Maine Yankee waste in feds' sight
Photo/Courtesy Maine Yankee
The dry cask storage systems for Maine Yankee's spent fuel became operational in 2004
Subcommittee members of a new federal commission exploring the transfer and storage of spent nuclear fuel will next month tour the site of Maine Yankee, a decommissioned nuclear power plant in Wiscasset that retains more than 550 metric tons of nuclear waste.
“We are very optimistic, and so pleased, that this subcommittee has agreed to come to our tiny little plant,” says Marge Kilkelly, chairwoman of the Community Advisory Panel on Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage and Removal, a watchdog group that represents community voices in Maine on nuclear issues.
“Our objectives are to get the waste from Maine Yankee shipped as quickly as possible out of state, and to make it a priority for the federal government to take waste from decommissioned sites,” Kilkelly says. “[Keeping the waste in decentralized locations] is the most ineffective and expensive way to store waste. It doesn’t make sense for anyone.”
It has also cost Maine utility ratepayers a bundle. Between 1982 and 1996, ratepayers put $65.5 million into the Nuclear Waste Fund, a federal fund set up to ship and store waste that today totals $30 billion. Another $185 million of Maine ratepayers’ dollars sit in a trust fund to cover waste storage that predated the establishment of the Nuclear Waste Fund, says Eric Howes, Maine Yankee spokesman. Ratepayers are also contributing between $6 million and $8 million each year, in storage fees, insurance, security and taxes, according Howes, costs built into consumers’ electricity charges.
Maine Yankee completed a storage system to handle its spent fuel in 2004, after the federal government rejected its waste. Those construction costs, and ongoing maintenance of the stored waste, continue to be borne by ratepayers, Kilkelly says. “Ratepayers have paid over and over again,” she says. “It’s like someone buying a used car from you and leaving it in your front yard. It’s like ‘Yeah, we’ll pick it up sometime.’ Well, hello?”
A fresh look at nukes
The Storage and Transport Subcommittee expected to tour Maine Yankee on Aug. 10 is one of three subcommittees of the federal Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, an appointment created in January to make “recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to managing the nation’s used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.” Long the scourge of power generators, nuclear power is enjoying resurging interest as the country struggles with energy independence. A month after forming the blue ribbon panel, President Obama approved loan guarantees to construct new nuclear power plants. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing its first applications in 30 years for construction of new nuclear reactors.
Kilkelly’s group invited the subcommittee to Maine in March to drum up support for transferring the waste to a centralized interim storage site outside of New England, one of the options the subcommittee is studying. The subcommittee’s visit would be its first to a shuttered nuclear site since the commission was created earlier this year.
The event opens the door to local discussions about nuclear power, an issue many considered dead after Maine Yankee powered down in 1996 after 24 years of operation, but 12 years before its license expired due to intense pressure levied against nuclear generators over safety and environmental concerns. Chief among those concerns was disposal of spent fuel rods, now stored in dry casks at the Wiscasset facility.
Maine Yankee filed a lawsuit in 1998 against the Department of Energy seeking payment of costs incurred because of the department’s failure to transfer and store spent nuclear fuel as required by Congress. The suit was extended to include costs incurred through 2002 and to pay for a dry cask storage system – a total of $82 million. A $43 million lawsuit followed for costs incurred between 2003 and 2008. A ruling on the first lawsuit is expected this year.
The fuel rods at Maine Yankee are also delaying redevelopment of the site, which last year drew interest from Toronto developer Riverbank Power Co., which considered building a $2 billion underground hydropower station there.
Wiscasset is one of eight U.S. towns dealing with nuclear waste from a decommissioned plant. Currently, 70,000 tons of radioactive waste are stored at more than 100 nuclear sites around the country, and 2,000 tons are added every year, according to a CNN report.
Resolving the waste issue
Maine Yankee operated from 1972 through 1996 as a 900-megawatt reactor — enough to power one-fifth of Maine’s homes and businesses, and an equivalent number of consumers in New England. Half of the plant’s power was used in Maine and the other half out of state.
Its fuel disposal problem was supposed to have been resolved in 1987 when Congress designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a central repository for spent nuclear fuel. But a political firestorm ensued and no nuclear waste was ever deposited at that site. The Department of Energy in January announced it wanted to withdraw its application to deposit fuel there, but its ability to do so remains contested in federal courts.
An alternative to permanent storage at Yucca Mountain would be to create a centralized, interim storage site for spent fuel, a prospect supported by Maine Yankee and the Wiscasset Community Advisory Panel.
The Department of Energy and the nuclear power industry are working on technology to recycle radioactive waste into nuclear fuel with intentions to build 11 advanced recycling centers in the United States. President Carter banned reprocessing in 1977 because a byproduct of recycling nuclear waste is weapons-grade plutonium, but President Reagan later reversed the ban.
France, the United Kingdom, Japan and Russia all recycle nuclear waste, but many in the industry say the technology is unrealistic for adaptation in the U.S. because those reprocessing facilities are financed by their governments. “There is today no compelling economic case that can be made for [doing it here],” says Nuclear Energy Institute spokesperson John Keeley. “It’s a pricey policy.”
The Blue Ribbon Commission will produce final recommendations for handling nuclear waste in 24 months. As the commission makes its considerations, nuclear waste remains in Wiscasset indefinitely.
At the time of its decommissioning, Maine Yankee was approved to keep its spent fuel in Wiscasset until 2020. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, however, has changed the length of licensing of dry cask storage from 20 to 40 years. If there are no alternative solutions in 2020, NAC International Inc., a Georgia-based company hired to manage nuclear waste storage in Wiscasset, would file to renew its license, meaning nuclear waste could remain in Maine until 2040.
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