TMI reactor to remain locked away for decades

Source: The Patriot-News, Harrisburg, Pa.迷你倉Aug. 29--It's been 34 years since the nation's worst nuclear accident occurred at Three Mile Island.For the last 20 years the power plant's number two reactor has been quiet, packed away in what is termed "SAFSTOR," essentially packed and locked away. The nuclear fuel that once burned within the reactor's core was long ago removed, taken to a national laboratory in Idaho.It's likely to remain that way, a towering monument to one of the midstate's darkest hours, for decades to come.There are no plans to dismantle the reactor unit in the near future. At a public meeting Wednesday night, officials with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said the current plan is for the reactor's owner, First Energy Corp. to begin dismantling the reactor sometime after April 2034.The island's two reactors are owned by two different companies. The station's active reactor is owned by Exelon and is licensed to operate until 2034. Decommissioning both reactors at the same time is expected to save money. The current estimated costs of dismantling the second reactor are somewhere north of $900 million.Whether that will actually happen though, is a source for some debate. Eric Epstein, of the watchdog group TMI Alert, said he distrusts the entire presentation by the NRC."The reality is the plant will never be decommissioned," Epstein said during the meeting.Instead, Epstein charged that the NRC and First Energy have neither the money, the technology nor anywhere to store the waste that would be generated by the cleanup. The most likely scenario, Epstein said, was that the reactor would simply be entombed and left as-is.While NRC Branch Chief Bruce Watson acknowledged that entombment is indeed an 文件倉ption, "we have not had a request for an entombment, nor do we expect any."The meeting itself was supposed to focus on a report submitted by First Energy regarding the decommissioning. That report, filed this June, was due in 1995. The report covers much of the same ground in other documents that have previously been submitted to the NRC by First Energy.The fact that it hadn't been filed was overlooked by the agency, largely due to the singular nature of the reactor's shutdown after it went critical in 1979, said NRC Project Manager John Buckley."The routine decommissioning process was not followed," Buckley said, due to the emergency nature of the shutdown. Both the meeting and the document that was recently filed are more administrative in function than safety-related, officials said.But the public meeting did allow for local residents to air their concerns about the reactor and its future.Scott Portzline, also with TMI Watch, said he had several concerns with the decommissioning, among them, that the accident was, in his mind, never properly investigated.Portzline, who said he has "done 40,000 pages of research" on the disaster, said reports issued by various commissions have indicated that the root causes of the accident remain unknown.He wants those questions answered before the plant is dismantled, he said. He also raised concerns about security and controls during any decommissioning, arguing that portions of the plant and its equipment should be preserved and donated to either the Smithsonian or the state museum in Harrisburg for display.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The Patriot-News (Harrisburg, Pa.) Visit The Patriot-News (Harrisburg, Pa.) at .pennlive.com Distributed by MCT Information Services存倉