Oil and gas opposition to consolidated interim spent fuel (CISF) storage facilities in Permian Basin 1

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9 Comments

  1. I don’t understand the desire to put all the casks in a single consolidated location. How does that solve any issue? It’s good business for Holtec. Holtec is not a publicly traded company (neither is Behtel). I’m philosophically opposed to private companies becoming sole suppliers for government contracts. At least BWXT is traded and I can invest my money in stable, incredibly expensive weapons systems. Leae the casks where they are…. moving them to NM does nothing.

    1. Depends on whether and for how long there will be room where they are. Locations like VY and Indian Point are required to go greenfield ASAP.

      1. ‘Required to go greenfield ASAP”

        By state mandate no doubt.

        Guess they’re not going to get what they want now are they? I’m quite tickled by that. Welcome to the club NY and VT.

    2. @Michael Scarangella

      I tend to agree with you. I’m not a big fan of spending money to move inventory around. Used nuclear fuel is a stockpile of material that might be a useful input to a manufacturing process someday.

      There is some logic in moving spent fuel casks away from sites where the existing reactors have been decommissioned. Those so-called orphan ISFI’s are considered to be problematic for local communities because they effectively prevent development of the site for uses other than nuclear facilities.

      IMO, a good answer to that is to redevelop those “orphan” sites by building new nuclear power stations. It’s possible to view spent fuel storage facilities on old nuclear plant sites as serving as unplanned placeholders.

    3. The other advantage of not moving the casks to a purpose built site is that they should be easier to access for future reprocessing, which in my opinion, should be the final destination for spent LWR fuel.

      1. @jon grams

        I hear what you’re saying. But I’ve also heard from people who work at certain long-view companies that gathering used fuel onto a single site MIGHT make it easier to set up an efficient recycling program.

        All recycling systems I’m aware of work on a significant scale and have a large input inventory before scale up.

        1. That makes sense. I suppose that as long as the storage system allows for relatively easy access to the casks, that would be better logistically.

          1. How much work is it to move the fuel from those huge ungainly casks to a central location in US? Years ago, I used to see them moved by crawlers that moved at walking speed. This doesn’t give me a whole lot of confidence that the whole cask would be shipped. Will the fuel have to be removed and put into a shipping cask?

            I’ve seen videos of the accidents that shipping casks can survive and they are impressive. However, it the fuel has to be unloaded from existing casks at each site and loaded into another cask, it would cost many millions. I would guess a separate structure for this activity would need to be built at each site.

            If my idea is out in left field, just let me know. I have full confidence that it won’t be the last time.

  2. Hard to see the case here. CISF is a surface facility. At most a few meters cut out into the grade for Holtec’s latest system, that is basically a concrete slab with silos in it.

    Surface facilities have no impact on oil in reservoirs.

    Holtec’s planned facility also looks extremely rugged. Sealed fuel rods in a sealed stainless steel canister in a steel silo in a concrete slab. Nothing is ever going to escape that let alone get into the soil. They are rated for fire, flood, etc. The site is a desert in the middle of nowhere. The nearest villages are positive.

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