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Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report (2006)

Chapter: A.5 FOURTH MEETING, MAY 1012, 2004, WASHINGTON, D.C.

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Suggested Citation:"A.5 FOURTH MEETING, MAY 1012, 2004, WASHINGTON, D.C.." National Research Council. 2006. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11263.
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Generating Stations to see first-hand how spent fuel is managed and stored. The two plants were chosen because of the differences in their spent fuel storage facilities.

A.3 THIRD MEETING, APRIL 15–17, 2004, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

During the third meeting, the committee held a data-gathering session not open to the public to receive a briefing from EPRI on spent fuel storage vulnerabilities. The committee also held a data-gathering session open to the public to receive briefings on dry cask storage systems and radioactive releases from damaged spent fuel storage casks.

  • Speakers on dry cask storage systems: William McConaghy (GNB-GNSI); Steven Sisley (BNFL); Alan Hanson (Transnuclear Inc.); Charles Pennington (NAC international); and Brian Gutherman (Hoitec International, via telephone).

  • Radionuclide releases from damaged spent fuel. Speaker: Robert Luna, Sandia National Laboratories (retired).

A.4 TOUR OF SELECTED SPENT FUEL STORAGE INSTALLATIONS IN GERMANY

On April 25–28, 2004, a group of committee members traveled to Germany to meet with German officials and to visit selected spent fuel storage installations. The agenda of the tour was as follows:

  • Meeting with Michael Sailer, chairman of the German reactors safety commission (RSK, Reaktorsicherheitskommission).

  • Visit to the dry cask manufacturer GNB (Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Behälter mbH) headquarters in Essen and the cask assembly facility and test museum in Mülheim.

  • Tour of the Ahaus intermediate dry storage facility.

  • Meeting with Florentin Lange, GRS (Gesellschaft für Anlagen- und Reaktorsicheheit mbH), co-author of the study entitled “Safety Margins of Transport and Storage Casks for Spent Fuel Assemblies and HAW Canisters Under Extreme Accident Loads and Effects from External Events” (Lange et al., 2002),

  • Tour of the Lingen nuclear power plant and its spent fuel storage facilities.

A summary of information gathered during the tour is provided in Appendix C.

A.5 FOURTH MEETING, MAY 10–12, 2004, WASHINGTON, D.C.

During the fourth meeting, the committee held a data-gathering session not open to the public to hold in-depth technical discussions with Sandia National Laboratories staff and contractors on their spent fuel storage vulnerability analyses. The committee also received an intelligence briefing from Department of Homeland Security staff on terrorist capabilities and from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff on terrorist scenarios.

The meeting also included a data-gathering session open to the public that included the following briefings:

Suggested Citation:"A.5 FOURTH MEETING, MAY 1012, 2004, WASHINGTON, D.C.." National Research Council. 2006. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/11263.
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Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage: Public Report Get This Book
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In response to a request from Congress, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Homeland Security sponsored a National Academies study to assess the safety and security risks of spent nuclear fuel stored in cooling pools and dry casks at commercial nuclear power plants. The information provided in this book examines the risks of terrorist attacks using these materials for a radiological dispersal device. Safety and Security of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel is an unclassified public summary of a more detailed classified book. The book finds that successful terrorist attacks on spent fuel pools, though difficult, are possible. A propagating fire in a pool could release large amounts of radioactive material, but rearranging spent fuel in the pool during storage and providing emergency water spray systems would reduce the likelihood of a propagating fire even under severe damage conditions. The book suggests that additional studies are needed to better understand these risks. Although dry casks have advantages over cooling pools, pools are necessary at all operating nuclear power plants to store at least the recently discharged fuel. The book explains it would be difficult for terrorists to steal enough spent fuel to construct a significant radiological dispersal device.

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