Influence for Nuclear Waste Storage in Minnesota
Storage of nuclear waste in Minnesota is a huge problem. Over the years, this issue has been creating constant stirs among the public, the government and the company running it. While solutions have been provided over time, anything substantial is yet to be realized. As a result, the state has issued a moratorium on any further expansions of nuclear facilities in Minnesota in exchange for a limited storage of the nuclear waste generated by the plants on the Prairie Island. However, considering the license to operate the plants are due to expire in early 2030s and no substantial solution to nuclear wastes generated have been arrived at, the debate continues. My goal in this paper is to lay out the issues on both sides of the debate and use economics to inform the debate.
Context of the Problem
There are two nuclear power plants in Minnesota producing 111.9 trillion Btu annually. The nuclear waste generated by these plants are currently stored in dry casks due to the lack of an offsite storage facility. The problem with storing these waste on-site at the Minnesota facilities, is that these sites aren’t designed or located ideally for storing nuclear wastes. These power plants are built on the Mississippi river.
Both nuclear power plants in Minnesota, currently, use a two-step nuclear waste management on-site Prairie Island. In the first step, they cool down the spent fuel rods by storing them in a spent pool. In the second step, these cooled down spent rods are transferred to containers made of steel and concrete, known as dry casks. This, however, is a temporary arrangement until the government comes up with a permanent disposal site.
In the beginning, the Prairie Island’s nuclear power plant used to store their nuclear waste in steel-lined concrete vaults, waiting to be transferred to a more permanent disposal site being planned by the US Government. As these vaults neared their storing capacities and with the US Government’s plan for a permanent site nowhere nearing completion, the Northern States Power Company (NSP) (now known as Xcel Energy) requested the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board (EQB) to allow storage of nuclear waste on-site in dry casks. According to Xcel Energy, the Prairie Island nuclear power plant requires 2,392 storage spaces on-site to operate till 2013-2014. In July 2011, The Prairie Island nuclear power plant renewed their license to operate till 2033-34. This would require the plant to eventually set up 98 casks on-site, to store the spent nuclear fuels produced during its lifetime.
The locals of Minnesota, especially the Prairie Island Indian Community have been regularly expressing their discomfort toward storing of spent nuclear fuel on-site the Prairie Island. They have been constantly protesting against the expansion of storage facility on-site and also against further expansion of the nuclear power generating capacity of the plants at Minnesota.
If no permanent solution is achieved before all the authorized dry casks fill up at the Prairie Island nuclear facility, the plant will have to shut down. If that happens, the state will have to look for replacement power and initiate the decommissioning process for the plant. Replacement power will come for a higher price than what is supplied by this plant. Decommissioning the plant is an expensive affair and involve a cost which is estimated to be $1,523 million, in terms of 2011 dollars. Please note this is only the decommissioning cost and does not include cost related to extended spent fuel storage.
Reprocessing vs. Direct Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel. Based on studies conducted by the Congressional Budget Office, the United States of America, the cost of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel is 25% more than the cost of directly disposing the nuclear waste. In other words, roughly for 2,200 metric tons of spent fuel reprocessing will cost $5 billion more, than if it is directly disposed of . There are, however, some economic advantages to reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. By using reprocessed fuel the rate of consumption of fresh Uranium can be brought down. This can prevent any shoot ups in price due to shortages. The other advantage is the storage space required for spent fuels. Reprocessed spent fuels occupy drastically less volume of space. However, building reprocessing units cost a lot of money. According to the information submitted by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to the American Nuclear Society Topical Meeting in 2003, the capital cost of building a facility that could reprocess spent fuel produced by light-water reactors was in the range from
1.5 to 2.4 billion in terms of 1983 dollars.
As far as permanent disposal site of spent nuclear fuels is considered, there are none operational commercially, anywhere in the world. In the US, a geological site was planned to be built for commercial use for permanent disposal of nuclear waste, at the Yucca Mountain, Nevada. This facility was originally scheduled to open by 1998, but was later postponed to come live in 2017. However, in 2009, the Obama administration halted the Yucca Mountain storage facility project for nuclear wastes.
