| Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff
will meet with representatives of Dominion Nuclear Connecticut, Inc., on Thursday,
December 12, to discuss the company’s plans to use dry cask storage for
spent fuel at the company’s Millstone 2 and 3 nuclear power plants. The
Millstone units, along with the permanently shutdown Millstone 1 reactor, are
located in Waterford, Conn.
The meeting is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. at the Region I office, 475
Allendale Road in King of Prussia, Pa. The public is invited to observe and
will have one or more opportunities to offer comments and/or ask questions
of the NRC staff before the session is adjourned.
At present, U.S. nuclear power plants have two options for the storage of
spent nuclear fuel, that is, fuel that has already been used in a reactor.
A plant can either store fuel rods in a circulating-water spent fuel pool
or in a “dry” cask storage facility. Under the latter option,
fuel is removed from the pool after a sufficient period of time has elapsed
and placed inside stainless-steel casks. Those casks are then sealed, filled
with an inert gas and transported to an outdoor concrete pad, where they are
placed inside specially designed vaults made of steel-reinforced concrete.
Convective air flow through vents at the top and bottom of the vaults helps
ensure that the fuel remains properly cooled.
Dry cask storage facilities are currently in use at nearly two dozen plant
sites across the U.S.
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