A recent article from Science magazine has pointed out major flaws in a U.S. nuclear energy policy review conducted by the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission). Of particular importance, is the NRC’s unwillingness to change regulations surrounding densely packed spent fuel pools.

A fire at any one of the 90 densely packed spent fuel pools scattered across the U.S. could lead to a nuclear disaster many times greater than the one that occurred at Fukushima in 2011. The NRC claims that risks of a fire are simply too low to justify the costs involved in switching to an alternate spent fuel storage strategy. Authors of the article, Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, as well as Michael Schoeppner and Frank von Hippel from Princeton University disagree with the assessment, citing the NRC’s failure to recognize the enormous area a nuclear disaster of this magnitude would affect.

The NRC cost-benefit analysis assumed there would be no consequences from radioactive contamination beyond 50 miles from a fire. It also assumed that all contaminated areas could be effectively cleaned up within a year. Both of these assumptions are inconsistent with experience after the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents.

What is a Spent Fuel Pool?

Fuel rods composed of fissile elements such as uranium-235 or plutonium-239 are used to power nuclear reactors. When hit with a slow-moving neutron, the atoms are split and produce several more neutrons, starting a self-sustaining chain reaction that generates enormous amounts of heat and energy. In a nuclear reactor, the thermal by-product of the fission occurring within the fuel rods is used to boil water and create large amounts of steam, which powers turbines that generate electricity. The reactors carefully control the rate at which fission takes place, whereas the fission that occurs when a nuclear weapon is detonated is completely uncontrolled. After a certain amount of time, the fuel rods become ineffective and must be replaced. The radioactive elements present in the spent fuel rod still generate large amounts of heat, and are highly toxic. So what do we do with these volatile fuel rods after they’re removed from the reactor?

All nuclear power plants in the United States are equipped with on-site pools of water that are at least 20 feet deep. The volatile fuel rods are stored in these pools and must remain there for at least a decade before they have cooled enough to be moved to a more permanent storage facility. New water must constantly be circulated in to prevent the pools from boiling and exposing the spent fuel rods to the atmosphere. These pools are extremely vulnerable, as any disruption to the cooling process will result in the release of massive amounts of radiation.

What Threat Does A Spent Fuel Pool Fire Pose?

If a fire were to disrupt the cooling cycle of one of these densely packed spent fuel pools, the fuel rods would melt into a nuclear fuel that would release more radiation into the environment than has ever been seen before. This fate was narrowly avoided at Fukushima in 2011 by a stroke of luck, but the NRC continues to tempt fate by failing to change regulations.

The NRC estimated that transferring some of the fuel rods into dry cask storage would reduce the amount of radiation released in a spent fuel pool fire by 99%, but claimed the $50 million dollars it would cost to implement dry cask storage at each pool was simply too high. Authors of the Science article calculated that the average spent fuel pool fire would result in the forced evacuation of 8 million people and accumulate two trillion dollars in damages. These numbers are much higher than those produced by the NRC’s risk assessment. Many believe the NRC’s underestimations to be a result of pressure put on them from an already collapsing nuclear energy industry.

Every year, 10,000 tons of nuclear waste is added to the already hundred of thousands of tons stored around the globe. This number continues to grow, yet the nuclear industry still has no fail proof solution for nuclear waste storage. The half-lives of the man-made radioactive particles contained within the nuclear waste are so long that they will need to be stored for thousands of years before they no longer present a threat to global health. Continuing to produce nuclear waste with no solution for the future is not only irresponsible; it threatens the existence of the human race.