NEWSLETTER

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MILLSTONE WASTE STORAGE PLAN IN DOUBT;
NRC RULES FOR ANTI-MILLSTONE COALITIONS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JANUARY 17, 2001
Contact: Nancy Burton 203-938-3952
Tina Guglielmo 631-324-0655

Mystic - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed today to reconsider a decision made last October permitting expansion of the storage capacity for highly radioactive waste at the Millstone Unit 3 reactor in Waterford, the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone announced.
The NRC decision grants an appeal by the anti-nuclear coalition and its Long Island counterpart, Long Island Coalition Against Millstone, opposing Northeast Utilities plans to double waste capacity onsite in the Unit 3 spent fuel pool from 756 spent fuel assemblies to 1860 assemblies.
"It took NU's revelation that it has lost track of two spent fuel rods to finally capture the NRC's attention on this issue, which is of great significance to the public health and safety," said Nancy Burton, the attorney representing the coalitions in the proceeding.
"For once, the NRC is making the right decision," said Tina Guglielmo, program coordinator for STAR Foundation, a member of the East Hampton, New York-based Long Island Coalition Against Millstone. "The NRC owes our communities a serious look into this issue."
The NRC's decision allows the Coalitions to appeal from a decision of the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board issued on October 26, 2000 dismissing their challenge to the fuel storage expansion plan.
The Coalitions and their experts have argued that doubling the storage capacity of the pool exposes the public to unnecessary risks of serious accidents.
The NRC decision concerns the legality of the NRC staff's interpretation of General Design Criterion 62, a federal regulation which requires that criticality - the occurrence of a spontaneous nuclear chain reaction - in spent fuel systems be controlled by physical separation of spent fuel assemblies.
"In deciding to review the legality of the NTC staff's interpretation of GDC 62, the NRC Commissioners have taken a first step toward recognizing the hazard posed by high-density pool storage of spent fuel," said Dr. Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Cambridge, Mass.-based Institute for Resource and Security Studies, who served as expert witness for the Coalitions.
"The NRC staff has allowed licensees to violate GDC 62 in order to increase the density of storage in pools," Thompson said. "This practice creates the potential for criticality accident."
"More seriously, a loss of water from a high-density pool would lead to a fire in the pool, releasing huge amounts of long-lived radioactive material in a plume that would travel downwind and contaminate vast areas of land," Thompson continued."

Coalition members expressed concern about NU plans to expand waste storage at Millstone in light of NU's admission in November that it had lost track of two highly radioactive spent fuel rods which belong in the Unit 1 spent fuel pool.
"It has been two months since NU publicly revealed that it can't find two 12-foot-long spent fuel rods," said Joseph H. Besade, a member of the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone. "Far from expanding storage capacity to allow for more deadly waste at Unit 3, the NRC should order NU to suspend all fuel movements until it can locate the lost rods."
The NRC has said it is unaware of any similar incident in the history of the U.S. commercial nuclear industry.
Today's decision allows the Coalitions to file additional legal arguments on their claims that federal law prohibits increasing the density of the spent fuel pools because of increased safety risks.
The Coalitions were directed to file briefs within 21 days. If their appeal is successful, NU faces the prospect that it will not be allowed to store additional spent fuel at Millstone.