Greenville News, Paul Alongi and Anna Simon
Published January 18, 2006
A terrorist attack on Oconee Nuclear Station could upend thousands of lives in a flash, but the tons of radioactive waste stored on the site won't be shipped away anytime soon, despite an attempt to revive a program that would reprocess the spent rods into reactor fuel.
President Bush has signed a bill that provides $50 million for reprocessing. But critics say reprocessing is a gamble because it's too expensive, won't take care of all the waste and results in a product that could be used in a terrorist bomb.
Another federal government plan is to store the waste at a national repository in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, but it remains mired in funding cuts and delays. In the meantime, dangerous waste remains on the shore of Lake Keowee within 10 miles of about 75,000 residents of Pickens and Oconee counties.
"They need to find some place to store that stuff," said one of those residents, Ray Williams. "They need to do away with that."
Experts say any solution that moves the waste out of the Upstate is years off.
Robert Alvarez, a former Energy Department senior adviser, said it would take at least 20 years to develop the infrastructure for reprocessing. Then, he said, the waste would have to be moved and processed.
"It isn't like a cotton candy factory where you just move it in and 'zip' -- you've processed the material," he said. "You're looking at a very long window of time."
Duke Power spokeswoman Rita Sipe said the waste is stored safely in dry storage with redundant safety systems, security officers and monitoring devices.
"Nuclear plants are some of the most secure facilities in the United States," she said.
Third District U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, R-Westminster, said that "in today's environment, you never say never," but Duke Power is as well prepared for an attack as any company he has seen.
He said the federal government should still push forward with reprocessing and the Yucca Mountain plans so the waste can be moved out of the Oconee Nuclear Station site.
"The short term? No, it's not going to happen," he said. "Long term? Yeah. Look at the French. The French have been reprocessing for years."
Other countries, including France and Russia, already reprocess nuclear waste because their governments pay a high price, then conceal the cost from their public, said Allison MacFarlane, a senior research associate in the technology group of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A single Japanese facility, for example, has cost more than $20 billion, she said.
"I don't think it's going to happen (in the United States) unless the government decides to foot the rather enormous bill," MacFarlane said.
While giving a $50 million boost to reprocessing, Congress cut spending for Yucca Mountain by $127 million, bringing this year's allotment to $450 million. The project would store 77,000 tons of radioactive waste about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Duke Power and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission declined to disclose how much waste sits at Oconee Nuclear Station.
"After Sept. 11... that's considered sensitive information," Sipe said.
A Duke spokesman said in 2003 the Oconee plant had about 1,900 assemblies in dry storage.
Even if Yucca Mountain were finished, it wouldn't be large enough to hold all the waste the nation's 103 nuclear power plants are expected to produce, according to a 2004 study by the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group.
Oconee Nuclear Station could be stuck with 1,095 metric tons by the time its reactor licenses expire in 2034, the group found. The advocacy group said it based its findings on U.S. Department of Energy numbers.
A license allows Duke Power to continue adding dry cask storage until 2010, Sipe said. The company plans to apply for an extension, she said.
When John Field of Maine visited the nuclear station's World of Energy on Tuesday, the nightmare scenario passed through his mind.
"God forbid," he said, "if terrorists should fly one of those huge airplanes into one of those things, would it really survive?"
Field and his wife were in town to consider where they might retire. The power plant shares a ZIP code with some of the Upstate's most upscale communities.
"I'm not concerned with the safety of the plant," said Lyn Hamilton, whose home shares a shoreline with the three Duke Power reactors. "But nuclear waste is an issue that needs to be addressed."
In reprocessing, spent fuel rods are chopped into small pieces and dissolved in a vat of hot nitric acid, MacFarlane said. Other chemicals are added to separate uranium from plutonium, she said.
But even after spent rods are reprocessed, waste is left over, she said.
"You're going to need essentially the same volume of storage," MacFarlane said.
Reprocessing can produce not only mixed-oxide fuel for reactors but also plutonium that can be used in an explosive, said Harold Feiveson, senior policy ana- lyst and co-director of the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University.
"If it's done in the United States, probably we could do it in a really disciplined, secure way, even though I'd still worry about it," he said. "But if it's done in a large scale in other countries, I think it does make one worry.'"
Alvarez said the nation needs a nuclear waste policy recognizing there is no "magic bullet" to solve the problem. He suggests guarding against terrorist attack by reinforcing the dry storage facilities on site with what he calls "brute-force engineering."
"Public safety is paramount above any political agenda," he said. "If you are serious about public safety, you reduce the risks of terrorist attacks against this technology."
WHAT'S AT STAKE
+Radioactive waste is likely to continue piling up at Oconee Nuclear Station, as plans to move the waste to a new storage facility in Nevada continue to be bogged down by delays and reprocessing remains an expensive option. Despite plant officials' security assurances, the buildup concerns many residents who live within 10 miles of the facility.
NUCLEAR WASTE STUCK IN THE UPSTATE
With 30 years worth of spent fuel and an average of five canisters a year placed in Oconee's dry storage building, space is running low. But, under the current license, Duke Power can continue to add to its dry storage until 2010.
HOW IT GETS THERE
1. Every 18 months, Duke Power temporarily shuts down one of the three operating Oconee reactors to replace the fuel assemblies, which have a livespan of four years.
2. Old assemblies containing highly radioactive material are cooled in water for more than 4 1/2 years.
3. They are placed in storage canisters adn moved to concrete and steel containment buildings where they are air-cooled.
Fuel assembly
Each storage canister, made of steel, concrete and lead, contains 24 uranium fuel assemblies. The 12-foot long assemblies consist of 200 steel fuel rods, each of which contains 250 half-ounce ceramic pellets containing uranium.
SOURCE: Duke Power
