CLOVIS — Getting spent fuel from nuclear power plants to a proposed interim storage facility in Lea County would require routing the waste by rail through Clovis.
Holtec International, a firm that specializes in spent fuel storage and nuclear power plant site decommissioning, is seeking a license to operate the Southern New Mexico storage facility.
As part of Holtec’s license quest, the company must also deal with transportation issues.
Ed Mayer, program director for Holtec, on Monday outlined the steps Holtec is taking to ensure the waste canisters, weighing up to 200 tons each, travel safely to the storage site in Lea County.
There wouldn’t be as much spent fuel traffic coming through Clovis as many might believe, he said, estimating “one or two trains a month” would arrive in Clovis to be switched to the Lea County track. Each train would carry a maximum of 10 casks each.
The trains, he said, would be solely dedicated to hauling spent fuel, and each would contain armed guards riding in a special car. Each train would be tracked throughout its journey by both the U.S. Department of Transportation and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In addition, he said, each train would be pulled by two locomotives to assure the train could continue along its route if one locomotive broke down.
Mayer said the casks have been designed and tested to be impenetrable. They have been dropped from 30 feet, crash-tested with the equivalent of a Boeing 747 slamming into them, burned with flames up to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit and dropped from 5 feet onto spikes.
Each canister would contain up to 100 fuel rods, the columns of uranium fuel pellets that heat water into steam at nuclear power plants.
The rods inside the canisters are “completely dry,” Mayer said, and would be surrounded by helium, a gas that does not react with other substances, and then encased in ceramic material surrounded by layers of lead, steel and other materials.
Mayer said technology for the transportation plan has been in use without serious incident for at least 60 years. It was used to haul fuel for the U.S. Navy’s nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, and materials used in nuclear weapons programs, he added.
Holtec representatives have conducted meetings in the past year with police, firefighters and hazardous materials handlers in the 15 New Mexico counties that might be affected by the transportation and storage plan, Mayer said.
“They have a lot of questions,” he said, “but when we leave, they have no concerns.”
Holtec faces challenges to the siting of the interim storage facility in New Mexico.