DOE's spent fuel strategy: Not a bang but a whimper

There is a hallowed tradition in Washington known as the "Friday Document Dump," in which news and announcements the government wishes to bury are strategically timed for Friday afternoons, when such announcements tend to fall through the cracks of the typical news cycle (i.e., assuming reporters are even present to cover the event, the strategic timing tends to ensure it will miss the weekend papers, thus effectively "burying" the story by the time the new week rolls around).

In this storied tradition, the Department of Energy released the Obama administration's response to the Blue Ribbon Commission report last Friday to relatively scarce media coverage. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find any coverage in many of the major papers; what little coverage there was can be found in the Washington Times, Platts (an energy publication), and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. (Needless to say, the timing appears to have had its intended effect).

AREVA's NextEnergy blog and Nuclear Diner have already posted some of their thoughts on the release, but after reading the DOE's report I have to say I've felt a bit underwhelmed. As a friend remarked, it's a document "laying out the next set of milestones for the nation's spent fuel management program to miss." I wish I could say he was joking.

Some of the major highlights:

• An emphasis upon a flexible, staged, consent-based process for locating a permanent geologic repository for used nuclear fuel designed to be adaptive to potentially changing circumstances.
• A new, independent waste disposal organization charged with overseeing used fuel management and disposal, along with legislative action to reform allocation of the Nuclear Waste Fee paid by operators to allow for greater operational flexibility and independence.
• Short-term emphasis upon siting a pilot interim storage facility for used nuclear fuel, with a triage priority of relocating fuel from decommissioned reactor sites first. Operations would begin in 2021.
• Transitioning toward an operational interim storage site with sufficient capacity to meet the existing federal government's liabilities under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982; operations to begin in 2025.
• Making "demonstrable progress" toward locating and characterizing a potential geologic repository with a target operations date of 2048.

Much of the above points are relatively familiar, essentially retreading what has already been detailed in the original BRC report findings (thus begging the question of why a 14-page response would take so very long). And, for the most part, the BRC findings, translated to the DOE report, are not bad findings - however it's hard to find where the DOE's report has added much at all to the discussion aside from a blanket endorsement.

Perhaps to the disappointment of the AREVA (who emphasized reprocessing as a viable fuel cycle strategy in their blog response), the report seems to go out of its way to minimize the potential role of reprocessing in a future U.S. fuel cycle strategy - in fact, one point which stuck out to me was in that the DOE report recommended that the scope of the waste management organization (referred to as a "management and disposal organization, or "MDO" - because if there's one thing Washington loves, it's acronyms...) should be explicitly constrained to explicitly exclude reprocessing. Here's the relevant quote:

In addition, the mission of the MDO will need to be carefully defined. For example, funding made available to the MDO should be used only for the management and disposal of radioactive waste. While this could include the management and disposal of waste resulting from the processing of defense materials, the MDO itself should not be authorized to perform research on, fund or conduct activities to reprocess or recycle used nuclear fuel. These limitations on the MDO mission are consistent with the recommendations of the BRC.

Thus, it would strongly indicate a commitment to a once-through fuel cycle for the time being. Among other factors cited to support this decision was ORNL research I'd highlighted in my previous post, which indicated that most of the current used nuclear fuel inventory (98%, in fact) could be consigned to direct disposal even assuming a future closed nuclear fuel cycle.

With respect to the emphasis on interim storage, I have to admit to having a somewhat adverse reaction while reading the report - namely because of the jarring disparity between words and deeds. In particular, such a ready-made pilot facility for interm storage based upon local consent has already been proposed - Private Fuel Storage. PFS existed as a consortium of nuclear utilities; it negotiated a contract with the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute Indian Tribe located in Utah (located about 70 miles SSW from Salt Lake City).

PFS had been attempting to open a privately owned and operated interim storage site for over ten years (it first filed a license application with the NRC in 1997); in the process, it has been a political football of multiple administrations in the ongoing battle over Yucca Mountain. Ultimately, PFS received an operating license from the NRC in 2006, yet various shenanigans from both the state and federal level prevented it from ever opening. (The Bureau of Land Management refused to allow for the expansion of a rail line to ship fuel to the reservation, and the state of Utah continued to block any shipments of spent fuel canisters to the site along Utah highways. Despite the fact that as a Native American tribe the Skull Valley Band is legally autonomous from the state of Utah, the state government found plenty of other ways to frustrate the intentions of the Goshute Tribe and PFS.) 

Roughly two weeks before the DOE report was released, PFS finally announced its intention to withdraw its license from the NRC - namely because it was clear that the process was going nowhere (and licenses aren't free). Thus, a jarring chasm between word and deed - clearly, a pilot interim storage site already existed - one which had the consent of the local government (in this case, the Goshute Tribe); however, the Obama administration has shown little inclination to intervene. One is left to wonder then how any other future site could hope to get off the ground when a ready-made solution such as this one is abandoned to state-level sabotage; one can easily see such a scenario playing itself out with states blocking shipments to interim sites located outside their borders based on the Utah example.

Particularly depressing about the overall strategy is in its relative lack of ambition; a planned operating date for an interim storage site which would happen a mere 27 years after the original timeline obligated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (and 43 years after the act was first passed), with no repository in sight until I (a relatively young and spry individual at the present) am poised to retire - a full 50 years past the original deadline. (Only in the federal government is one allowed to miss a deadline by a full half-century with a straight face.)

I will be the first to say that the 1987 amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act which ultimately decreed Yucca Mountain as the nation's sole geologic repository by virtue of legislative fiat was a mess. But the warmed-over copy-'n'-paste job combined with completely lackluster goals for siting a repository look like rather unseemly indicators that Obama administration's approach to the BRC process was essentially that of a stalling tactic, following their contentious decision (both politically and legally) to cancel the Yucca Mountain project. If one is to unilaterally dismantle nearly three decades of standing policy of nuclear waste disposal policy, a little more should be expected in terms of an alternative. The DOE report would not be it.

To reprocess or dispose? A look at fuel cycle triage

A recent study by former colleagues of mine from Oak Ridge National Laboratory raises some interesting questions about the future direction of U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. My colleagues have been presently engaged in a scientific triage study for used nuclear fuel disposition options. One of the largest parts of their work has simply been in collecting the massive amount of data on the 67,600 metric tons (1 MT = 1000 kg) of commercial used nuclear fuel in the U.S., including issues such as how long it was burned in the reactor, the fuel type, and the initial enrichment, with an objective of being able to accurately characterize the composition and location of every used nuclear fuel assembly presently in the U.S. (I also am tangentially involved in this work, funding an undergraduate for data collection and am hoping to expand my role into doing modeling work in support of this effort).

The overall goal of this work is to support a more informed decision framework to specifically look at how we deal with spent fuel inventories in the U.S. - in other words, performing a triage analysis on what fuel would be the best candidates for various fuel cycle options (including direct disposal versus recycling). Given that some fuel is inherently going to be less suitable (read: more expensive) for recovering actinides as future fuel material, the goal is to sort out what can be disposed of immediately and what might be preserved for future fuel cycles.

