" Speculation turns to spent fuel pool " [FW]

See especially the last paragraph in this article -- a semblance of realism amid all the antinuke fantasy, at last.

Jaro

CRYSTAL RIVER -- Its thick concrete walls reinforced with steel bars the diameter of a soda can, the building that protects Florida Power's nuclear reactor is a formidable sight.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, however, the containment building has been the source of great speculation. Some say there is no way it could withstand the impact of a jetliner; others insist it could.

But amid that debate, a less-protected target has largely been overlooked: the area where two decades of nuclear waste is stockpiled.

"An active reactor poses, psychologically, a bigger target," said Tyson Slocum, research director for Public Citizen, a California-based group that is critical of the nuclear industry.

"But spent fuel is kind of the soft underbelly. It is a highly radioactive substance and it can provide fodder for an attack."

The nuclear industry says fears about spent fuel and the reactors themselves are overblown and note that much of the criticism comes from antinuclear groups, such as Public Citizen.

"There are questions that are raised from time to time that are legitimate," Florida Power spokesman Mac Harris said. "But there are also people whose motive is to undermine credibility of the industry. It's a balance that you want."

Florida Power opened its Crystal River nuclear plant in 1977. About every two years since then, one-third of the fuel has been replaced.

The latest refueling ended last month, with workers adding 72 fuel assemblies -- metal rods filled with uranium pellets -- to the pool.

Today there is more than four times the nuclear material in the pool than in the reactor. The pool has 840 assemblies and room for 640 more.

At first, the pools were intended to store the waste temporarily, until the federal government came to take it away. But that plan became embroiled in politics and though a site in Nevada, Yucca Mountain, has been selected, lawmakers still have not resolved the issue.

So here it sits, 630 tons in all, under 25 feet of water. The water acts as a radiation shield by absorbing neutrons and gamma rays. Boron, which is added to the water, adds to this protection. "It's like a sponge," Harris said.

Water also carries away heat that emanates from the rods long after they are out of service.

Florida Power said the above-ground pool is protected by a "hardened" building made of concrete and steel. The pool itself is covered by steel -- the company would not say how thick -- designed to endure hurricanes and earthquakes. "It's a pretty rugged structure," said Scott Stewart, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector who works at the Crystal River plant. "My general assessment would be that it's not vulnerable to any sort of attack."

Still, the NRC is taking an "across-the-board, top-to-bottom look at all safety procedures and regulations. Certainly, spent fuel is part of those considerations," spokesman Roger Hannah said.

Critics point out that pools, like reactor containment buildings, were not designed to withstand acts of war.

And while mock attacks are staged periodically at the reactor complex, there is no drill testing the security at the spent fuel pools. To get to the fuel pool from inside, one would have to go through the containment structure, which is heavily secured.

So what would happen in an attack? If the cooling capability was disrupted and a significant amount of water was lost, the fuel could begin to heat and the cladding, the metal sheath around each fuel rod, could break up, releasing radioactive gas into the environment.

"The issue is how much longer would it take before the fuel starts melting," said Ed Lyman of the Nuclear Control Institute, an antiproliferation group. "Once the fuel starts melting, you get a release of the nongaseous isotopes in the fuel itself."

A study conducted last fall for the NRC, which called for more safeguards for used fuel, concluded that between 2,460 and 25,800 people could die from cancer as a result of exposure to radiation from a spent fuel pool accident.

But that was a worst-case scenario. Indeed, the study also said the risk of spent fuel pools was low. Hannah said he could not discuss the report because it's been classified since the Sept. 11 attacks.

An aircraft or explosive force, such as a bomb or missile, would not have to level the fuel building to cause harm, according to the Union for Concerned Scientists, a nuclear watchdog group in Cambridge, Mass. It would merely need to crack the wall or floor allowing the water to drain out.

Harris was reluctant to discuss the possibility of an attack. "One has to say that it is really no sure bet that a person with an airplane could get it to a location and find the spent fuel pool."

He noted that it would take hours for the fuel to heat and that some of the fuel is so old that it might not pose a threat. In that time, problems could be fixed, he said. "It's not like you shut off the cooling and then there is nothing you can do. We can get water to the spent fuel.