US nuclear plants and their spent fuel rods
Apparently, we’re more willing to take risks than the Japanese. Renee Schoof at McClatchy:
U.S. nuclear plants use the same sort of pools to cool spent nuclear-fuel rods as the ones now in danger of spewing radiation at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, only the U.S. pools hold much more nuclear material. That’s raising the question of whether more spent fuel should be taken out of the pools at U.S. power plants to reduce risks.
Workers in Japan have been struggling for days to get water into the spent-fuel pools at the plant, so that the fuel rods won’t be exposed to the air, burst into flames and set off a large radiological release.
Experts are debating whether America’s spent fuel pools would fare as badly or worse in an accident, and whether they could be made safer.
Edwin Lyman, a physicist and nuclear expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said he has long been concerned that U.S. spent-fuel pools are too full. Lyman said that his group, which doesn’t take a position for or against nuclear power, recommends reducing risk at the spent-fuel pools by transferring some of the fuel rods to dry casks.
“I think that’s being borne out by what we’re seeing in Japan,” he said Thursday.
The Japanese plant’s pools are far from capacity, but still contain an enormous amount of radioactivity, Lyman said. A typical U.S. nuclear plant would have about 10 times as much fuel in its pools, he said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reaffirmed its position that . . .
