SAFSTOR: SAFER, CHEAPER, AND SUPPORTIVE OF THE WORKFORCE“The SAFSTOR alternative for decommissioning requires a much larger organization to support the plant. The entire plant is still physically intact. Systems have been drained down, it's been put in a passive state, but you still require a full time security organization, you require health physics, periodic testing, monitoring the facility and all the other corporate functions that go with supporting a fairly large on-site organization.” --Testimony in the Sale of Vermont Yankee To AmerGen May 2000 by William Cloutier Jr. From the Thomas Laguardia Group
By waiting just 30 years, the amount of waste requiring removal to a waste facility decreases by one order of magnitude. For example Yankee Rowe during rapid dismantlement of its reactor removed over 200,000 curies of radioactive waste. If Yankee had waited and utilized SAFSTOR waste removal could have decreased to 20,000 curies. The cost for the decommissioning of the Rowe reactor is over $700 million dollars; Yankee Rowe, the first commercial reactor in the country, cost $37 million to build in 1961. The Connecticut Yankee reactor in Haddam, CT has cost over $1 billion to clean up. Both sites continue to have high level waste stored on site in above ground cannisters. DECON: Rapid Dismantlement “By contrast, if you promptly decommission a facility, remove a majority of the power block and the adjoining facilities and all you have left is a dry storage installation, the monitoring requirements are much, much less, the transfer function when it comes time to move that fuel to DOE can all be subcontracted, the corporation can diminish to the bare essential, a skeleton organization.” -Testimony in the Sale of Vermont Yankee To AmerGen May 2000 by William Cloutier Jr. However you lose the skilled workforce that ran the reactor because many leave to find other jobs in the industry. You also expose workers to substantially higher amounts of radiation because the reactor and its internals are quite radioactive after shutting down. The primary radionuclides found in decommissioning are Cobalt 60 and Cesium 137 as well as Tritium. Cobalt 60 has a 5 ½ year half life, Cesium has a 30 year half life and Tritium has a 12.5 year half life. Once these radionuclides decay out, exposures as well as waste removal decrease substantially. SAFSTOR was undertaken by the Rancho Seco nuclear reactor in California and is pursuing a program of incremental decommissioning. “Some people have described it as decommissioning as a hobby. They (Rancho Seco) were shut down in 1989 due to a public referendum. Severely underfunded, they were forced into a safe storage mode. The original intent was to continue collecting from the ratepayers through the year 2008 which was the original shut down date of the unit. However, the cost to maintain that facility in safe storage has continued to escalate. Maintenance costs that they had not anticipated have continued to rise. Soon after they shut down, the roof of their low-level waste building was blown off in a storm. They have had problems with many of their facilities in the complex. As a means to conserve funds, because they have a very large staff on site monitoring the facility, they have used that staff to also do decommissioning work in their spare time. And they have been very aggressive, they have cleaned out the entire turbine building, they are working right now in the auxiliary building removing systems and components. They are doing a very slow and methodical decommissioning on site, but they found out it's the most cost-effective approach rather than waiting until 2008 and not having enough money because they have spent a lot of the funds already on unexpected maintenance of the facility.” -Testimony in the Sale of Vermont Yankee To AmerGen May 2000 by William Cloutier Jr. emphasis added As part of the referendum, Rancho Seco’s power was replaced by the utility with a diverse set of alternatives including conservation, biomass, appliance replacement as well as wind and solar. This diversity has proved successful. The Laguardia Group provided a SAFSTOR estimate for the company in 1994 as part of the decommissioning study. However in its April of '99 report, the only scenario considered was prompt dismantling, or DECON.
SAFSTOR:SAFER CHEAPER AND SUPPORTIVE OF THE WORKFORCE |