Their (surprising) finding was that of the present inventory, 98% of the current used fuel inventory (by mass) could be disposed of without leaving open the option of future retrieval while still allowing for the ability to facilitate a future closed fuel cycle in the U.S. This conclusion was based upon the assumption that the U.S. would eventually open a fuel reprocessing facility; even under this assumption most of the present inventory of used nuclear fuel is not needed to support such a cycle. Some of this is simply due to the large inventory of used nuclear fuel in the U.S. - at nearly 68,000 metric tons of heavy metal with the largest fuel reprocessing centers having a throughput on the order of 1,000-1,500 MTHM per year, there is simply more "legacy" fuel out there than a typical facility would ever usefully process.

Their decision analysis was based on several factors, including the value of material which would be recovered (older fuel tends to have less plutonium available for recovery, and the plutonium is of lower quality); complexity (older fuel has other complicating factors such as different types of cladding material - like stainless steel - which can complicate potential recovery and thus make it less preferable to newer fuel), and simply the amount of material needed to sustain a closed fuel cycle (given the time before such a facility would come online, it is anticipated more than sufficient inventories would be present to sustain a closed fuel cycle without drawing into older fuel). Likewise, they considered what fuel assemblies might be useful to future reprocessing research efforts by DOE (such as used, highly-enriched fuel from naval and research programs).

To many who advocate exploiting the resource potential of used nuclear fuel (myself included), this is a jarring conclusion. There has always been a tacit assumption in mind that domestic reprocessing would not only include future inventories of used nuclear fuel, but help to alleviate the pressure on current demand for geologic repository space by making use of the readily available inventories out there. Yet beyond looking at what is economically practical (i.e., prioritizing the most valuable fuel for recovery), the report brings in an eye-opening reality - given the fact that the U.S. has spent the last thirty years committed to a once-through fuel cycle track, there is simply more used fuel than a single modern reprocessing facility would have capacity to handle, especially given the stable influx of fuel coming out of future reactors which would form the foundation for a future closed fuel cycle. As a result, much of this "legacy" fuel becomes unnecessary to support such future fuel cycles.

A more important implication relates to geologic disposal itself. The plans for the (now likely former) Yucca Mountain site called for a 50-75 year "retrievability" window; in other words, the repository was to be operated for an extended period which would allow for retrieval of used fuel out of the repository for other uses. (After the retrieval period, it was generally assumed if no use case had emerged by this point, permanently closing the repository was the most reasonable option).

Designing a repository with future retrievability in mind doesn't come for free; it essentially adds another engineering constraint (read: cost) to the problem and ultimately requires further analysis of how the repository will perform in containing waste in addition to the "post-closure" period. (It also tends to bias one's choice of geology - a feature of salt-based repositories like WIPP is that they are explicitly not designed to be retrievable - the heat from nuclear waste packages generally causes salt to plastically deform around waste packages, effectively "sealing them in.")

Thus, figuring out what spent fuel has little potential prospect for future recovery represents an technical triage which can help simplify a future repository design (as well as open up options for where such repositories might be located). In essence, separating out the "wheat" (fuel more useful for recovery) from the "chaff" (fuel which has limited potential for recovery) allows for a more intelligent approach to used fuel disposition which can ultimately make constructing a future permanent geologic repository cheaper and easier.

Of course, the standard caveat applies: the hardest part of opening any geologic repository has never been technical so much as it has political. Nonetheless, the ORNL report offers a rather bracing conclusion as to what a future U.S. fuel cycle may look like, even if the decision is made to restart reprocessing in the U.S. Ultimately, the vast majority of the current inventory of used nuclear fuel may yet still be destined for direct disposal, simply due to the realities of waiting over three decades before finally deciding to reconsider our rather ill-fated national decision to abandon a closed nuclear fuel cycle.

Spent nuclear fuel disposal is not a "subsidy"

One thing that tends to raise my hackles without fail is when the inevitable game of "Name the Energy Subsidy!" comes up, somehow the issue of spent nuclear fuel disposition gets lumped in. Namely because spent fuel management is pretty much the opposite of what is typically thought of as a "subsidy."

To give some background - prior to 1982, the management of spent nuclear fuel was the sole province of nuclear generators. In this regard, coupled with the dual expectation that uranium resources would be relatively scarce and that fast "breeder" reactors would be used to create a virtually inexhaustible source of plutonium-based fuels from non-fissile U-238, the nuclear industry began private-sector arrangements toward chemical reprocessing and recovery of uranium and plutonium from spent fuel. (This still leaves the issue of locating a high-level waste repository for the remaining radioactive materials not recycled, however the mass and volume of said materials would be substantially reduced).

This continued until 1976, when President Ford issued a temporary moratorium on civilian reprocessing of spent fuel, followed by President Carter's (infamous) 1977 executive order permanently banning it, based on international nonproliferation concerns. (Reagan would later reverse this order, but the damage by that time had been done). This came just as plans were underway to by Allied General Nuclear Services open a relatively advanced reprocessing facility in Barnwell, South Carolina. Ford's (and subsequently Carter's) executive orders came after $500-700 million had already been committed to the Barnwell facility. It is one of many sobering lessons in the history of the nuclear industry how mercurial shifts in politics can bring about financial ruin when dealing with capital-intensive investments.

Fast-forward to 1982 - faced with a crisis in managing spent fuel brought about by the sudden halt in the domestic reprocessing industry, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. One of the main provisions of this act is that the federal government assumes the role of locating and constructing a suitable geologic repository for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel. (The subsequent 1987 amendments, termed the "Screw Nevada" bill, amended the 1982 Act, short-circuiting the site selection process to designate Yucca Mountain as the sole candidate site, in part due perceived cost savings by narrowing down the site selection process.)

[As an aside, there are two excellent articles I can recommend to those more interested in a full treatment of the history of how we came to where we are today - the first, "The U.S. Spent Nuclear Fuel Policy: Road to Nowhere" by James M. Hylko and Dr. Robert Peltier, PE, which focuses more on the chronology of U.S. high-level waste management, and the second, a recent article in The New Atlantis, "Yucca Mountain: A Post-Mortem" by Adam White, which delves more into the politics of Yucca Mountain.]

However, a key facet of this bill which is often overlooked is the fact that the industry is required to pay for the cost of disposal; specifically, they pay a fee of 1 mil/kWh ($1/MWh) of nuclear electricity generated. In other words, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act is by its very nature a "polluter pays" arrangement (which really, is as it should be). To date, the Nuclear Waste Fund has accumulated nearly $30 billion (accounting for accumulated interest), while spending about $8 billion on site characterization for the Yucca Mountain Project. Only in Bizarro-world is a net payment of $22 billion from the utilities (and, by proxy, electricity consumers) to the federal government considered a "subsidy." One can quibble over whether the sum is sufficient - right now the fee generates about $750 million per year - but the fact is, no one's getting a free ride on that front.

So I was somewhat distressed to see the waste "subsidy" canard come up this discussion of energy subsides over at Scholars and Rogues. Specifically, a couple of quotes jumped out at me:

The continuing cost of such temporary storage, and the nearly $100 billion needed for “research, construction and operation of the geologic repository over a 150 year period” at Yucca Mountain, is a subsidy for the nuclear industry.

Fifty-five thousand tons of spent fuel rods, with no permanent home in sight, suggest nuclear subsidies will continue. But before Congress, presumably with White House “cooperation,” ends any energy subsidy, perhaps they’ll take time out from their internecine bickering to actually produce a coherent national energy policy that reflects all available technologies and considers the viability of energy technologies in light of fossil fuel emissions decimating the global climate.

