Expansion OK'd for storing spent nuclear fuel at Beaver plant
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The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a major expansion of spent nuclear fuel storage capacity at FirstEnergy's Beaver Valley Unit 2 nuclear reactor in Shippingport, Beaver County.
The NRC action, announced Friday afternoon, allows the Akron, Ohio-based electric company to "rerack" its existing storage pool and install new higher density racks that will allow for underwater storage of up to 1,690 spent fuel assemblies or "bundles," an increase from the current capacity of 1,088.
That storage pool, which measures 53 feet long by 29 feet wide and 38 feet deep, contains 945 spent fuel bundles now.
Spent nuclear fuel has been accumulating at power plants for more than 50 years and is stored at all of the 103 nuclear power plants in the United States, including Beaver Valley, Three Mile Island and three others in Pennsylvania. Expansion of Beaver Valley Unit 1 spent fuel capacity was approved and completed in the early 1990s.
"(Nuclear power) plants all over the country are doing this," said Todd Schneider, a FirstEnergy spokesman. "It's a stop-gap measure that's necessary because there's no centralized national storage facility."
Mr. Schneider said the storage expansion requested by the company in April 2009 will provide up to 11 years of additional wet storage capacity for Unit 2. Work on removing the old rack and installing a new one will begin later this year or early next year and take several months to complete, he said.
In issuing the amendment, the NRC stated that "There is reasonable assurance. ... that the activities authorized by this amendment can be conducted without endangering the health and safety of the public. ..."
Neal Sheehan, an NRC spokesman, said the commission's three-year review of the company's spent fuel storage expansion request was not unusually lengthy but did include a number of highly technical issues related to how the higher density storage racks will affect the storage pools and the steel and concrete walls around it.
"Spent fuel is getting a great deal of attention because of what happened in Japan," Mr. Sheehan said. "But there's not a great deal of controversy about this one."
Mr. Schneider said spent fuel storage at the Japanese reactors was located above the reactors, which caused some problems.
"Ours are located at ground level in concrete and steel-lined pools in a completely different area of the plant," he said.
A nuclear fuel rod is as big around as a pencil and 14 feet long. Each fuel assembly or "bundle" contains 264 rods and each of the two Beaver Valley reactor cores contain 157 assemblies.
FirstEnergy replaces or "changes out" about one-third of the assemblies in each core every 18 months during refueling and the spent fuel bundles are placed in the pool where they are submerged under 23 feet of water.
The Beaver Valley Power Station Units 1 and 2, located along the Ohio River, 22 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, produce more than 1,800 megawatts of electric power. The two reactors at Beaver Valley power station went online in 1976 and 1987.
First Published April 30, 2011 12:00 am