Influences of Different Parties Involved
The Minnesota plant facilities are not designed to store waste on-site. The government has not provided with any permanent storage facility for the spent nuclear fuel produced. These have raised concerns among the public, Xcel Energy and the government. Some of them are as following:
The number of dry casks that can be stored on-site by a nuclear power plant is decided by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). While power plants operating under general license from the NRC have no upper limits to storing fuel assemblies on-site, others have limitations based on site-specific license issued by the NRC. In 1991, following a plea for permission of storing nuclear waste in dry casks by Xcel Energy, the Public Utilities Commission granted the energy producer the permission to set up 17 dry casks. This incident was followed by a strong protest by the Mdewakanton Prairie Island Indian Community and environmental groups. Their argument was based on the fact that dry cask fall under permanent storage, and therefore, requires authorization from the Legislature. An extensive debate followed. Post this, in 1994, the Minnesota Legislature passed a law allowing the 17 casks, at the same time imposing a moratorium on any expansion of nuclear power generating capacity in the state. As the casks gradually filled up, a fresh request to allow additional storage casks were made before the Minnesota Legislature. In May 2003, a new law was passed allowing additional dry storage cask, not exceeding the 48 casks permitted under federal license. The law included the generation of renewable energy by Xcel Energy and payment of $2.5 million per year to the Prairie Island Indian Community for acquiring land needed for expansion of the storage facility on Prairie Island. The law also mandated the need for approval of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, in case there was a need for any additional storage requirement. In 2015, the Prairie Island facility had 38 dry casks containing spent nuclear fuel stored on its premises.
In 2011 when the renewal license was granted to Xcel Energy to operate the Prairie Island site till 2033-34, the Prairie Island Indian Community protested citing concerns about an increase in levels of radioactive tritium in the two wells that are there on the plant property. Although the levels were found to be much less than federal standards permitted for drinking water, an investigation by Associated Press revealed a tritium leakage from the plant.
In another instance, NRC was sued by the Prairie Island Indian Community and several states over failing to investigate the risks associated with on-site storage. To this the Washington D.C. ruled in favor of the applicants saying NRC should have investigated and taken into account the risks associated with on-site storages, in the event that the government never build a permanent repository.
Excel Energy in their Resource Plan had assumed that the Yucca Mountain site as permanent repository will be functional by 2015. However, due to vehement protests staged by the state of Nevada, the project has been stalled. The Nevadans have vowed to exhaust all their legal, political, administrative, and regulatory options to stop the project.
Earlier, the US Government had planned the completion of its Yucca Mountain facility by January 31, 1998. When it failed to meet the deadline, NSP filed for claims from the department in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims against maintenance cost of storing the nuclear waste on Minnesota premises. Xcel Energy was paid a compensation of $116 million.
In response to or as an aftermath of stalling the Yucca Mountain facility, the President advised creation of the Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC or the Commission) to study America’s Nuclear Future, especially the issue related to the disposal of nuclear waste. According to BRC, if the Department of Energy (DOE) does not start accepting nuclear waste by 2020, the estimated liability on US taxpayers could be of the order $20.8 billion.
In a recent development, Xcel Energy is now mulling over the chances of an early retirement of its Prairie Island facility. This owing to the fact that the 40-year old power generating facility needs to be upgrade it two reactors to ensure safe operation till the end of its license period. This upgrade should happen by 2018, if not anytime sooner. While the cost of upgrading is estimated to be about $487 million, further expenses in the form of additional work required in 2020s is expected to range between $600 million to $900 million. Coupling this with the plant’s existing problem of a lack of visibility into the permanent storage of the nuclear waste produced, Xcel Energy has a lot going for this facility in terms of sustainability. The company has requested for 9.8 percent rate hike, which is currently pending with the state Commerce Department. The Prairie Island Indian Community is yet to yet weigh this option provided by Xcel Energy.
