Feb 16, 2006 7:28 am US/Central
Public Discussion Set For Xcel-Monticello Plan
St. Paul (AP) ―
State officials on Thursday planned to field public testimony about a $55 million proposal to store radioactive waste near the Monticello nuclear plant.
Xcel Energy is seeking state permission for the extra storage space, saying it's needed for the plant to remain running for the next few decades. Environmentalists, however, fear it will lead to further stockpiling of nuclear waste in Minnesota.
Xcel wants to store the waste in as many as 30 large canisters, each placed in a modular concrete vault about the size of a one-car garage. The vaults would sit on a large concrete pad near the plant, surrounded by security fences.
The storage is needed for the plant to remain running from 2010, when its current license expires, to 2030, said Jim Alders, Xcel's manager of regulatory projects. The plant now keeps its used nuclear fuel under water inside the plant, but the storage pool is nearly full.
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission will decide on the renewal, but the state has authority to decide whether expanded storage of spent nuclear fuel is in the public interest.
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission was sponsoring the hearings Thursday.
Alders said without the extra storage Xcel would need to shut the nuclear plant and replace it. "That would require a coal or natural gas power plant which would be much more expensive for our customers, and would result in significant increases of pollutants," he said.
But environmental leaders said allowing more waste to be stored at Monticello would simply add to the stockpile of radioactive material that may never leave Minnesota. A permanent waste disposal at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been planned, studied and partially built, but U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman said Monday that he doesn't know when it will open.
State Sen. Ellen Anderson, DFL-St. Paul, said it was "completely immoral and irresponsible" to continue to allow more radioactive waste to be produced in Minnesota with no assurance that it will ever leave the state.
That was a major issue in 1994 when the Legislature allowed expanded storage of radioactive waste at Xcel's Prairie Island nuclear plant in Red Wing, she said, and it's more of an issue now when both nuclear plants are seeking 20-year license extensions.
Alders countered, "You don't move that process along by shutting down a perfectly good nuclear plant that serves our customers well."
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