John Tuma’s Capitol Update – The Pre-Session Version

“Even Mr. Schwartz, the expert sponsored by NSP, conceded that 2010 was optimistic”
       Allen W. Klien
       April 10, 1992

Allen W. Klien was the Minnesota Administrator Law Judge appointed in 1992 to collect evidence and provide an opinion to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) as to whether Northern States Power Company (NSP, now known as Xcel) was allowed to store spent nuclear rods in dry casks outside its Prairie Island nuclear power plant.  The Prairie Island power plant is located just outside of the city of Red Wing on an island at the mouth of the Cannon River that had been used for centuries by the Dakota Indians as a village.  The first accounts by white explorers of this village go all the way back to Father Hennepin.

It’s what happened on this island in the early 1990s though that set the stage for one of the most dramatic political battles in Minnesota state history.

Last week we were recounting the passage of the 1977 Radioactive Waste Management Act which prohibited the construction or operation of a permanent radioactive waste management facility within Minnesota unless specifically authorized by the Minnesota Legislature.  In 1991, NSP was seeking permission from the PUC to “temporarily” store spent fuel rods from the Prairie Island nuclear plant in “dry casks” on a concrete pad just outside of their plant.  A dry cask is a 17′ x 9′ steel cylinder holding 40 spent fuel rods encased in helium to keep the fuel cool.  They were left with no choice but to store this waste in this fashion because the federal government failed to live up to their promise of building a federal repository.  Each of the spent fuel rods is highly radioactive with a decaying “half-life” of 24,000 years and it takes 10 of those “half-lives” before the waste is no longer dangerous.  One of Judge Klien’s findings was that the cask only had a design life of 25 years with a possible maximum life of 100 years.

NSP’s central argument was that the 1977 Radioactive Waste Management Act did not apply to the storage because it was “temporary” due to the imminent construction of a federal repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.  They put into evidence that the federal government was required to provide the repository that would be taking waste by 1998, but the utility expert testified that it would likely be ready by the year 2010.  On cross-examination, he apparently indicated, as quoted above, that the 2010 prediction was “optimistic”.  (Finding 88 of Judge Klien’s findings, 4-10-92)  Let’s see, that’s right — this year is 2010.  Well at least the NSP “expert” did get the optimistic part right.  It’s 2010 and the only thing hibernating in the caverns off Yucca Mountain, Nevada are rattlesnakes and scorpions.

Judge Klien rightly determined that any storage of nuclear waste in the fashion proposed by NSP had to be considered permanent.  Therefore, he ruled that the Legislature reserve for itself the authority to approve dry cask storage just outside the plant.  The PUC surprisingly ignored the administrative law judge’s opinion and issued a permit for the storage of the spent nuclear fuel rods in dry casks without legislative approval.  The PUC was then sued by the Prairie Island Mdewakanton Dakota Community and MEP member Minnesota Public Interest Research Group (MPIRG), among others.  At the end of May 1993 the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled that the Legislature did retain the authority under the 1977 act to specifically authorize the dry cask storage.  That set off one of the most contentious legislative debates in Minnesota history.

Under immense pressure from the utilities to authorize the storage and in the midst of huge public protests against the storage, the Minnesota Legislature allowed 17 of these casks at Prairie Island, which was far less than was requested by the utilities.  The authorization by the Legislature came with some clear conditions.  Wisely recognizing the fallacy that there was no permanent storage in the near future, the Legislature placed a moratorium on the construction of more power plants that would produce more waste that would dangerously linger on Minnesota’s soil for many generations.  This legislation also required NSP to produce more wind and solar energy under the first concrete renewable energy standard.  It was a framework that the Minnesota Legislature has been building off of ever since, becoming a leader in renewable energy production through wind and other sources.   A small legacy of stewardship we should be proud of. 

The biggest lesson we should learn from this little tidbit of history is to take the claims of the so-called utility experts with a grain of salt.  As in the early 1990s, they are telling us today that nuclear energy is the most sensible baseload electricity source in existence.  I’m kind of curious what our great-grandchildren will think when they are saddled with the cost of figuring out how to store this dangerous nuclear waste when the casks outside of Red Wing start admitting excess amounts of radiation due to the decay of the casks.  At best, the casks are only supposed to survive the next hundred years.  So for 40 years of cheap electricity, we have saddled our future generations with the immense costs with no benefit.

Of course, those utility experts will tell us that the future holds some exciting recycling opportunities for this waste and that science will come up with the solution.  We don’t know at what cost or whether that is realistic, but those well-paid and well-meaning utility experts said it.  Therefore, it must be true.  They tell us that those paragons of scientific knowledge in France have figured it out by “recycling” their nuclear waste.  They want us to believe that this recycling will leave us with something useful in the end like a doormat made out of recycled pop bottles.  You too can have your recycled nuclear doormat for only $19.95 from Xcel Recycling Products, our friendly green nuclear recycling company (bonus, it even glows in the dark).  The dirty little secret they don’t tell you is that recycled nuclear waste produces weapons grade plutonium which is even more dangerous and more expensive to secure.  I hear the countries of Ethiopia and Yemen are competing to build the repository for our “recycled” nuclear waste.

Of course those experts also tell us that if Yucca Mountain does not work out, our federal government will be able to identify other storage options in the future.  The other dirty little secret that they don’t want you to know is that Minnesota has long been considered an ideal site for a nuclear repository.  We are miles away from any fault line and we have some of the largest ancient granite rock formations in the world.  As a matter of fact, the federal government has already identified several sites in Minnesota which would be ideal.  So if you live in St. Cloud, Mankato, or Thief River Falls, you might want to convince your mayors to start competing for that new repository.  I hear those repositories produce good construction jobs, for at least a couple years.  What’s great is that after the waste starts rolling in, think of the great community promotion and pride that will result from being the home of a nuclear waste repository.

Now, I am only the lobbyist for the environmental community and there are some in our ranks who think we should not give up on the possibility of nuclear energy playing a role in an energy policy with the goal of reducing pollution.  But every one of those individuals that I have talked to who want to continue to explore the concept of nuclear energy always provide significant caveats regarding what to do with the waste.  The caveat is always along the lines that the waste management issues must be resolved now before we create any more of this dangerous waste.  It is the height of extremely selfishness and utter lack of stewardship for our generation to think that we are so important that we must produce electricity for our short-term enjoyment while leaving thousands of generations with the headache of managing our legacy of dangerous waste. 

To learn more about moving forward with sensible and clean energy options without the need to saddle future generations with nuclear waste, go to www.protect.mn.

To learn more about the 1994 Prairie Island controversy the Minnesota Legislative Library as assembled several of the original document well organized for public review at: http://www.leg.state.mn.us/lrl/issues/prairieisland.asp

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 8:25 am by Tuma, Minnesota Environmental Partnership and is filed under Energy, Legislature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.