Leaking Radioactive Waste Pool at Indian Point Drained

November 10, 2008

By Alexa James, ajames@ th-record.com
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081110/NEWS/811100315

BUCHANAN Officials at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan can cross a big chore off their to-do list. A leaking waste-containment pool, containing 500,000 gallons of radioactive water and spent fuel rods, has been drained and cleaned.

The bulk of the work was completed at the end of October, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The last step is for work crews to coat the pool and do some other maintenance-related work, thus solving a problem that surfaced several years ago.

In August 2005, a dangerous dose of strontium-90, a carcinogenic isotope, was detected in storm drains and groundwater around the riverside power plant. The contamination was eventually traced back to a leaking spent fuel pool for reactor Unit 1, which was shut down in the 1970s.

Officials with both Entergy Nuclear the New-Orleans based company that owns and operates the 2,000 megawatt plant, and the NRC the federal oversight body that monitors the plant insist that unsafe levels of contamination have not found their way into drinking water or the Hudson River. Still, supporters and critics agree: Draining the pool and storing the old fuel rods in a safer location was a major accomplishment.

"It eliminates any chance of any (more) contaminates leaking out of the pool," said Indian Point spokesman Jerry Nappi.

NRC officials said they will continue to monitor the groundwater around the plant.

The old spent fuel rods of plutonium and uranium are now being stored on-site in five massive dry casks, weighing about 160 tons apiece, lined up on a steel-and-concrete pad roughly double the size of a basketball court.

The dry cask system was initiated at the beginning of the year to store waste from the plant's reactors, at an initial cost of more than $40 million.

There are 46 storage sites across the country similar to this new one at Indian Point, all designed as temporary holding facilities until a national repository is built.