US nuclear fuel fire may lead to much larger disaster than Fukushima: Study

An aerial view of the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station, a nuclear power plant in Delta, Pennsylvania (File photo)

A new US study has found that government agencies have underestimated the risks to the country’s nuclear safety, warning that a single nuclear fuel fire may lead to a disaster “much greater than [Japan’s] Fukushima.”

If spent fuel at one of America’s dozens of nuclear sites is set on fire, it “could dwarf the horrific consequences of the Fukushima accident,” researchers from Princeton University and the Union of Concerned Scientists cautioned in a study published in the Friday issue of Science Magazine, censuring the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for ignoring the potential danger.

Such a disaster, it said, would lead to “trillion-dollar consequences,” as the hypothetical fire would lead to the contamination of a region larger than the northeast state of New Jersey and compel mass relocations.

For their research article, titled ‘Nuclear safety regulation in the post-Fukushima era,’ the scientists simulated a nightmare scenario in which an imagined fuel fire broke out at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania at the beginning of 2015, and taking into account the weather conditions at that time, they showed the devastating extent of potential contamination in the region.

According to the study, such an accident would have led to the relocation of nearly eight million people and cost $2 trillion in damages.

At first, the authors of the study note, the accident would have mostly affected a small part of Pennsylvania State and its major city of Philadelphia, barely reaching neighboring states of New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

However, they insist, within three months nearly all of the US East Coast from South Carolina to Maine would have become contaminated to a varying extent, with radiation going deeper into the land later on.

The researchers then emphasize that such a frightening scenario can be avoided if spent fuel is not stored in the pools which are used at nearly all US nuclear plants to store and cool used radioactive material. Instead, they add, it would be safer to transfer it to dry storage casks after it is cooled in pools for around five years.

However, the NRC had previously considered such measures but dismissed them as too costly, the study states, blaming the government agency for downplaying the potential consequences and risking millions of lives in favor of nuclear industries in the US.

“The NRC has been pressured by the nuclear industry, directly and through Congress, to low-ball the potential consequences of a fire because of concerns that increased costs could result in shutting down more nuclear power plants," said one of the authors of the study, Frank von Hippel.

"Unfortunately, if there is no public outcry about this dangerous situation, the NRC will continue to bend to the industry's wishes,” he added.

The researches further pointed out that a nuclear disaster could be brought about by a large earthquake or terrorist attack, the possibility of which was excluded by the NRC.