Connecticut doesn’t want nuclear waste stored in temporary containers at closed reactor sites in Haddam and Waterford for 60 years as a new federal ruling now allows, the state attorney general says.
George Jepsen said Tuesday he is joining New York and Vermont in asking the U.S. District Circuit Court of Appeals to review the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision in December to allow on-site fuel storage to go from 30 years to 60.
Connecticut has two operating nuclear plants, Millstone 2 and Millstone 3 in Waterford and two decommissioned nuclear plants, Millstone 1 in Waterford and Connecticut Yankee in Haddam. The spent fuel from those plants remains on site awaiting a permanent storage facility.
The 412 metric tons of nuclear waste from the Connecticut Yankee power plant has been in dry-cask storage in Haddam for the past eight years, and the storage facility is the only structure on the site, as the plant was decommissioned in 2007.
Millstone has its own dry-cask storage as well, which grows as more spent fuel comes from the two active generators.
Connecticut ratepayers have contributed $383 million to develop a permanent storage site for spent nuclear fuel, the majority of which went to Yucca Mountain. Ratepayers also pay $8 million per year to store the nuclear fuel on site in Haddam and Waterford.
The states insist the NRC must perform environmental impact studies before extending the temporary storage rule because any leaks from spent fuel storage pools or dry storage facilities could have significant impacts on groundwater and land use.
“We are asking the NRC to obey the law,” Jepsen said. “The NRC has a mandatory legal duty to provide state and local governments and the public with a full and comprehensive analysis of the potential environmental impact of additional decades of storage of high-level nuclear waste.”
Both the Indian Point reactor in New York and the Vermont Yankee reactor have had leaks of small amounts of nuclear material into the groundwater.
The owners of the Connecticut Yankee and the Millstone plants oppose storing the nuclear waste on site as well, because the dry-cask storage was meant to be temporary while the U.S. Department of Energy developed a permanent repository for the fuel.
NRC on Tuesday defended its decision.
“We believe the waste confidence rule has a solid legal foundation that is well explaned in the commissio’s decision,” said spokesman Eliot Brenner. “The rule is in full accord with earlier court decisions interpreting the commission’s obligations under [the National Environmental Protection Act].”
In 1998, the Energy Department was supposed to start collecting the nuclear waste from sites around the nation and put them into the repository, but that never happened because the repository was never developed. The plan to create such a facility inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain has since been abandoned.
The NRC’s extension of the temporary storage rule came as the oldest dry-cask storage in the nation is nearing its third decade in service. The Surry Power Station in Virginia has stored its nuclear waste on site since 1988. Surry and Millstone in Waterford are owned by Dominion.
With Yucca Mountain out of the picture, the Energy Department has no alternative plans for permanent storage of nuclear waste. President Barack Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Fuel is expected to issue a report on spent nuclear fuel on July 29.
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