Scott Northard
Private Fuel Storage

Continued...

Verdoia: What about the concern that at Yucca Mountain there is one very exacting standard for the study, the scientific veracity, if you will, of creation of this permanent location. Yet, in Skull Valley, the standards are completely different. The exacting study is less exacting than at Yucca Mountain and that there seems to be two completely different standards that these units are marching towards as satisfying that public good or that public assurance.

Northard: Well I guess I would argue that the standards for both Yucca Mountain and for Skull Valley are very exacting standards. The Skull Valley facility has to meet a whole host of federal regulations. They're different regulations perhaps then you might have for Yucca Mountain, but we're talking about an interim storage facility that could operate for up to 40 years at Skull Valley as opposed to a repository that will operating for 10,000 years or more at Yucca Mountain. So there are differences in the standards but they're both very exacting. They're both very specific and they're both very rigorous.

We had to do a full scope Environmental Impact Statement for the Skull Valley facility that looked at all of the different potential environmental impacts that could be caused by an industrial facility of this type. We had to do a very detailed safety analysis report and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had to do a safety evaluation report of this facility that outlined how the facility would operate, to make sure that it would operate safely. That the workers would be protected. That the public would be protected. That the neighbors would be protected. So an extremely rigorous licensing process that we're currently going through.

Verdoia: You draw a clear distinction between the "permanent" facility being studying at Yucca Mountain and a "temporary" site. The central concern of the governor of the state of Utah is if it comes in under the guise of temporary, it will stay under the practical reality of permanent. Once it's here, we'll never be able to get rid of it.

Northard: Well there are many reasons why this facility in Skull Valley will not become a permanent facility. Number one, we won't allow it to be. Our customers and our companies will not stand for temporarily storing spent fuel on our own, indefinitely. It's not something we would like. That's why we're in court with the federal government today. That's why we're working very hard with Congress to force the Department of Energy to be accountable and to take this spent fuel as soon as they possibly can. That's why we're doing everything we can to support continued licensing at Yucca Mountain, and if you look at the license that's granted for this facility, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will not allow you to indefinitely store fuel at a temporary storage facility. It's just not part of the licensing basis, so it's not allowed.

Now there are a lot of other reasons why spent fuel will not stay at Skull Valley permanently and why Yucca Mountain or a permanent repository will eventually open. The first reason is that commercial spent fuel, like we have from power plants, is not the only thing that Yucca Mountain is being built and designed for. In fact, it needs to receive spent fuel that comes from our Navy nuclear submarines, from the Navel aircraft carriers, that's now piling up at a facility up in Idaho. There are materials in Hanford, Washington that were left over from the weapons production plants in the 40s and 50s that's in liquid form, it's in underground storage tanks. That material needs to be solidified and stored in a permanent repository where it can be safely protected from the environment for a long period of time.

There are other plants located all around the United States that were part of our weapons complex, back during the Cold War in the 40s, 50s, and 60s that have materials all destined to go to Yucca Mountain. And there's 15,000 spent fuel assemblies that we're currently receiving from 42 foreign countries in the United States today, that has to go to Yucca Mountain as well. We're bringing all this material back from 42 foreign countries and finding space at federal facilities all around the United States until Yucca Mountain is ready to receive it. So all of this material, in addition to commercial spent fuel, has to go to Yucca Mountain. Now, our material is being stored safely and it's in good condition and we're protecting the environment the way we store it now, but it still needs to go to a permanent repository someday and we're working very hard to make sure the federal government builds that repository and lives up to their obligation to our customers to store that spent fuel.

Verdoia: You've been, by your own account, involved with the Nuclear Power Industry for more then 20 years. When the subject turns to "radioactive" or "nuclear" you can almost see the fear factor rise in a good portion of the public. What prompts that fear and how do you address that central fear?

Northard: Well, unfortunately, we live in a day and age when people are concerned about radioactivity and people fail to understand that radioactivity is a part of our everyday life. It's in the soil around us. It comes from the atmosphere. It comes from other sources that we have that we deal with in daily life. Our smoke detectors in our homes and lantern mantels. There's potassium in salt substitutes that we use on our food. Some of the dishes that we eat off of may contain radioactive materials. The buildings we live in have radioactive material, the granite and marble at the state Capitol in Utah contains radioactive materials. It's part of our everyday life. People don't understand that generally, because it is not something that they can see or smell or taste but it is something that's very natural and very much a part of our everyday life.

In fact, living in Utah, most residents receive more than the average annual exposure from natural sources because they live at a higher elevation near the mountains, than perhaps people on the coasts. The atmosphere tends to shield a lot of the radiation from outer space that bombards us everyday. So it is a part of our everyday life and it is unfortunate that it's difficult for people to put in context how small the radiation contribution is from nuclear power plants and facilities like Private Fuel Storage would be in comparison to the natural background sources. I guess I've often said that I don't think we'll be totally comfortable with it until you're watching the nightly weather forecast on the news and they tell you what the temperature is. They tell you what the wind speed is. They tell you what the relative humidity is that day and then they also tell you what the natural background radiation levels are, because it's just as natural as the other elements we hear about on the weather report.

There are many opportunities in our life when we receive radiation exposure from natural sources. On a transcontinental flight you receive approximately three millirims of radiation exposure. A chest x-ray might be 20 to 30 millirims of exposure. During the course of a year, a resident in Utah may receive about 400 millirims of radiation exposure. We are required at Private Fuel Storage and all nuclear facilities like that, to limit the amount of radiation exposure that a member of the public would get by standing next to the fence at the facility for a year to less then 25 millirim per year. And in fact, our analysis for this facility shows that , the radiation levels would be less then 1 millirim per year to a member of the public. We've gone above and beyond to try to make sure that radiation exposure from the facility like this are extremely low and a small fraction of what is normally received from our everyday life from background radiation.

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