Huh? In what universe is an industry tasked with the responsibility of paying for its own waste disposal (particularly after the utter and repeated failure of the federal government to live up to its contractual obligations with utilities) a "subsidy?" Much of the rest of the article contains some risible arguments about subsidies to the nuclear industry (the value of the Price-Anderson Act is a contentious issue, namely because while it does act as a liability backstop for nuclear accidents, not a single dime has ever been paid out under the act; further is the cross-insurance requirement that literally guarantees "an accident anywhere is an accident everywhere"); however, given that I have a day job, I really didn't feel like debating every single claim. Needless to say though, the issue about calling waste management a "subsidy" struck me as profoundly incorrect.

So, in the spirit of Rod Adams, I left a comment, but I decided to share my comment here as well. (Forgive my long-windedness...)

I will leave the debate over some of the "subsidies" you bring up for others, but there is one major issue I must take issue with - you state the cost of spent nuclear fuel storage is a cost borne by taxpayers (i.e., a subsidy). This is most explicitly not true.

First, the cost of on-site storage is explicitly paid for by the generating utilities (i.e., under the law, this is their obligation) - not the federal government. Second, per the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, nuclear operators have been required to pay a fee of 1 mil/kWh of nuclear electricity generated (i.e., $1/MWh) to cover the costs of geologic disposal. (Per the NWPA, the federal government assumed the responsibility for permanent geologic disposal - in 1987, this was amended to select the Yucca Mountain site.)

In this time, the federal government has collected nearly $30 billion (including accumulated interest) from the utilities to cover the costs of Yucca, with about $8 billion being spent in site characterization. This most certainly does not look like a subsidy in the conventional sense.

One can argue whether the nuclear waste fee is sufficient to cover future costs - at present, the waste fund accumulates about $750 million per year, and will continue to do so as long as the reactor fleet operates. One could likewise argue with your characterization of "no permanent solution" - geologic disposal, by its very nature, is designed to be a "permanent" solution, namely by placing spent fuel in long-term isolation from humans and the environment. And this is not the only waste disposition strategy available - other strategies, like reprocessing to separate out shorter-lived fission products from still-useful actinides can both substantially reduce waste volume and the overall long-term radioactivity (i.e., the actinides, like Pu and other fissionable heavy metals, are the majority of the "long tail" of radioactivity in spent fuel - nearly all of the rest is gone after around 300 years). However, I would also point out that it was political decisions by the federal government in the 1970s that ended U.S. reprocessing efforts being undertaken by private industry - and thus left the federal government in the role of assuming responsibility for spent fuel disposal.

Overall though, the fact that the nuclear industry is responsible for paying its own way with regards to spent fuel disposal significantly undercuts the argument that this constitutes a "subsidy" in any form.

Meanwhile, what other energy sector requires that hazardous wastes be so methodically isolated from humankind until the end of time? Certainly coal ash has toxic heavy metals (lead and mercury) which never become less toxic, as do older generations of photovoltaic cells. I don't say this to diminish the challenge in responsibly managing nuclear waste, but rather to point out that this is a more universal problem - the only difference is that nuclear is the only sector actually held to account for this negative externality, including paying for the actual costs of permanent disposal.

Yucca Mountain is dead. Long live Yucca Mountain!

Last October, during the Republican primaries, I made a prediction regarding the future of Yucca Mountain - namely, don't bet on it. Not, of course, because it's particularly deficient on a technical level (it's not perfect, but you can judge the science that went into it for yourself.) But rather, the battle for Yucca mountain left its opponents holding the political high ground - particularly when even none of the Republican hopefuls would defend the site at risk of angering Nevada voters.

Skip forward to today. Mitt Romney (last seen saying anything to the residents of Nevada that he think would lead to his election) has lost, meaning any possibility of a reversal of fortune for Yucca Mountain is pretty much dead in the water for the next four years (and likely now for all time).

Politically, not much has changed. Harry Reid still wields an inexplicable* position of influence over the Senate, and Obama still holds the presidency. Absent a surprise intervention by the Supreme Court on the Yucca licensing issue or a sudden change of heart by the residents of Nevada outside of Nye county (the potential host of Yucca Mountain, and generally more supportive overall of the project, namely because of the perceived benefits in terms of high-paying jobs and local investment which generally balance out perceived risks), it is unlikely anything much is going to happen.
 
(*One of my students in my Nuclear Waste Management class asked me how Harry Reid managed to ascend to such a position of influence from what is otherwise an inconsequential state - to which I had to answer, "I don't know, it is beyond the scope of this class." I really don't have a good answer for this one.)

As an aside, relevant to this discussion is an interview in this month's Nuclear News with Chairwoman Allison MacFarlane:

Q: Do you have technical concerns about a repository at Yucca Mountain, such as the rock form or the possibility of contact with an aquifer?

Let me explain. The technical analysis that I did on Yucca Mountain was in the pre-2002 time frame. Since then, in 2008, the Department of Energy submitted a license application. Then the NRC did some technical analysis. I haven’t looked at either of those. So I haven’t updated myself on the technical situation or on any new information that’s come in within the last 10 years. And so, as a careful scientist, I would hold off on making any judgment.

(Emphasis mine.)

On one hand, as a fellow scientist, I appreciate Dr. MacFarlane's reticence toward commenting on a technical issue which she herself recognizes that she is not current on. On the other hand, it is somewhat distressing that the chairwoman of the NRC would not deign to familiarize herself with those very same findings.  (I realize that Dr. MacFarlane obviously has a very full agenda, but nonetheless given that her specialty with geologic disposal of nuclear wastes was one of her core competencies given for her nomination to head the agency, the fact that she has been an extremely outspoken critic of Yucca Mountain, and the fact that this is a timely and controversial topic facing her agency, one would think that she might find the time for a bit of... "light weekend reading...")

Process matters

By this point, your response is probably something along the lines of, "Thanks for the update on News of the Obvious." But to be honest, it seems like a great many people haven't seemed to get the memo yet. Following a discussion on Jim Conca's recent Forbes piece featuring WIPP (the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in Carlsbad, NM, which is responsible for handling military-origin transuranic wastes to be buried deep in salt bed caverns), the question was inevitably asked - "If WIPP is working, why can't Yucca Mountain?"

Herein lies the problem. Debates over the technical details of Yucca aside (details which have been exhaustively studied for nearly two decades), it was never about technical feasibility. One of the most salient arguments I have tried to convey upon my students (and anyone else unfortunate enough to be caught within earshot) is that process matters. Again and again this has been emphasized - by myself and by the findings of the Blue Ribbon Commission themselves. (As well as by social science experts - see for example, this decent op-ed by Chris Mooney on science communication right around the time Yucca faced the axe.)

WIPP worked namely because WIPP made sure to do the process right. From the start, WIPP focused on public engagement and local consent - trying to build understanding and consensus before they broke ground. And to that end, they've been remarkably successful. WIPP enjoys extremely high levels of support from the local Carlsbad community, largely in part due to the influx of high-paying jobs it has brought an otherwise very rural economy. And by committing to transparency and public oversight from the start, the WIPP project managed to soften much of the opposition which may have otherwise doomed such a project - namely because the public felt like both they had a say and that the process was fair and trustworthy. (Mind you, it is unlikely one will ever gain complete consensus - namely because there are some who persist in asserting that nuclear waste is an "unsolvable" problem and frankly have no interest in solving it...)

