Although the nuclear power industry touts the fuel as emission free, it still leaves a big challenge behind: what to do with radioactive waste.
The lack of a national policy — either storing the waste in a central repository or allowing it to be reprocessed — has caused California to call for a moratorium on new nuclear plants until the problem is solved. Georgia, on the other hand, is relying on utilities such as Southern Co. to store the waste safely at their power plants.
Before nuclear fuel goes into the reactor to start producing power, it is mostly uranium, oxygen and steel. After the fuel produces power, it turns into a material called nuclear waste, or spent fuel.
Nuclear waste is highly radioactive and remains so for thousands of years. If the waste is unprotected when it first comes out of the reactor, anyone who gets within a few yards of it will receive a lethal radioactive dose.
The federal government by law is responsible for figuring out a strategy for storing spent nuclear fuel over the long term. Last week, a presidential commission said the United States must start looking for an alternative to replace the planned Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, which the Obama administration nixed amid environmental concerns.
The administration canceled plans for a nuclear reprocessing facility in 2009 and then backed away from the idea of burying the waste under Yucca Mountain.
Utilities are instead storing used fuel rods in large pools of water for at least five years. Now, some are taking steps to move the cooled rods into dry casks, where they will remain until the United States sets a national policy for storage.
Southern Co.’s subsidiary, Southern Nuclear, has started storing used fuel in dry casks at Plant Hatch in South Georgia and Plant Farley in Alabama. At Vogtle, officials are building space and buying dry casks to begin storing used fuel from its existing operating units in about two years.
The two new Vogtle units will have large fuel pools next to the reactor containment building, where the used rods will stay until they are cooled.
“As long as they are in the used fuel pool, the radioactive component of them is decaying,” said Cheri Collins, general manager of external alliances for Southern Nuclear. “The optimum time to have them in there is between five and 10 years and then move them out again under a well-controlled process to dry cask storage.”
Like most of the nation’s other utilities, Southern advocates for a permanent alternative storage facility, such as Yucca Mountain. The company also supports the idea of reprocessing the waste.
“They do this in other parts of the world,” Collins said. “From an engineering perspective, from a science perspective, it makes sense. It’s hard to argue against it.”
Glenn Sjoden, a Georgia Tech professor who is considered an expert in nuclear system design, said pulling away from Yucca Mountain may force the government to reconsider the idea of reprocessing the waste.
“The government really needs to take care of that reprocessing issue in the next 50 years,” he said.
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