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Nuclear Energy Back in Vogue, but Waste Disposal
a Super-Heated Issue
Aug 15 - The Palm Beach Post It's been in the national doghouse since the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, but today, nuclear power is on the way back. Last week, Bush signed into law a national energy policy that provides financial incentives and lawsuit protection for new nuclear power plants, which should spur development in an industry that hasn't seen a new plant start up since June 1996. With oil and natural gas prices soaring to record highs on a daily basis, some say it can't come too soon. "We're going to need as much new generating capacity as we can get, and from all sources, and that includes nuclear," said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade association. But critics say there's one major problem with nuclear power: The highly radioactive waste created as a result of fission, the atom-splitting process that releases the energy of nuclear power. "We have no idea what to do with it," said Brendan Hoffman, campaign organizer for Public Citizen, a Washington-based nonprofit watchdog group. How utilities handle nuclear waste became an issue again earlier this month as a result of renewed attention to a series of incidents in the late 1970s and early 1980s at Florida Power & Light Co.'s St. Lucie Nuclear Plant on Hutchinson Island. Documents compiled in preparation for a court case early next year showed that workers at the plant sent radioactive waste to regular landfills, among other places. FPL spokeswoman Rachel Scott said the waste was sent to a state-licensed farm field for nonradioactive sludge disposal. But the parents of two children afflicted with cancer have sued FPL, linking the waste disposal to the illnesses. One child, Ashton Lowe, died from brain cancer at age 13 in 2001. The other, Zachary Finestone, 11, was diagnosed with cancer in March 2000. Nuclear waste includes the used fuel, stored in rods, as well as anything that was in a radiation control area and might have had a chance to become contaminated. One-third of a nuclear reactor's fuel, known as high-level waste, is removed every 24 months during routine maintenance. The used fuel rods are cooled off in water and then are placed in dry-storage areas. Everything else is known as low-level waste and may include things such as protective clothing, laboratory supplies and tools. This type of waste can be stored on site for a while, but then it is incinerated or compacted to reduce its volume to a tenth of its original size. It then is shipped to waste sites in Salt Lake City or Barnwell, S.C. "When the utilities signed up to get into the nuclear business, the government made a commitment that it would take the fuel off of their hands," said Shane Johnson, acting director of the nuclear energy department at the U.S. Department of Energy. "The biggest issue from the utilities' point of view is: Is the government going to meet its commitment?" Scott at FPL said the problem with having adequate space to store waste has been political, not technical. For example, customers who receive electricity from nuclear power pay a small monthly charge for the Nuclear Waste Fund, which is designed to finance disposal sites, she said. "The whole process has been stalled, but steps are being made in the right direction," Scott said. The government's biggest answer to the nuclear waste problem is a massive disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, which is expected to open in 2012. But the site has proved controversial since it was proposed, and the heightened threat of terrorism has made opponents even more vocal. "The day that Yucca Mountain opens, it's going to be pretty much full," said Holly Binns, the clear air and energy advocate for the Florida Public Interest Research Group. "They should be building containment facilities that are on site so the waste doesn't have to be transported on our railways, highways, barges and through ports, all of which has some level of potential danger." Singer, the Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman, counters that Yucca Mountain, which can hold 120,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, is the best solution. At the same time, nuclear plants aren't running out of storage room, he said. "We're very, very confident in the security of where the spent fuel is on the plant side as well as on the transportation side," he said. Meanwhile, three national consortiums of utility companies have formed recently, including NuStart Energy Development LLC, of which FPL is a member. NuStart, a group of eight utilities, is looking for two sites somewhere in the country to build nuclear reactors, which could cost $2 billion apiece. The consortium and the U.S. Department of Energy are splitting the $520 million it takes to prepare the applications for the licenses to build and operate the plants. "FPL is very supportive of the nuclear industry's effort to explore the development of new nuclear power plants," Scott said. "We are very proud of our safety and reliability record in the operation of our plants, and we certainly would like to see new nuclear added to our portfolio in the near future." Three companies have filed permit applications to build plants in Mississippi, Virginia and Illinois, and other companies have contacted the office at least informally, said Roger Hannah, a spokesman with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Region II office in Atlanta. His office is charged with reviewing the safety, environmental and security requirements for any proposed nuclear plants. "Any new plant that would be built would be built by a utility that already owns at least one nuclear plant," Hannah said. FPL, owned by FPL Group Inc. of Juno Beach, operates two nuclear reactors at its St. Lucie plant as well as two nuclear reactors at its Turkey Point plant in Miami-Dade County. FPL Energy, a nonregulated subsidiary of FPL Group, operates a nuclear plant in Seabrook, N.H., and holds a majority interest in a 598-megawatt nuclear power plant just north of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. But for some, the more the nuclear industry grows, the unsolved problem of nuclear waste swells along with it. "We really need to step back and realize the more we promote this industry, the more these technologies will spread, the more waste will spread," said Hoffman of Public Citizen. "As you continue to generate it, it is an infinite problem." Johnson, the DOE director, said the government will fulfill its promise to handle nuclear waste. Like it or not, nuclear power will play a bigger role in the nation's energy matrix. "As a rule of thumb, there is going to be new nuclear in the future," Johnson said. ----- To see more of The Palm Beach Post -- including its homes, jobs, cars and other classified listings -- or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.palmbeachpost.com. Copyright (c) 2005, The Palm Beach Post, Fla. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com. FPL, |