Washington (Platts)--30Mar2011/400 pm EDT/2000 GMT

The US should reconsider its use of water-filled pools for the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel given the continuing crisis in Japan, US Senator Diane Feinstein told the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Wednesday.

Feinstein, a California Democrat who chairs the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, said at a hearing on the Japan disaster that the US must rethink how it manages spent-nuclear fuel.

"These pools often become de facto long-term storage," she said. "I have a hard time understanding why the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not mandated a more rapid transfer of spent fuel to dry casks."

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A magnitude 9 earthquake off the coast of Japan March 11, and resulting massive tsunami, damaged the Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima I nuclear plant and led to continuing releases of radiation.

Problems at the reactors were primarily caused by the loss of offsite power and the inability to supply the reactors and spent fuel pools with cooling water.

"The situation in Japan suggests we should quicken the move to dry cask storage," Feinstein said.

Spent fuel taken out of a reactor must be cooled for about five years before it can be moved to dry cask storage. Some nuclear power plants in the US, however, do not use dry casks, and keep the spent fuel in pools indefinitely.

NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko told Feinstein he believes spent-fuel pools are safe and secure, and said the agency will be examining the long-term use of the pools as part of a broader review of US nuclear plant safety ordered earlier this month by President Barack Obama.

"The information we have right now shows that both of these methodologies are equally safe for a very long period of time," he said. Spent-fuel pools are hardened to withstand the same level of accident or disaster that may befall the reactor, he said.

"As the fuel gets cooler the liklihood of the very severe type of accident from spent fuel gets reduced significantly," Jaczko said. "The concern is that we have a fire, essentially, and it releases a lot of radioactive material from the spent fuel pools. As the fuel ages, the liklihood of that fire reduces dramatically."

Jaczko also told the panel that on-site storage of spent nuclear fuel would be safe for up to 100 years.

Ernest Moniz, an MIT physics professor and a member of DOE's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, told the subcommittee that while he believes there was a good case for the safety of storing spent fuel onsite for 100 years, he also said data to support that is skimpy.

"It may be that the fuel can be contained for 100 years in dry cask storage, but what about moving it then, would moving it compromise integrity?" Moniz said.

A policy on storing spent fuel depends on where it would eventually go. Energy Secretary Steven Chu terminated a long-planned national nuclear repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, and convened the Blue Ribbon commission to recommend alternatives. The panel is expected to complete its report in January.

Putting off a national nuclear waste policy makes it difficult to maintain a coherent policy for storing spent fuel on site, William Levis, the president and COO of PSEG Power, told the subcommittee. The company operates two nuclear reactors, and Levis testified on behalf of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry trade group.

"We want to limit the number of times we handle used fuel," Levis said. Not all dry casks can be used for transport, so a national policy on the eventual disposition of the waste is crucial to making the decision on what type of cask to use, he said.

--Derek Sands, derek_sands@platts.com