Unsuspecting tourists might not know the prettiest village in Maine is home to a stockpile of Maine Yankee’s nuclear power waste, but thanks to a recent Obama Administration decision, they will have plenty of time to find out.
The Administration has decided to dump the longstanding federal Dept. of Energy (DOE) project to provide a permanent national repository for spent nuclear fuel and other high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada that was originally promised by 1998.
As a result, Wiscasset and the many Central Maine Power Co. ratepayers end up holding the radioactive bag, much to the chagrin of local, state, and national leaders.
Sixty-four concrete casks sit at an independent spent fuel storage installation containing mostly spent nuclear rods from Maine Yankee’s pressurized nuclear reactor. The power plant generated about 119 billion kilowatt hours of electricity at the Bailey Point site in Wiscasset until 1997.
Four of the casks contain high level nuclear waste disposed of as part of the decommissioning process.
An earthen berm surrounds the installation making it barely visible on the skyline unlike the ever-present reactor dome, which was once a familiar sight on the horizon.
Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes said, “The government still has an obligation to provide for disposal of spent nuclear fuel. If not Yucca Mountain, what?”
Plans for the Yucca Mountain repository had been moving ahead but the date for initial deposit of nuclear waste materials was most recently set back to at least 2020.
Howes said the Obama Administration plans to have a blue ribbon committee study the issue with the idea of coming up with another alternative. The President’s decision to pursue other alternatives flies in the face of innumerable studies emphasizing the need to address the spent fuel storage issue at decommissioned nuclear power plants.
Various organizations and committees who have studied the issue, including the American Physical Society, National Commission on Energy Policy, the Keystone Center, House Appropriations Committee Report of June 2007, The New England Council, the fiscal year 2008 Consolidated Omnibus Bill Report, Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, Nuclear Energy Institute, and National Conference of State Legislatures, have come to basically the same conclusion.
In a joint letter to President Barack Obama, Maine’s U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, along with other Congressional leaders, stated, “Federal law imposed a duty on the Dept. of Energy to begin accepting this spent fuel and associated waste for disposal in 1998.”
They said the law also imposes a duty on the owners of facilities like Maine Yankee’s and the electric consumers to pay for costs of the government’s disposal activities. They have been paying for that for the past several years.
“Despite these payments that total in the billions thus far, electricity consumers in our states continue to provide funds to secure and safeguard these shut-down reactor sites,” the Congressional leaders said. “While the sites are under strict environmental, safety and security controls, as required by state and federal law, they cannot be reused in ways that will benefit the host communities until the protected material is removed.”
Maine Yankee has had a multi-million dollar suit still lodged in federal courts for the federal government’s failure to provide a national repository as it promised to do. That suit covers the years from 1998 though 2000. Maine Yankee has another suit in progress for the years from 2002 though today and beyond.
However, the DOE submitted a license application last June for a national repository at Yucca Mountain. Howes said a formal process is still involved and it is up to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to decide what to do with the application.
The NRC licenses and regulates two methods of spent fuel storage. One requires spent fuel pools where water removes decay heat from the fuel assemblies and provides shielding from radioactivity. The other, the kind Maine Yankee has, consists of dry cask storage containers where circulating air removes the decay heat and massive steel and concrete casks provide the radiological shielding.
Both methods require an NRC approved security system, emergency plan, and monitoring, which Maine Yankee has done since the installation’s inception.
How long the installation and storage in the casks remains safe poses a question. Maine’s Public Advocate Richard Davies said in an interview for this article, “At certain levels it is perfectly safe, but for the long term I have my concerns.”
Davies wonders what will happen if nothing happens with the nuclear waste stored in Wiscasset. “It’s pretty potent material that can do nasty things to material that contains it,” he said.
In his position, Davies said he, along with the Governor and other leaders, would continue to push the federal government for a reasonable and rational solution.
Congress has been making cutbacks, and Davies said the Bush Administration diverted funds for the repository using them for other purposes in the federal budget as a loan.
“At least we got to the point where we submitted an application for the site,” Davies said. “That was a major step forward.”