But far too often in the technical community, there is an attitude that this process can be circumvented. "Who cares what the unwashed masses think? We're right and they're not" - a fine ethos for a dictatorship run by scientists and engineers, a recipe for repeated and painful failure in a democracy. This is the attitude that I see prevailing each and every time I hear someone hammer on why we need to keep pushing on Yucca Mountain - either by forcing a showdown on the licensing process or some other means. And let me reiterate - on a technical basis, I think Yucca Mountain is a sufficient (not ideal, namely because it consigns otherwise recoverable resources to waste, but sufficient) solution.


Here's the problem - it's off the table. There is about a snowball's chance in hell of any of the following factors aligning to rescue Yucca Mountain right now: Chairwoman MacFarlane rescuing the Yucca Mountain license (previously withdrawn with prejudice by Secretary Chu), a sudden reversal in position by President Obama, an intervention by the Supreme Court to finish the Yucca Mountain licensing evaluation, a marked shift of opinion in the state of Nevada, or the sudden departure of Sen. Harry Reid.

Like it or not, the political deck has been stacked against Yucca. Perhaps why it's so hard for technical folks to accept is because of this - it's a victory of politics over science - and unabashedly so. But even assuming Yucca were never to have been derailed by an opportunistic president looking to make a deal with an influential senator, the problems at the core still remain - a process built on a foundation of rolling over state-level consent. It is hardly believable that the opposition which has escalated through the courts up until the 2010 would suddenly evaporate upon Yucca's grand opening. Instead, it is far more likely that another decade of contentious (and expensive) lawsuits would have followed, bankrolled (in somewhat ironic fashion) by the same funds legally obligated to the state of Nevada for hosting the repository by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

$8 billion and all I got was this lousy blog post

Hence my point of emphasis to folks still pushing Yucca Mountain: he's dead, Jim. Let this one go and start thinking about what to do right now while we begin the process again, this time hopefully learning something from our $8 billion lesson.

The sunk cost is perhaps what is hard for most to accept, particularly in the nuclear community. $8 billion is a high price to pay for learning to respect the process of siting a repository in equal measure to the level of technical effort that went into it. But again, this is where the hard-nosed realism of technical folks must prevail - what do you hope to do now? Wishing for a more favorable political situation won't bring back your $8 billion or put a single fuel assembly into the ground. Instead, it's going to require a hard gut check and some long thinking about where we go from here.

So what now?

Let me quote now from wisdom of the Bard Jagger:

You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you just might find
You get what you need

In the short term, what is needed is some means of storing spent fuel, particularly from already-decommissioned sites (i.e., "orphaned fuel") in a consolidated interim storage facility. Such a facility would be inherently temporary by nature, something which can be enforced by contractual penalties as a means of making such a site more attractive to the host community. Fuel would be kept in concrete storage casks, where it is currently safely licensed to be kept for periods of up to 60 years, and may potentially be safely stored for up to 100-200 years, following further study.

Meanwhile, the main upshot of such a move to interim storage is that it provides a workable solution for the time being until the process of siting a repository can be restarted (which it inevitably must be). This something both recommended by the BRC and is now being proposed by outgoing Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). Whether it or not it goes anywhere in Congress is anyone's guess (although it will likely and unfortunately be eclipsed by much of the talk of the coming "fiscal cliff.")

My own feelings on interim storage have evolved somewhat over the years; it was not long ago that I was critical of such a strategy, namely because it felt like "kicking the can down the road" to future generations. But here's the rub - as much as I generally favor strategies like reprocessing on the grounds of energy recovery, as far as economics go, it simply can't compete with the cost of mining new uranium, even with the repository cost tacked on - and the requisite technologies like fast-spectrum reactors which can effectively transmute and fission long-lived actinides (thermal spectrum, "light water" reactors like those we run now aren't particularly efficient at this) - simply aren't here yet. In that sense, absent the infrastructure to reprocess and effectively burn all of the long-lived constituents of used fuel (not just plutonium), it may just make sense to let it sit around for awhile under well-monitored conditions. Even assuming technology never progresses forward, the end result is a cooler, less radioactive fuel that is less expensive to dispose of. (It is one of the few problems in life that manages to get cheaper the longer you wait.)

Such a position doesn't necessarily sit perfectly with me - as a technical person, I have a bias toward action. (Which of course would be why my research focuses on advanced waste management and recovery strategies). But such a solution is certainly better than a complete failure of the federal government to meet its obligations to ratepayers (i.e., consumers of nuclear electricity) who have paid $30 billion over the last two decades to handle this problem, only to be met with nothing to show for it.

Siting even an interim storage for used fuel won't be trivial - it will likely run into some of the same political challenges Yucca Mountain has faced, if the fate of the proposed Private Fuel Storage facility in Utah is any indication. (PFS has negotiated with a Native American tribe - the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute Tribe - to host such a facility. Despite the fact that the facility is on tribal lands, the state of Utah has attempted to do everything in its power to block the proposed facility - namely by denying rail and road access.) But it may serve as a useful trial run for getting the process right when it comes to the "real thing," i.e., siting a permanent geologic repository.

On a final note, I will be supervising my students' end of semester projects this evening. The task I assigned them was to propose an amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, taking into account the failures of U.S. high-level waste management policy (including a technical analysis of their proposed alternatives compared to the "baseline" scenario). It should be interesting to see what they come up with.

Questions for MacFarlane

Dr. MacFarlane (Image: George Mason University)

The nomination of Allison MacFarlane has drawn a considerably mixed reaction among the nuclear community, ranging from NEI's rather speedy endorsement and Rod Adams' similarly rapid denouncement. Others (including myself) have chosen to withhold judgment for the time being, although I do recomend Margaret Harding's list of desirable qualities in a potential NRC chair.

Given that MacFarlane's hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works committee is scheduled for tomorrow, here are some questions which I believe would better inform the discussion both of whether MacFarlane is a good candidate to lead the NRC and what her leadership might entail.

NRC & Leadership

1. Given the size and relative impact of the NRC, it is not an agency known for its amenability to on-the-job leadership training. A particular concern is in your lack of organizational leadership experience on your resume. Why do you believe you are qualified to lead the NRC, and what leadership qualities do you believe you bring to the table?
2. Describe what you feel are the key challenges currently facing the NRC. What areas would you focus on as chair, and how would you work to overcome them?
3. Your attitudes appear to have evolved from being a self-described "nuclear agnostic" to indicating that "we absolutely need" nuclear energy with respect to climate change. What provoked this evolution?
4. A prominent concern regarding your appointment to the chairmanship of the NRC is that your background has generally not focused on nuclear fuel cycle technology per se. How do you believe you can overcome this experience gap?
5. Much of the NRC's policy comes down to producing an appropriate balance of safety with economic considerations in regulation. Please describe your thinking on what constitutes socially acceptable risks. Should the safety threshold for nuclear energy systems be higher than other commonly accepted risks, such as air travel? What about in comparison to other energy sources?
   
