Meet My Neighbor Illinois - It has Spent Fuel Issues As Well

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Peters and Fanning appear on NBC-5 report on Illinois nuclear power industry and spent fuel recycle research at Argonne

Mar. 30, 2011

On March 25, 2011, Chicago NBC TV affiliate Channel 5 reported on a public forum conducted by Illinois U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Mark Kirk to discuss the state of the nuclear energy industry in Illinois. The report also looked at ongoing research at Argonne National Laboratory to recycle spent nuclear fuel.

Mark Peters, Argonne Deputy Director for Programs, participated in the forum; NE nuclear engineer Thomas Fanning was also interviewed for the report.

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Illinois is home to more spent fuel rods than any other state in the nation. Until the Yucca Mountain storage facility was nixed, Illinois thought it had a handle on storage of its spent fuel. Illinois has six power plants and eleven reactors and is running out of storage.

Exelon, who operates the plants in Illinois and elsewhere says it's goal is to begin dry-cask storage by 2015. But this will still leave open as to what the plans will be for long-term permanent storage of spent fuel.

Illinois has had a moratorium on nuclear plant construction since 1987 and any plans by the legislature to lift this ban has been postponed in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

Approximately half of the nuclear reactors in the United States use the spent fuel storage pool system, which at best was designed for temporary storage of spent fuel rods as they "cooled" down enough to be moved into a dry cask storage system.

As the debate continues with the Department of Energy on plans to take over the long-term permanent storage of spent fuel, reactor operators more and more will have to look to safe on-site dry storage. Since the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, the storage of spent nuclear fuel has been under even more scrutiny.

The funny thing is that garbage that we humans generate on a daily basis can get a whole lot more attention when it isn't handled properly and in a timely manner. Witness New York during a garbage pick-up strike years ago:

 

Let hope we don't have to wait until the nuclear plant operators start putting their spent fuel out at the curb before we begin to address this problem.