Cooling lost to Palisades' high-level radioactive waste storage pool during incident

In its Feb. 14, 2012 final significance determination letter to Entergy Nuclear about a Sept. 25, 2011 loss of power to the control room at the Palisades atomic reactor in southwest Michigan, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported that not until 6 p.m., "Cooling was restored to spent fuel pool heat exchanger (lost during loss of power). The pool temperature was 83.4 [degrees] F at 15:00 [3 p.m.] and had risen to 87.4 [degrees] F by the time the heat exchanger was restored."

Although Palisades has had dry cask storage since 1993, the vast majority of its high-level radioactive waste is still stored in its indoor pool. Loss of pool cooling for long enough would lead to boiling, and eventual exposure of irradiated fuel to air. After a short time without water cooling, irradiated nuclear fuel will ignite, and the fire could spread to the entire pool inventory. Up to 100% of the hazardous radioactive Cesium-137 contained in the irradidated nuclear fuel could be released into the environment. An NRC commissioned study in 2001 reported that 25,000 latent cancer fatalities could result from a pool fire. An NRC commissioned study in 1997 reported even more shocking figures: 143,000 latent cancer fatalities downwind of a pool fire.

Major seismic aftershock at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 could unleash 8 times Chernobyl's Cs-137

Recent photo of the ruins of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4. Note workers, wearing white protective suits, near the pool's surface (just beneath the topmost girders).Robert Alvarez of the Institute for Policy Studies released the following message today:

"Here is a recent photo [left] of the Unit No. 4 at the Fukushima-Daichi nuclear ruins provided by Akio Matsumura. It is quite sobering.

The pool at Unit No. 4 contains 1,538 fuel assemblies, including a full core that was freshly discharged prior to the accident. 

Based on data from the U.S. Department of Energy, a spent fuel assembly from a typical boiling water reactor contains about 30,181 curies (~1.1E+12 becquerels) of long-lived radioactivity. So the Unit No. 4 pool contains roughly 49 million curies (~1.8E+18 Bq), of which about 40 percent is Cs-137.  (Source:  U.S. Department of Energy, Final Environmental Impact Statement for a Geologic Repository for the Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste at Yucca Mountain, Nye County, Nevada, 2002, Appendix A, Tables A-7, A-8, A-9, A-10, BWR/Burn up = 36,600 MWd/MTHM, enrichment = 3.03 percent, decay time = 23 years.)

The risk of yet another highly destructive earthquake occurring even closer to the Fukushima reactors has increased, according to the European Geosciences Union.http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/02/15/could-fukushima-daiichi-be-ground-zero-for-the-next-big-one/ This is particularly worrisome for Daiichi's structurally damaged spent fuel pool at Reactor No. 4 sitting 100 feet above ground, exposed to the elements. Drainage of water from this pool, resulting from another quake could trigger a catastrophic radiological fire involving about eight times more radioactive cesium than released at Chernobyl."

In 2011, Alvarez published a report on the risks of high-level radioactive waste pool storage in the U.S., in light of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Catastrophe.

Entergy Nuclear, infamous for "buying reactors cheap, then running them into the ground," and GE BWR Mark I storage pools for high-level radioactive waste

The Kalamazoo Gazette has quoted Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps responding to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's downgrading of the Palisades nuclear power plant's safety status as one of the worst in the country. The call has gone out from grassroots Vermont Yankee watchdogs for the formation of an "Entergy Watch," to monitor reactor risks at the second biggest corporate nuclear power fleet across the U.S., which includes the following dozen atomic reactors at 10 different nuclear power plants: Arkansas Nuclear One, Units 1 and 2; Cooper Nuclear Station in Nebraska; FitzPatrick in upstate New York; Grand Gulf in Mississippi; Indian Point Units 2 and 3 near New York City; Palisades in Michigan; Pilgrim near Boston; Riverbend in Louisiana;Vermont Yankee; and Waterford in Louisiana. Of these, Cooper, FitzPatrick, Pilgrim, and Vermont Yankee are General Electric Mark I Boiling Water Reactors (GE BWR Mark Is), identical in design to Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 4, the focus of Beyond Nuclear's "Freeze Our Fukushimas" shutdown campaign. 

As Beyond Nuclear spelled out in a recent backgrounder, GE BWR Mark I storage pools for high-level radioactive waste are especially vulernable to catastrophic radioactivity releases, whether due to natural disaster, accident or attack.