TVA suing feds over cost to store nuke waste

TVA suing
feds over
cost to store
nuke waste
Agency 'reluctantly
went after government
By Richard Powelson
News-Sentinel Washington bureau

TVA officials estimated Monday federal delays in
accepting and storing radioactive waste from nuclear
power plants might cost the agency more than $120
million for extra storage.
The Knoxville-based federal agency is ordering
steel- and concrete-based storage, costing about $1
million each, for temporary storage, perhaps until
2014, when the U.S. government may have a Nevada
desert site ready for TVA's shipments.
The dry casks are cheaper than building more
cooling pools, TVA said.
TVA chairman Glenn McCullough Jr. said the
whole sale power agency "very reluctantly" has sued
the U.S. government to recover the $120 million or
more in costs.
"We have to protect the ratepayers' money,"
McCullough said.
The agency has paid $580 million over nearly 20
years into a federal fund to finance a permanent
repository to handle the country's nuclear waste
repository to handle the country's nuclear waste
The tests are based on the amount of power generat-
ed at each U.S. nuclear plant.
TVAs waste this year, initially planned to begin taking
site and other locations, caused long delays. The
Department of Energy and President Bush have also-
seen an isolated desert site at Yucca Mountain in
Nevada to house the radioactive waste.
The full House will vote soon on whether to over-
ride Nevada's objection to receiving the nuclear
waste, and the Senate may vote this summer.
John Scalice, TVA's chief nuclear officer and an
executive vice president, said he was encouraged by
a House committee vote recently to move ahead with
completion of the Yucca Mountain site. Keeping the
nation's spent nuclear fuel in one isolated, safe loca-
tion 1,000 feet underground plant sites is preferable to keeping
it at 63 nuclear power plant sites in cooling pools or
dry casks at ground level, he said.
He said he has visited Yucca Mountain, which the
government found the most suitable location after
studying various sites for more than 20 years and
spending $8 billion analyzing them.
"It's way out in the desert," Scalice said. "It's arid,

There's nobody living around there. It certainly is an appropriate area to store spent nuclear fuel."

But U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., is among those urging to keep nuclear waste at each plant site. He fears what would happen should nuclear waste-laden trains or trucks crash en route to Nevada.

Also, an East Tennessee environmental group, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, prefers that TVA keep the waste at its plants until there is more certainty that Yucca Mountain is the best repository. "The worst thing is to move it around, get it out there and then realize you have to move it again," alliance spokesman Stephen Smith said.

He said there also should be concern that terrorists would target the shipments headed to Nevada. But federal officials maintain that they have designed nuclear waste containers for storage and transportation to withstand various calamities, including hitting a bridge abutment at 120 mph and being engulfed in fire at 1,475 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes.

TVA's casks will be 1-inch-thick steel in a 6-foot-by-16-foot cylinder, surrounded by a 30-inch-thick wall of concrete on each side, spokesman John Moulton said.

The TVA lawsuit seeking federal reimbursement for extra storage costs was filed in April 2001. Moulton said he did not know why the agency did not announce the legal action then.

Scalice said the first cooling pool to fill with spent nuclear fuel would be at the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant near Chattanooga in 2004. At TVA's Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in North Alabama, pools are expected to fill by 2006 and by 2013, he said.

Buying steel-and-concrete casks is millions of dollars cheaper than building more pools, Scalice said. All U.S. nuclear plants have limited storage for spent fuel, while Yucca Mountain has a huge repository for future growth, he said.

The U.S. military has been transporting nuclear weapons around the country for years without problems, so spent nuclear fuel can be handled safely, too, Scalice said.

"The missiles didn't get to Iowa or wherever they are located by beaming them there," he said.

Richard Powelson may be reached at 202-408-2727 or PowelsonR@shns.com.