Xcel to relicense nuclear plant
03/25/2005
[Note the 5th paragraph of the article, Xcel wants to build a 30 cask
waste storage site at Monticello.
Yet more consequences of the flawed 1994 legislation which authorized
NSP (now Xcel) dry cask storage at their Prairie Island plant. Now to
make matters worse, as a result of the legislative action 2 years ago,
the 1994 limitations were stripped away and Minnesota is in for
unlimited high-level radioactive waste storage - basically forever.
As we told the legislature in ‘94 the likelihood of any nuclear waste
leaving Minnesota was slim to nonexistent. As we also told the ‘94
legislature, this was never about authorizing “just 17 casks” (NSP
built their storage pad at Prairie Island for 48 casks before even
getting authorization), if they authorized one cask the door was open
and Xcel would be back year after year to get more storage. Now we not
only have on-site water pool storage, but we also have above ground dry
cask storage.
As “cooler” radioactive spent fuel assemblies are removed from the
water pool storage and are moved to the casks, more fresh (and hotter -
thermally and radioactively) spent fuel assemblies go into the pools.
The water storage pools were built with the plants 30 years ago and
were designed for storing 198 spent fuel assemblies temporarily. In
1977 NSP got authorization to increase the nuclear waste storage to 687
fuel assemblies. In 1981 they got authorization to increase the
storage to 1386 (or 1582 if an emergency full core down-load was
necessary). Xcel has now increased that pool storage even further.
With the Yucca Mtn national nuclear waste repository in trouble once
again (with the Federal Courts, and funding being with held by Congress
because of fabricated and falsified scientific/geological reports, it
appear more likely than ever that not one once of Minnesota nuclear
waste will ever leave the state. And now Xcel want to produce and
store more of it - not only at Prairie Island, but also at their
Monticello plant (both sites right on the banks of the Mississippi
River. What a travesty!
- Mark Frederickson
Excerpts from Duluth Trib:
Posted on Fri, Mar. 25, 2005