Spent Nuclear Fuel Out Of Pools At Indian Point

CORTLANDT, NY — All the spent nuclear fuel at Indian Point has been transferred to dry cask storage, the New York State Department of Public Service and the Indian Point Closure Task Force announced Monday.

The risks posed by Indian Point’s long-standing practice of storing spent nuclear fuel in densely packed cooling pools had long been of concern, contributing to New York’s opposition to the relicensing of Indian Point more than 15 years ago, its successful effort to permanently close the facility in 2021, and its insistence that the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission oppose clean-up company Holtec’s waivers for its Post-Defueled Emergency Plan until all spent nuclear fuel was out of the densely packed pools, state officials said.

They wanted to mitigate the risks of fires in the spent fuel pools and release of radiation during a severe accident and to avoid a decades-long process allowed by the federal government’s decommissioning regulations.

So state officials required all spent nuclear fuel at Indian Point to be transferred into dry cask storage on an accelerated timeline. Less than 30 months since those requirements were imposed, all 3,998 spent fuel assemblies are now contained within 127 reinforced concrete and steel casks on the site’s independent spent fuel storage installations, they said.

Dry cask storage is a safer, more secure storage practice, they said.

"The successful transfer of spent fuel to dry cask storage is a tremendous accomplishment by the skilled men and women working to decommission Indian Point," Tom Congdon, Chair of the Indian Point Closure Task Force, said in the announcement. "Meanwhile, New York’s oversight over the decommissioning of Indian Point continues unabated. New York’s regulatory agencies, and the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board, remain laser-focused on the safe, prompt, and thorough decommissioning of Indian Point."

New York is the first state to accomplish such a prompt shift and remedy, officials said.