Tag Archives: Holtec nuclear waste canisters

Fracking v. Nuclear Wastes: the Fate of New Mexico

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Holtec International, a Florida-based company, aims to rail thousands of canisters of spent nuclear fuel to Lea County, New Mexico, United States, and store the containers below ground. The site has a 40-year license and could ultimately hold around 170,000 metric tons of used radioactive fuel—about twice as much as the U.S. currently holds. It would be the largest such facility in the world, and Holtec says it would further the development of U.S. nuclear energy. [This plan is opposed by Fasken Oil and Ranch] a company that claims that  a nuclear incident in the Permian basin, which cranks out more oil than Iraq and Libya combined, would have devastating consequences for U.S. energy and the local economy. “I’m not antinuclear,” Fasken Assistant General Manager Tommy Taylor, said. “We just don’t feel like siting all the nuclear waste in the middle of our biggest oil and gas resource is a good idea.” 

Fasken said the nuclear-waste storage sites threaten its operations in the Permian. According to the court filing of Fasken:

“The proposed site sits on top of and adjacent to oil and gas minerals to be developed
by means of fracture stimulation techniques. Currently, drilling techniques used to
extract minerals in the Permian Basin involve drilling horizontally into deep
underground formations up to two miles beneath the earth’s surface. High pressure
fluids are pumped into the wells, in some cases exceeding twelve thousand pounds
per square inch. This pressure is power enough to fracture the surrounding rock
thus releasing the oil and gas. The pressure creates fissures and cracks
beneath the surface. And, at this time, there are oil and gas operators testing a new
technique of simultaneously drilling and fracturing up to 49 horizontal wellbores in
a single section of land. Either the traditional or new and unproven drilling
technique, involving more than 20,000,000 bbls of water and sand, could
conceivably be utilized to inject into and withdraw from the rock formation beneath
and surrounding the Holtec site. Hydraulic fracturing beneath and around Holtec
should give the NRC pause and is sufficient reason not to proceed.” (HOLTEC INTERNATIONAL’S ANSWER OPPOSING FASKEN’S, pdf)

The yearslong fight has entangled large oil companies, the country’s top nuclear regulator, the states of Texas and New Mexico, as well as local communities that want to host the nuclear waste. 

Supporters of the nuclear-waste projects say they could help break a decades-old nuclear waste logjam that has led to radioactive refuse piling up at reactors. President Biden and billionaire investors are endorsing new nuclear projects to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but the U.S. has yet to figure out where to permanently unload some of the most hazardous material in the world.  The Permian is home to two sites that handle some types of nuclear waste and to the only commercial uranium-enrichment facility in the country.  Holtec’s storage would be temporary, and some nuclear experts say interim facilities can be a stopgap until the federal government builds a permanent, deep geologic repository. A plan to house nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain fizzled under former President Barack Obama, and the search for an alternative site has stalled.

As a result, the US federal government is paying utilities billions of dollars to keep used fuel rods in steel-lined concrete pools and dry casks at dozens of sites.  Consolidating used nuclear fuel at one or two facilities would lessen that financial

Fasken has notched court victories. Last year, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans found that federal law didn’t authorize the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license a private, away-from-reactor storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. It vacated the federal license for another storage project proposed by Interim Storage Partners, a joint-venture between Orano USA and Waste Control Specialists. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has asked the court to reconsider.

The Holtec project faces other hurdles. New Mexico last year passed legislation all but banning storage of high-level nuclear waste. Texas lawmakers have also opposed interim storage facilities. The Holtec spokesman said the company was evaluating the legislation’s impact on the project. Fasken expects the fight over interim storage will eventually reach the Supreme Court. 

Excerpts from Benoit Morenne, The War over Burying Nuclear Waste in America’s Busiest Oil Field, WSJ, Feb. 19, 2024

Imagining Failure: Nuclear Waste on the Beach, California

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But for all the good vibes and stellar sunsets of  San Onofre state beach in California, beneath the surface hides a potential threat: 3.6m lb of nuclear waste from a group of nuclear reactors shut down nearly a decade ago. Decades of political gridlock have left it indefinitely stranded, susceptible to threats including corrosion, earthquakes and sea level rise. The San Onofre reactors are among dozens across the United States phasing out, but experts say they best represent the uncertain future of nuclear energy.

“It’s a combination of failures, really,” said Gregory Jaczko, who chaired the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the top federal enforcer, between 2009 and 2012, of the situation at San Onofre. That waste is the byproduct of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (Songs), three nuclear reactors primarily owned by the utility Southern California Edison (SCE) that has shut down….

Since there is not central repository for the final disposition of nuclear wasted in the United States,  the California Coastal Commission approved in 2015 the construction of an installation at San Onofre to store it until 2035. In August 2020, workers concluded the multi-year burial process, loading the last of 73 canisters of waste into a concrete enclosure. San Onofre is not the only place where waste is left stranded. As more nuclear sites shut down, communities across the country are stuck with the waste left behind. Spent fuel is stored at 76 reactor sites in 34 states….