6. A decision which has been roundly criticized by many nuclear experts was outgoing Chairman Jazcko's unilateral decision to establish a 50-mile evacuation zone for U.S. residents in Japan, contrary to both existing U.S. evacuation guidelines and the Japanese evacuation guidelines. Do you agree with this decision? If so, upon what basis? If not, where did the Chairman err and how would you handle the situation differently?

Nuclear Waste Management

1. As an outspoken critic of Yucca Mountain, both on technical and procedural grounds, how do you view the decision by your predecessor Gregory Jazcko, along with President Obama and Secretary Chu to terminate the licensing review process in light of amendments to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act which legally mandate Yucca Mountain as the nation's sole geologic repository? Would you allow the licensing process to move forward? If not, how then do you square this under existing federal law?
2. One of your significant contributions to the Blue Ribbon Commission was a strong focus upon a more consent-based process of involving communities in the repository licesing process. What do you view as the NRC's role the siting process for a potential repository (if any)?
3. What immediate actions (if any) do you believe the federal government should take with respect to spent fuel management?

Nonproliferation

1. Your academic background includes several publications on the topic of nuclear nonproliferation policy. In particular, you have publicly stated your opposition to spent fuel reprocessing on nonproliferation grounds. Do you believe President Carter's decision to suspend civil reprocessing in the United States was ultimately effective in achieving its stated nonproliferation goals?
2. How do these nonproliferation concerns relate to the NRC's recent license to GE to construct a laser enrichment test facility, given similar nonproliferation concerns?
3. Please describe why you believe reprocessing of reactor-grade plutonium to be a viable proliferation concern, particularly in nuclear weapons states.
4. What role (if any) do you see for the NRC in establishing U.S. nonproliferation policy?

Licensing and new construction

1. A particular challenge to the development of novel reactor concepts such as small modular reactors as well as entirely new reactor concepts such as TerraPower's traveling wave reactor has been the difficulty in getting such designs through the NRC licesning process. In particular, this has been described as a "chicken-and-egg" problem, with the NRC refusing to prioritize designs with no present commercial interest, while utilities are generally only interested in designs that are expected to receive NRC review. As a result, some designers - such as TerraPower - plan on circumventing the U.S. market entirely. What do you believe the NRC should do to address this issue?
2. Nuclear experts such as Rod Adams have pointed out that the existing COL process relies on the assumption that no amendments to the design will need to be made after construction begins. Does this process need to be improved? If so, how would you propose improving it?
3. Departing chairman Jazcko was frequently the lone dissenter on several recent votes for involving reactor licensing and construction, including the construction licenses for Vogtle and VC Sumner reactors as well as the recent 20-year license extension for the Pilgrim nuclear facility. Do you believe Jazcko's dissenting votes were justified? If so, on what grounds? If not, how would you approach the situation differently?

What questions would you ask MacFarlane, given the chance?

Update: Margaret Harding presents her own list of questions, and Rod Adams posts a transcript of his 2007 interview with Dr. MacFarlane in which she declares herself as an "atomic agnostic."

Update II: Jack Spencer at Heritage's blog similarly poses his questions. Some substantial overlap in themes arises - particularly over issues such as Yucca Mountain and new reactor licensing.

A closer look at Jazcko's replacement

Dr. MacFarlane

Earlier this week, embattled NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko announced he would be stepping down from his position contingent upon the confirmation of his replacement. Wasting no time, the Obama administration announced their nominee today, a mere three days after Jaczko's announcement. Their candidate? Dr. Allison MacFarlane, an associate professor of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University.

MacFarlane is not without technical credentials - she holds a Ph.D. in geology from MIT and has written extensively on nuclear waste management issues - in particular, serving on the recent Blue Ribbon Commission. And, unlike the departing Chairman, MacFarlane at least has an academic career to point to, rather than solely being employed as a political aide for entire career. Ideologically however, she is relatively aligned with the departing Chariman however - thus, while not quite Gregory Jaczko II: Electric Boogaloo, she is likely close enough for government work.

A mixed bag

Suffice it to say, MacFarlane's ideological interests represent a mixed bag, to say the least. In many of her writings concerning the siting process for a nuclear waste repository, MacFarlane has repeatedly pointed to the need for a consent-based process (like that used for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant [WIPP] in New Mexico) for locating a disposal facility, something which has been repeatedly stressed by other nuclear professionals (including myself). Thus, her influence over the Blue Ribbon Commission's final report is quite obvious.

On the other hand, MacFarlane has been extremely critical of spent fuel reprocessing along with being a tenacious opponent of Yucca Mountain itself; she, along with Frank Von Hippel of Princeton have repeatedly advocated plutonium immobilization of surplus stocks of reactor-grade plutonium from civil reprocessing programs, as well as for weapons-grade plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads. Needless to say, this is an incredibly wasteful and inefficient waste management solution. (It is thus perhaps unsurprising then, given her influence, that the BRC final report also declined to endorse reprocessing as a policy solution for spent nuclear fuel.)

MacFarlane couches her objections chiefly in terms of nonproliferation concerns (something which I have an academic specialty in); what is not clearly demonstrated in any of her analysis is how reactor-grade plutonium (itself not suitable for direct use in weapons, due to heat-producing impurities such as Pu-240 and Pu-242 which make for sub-optimal weapons materials - more on this in a moment) represents a viable proliferation concern, particularly in nuclear weapons states such as the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and the United States.

The exception here to this trend is of course Japan, which currently reprocesses fuel and ultimately aspires to achieve a fully "closed" fuel cycle for reasons of resource independence. However, even absent a reprocessing program, their world-class leadership in nuclear technology means that they are hardly constrained on a technical basis from developing a weapons program. (Japan is quintessentially a "screwdriver's turn" from nuclear weapons capability.) Yet given their deep cultural aversion to nuclear weapons, Japan is in fact a leading figure in the international nonproliferation community.

All of this said, MacFarlane herself has gone on the record of indicating the she personally does not oppose nuclear energy itself, arguing that in the face of climate change, we "absolutely need nuclear power." Again, very much a mixed bag, so to speak.

The two faces of the nonproliferation community

Much of MacFarlane's background has been associated with what I term the "political" wing of the nonproliferation community - the other being the "technical" side (where my background is from). Her affiliations include the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard (not exactly a hotbed of pro-nuclear activity or solid technical analysis at that), home of well-known academic nuclear critic Matthew Bunn, as well as being a regular co-author with Frank Von Hippel (someone also not known for his warm feelings for nuclear energy - although a perfectly pleasant person in real life.)

Nonproliferation tends to get a poor reputation among nuclear professionals and advocates, precisely due to the "political" wing, who tend to focus on opposing any nuclear technology seen as "proliferant," which in turn lends itself to the anti-nuclear strategy of "bottle-necking" - in other words, "constipate" the nuclear fuel cycle and then complain loudly of the "lack of solutions" for nuclear waste (despite the plethora of available technical options).

Conversely, the "technical" nonproliferation community tends to focus on aspects such as how to improve aspects of verification and measurement within fuel cycle facilities - in other words, ensuring that declarations of sensitive facilities are complete and accurate and that material is fully accounted for. An example of this includes projects like those I am currently working on, which seek to use radiation detectors to better characterize the isotopic contents of spent nuclear fuel in order to provide for a superior accounting of materials such as plutonium. The difference in focus thus could not be more stark - one side complaining of the potential problems and the other seeking solutions to improve facilities such to eliminate said problems.

