Dominion Plans New Storage at Wisconsin Nuclear Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Nuclear power continues to play a significant role in electricity generation to meet energy demands in the United States. It produces little pollution and virtually no greenhouse gases. Well-managed nuclear plants, with their low fuel costs, are among the least expensive plants to operate.

But properly storing nuclear waste continues to be a challenge. The spent fuel (used, irradiated solid material from the reactor) is extremely radioactive and has to be stored in water-filled pools at the plant for the first five years.

Dominion (Richmond, Virginia) is conducting detailed design to construct a dry cask storage system at its Kewaunee Nuclear Power Station (Kewaunee, Wisconsin). Dry casks are steel and concrete containers filled with inert gas to store highly radioactive spent fuel. The nuclear facility occupies a 900-acre site in Kewaunee County, about 35 miles southeast of Greenbay, Wisconsin. The plant generates 574 megawatts of electricity from a single-unit Westinghouse pressurized-water-reactor (PWR) that became operational in 1974 and has an operating license that expires in 2013.

The current pool storage at the plant is nearly full and the plan is to start construction in the spring of 2007. The first fuel loading is expected to begin as early as the first quarter of 2008, just in time for the 18-month cycle refueling outage. Dominion doesn’t need a federal permit to build the dry cask storage, but it does need a building permit from local authority.

The new dry cask will be an updated version of those already in use at the nearby two-unit, 1,048-megawatt Point Beach Nuclear Power Station (Two Rivers, Wisconsin).

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