At San Onofre, the waste is buried about 100ft from the shoreline, along the I-5 highway, one of the nation’s busiest thoroughfares, and not far from a pair of faults that experts say could generate a 7.4 magnitude earthquake. Another potential problem is corrosion. In its 2015 approval, the Coastal Commission noted the site could have a serious impact on the environment in case of coastal flooding and erosion hazards beyond its design capacity, 

Concerns have also been raised about government oversight of the site. Just after San Onofre closed, SCE began seeking exemptions from the NRC’s operating rules for nuclear plants. The utility asked and received permission to loosen rules on-site, including those dealing with record-keeping, radiological emergency plans for reactors, emergency planning zones and on-site staffing.

San Onofre isn’t the only closed reactor to receive exemptions to its operating licence. The NRC’s regulations historically focused on operating reactors and assumed that, when a reactor shut down, the waste would be removed quickly.

It’s true that the risk of accidents decreases when a plant isn’t operating, said Dave Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists. But adapting regulations through exemptions greatly reduces public transparency, he argued. “Exemptions are wink-wink, nudge-nudge deals with the NRC,” he said. “In general, it’s not really a great practice,” former NRC chair Jaczko said about the exemptions. “If the NRC is regulating by exemption, it means that there’s something wrong with the rules … either the NRC believes the rules are not effective, and they’re not really useful, or the NRC is not holding the line where the NRC should be holding line,” he said…

It’s worth considering how things fail, though, argued Rod Ewing, nuclear security professor at Stanford University’s center for international security and cooperation, and author of a 2021 report about spent nuclear waste that focuses on San Onofre. “The problem with our safety analysis approach is we spend a lot of time proving things are safe. We don’t spend much time imagining how systems will fail,” he said. “And I think the latter is what’s most important.”

Excerpts from Kate Mishkin, ‘A combination of failures:’ why 3.6m pounds of nuclear waste is buried on a popular California beach, Guardian, Aug. 

The Enormous Task of Nuclear Waste Storage

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“The Koeberg spent fuel pool storage capacity in South Africa  is currently over 90% full. (These) pools will reach (their) capacity by April 2020,” Eskom, the South African utility, told Reuters in a statement on Nov. 25, 2019.  Koeberg produces about 32 tonnes of spent fuel a year. Fuel assemblies, which contain radioactive materials including uranium and plutonium that can remain dangerous for thousands of years, are cooled for a decade under water in spent fuel pools.

Fuel Pool at Koeberg, South Africa

In 2016,  Eskom paid an estimated 200 million rand ($13.60 million) for an initial batch of seven reinforced dry storage casks from U.S. energy company Holtec International to help keep Koeberg running beyond 2018.  Eskom now has nine new unused casks on site, each with an individual capacity of 32 spent fuel assemblies, with another five expected to be delivered soon.

Holtec Cask

The 14 casks should ensure there is sufficient storage in the spent fuel pool until 2024, Eskom said, ahead of a tender for an extra 30 casks….Anti-nuclear lobby group Earthlife Africa said South Africa could not afford the social, environmental and economic costs associated with nuclear waste.  “We have a ticking bomb with high-level waste and fuel rods at Koeberg,” said Makoma Lekalakala, Earthlife Africa’s director.

Wendell Roelf, Waste storage at Africa’s only nuclear plant brimming, Reuters, Nov. 25, 2019

Between Colonialism and the Abyss: the Desperate Search for a Nuclear Waste Disposal Site, United States

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A proposal for New Mexico to house one of the world’s largest nuclear waste storage facilities has drawn opposition from nearly every indigenous nation in the state. Nuclear Issues Study Group co-founder and Diné organizer Leona Morgan told state legislators in November 2019 the project, if approved, would perpetuate a legacy of nuclear colonialism against New Mexico’s indigenous communities and people of color.

Holtec International, a private company specializing in spent nuclear fuel storage and management, applied for a license from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct and operate the facility in southeastern New Mexico. Holtec’s proposal would see the majority of high-level nuclear waste in the U.S. transported to a consolidated interim storage facility located in southeastern New Mexico. If licensed, the facility would house up to 100,000 metric tons of high-level waste at capacity — more nuclear waste than currently exists in the country — for up to 40 years, while the federal government either re-opens Yucca Mountain or establishes a new deep repository to permanently store the waste.

The proposal, which has been in the works since 2011, would see high-level waste generated at nuclear power plants across the country transported to New Mexico for storage at the proposed facility along the Lea-Eddy county line between Hobbs and Carlsbad. Holtec representatives say the facility would be a temporary solution to the nation’s growing nuclear waste problem, but currently there is no federal plan to build a permanent repository for the waste.