Ultimately, these kinds of debates come back to the question I frequently ask: "So what's your alternative?" To her credit, MacFarlane at least does offer an alternative solution - one I find to be highly flawed, but it is nonetheless out there. And again, likewise to her credit, MacFarlane does not declare herself to be outright opposed to nuclear energy. Thus, the problem is simply a matter of coming to an agreement on a better solution for nuclear waste management.

A small background on "weapons-usable"

So-called "weapons-grade" plutonium contains more than 90% Pu-239 - the isotope most suitable for weapons use (given its low spontaneous fission rate and low heat generation rate). Even-numbered plutonium isotopes - Pu-238, Pu-240, and Pu-242 - tend to have a high heat generation rate (Pu-238 has such a high heat generation rate from alpha decay that it is frequently used as a power source for space missions such as the Cassini-Hugyens probe which took spectacular images of Saturn and the New Horizons probe currently en route to Pluto). Pu-240 and Pu-242 also have a high level of spontaneous fission, which means in addition to producing large amounts of heat they produce high levels of neutrons - in a weapon, this leads to unpredictable yield, or "fizzle." Thus, generally speaking, "reactor grade" plutonium, while usable in the strictest sense (i.e., one can construct a fission chain reaction using the materials), they are far from optimal for a national weapons effort - any nation with the capability of reprocessing would easily choose a more dedicated route (i.e., with separate plutonium-production reactors to produce high-purity Pu-239 and separate reprocessing facilities) before resorting to diverting civilian stocks.

Political calculations - the "twofer"

So why did Obama tap MacFarlane? Two reasons are likely in play. The first of course is that given her prior criticisms of Yucca Mountain, her nomination has been bolstered by the support of Senate Majority Leader and infamous Yucca Mountain opponent Senator Harry Reid (D-NV). Second, her nomination comes on the heels of President Obama's renomination of current Commissioner Kristine Svinicki. Thus it is likely the Obama Administration is seeking a "twofer," seeking to align the confirmation of Svinicki with that of MacFarlane as a "package deal." Senate Republicans are unlikely to object to Svinicki, who has enjoyed the support of the nuclear community given her extensive expertise in nuclear issues. (And indeed, even NEI has been pushing this strategy of jointly confirming the two nominees.)

The nomination of MacFarlane as chair may also be a concession to Reid and other anti-nuclear Senate Democrats in another sense - Senator Reid has complained (without substantial basis) of Svinicki's record on the NRC - a rather questionable position, given Svinicki has generally voted with her three other commissioners on many important issues (in other words, it would seem that Reid's criticism, and in particular singling out Svinicki, is mostly upon the grounds of several prominent 4-1 votes in which Chairman Jaczko stood alone).

However, his grumbling appears to be muted in a press release similar to that of NEI, stating:

I continue to have grave concerns about Kristine Svinicki’s record on the Commission. But I believe the best interests of the public would be served by moving the nominations of Dr. Macfarlane and Ms. Svinicki together before Ms. Svinicki’s term expires at the end of June, to ensure that we have a fully functioning NRC. Republicans claim to share that goal, and I hope they will work with us to make it a reality.

The smart money will thus likely be on a joint appointment deal hammered out sometime this summer.

And as for Yucca Mountain? I still wouldn't bet on it.

TECPO's triage at Unit 4

My prior post debunking some of the more outrageous myths circulating the internet as to the state of the Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 spent fuel pools generated some considerable amount of heat, particularly over at its syndicated location at The Energy Collective. Much of this discussion has focused upon the physical state of the Unit 4 reactor building itself (at the top of which the Unit 4 spent fuel pool resides). Yet contrary to popular belief in particular circles, TEPCO has certainly not left the spent fuel pool at Unit 4 to the vagaries of nature, nor have they failed to produce a credible, long-term plan for stabilizing and containing the remaining spent fuel at the reactor units.

Before getting too far into the topic, it's useful to point to a comprehensive companion piece to the prior discussion by Will Davis (of Atomic Power Review) over at the ANS Nuclear Cafe, entitled "Spent Fuel at Fukushima Daiichi Safer than Asserted." (Along with several other nuclear bloggers, I offered a moderate amount of technical consultation for this topic.)

TEPCO's remediation strategy for the Fukushima Daiichi site (original)

Given the concern over the structural state of the reactor building, it is thus useful to look at what TEPCO is actually doing to address the issue. Much of TEPCO's strategy is oriented around immediately stabilizing the site with a focus upon long-term remediation; in a word, triage.

In order to stabilize the earthquake-damaged reactor building, TEPCO has already conducted an evaluation of the structural integrity of the Unit 4 reactor building, deciding to reinforce the foundation of the building with a steel-beamed outer support structure, work which was completed last summer. In this sense then, the immediate concern over the stability of the reactor building (and spent fuel pool) has already been addressed.

However, there remains the issue of the fuel itself in the Unit 4 spent fuel pool. TEPCO has already put measures into place to ensure adequate cooling in the event of a sudden loss of water (i.e., from another large earthquake), including the deployment of concrete pumper trucks (referred to as "giraffes," which were used to originally restore the water levels at the Unit 4 pools). To emphasize - the concern here is not from a loss of water due to evaporation (again, spent fuel pools are kept at atmospheric temperature and pressure under normal conditions; meanwhile, the youngest fuel within the pool is now well over a year old, meaning it is cool enough where sudden evaporation is not a concern). Rather, the planning is again one of being able to respond to issues such as future earthquakes.

Despite the fact that the situation is as stable as can be expected presently at Unit 4, there is a legitimate concern about the impact of future earthquakes. Again, to emphasize - the chief concern over a (rather unlikely) collapse of the spent fuel pool is not the global catastrophe flogged by certain activists lacking in technical credentials (both my prior post and Will Davis' post adequately address why this is so), but rather a mechanical failure of the fuel (which would release local contamination - in particular, radioactive cesium and strontium) and force a local evacuation from the site, thus greatly complicating the cleanup response. (Thus, while far from catastrophic, such a collapse would greatly hinder the ability of TEPCO to clean up the site and add considerable expense to an already vastly expensive project.)

Thus, the medium-term strategy is to relocate the fuel out of the Unit 4 spent fuel pool into the common pool, thus obviating the risk from further damage to the Unit 4 reactor building; current plans call for the fuel from Unit 4 to be fully removed by mid-2013 (and from Unit 3 by the end of 2014). Again, in contrast to the opinions of certain press-seeking political office-holders and activists, this is not a process accomplished with the wave of a wand.

According to TEPCO's mid-to-long term roadmap, this will roughly consist of the following:

• Clear debris from the spent fuel pool which was dropped into the pool due to the hydrogen explosion
• Install a cover over the damaged building to shield heavy equipment from the environment (e.g., wind and rain). Following this, heavy fuel handling equipment (e.g., heavy cranes) will be installed in the reactor buildings in order to begin the process of moving undamaged fuel rods.
• Relocate undamaged, older fuel from the common fuel pool into dry cask storage to make room for newer, hotter fuel from the spent fuel pools at each reactor building. 
• Begin removing spent fuel from the reactor buildings; this will involve placing the fuel from the reactor buildings in temporary transportation canisters and lowering the canisters to ground level, where they can then be relocated to the common fuel pool.