Dry casks storage is a type of permanent storage of nuclear waste and is proven to be safe by the recent Fukushima nuclear power plant mishap. However, there is a risk from terrorist attacks, for which the industry experts are mulling to have a permanent and secure geological site. In terms of maintenance cost, dry casks are proven to be 60% cheaper than spent pool storage.
Reprocessing and recycling the spent nuclear fuel is an option that countries globally are beginning to consider. Reprocessing can help countries with huge amounts of high-level nuclear waste reduce the volumes of their nuclear waste dramatically. This is because it is the heat factor of the nuclear wastes that determine the storage capacity of a long-term repository. By reprocessing spent nuclear rods, the heat factor drops down by a huge margin. Thereby, reducing the volume of nuclear waste. The problem with this method is that it uses a technology called PUREX. PUREX separates the fuel from the waste yielding pure Plutonium, which is used for making nuclear weapons. Currently, this technology resides with only a handful of countries. Therefore, an increase in reprocessing may lead to rise in thefts and proliferation of nuclear weapons. The US has only a limited involvement in reprocessing of nuclear fuel.
The granite belt of Minnesota and Wisconsin is being considered for permanent storage of nuclear waste. According to Steve Hauck, geologist for the University of Minnesota Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute,
Not only does Minnesota have lots of "granitic" rock, but we haven't had a volcano or significant earthquake here in millions of years - the kind of geologic stability you'd want if you were trying to entomb deadly nuclear waste for several millennium.
According to a professional member of the Geological Society of America , building a permanent spent fuel repository in the granite deposits of Minnesota makes sense not only because of the geology of the rocks and Minnesota, but also economically this could open up a multibillion dollar industry for the state. However, this would require deep geological studies of the rocks, as a lot of them have been fractured with blasting in the past 100 years.
Another possible solution being considered by the US Government for the future is the use of advanced burner reactor. This is a type fast-neutron reactor and uses Plutonium or Uranium-238 as fuel. This reactor can also be used for burning spent nuclear fuel by the existing reactors in the US, but for that reprocessing of the spent fuel will be necessary. This will require constructing reprocessing units in the US, and / or constructing new advanced burner reactors that are expensive to construct. Incidentally, cost of building such reactors is the reason why some countries have abandoned them. For example, in 2007, the US ended up spending $15 billion on such a program. According to the Energy Department of the US, the cost of building a reprocessing plant with an annual capacity of processing 2,000 metric tons of spent fuel is $20 billion. According to a scientist from the Argonne National Laboratory, use of reprocessed fuel would shoot up the cost of generating electricity to 0.4 to 0.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, from the current $0.0192 per kWh at the Prairie Island nuclear power plant.
Another solution, though interim, is being proposed by a consortium eight commercial nuclear utilities, called the Private Fuel Storage (PFS), L.L.C. They propose to store the high-level radioactive waste within the 820 acres of the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah. This facility will be an above the ground facility and have the capacity to hold 4,000 dry casks or 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel. The license application for this still pending with the Legislature. Based on a 2009 estimates by PFS, this centralized repository will cost $118 million considering it gets the status of a federal facility, and therefore, no taxes are levied. Other infrastructure cost would amount to a total of $87 million approximately, while the operation cost on an annual basis were estimated at $8.8 million.
Conclusion
Looking at the arguments put forward by both groups — pro and against — for storing spent nuclear fuel in Minnesota, one can only marvel at the fact that the government has so far been unable to provide a permanent solution to such a grave issue. And yet, allow the industry to function fully. Arguments put forward by both parties are sound and are strongly grounded. However, the need is to look forward and find a solution that will be in favor of all parties. A solution that is economical, causing minimum damage to the environment and leads to no loss of life or property. As we see in this paper that a number of possible solutions are already being discussed and considered. To arrive at a permanent solution would require the inclusive participation of all affected parties and a genuine intention to find a solution that suits all.
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