As the nuclear power industry ages and begins to deal with the highly radioactive and dangerous wastes it has created, eyes are on those who go first.
Now, the decommissioning of the nation’s oldest nuclear reactor at Big Rock Point, just north of this popular summer resort, has drawn the attention of other nuclear plant operators, regulatory agencies and critics of nuclear power because it involves the same challenges that eventually will face all reactors.
Big Rock Nuclear Power Plant, with its distinctive green domed containment building, occupies a small portion of a mile and a half of Lake Michigan beach frontage and 600 otherwise undeveloped forested acres on what is commonly referred to there as the “gold plated coast.”
When Consumers Power Co. executives threw the switch in August turning off the nuclear plant forever, they announced that Big Rock would be dismantled. The low-level radioactive wastes would be shipped off site, but the 441 bundles of high-level spent nuclear fuel would be stored in casks on site until a national storage facility for such waste is approved.
If everything goes according to the company’s plans, the property could be ready for other uses as early as 2002, a prospect that already has drawn the attention of real estate developers attracted by the plant’s prime Lake Michigan location.
While most local residents and community leaders think the decommissioning is well planned and welcome the eventual development of the property, some people fear the process is moving too quickly for safety.
Critics, such as Joanne Beemonn of Concerned Citizens of Charlevoix, say that “economics, not safety is driving these decisions.”
Big Rock is not the first nuclear plant to begin the decommissioning process, but it is the first to have a plan in place and approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission before shutting down. The 17 other commercial U.S. reactors that have shut down have done so prematurely and without an approved plan in place.
Big Rock closed earlier than originally planned, according to spokesman Tim Petrosky, because the deregulation of the utility industry made its continued operation uneconomical. Built in 1962, Big Rock, the smallest of the nation’s 107 operating plants, was valued as a research facility where fuel, including uranium and plutonium, and the claddings on the fuel rods were tested. The electricity it produced, however, cost nearly double that of the power produced by other Consumers Power plants.
Decommissioning the small 75-megawatt reactor, owned by Consumers Power Co. of Jackson, Mich., is expected to cost $291 million, more than 10 times its construction costs in the 1960s. The major hurdle will be how to properly dispose of the highly radioactive spent fuel, the wastes that will remain dangerous for thousands of years.
Each step of the arduous process depends on the successful completion of the step before it.
The first crucial step in decommissioning was the removal of all the nuclear fuel rods from the reactor to a spent-fuel pool where they are kept cool and where they begin the process of decay.
That was accomplished by early October, which allowed plant operators to begin decontaminating and preparing for shipment such low-level radioactive waste as workers’ clothing, rags, piping and tools. These items will be shipped to a privately operated site in Barnwell, S.C. The complete removal of all low-level waste will take at least five years, according to Petrosky.
The most controversial aspect of the Big Rock decommissioning involves the plan by Consumers Power to move the fuel from the spent-fuel pool to “six or seven 20-foot tall, 15-ton, stainless steel casks encased in cement silos on cement pads,” according to Petrosky and Jim Rang, who is managing Big Rock’s decommissioning.
These casks will wait at Big Rock until the federal Department of Energy takes possession of the spent fuel and removes it to a government-run storage facility.
Establishing such a site remains embroiled in ongoing political and environmental battles. The only permanent site currently under serious consideration, Yucca Mountain, Nev., some 100 miles outside Las Vegas, is highly controversial.
Meanwhile, bills to establish an interim storage facility at the Nevada atomic testing site have passed both houses of Congress. President Clinton, however, has said he will veto such a bill.
Rang acknowledges it is unlikely that a permanent storage facility will be approved in time for Big Rock’s 441 bundles of high-level, spent nuclear fuel waste to go directly from the spent-fuel pool into casks for transportation to either Yucca Mountain or an interim site.
This makes the question of the relative safety of the casks holding the used fuel more pressing to those who live near the Big Rock plant.
Mary Sinclair of Midland, Mich., a longtime nuclear critic, has successfully prodded the NRC to put a halt to the manufacture of the type of cask used at Consumers Power’s Palisades Nuclear Plant in southern Michigan, because of problems with the zinc coating of the casks and weld weaknesses.
Beemon says she also is concerned because the NRC does not require an environmental impact study for each site where dry cask storage is planned, relying instead on the combination of the original environmental studies for the nuclear plant and the approvals for specific casks.
“The NRC has said they do not have the resources to really regulate dry cask storage. We think there is a great lack of the necessary kind of safety consciousness,” Sinclair said.
Angela Greenman, an NRC spokeswoman, acknowledged existing cask problems but pointed out that the casks planned for use at Big Rock will be unique, used “for both storage and transportation.”
The NRC is still reviewing the design of the Big Rock casks, Greenman said.
“Casks are considered safe because they are passive, they have no moving parts,” Greenman said. She added that the NRC requires that casks be able to “withstand floods, missiles and drop tests.”
