Millstone Nuclear Power Plant gets green light to add more casks for
storing spent nuclear fuel.
The Connecticut Siting Council acted a few days early,
granting its tentative approval to Virginia-based Dominion Energy to
vastly expand its nuclear waste storage at its Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in
Waterford, CT, just outside New London.
The Council will make it official at its May 2 meeting, but the
commissioners have voted 7 to 0, with two abstentions, to grant approval.
The two abstaining members are both alternates; the members they stood
in for are expected to also vote “yes” when the formal vote is taken on May 2.
Generally, dry cask storage is considered to be much safer and more
secure than the common practice of storing spent fuel rods in deep pools of
water.
For more detail on Millstone, click here for my most recent analysis.
Since the federal government never came up with the promised permanent
solution to nuclear waste storage, all of America’s operating and
decommissioned nuclear power plants have become more or less permanent radioactive
waste dumps.
There are no other practical
alternatives for the handling of the radioactive waste that already has been
produced. In my opinion, it is well past time that we stopped producing more.