Ultimately, this is not a quick process; nor is it clear how, despite the best intentions of "concerned outsiders" how this could reasonably be expedited beyond the current schedule, as several tasks are contingent upon one another. (i.e., spent fuel pools must be cleared of debris and a temporary cover must be installed before heavy equipment can be installed, and subsequently fuel can be relocated). Yet it is also clear from both current triage efforts as well as long-term recovery plans that the situation is far the looming disaster it is being sold as.

Update: Via TEPCO's English-language Twitter feed comes this presentation specifically addressing their analysis of the structural soundness of the Unit 4 reactor building.

Overheated rods & rhetoric

A little knowledge is sometimes a dangerous thing - particularly when fundamentally incomplete technical knowledge is used to make sweeping engineering recommendations. The latest example of this is the concern over the spent fuel storage pools at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4, which has been getting attention from several corners. First, there was U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), a ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee, who recently toured the stricken Fukushima site and released a very widely reported statement that, "things were worse than reported." In particular, Wyden has singled out the spent fuel pools at Unit 4 for unique concern, calling on both the Japanese and U.S. governments to see to it that the rods are safely relocated elsewhere, citing their storage in unsound structures close to the ocean. Wyden has pushed the NRC and others to relocate these spent fuel rods to dry cask storage elsewhere.

As for Wyden's technical credentials for making this assessment? A J.D. in law and his self-assurance in a Senator's unerring technical omniscience.

I suppose it probably doesn't occur to the Senator that relocating spent fuel rods out of the damaged building is no mean feat, given that the rods which will be relocated need to maintained underwater while they are transferred into concrete casks (in this case, mostly for radiation shielding purposes) using heavy cranes. Meanwhile, TEPCO has already reinforced the damaged building, addressing the concern he has over future tsunamis further damaging the weakened building and leading to a release into the environment. Its current plans call to begin removing spent fuel for relocation within the next two years. To emphasize - this is not a problem that relevant technical experts were ignorant of until one brave Senator stepped in and decided to lead.

Of course, to be fair to Wyden, as Dan Yurman points out Wyden is clearly not the only politician suffering from an acute hubris on technical matters.

Overheated rods & rhetoric

A spent fuel pool (Image: IEEE spectrum)

At least the good Senator can be forgiven for his enthusiasm however, as it's not nearly as obnoxiously hyperbolic as certain other accounts going around the internet. Anti-nuclear activist and self-described nuclear "expert" (to use the term rather loosely) Robert Alvarez has been shopping around the dangers of spent fuel pools for some time, specifically focusing his ire upon the rods contained in the spent fuel pool at Unit 4. This of course is not a new topic for Alvarez, who has gone so far as to argue that such pools are "a ticking time bomb" and that the U.S. needs to move toward dry cask storage of all spent fuel as soon as possible. (More on why this is silly at best and potentially a dangerous misplacement of priorities in a moment.)

Spent fuel rods at Unit 4 (Image: IAEA)

Alvarez's latest work, "Why Fukushima Is a Greater Disaster than Chernobyl and a Warning Sign for the U.S.", hits a new low in terms of outrageous hyperbole. Let's start with the headline premise - Alvarez asserts that the potential danger - a release of radioactivity from the spent fuel rods at Unit 4 - is already worse than something which actually happened - i.e., the Chernobyl disaster. (Perhaps aware of this seeming logical contradiction, Alvarez walks this back to "may be worse" in the first sentence.)

The basis of his reasoning? 1) Spent fuel contains very large amounts of radioactivity, 2) The spent fuel pools have been exposed to air (due to the hydrogen explosion at Unit 4), 3) A collapse of building containing the spent fuel pool would lead to an overheating of the rods contained at Unit 4, 4) Somehow, this would lead to a zirconium fire and release all of the radioactivity present in the rods.

Alvarez' blog post is a perfect example of the trouble one can get into when one extrapolates from a small bit of knowledge to a larger technical issue.

Taking it point-by-point - first we have this:

Several pools are now completely open to the atmosphere because the reactor buildings were demolished by explosions;

First of all, it should be noted that spent fuel pools are generally kept at room temperature and atmospheric pressure to begin with. A spent fuel pool, at its core, is essentially a very deep, very large swimming pool (which is also very radioactive as you reach the bottom). At the top, radiation levels are low enough to safely work without problems - you can even look down inside and see the eerily beautiful blue Cerenkov glow if the lights are dark enough. As for containment? The explosion at Unit 4 was in the secondary containment, which is essentially a thin* metal reinforced concrete shell - again, namely because spent fuel rods are un-pressurized and not at the kinds of temperatures found in the reactor. (In other words, the same kinds of phenomena involved in a core melt aren't relevant here.) The primary containment in any spent fuel pool is the water itself, which isn't hot enough to be going anywhere.

*(Edit: "Thin" being relative to the primary containment, which is 4-8 feet thick; most of my understanding of the secondary containment comes from diagrams such as this one, or this one via TheEngineer which bears much greater detail)

Moving on:

As more information is made available, we now know that the Fukushima Dai-Ichi site is storing 10,833 spent fuel assemblies (SNF) containing roughly 327 million curies of long-lived radioactivity About 132 million curies is cesium-137 or nearly  85 times the amount estimated to have been released at Chernobyl. 

So what does this mean? Without context - absolutely nothing. What Alvarez is trying to imply is that in the circumstance that these materials were released into the environment, the consequences would be far worse than Chernobyl. The problem? Alvarez presents no credible physical mechanism for this to happen.

Then there's this:

Also, it is not safe to keep 1,882 spent fuel assemblies containing ~57 million curies of long-lived radioactivity, including nearly 15 times more cs-137 than released at Chernobyl in the elevated pools at reactors 5, 6, and 7, which did not experience melt-downs and explosions.

Why is it not safe? Well, other than the fact that spent fuel is radioactive, Mr. Alvarez doesn't say. An industrial blast furnace is also not a safe place to be, but that certainly doesn't prevent their use. Instead, we actually take precautions to use them safely - the same way spent fuel pools use deep levels of water to both cool the fuel and shield the high levels of radioactivity.

To wit: certainly no one would want to be next to a spent fuel assembly without the shielding provided by the deep pool of water. (With this shielding, the levels of radiation are low enough where it is quite safe to stand above the pool and look down inside - something I have had the opportunity to do before). But for this radioactivity to be truly disastrous (rather than simply being a dangerous but extremely localized nuisance), something has to cause the radioactive materials in the fuel to change state - i.e., to either melt or be carried away ("lofted") by a fire.

In the beginning of his article, Alvarez eludes to the possibility of a zirconium fire, which he asserts could happen if the rods grew too hot. (Alvarez provides no further explanation or reference to credible technical resources beyond this.) Yet there are several significant problems with this theory. First, this would require the rods growing hot enough to ignite (if this is even possible - zirconium in solid form will not ignite, and its melting point is 1852° C). It second assumes that all of the radioactivity is uniformly lofted into the atmosphere; one of the main reasons for the magnitude of the Chernobyl disaster had to do with the fires in the reactor building which lofted radionuclides high into the atmosphere, where they spread across Europe. (Incidentally, this fire was also not from zirconium - it was a graphite fire from the reactor and control rod design being used.)

(Alvarez also rides his hobby-horse in inveighing against spent fuel reprocessing - a topic beyond the scope of this post but one which we've covered previously.)

