Three U.S. senators on Wednesday reintroduced legislation intended to expedite the transfer of radioactive spent fuel into dry storage at nuclear power plants.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is lead sponsor on the legislation, with co-sponsors Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
“Addressing the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel is critical for the communities around our nuclear plants,” Gillibrand said in a prepared statement. “This legislation will ensure that each nuclear plant has a plan in place to responsibly transfer spent fuel from spent fuel pools into dry cask storage and maintain critical safety, security, and emergency planning requirements until that transfer is complete.
The Dry Cask Storage Act would require nuclear power licensees within 180 days of passage to submit a plan to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for transfer of used fuel from cooling pools to dry casks. Licensees would then have seven years to carry out the plan.
The commission, the regulator for the U.S. nuclear industry, would have 90 days to accept or reject a plan. Licensees would then have 30 days to make revisions and the commission another 30 days to rule on the updated plan.
Beginning two years after approval of the plan, the NRC would conduct a biennial review of licensee adherence to the storage approach laid out in the document.
Any nuclear power plant that is not complying with the NRC-approved plan would be required to expand its emergency planning zone to 50 miles, the bill says. Otherwise, the zones would have a radius of at least 10 miles.
Markey was critical of the NRC’s approval last week of reducing emergency preparedness requirements at the retired Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in his state, which still has nearly 3,000 used fuel assemblies in its cooling pool. The decision included elimination of the dedicated emergency preparedness zone around the Cape Cod plant, which pemanently shut down on May 31.
“Cutting these planning and emergency response requirements for cost savings just cuts away at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s legitimacy in the eyes of Massachusetts residents,” Markey said Wednesday during a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on nuclear power.
The bill was referred to the committee for consideration. The same panel received the 2017 version of the legislation, but never voted on it.
