Radioactive fuel shipments planned through counties

Getting spent, or used, fuel from nuclear power plants to a proposed interim storage facility in Lea County would require routing the spent fuel by rail to Clovis to reach a rail line that is the only access route to the Lea County site.

Holtec International, a firm that specializes in spent fuel storage and nuclear power plant site decommissioning, is seeking a license to operate the interim storage facility in Lea County.

As part of Holtec's license quest, the company must also deal with the transportation issues.

Ed Mayer, program director for Holtec, on Monday outlined the steps Holtec is taking to ensure that the canisters, weighing up to 200 tons each, that contain the spent fuel will travel safely to the storage site in Lea County.

He also pointed out that there would not be as much spent fuel traffic coming through Clovis as many might believe. There would be "one or two trains a month" arriving in Clovis to be switched to the Lea County track he said. Each train would carry a maximum of 10 casks each.

The trains, he said would be solely dedicated to spent fuel waste hauling, and each would contain armed guards riding in a special car. Each train would be tracked throughout its journey by both the U.S. Department of Transportation and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

In addition, he said, each train will be pulled by two locomotives in order to assure the train could continue along its route if one locomotive broke down.

The casks, he said, have been designed and tested to be impenetrable. Without being compromised, Mayer said, The casks have been dropped from 30 feet, crash tested with the equivalent of a Boeing 747 slamming into them, burned with flames up to 1,400 degrees, Fahrenheit, and dropped from five feet onto spikes.

Each canister, he explained, would contain up to 100 fuel rods, the columns of uranium fuel pellets that heat water into steam at nuclear power plants. The rods inside the canisters are "completely dry," Mayer said and would be surrounded by helium, a gas that does not react at all with other substances, then encased in ceramic material surrounded by layers of lead, steel and other materials to make them impenetrable.

All of the technology in use for the transportation plan, Mayer said has been in use without serious incident for at least 60 years, he said., including the nuclear fuel for the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers and materials used in nuclear weapons programs.

"We've been moving nuclear materials around the country for 60 years without major incident," he said.

Holtec representatives have conducted meetings in the past year with police, firefighters, and hazardous materials handlers in the 15 New Mexico counties that might be affected by the transportation and storage plan, Mayer said.

"They have a lot of questions," he said, "but when we leave, they have no concerns."

Holtec faces challenges to the siting of the interim storage facility in New Mexico.

New Mexico Sen. Jeff Steinborn, D-Las Cruces, opposes the siting of the facility in the state for three reasons, he stated in an email Tuesday.

"It's being licensed as temporary facility but there is no permanent repository even being planned in America,' Steinborn stated in the email. "That's the equivalent of throwing New Mexico over a cliff with no net. Temporary could likely become permanent, and we will be at long term risk for cask failure, and potential dissolution of ...Holtec."

Mayer said 40 years should be adequate for finding, licensing and constructing a permanent spent fuel repository. In addition, he said, new technologies could result in the spent fuel being recycled to produce more electric power.

Fuel rods "use only 2% or 3% of their weight," before they are consigned to spent fuel, Mayer said, but new technologies could tap the remaining 3% of their weight that could be used."

That would mean the casks could be taken from the silos for their fuel to be reused even before they are moved to a permanent repository.

Mayer said Holtec has set aside funds to operate the plant for up to two years in case Holtec were to fail as a business. Holtec's current financial strength, he said, makes that highly unlikely.

Steinborn also said that transporting all of the nation's spent fuel on the single rail line through Clovis, Portales and Roswell, places "an extraordinary risk and burden on your community and New Mexico." The transportation risk, he said, is doubled because the spent fuel will have to be hauled over the same rail route to get to the permanent repository.

Mayer said the use of trains that only carry waste canisters, the presence of armed guards and constant monitoring of the trains along the route will minimize the risks, even in the event of an accident.

Steinborn also stated in his email that the interim storage "poses tremendous risk to other economic activities in the region that could have to shut down if there is an accident, as well as undermine the attractiveness of recruiting other industry to an active high level nuclear waste corridor."

Mayer said the oil industry, the chief industry in the area, is comfortable with the site.

"They drill down 10,000 to 15,000 feet for fracking," he said, while the silos for interim storage are only 25 feet deep.

The silos, Mayer added, are designed to withstand seismic motion up to 1.3 times the acceleration of gravity, which is higher than the standard applied to the San Andreas fault along the West Coast, the nation's longest active fault line.

Fracking, Mayer said, does not produce "anywhere near" that amount of acceleration.

The waste canisters, Mayer added, are designed to resist corrosion due to radioactive decay for "hundreds of years."