A background on spent fuel

Spent fuel heat (click for larger)

Meanwhile, let's back up for a moment such that everyone understands what's going on. As we've covered on this blog before, spent fuel does still produce heat after the fission reaction shuts off. The remaining radioactive materials in the fuel, created both by fission and absorbing neutrons - are decaying. The quickest-decaying materials produce very high levels of radioactivity, and much of this energy is trapped in the fuel itself, heating it. Thus why spent fuel needs to be cooled following the reactor shutdown (which was the resulting source of problems at Units 1, 2, and 3).

Both this radioactivity and decay heat fall off dramatically with time, as the shortest-lived fission products decay away. Within 100 days, the heating rate and the radioactivity in spent fuel have dropped by a factor of 10; within 10 years, this drops to 1/100th of the original values.

Spent fuel radioactivity (click for larger)

Doing my own calculations using ORIGEN-S (a tool for nuclear licensing evaluation which is used to simulate spent fuel inventories), a typical assembly of the type found in the spent fuel pool would produce about 3-4 kW of heat after being stored around 1.5 years (and even less as it grows older) - or about 17-20 watts per pin (which themselves are over a meter long). In other words, while fuel which has just been ejected from a reactor poses a challenge in terms of cooling, it is difficult to conceive of how one gets the type of scenario Mr. Alvarez describes, in which something producing so little heat manages to cause these assemblies to melt or spontaneously catch fire.

A solution in search of a problem

Dry storage casks for spent fuel

Getting back to the main thread now - let's assume for a moment that this scenario, one already demonstrated to be of extremely questionable plausibility, is true - i.e., that there remains a real threat spent fuel pools, in which the cooling water is lost and the rods subsequently overheat and either catch fire or otherwise change state. So Alvarez's solution, to prevent these rods from overheating? Put them into thick concrete casks cooled by circulating air. Apparently, the same rods at risk of spontaneous combustion when exposed to air are fine if put into thick concrete casks. The logical inconsistency beggars belief.

Note that I am most explicitly not criticizing dry storage - in fact, dry storage casks have been demonstrated to be an effective, medium-term solution for isolating spent fuel from the environment. But to simultaneously assert a danger of spent fuel rods melting when exposed to air while simultaneously advocating to put them in thick concrete casks exposes a basic failure of physics reasoning, one which both Mr. Alvarez's employer and the ever-reliable science reporting of the Huffington Post are happy to embrace.

Alvarez and his sponsors at the liberal think tank Institute for Policy Studies are of course using this reasoning to go a step further, arguing that all spent fuel pools at U.S. reactors are at risk and thus need to be moved to dry storage. Let's just watch the errors compound...

First, let's go back to the decay heat issue. Generally speaking, spent fuel isn't suitable for moving into dry storage until it has cooled for a few years in a spent fuel pool - a general rule of thumb for dry storage is 5-10 years cooling time, although less is possible. The heat generated by 10-year old spent fuel assemblies are a hundredth of that generated by recently-ejected assemblies - in other words it would take one hundred assemblies stored for ten years to equal the contribution of one "fresh" ejected assembly.

If the reasoning here is to give greater safety margins for spent fuel pools in the event of a loss of cooling, dry storage is an extremely inefficient mechanism for doing so - namely because of the fact that the assemblies which are eligible to be moved into dry storage casks make at best a marginal contribution to the spent fuel pool heating. In other words, a large expense for very marginal gains in safety.

So here's how it breaks down: "newer" spent fuel rods are too hot to go into dry storage casks, and thus must be kept in the spent fuel pool to cool. Therefore, the integrity of the spent fuel pool must be maintained. Yet if the integrity of the spent fuel pool is maintained, there is no real safety reason (at least in terms of heat or radioactivity) to move older rods, which can be moved into dry storage. (Note: there are other reasons one may choose to do so - spent fuel pools are limited in terms of total capacity, based on a number of safety-related factors, including total heat as well as how closely the assemblies can be placed together in order to prevent assemblies from going "critical" and restarting the fission chain reaction. However, these are far less limiting circumstances.)

What we have is thus a classic case of a solution in search of a problem. Alvarez (and others, for that matter) have found a solution they like - dry storage - and have (by process of scientifically incomplete reasoning) connected this with a problem they see - the vulnerability of spent fuel in wet storage pools - and naturally put the two together. Regardless, that is, of whether that square peg will actually fit in said roundish hole - the solution is, apparently, to just keep pounding.

When well-meaning ignorance actually becomes dangerous

This is where I think Alvarez's (possibly well-meaning) concern actually becomes dangerous. Maintaining the integrity of spent fuel pools for "younger" fuel is vitally important - which is why some of the most recent changes recommended by the NRC as well as industry call for improvements such as better monitoring and instrumentation at spent fuel pools, along with other kinds of contingency plans to ensure water can be delivered to the pool in the case of a loss of coolant. Likewise, ensuring the integrity in the design of spent fuel pools indeed should be a priority.

But herein lies the problem with "experts" like Mr. Alvarez, who has no actually technical background to speak of - starting with the faulty premise that "wet storage" (i.e., spent fuel pools) can be eliminated entirely (they can't), we are then assaulted with faulty recommendations to move fuel out of these spent fuel pools at large expense and very marginal contributions to safety. Yet arguably these are resources that could be better spent on improvements to the safety of spent fuel pools - things like better instrumentation to know what is going on in said pools and improved emergency response capabilities (such as designing easier means of supplying auxiliary water to the pools). The focus on dry storage as a safety measure thus makes for a dangerous distraction which commits attention and resources away from more productive ends, thus potentially compromising safety as a whole.

Alvarez isn't the only one guilty of a single-minded focus on dry storage as a "solution" to spent fuel storage pools - all kinds of individuals (such as Senator Wyden above, and even some people I know of in real life who should know better...) have jumped all over this. The problem comes down to a simple failure to think things through - again, if spent fuel is too hot to be exposed to air, it's too hot to go inside a thick (thermally insulating) concrete cask. If it isn't too hot for dry storage (i.e., older fuel), then it isn't what is driving the safety issue at the spent fuel pool. Thus, in either case, it's a solution in search of a problem - given the fact that hotter fuel cannot be removed from the pool itself, it is more useful to focus upon the problem at hand.

The underlying pathology here - in other words, why seemingly simple-sounding solutions like this are so seductive - is because it gives the illusion of "doing something" about the (perceived) problem. In this case, this is done through a somewhat primitive technical analogy - we  have a thick concrete containment for the reactor as a safety mechanism, therefore spent fuel should similarly always be in a thick concrete containment. It simultaneously ignores where the solution is technically inappropriate ("younger," hotter fuel) and how it fails to address the root problem (i.e., keeping the spent fuel both cooled and well-shielded - which is done by ensuring the integrity of the water levels in the spent fuel pool). Fundamentally, it is an example of how not to do engineering - engaging in a top-down method of choosing a solution first and making it work to fit the problem.

Under ordinary circumstances, this leads to bad outcomes - wasted money and sub-optimal solutions (or even solutions that are simply inappropriate). In the worst-case scenario, this kind of thinking actually makes things worse, namely by committing time and resources away from evaluating actual safety improvements - and thus where well-meaning concern of outsiders who are fixed upon a particular solution without understanding the actual problem can actually do more harm than good.