Legislators, activists and residents alike share concerns about the proposals. Some fear the “interim” storage facility could become a de facto permanent storage facility if no other repository is built; others question the site selection for a nuclear facility so close to oil and gas activity in the Permian Basin. Increased transport of high-level radioactive waste across the state could also lead to potentially dangerous nuclear releases, leaving impacted communities responsible for emergency responses.

“New Mexico doesn’t make the waste, why should we take the waste?” Morgan said. “What we’re advocating for is not a temporary, band-aid solution, but something more scientifically sound. The waste does have to go somewhere. However, storing it in New Mexico temporarily is not the right idea. It’s not safe; it’s not supported by the local communities; and New Mexico does not want it.”  “We see this as environmental racism and perpetuating nuclear colonialism that is going to result in a continuation of a slow genocide,” she said….

Meanwhile, nuclear power utilities across the country have sued the federal government over a breach of contract for failing to establish a permanent repository for the waste. 

Nuclear colonialism, a term first coined by environmentalist Winona LaDuke and activist Ward Churchill, describes a systematic dispossession of indigenous lands, the exploitation of cultural resources, and a history of subjugation and oppression of indigenous peoples by a government to further nuclear production of energy and proliferation of weapons.  “All of the impacts from nuclear colonialism can be simplified by explaining it as environmental racism,” Morgan told state legislators last week. She pointed to the health and environmental consequences of uranium mining on the Navajo Nation during the last century.  “My family lives in areas where there was past uranium mining. We’re still dealing with the legacy of all of the mining that fuelled World War II and the Cold War,” Morgan said. “This legacy is still unaddressed — not just in New Mexico, but in the entire country. For that reason, my concern is the health of our people, our environment.”

Cleaning Abandoned Uranium Mines New Mexico

“We do not believe we are separate from the environment,” Morgan said. “We are not here to protect the environment as land and as mountains, but as living, breathing entities.”  Similar beliefs, sometimes referred to in policy discussions as “environmental personhood,” have gained recognition among regulators in countries across the world in recent years. 

Excerpts from Kendra Chamberlain, Nuclear Colonialism: Indigenous opposition grows against proposal for nation’s largest nuclear storage facility in NM, https://nmpoliticalreport.com/,  Nov. 14, 2019

How to Make Money out of the Nuclear Waste Mess

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Companies specializing in the handling of radioactive material are buying retired U.S. nuclear reactors from utilities and promising to clean them up and demolish them in dramatically less time than usual — eight years instead of 60, in some cases.  Turning nuclear plants over to outside companies and decommissioning them on such a fast track represents a completely new approach in the United States, never before carried to completion in this country, and involves new technology as well…

Once a reactor is shut down, the radioactive mess must be cleaned up, spent nuclear fuel packed for long-term storage and the plant itself dismantled. The most common approach can last decades, with the plant placed in a long period of dormancy while radioactive elements slowly decay.  Spent fuel rods that can no longer sustain a nuclear reaction remain radioactive and still generate substantial heat. They are typically placed in pools of water to cool, staying there for at least five years, with 10 years the industry norm, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. After that, they are removed and placed in giant cylindrical casks, typically made of steel and encased in concrete.

But Holtec International, which in the past year has been buying up several retired or soon-to-be-retired nuclear plants in the U.S., has designed a cask it says can accept spent fuel after only two years of cooling.  Holtec struck a deal last year to buy Oyster Creek in Forked River, New Jersey, from its owner, Exelon Generation.  It also has deals in place to buy several plants owned by Entergy Corp., including: Pilgrim, in historic Plymouth, Massachusetts, closing May 31; Palisades, in Covert, Michigan, set to shut down in 2022 ; and two reactors expected to close within two years at Indian Point in Buchanan, New York….  NorthStar Group Services, a specialist in nuclear demolition, completed the purchase of Vermont Yankee from Entergy with plans for its accelerated decommissioning.

The companies jumping into the business believe they can make in profit….Holtec will inherit the multibillion-dollar decommissioning trust funds set up by the utilities for the plants’ eventual retirement. , The company would be able to keep anything left over in each fund after the plant’s cleanup. By Holtec’s accounting, for instance, the Pilgrim decommissioning will cost an estimated $1.13 billion, leaving $3.6 million in the fund.  Holtec and Northstar are also banking on the prospect of recouping money from the federal government for storing spent fuel during and after the decommissioning, because there is no national disposal site for high-level nuclear waste…

Holtec has come under scrutiny over its role in a mishap in August 2018 during the somewhat less aggressive decommissioning of the San Onofre plant in Southern California, where two reactors were retired in 2013 and the estimated completion date is 2030….Holtec contractors were lowering a 45-ton spent fuel cask into an underground storage vault at San Onofre when it became misaligned and nearly plunged 18 feet, investigators said. No radiation was released.  Federal regulators fined Southern California Edison, the plant’s owner, $116,000, and an investigation found that some Holtec procedures had been inadequate or not properly followed.

BOB SALSBERG , Speedy reactor cleanups may carry both risks and rewards, Associated Press, May 21, 2019