000 spent fuel rods in 4,588 assemblies.
In the absence of a national repository, about 60 percent of that waste has been transferred to durable, dry-cask storage, a safety measure that Alvarez applauds. But the remaining 40 percent remains in the reactor's spent fuel pool, a 350,000-gallon tank located at the top of the reactor building, six stories above ground.
The study's basic premise is that the plant, like others around the country, has been forced to store more fuel on site because of the failure to build a national storage site. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has also allowed plant operators to use fuel longer, resulting in higher levels of radioactivity when it is transferred to wet storage.
Bottom line, the study says there's a greater quantity of more radioactive and physically hotter fuel in the storage pond than it was originally designed to handle. In the event of an earthquake and loss of coolant water, that fuel could catch fire and cause a massive release of radiation.
"It's not rocket science to thin out what's in the pools and put as much in dry storage as possible," Alvarez said. If Energy Northwest is truly concerned about safety, he said, it needs to "go back to the part of the plant that poses the most significant risk to the public and reduce that hazard."
The backers of the study suggest that the elevated pool coupled with the seismic risk means the problem can't truly be fixed.
Energy Northwest says the pond is only holding 51 percent of 2,658 fuel assemblies it is licensed for, and that their radioactivity is below allowed thresholds.
"We're licensed to hold that amount of fuel. We have backup systems in place. The worst-case scenario they're describing is so unlikely it's unreasonable," said Energy Northwest spokesman Mike Paoli. "We have systems to address situations that should not occur."
Paoli says the example of Fukushima, Japan, is often cited. But even there, after a 9.0 earthquake, a 45 foot tsunami and three hydrogen explosions that blew the side and roof off reactor buildings at the site, "the spent fuel pools didn't lose a drop of water."
Updated seismic data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows that ground motion in a major earthquake in the area could be more than double what the plant was designed to withstand. Energy Northwest says that data isn't strictly applicable to the plant site. But it is required to deliver a new seismic review of the site to Nuclear Regulatory Commission by March.
"We all agree seismic hazards are going to be higher, and we'll make changes in the plant to make sure we can handle a higher seismic threat than we current have on paper," he said. "Where we diverge is when they say we have to shut down tomorrow."
The study also suggested that workers at Columbia Generating Station were receiving some of the highest radiation exposures in the country. Energy Northwest says workers exposure has not exceeded federal limits in 17 years.
-- Ted Sickinger