Spent Fuel
Spent Fuel
Highly Effective Barriers
Water serves as a natural—and one of the most effective—barriers to radiation. This is why spent fuel is stored in pools. The fuel is contained neatly in fuel rods in a 40 foot deep pool. The racks stand 13 feet high leaving the fuel completely contained and safely submerged under 27 feet of water.
Spent Fuel Pools at Indian Point
The spent fuel pools for the two operating Indian Point plants have their own safety and construction features designed exclusively for their safeguard. They are constructed with concrete walls 4 to 6 feet wide and with a half-inch stainless steel inner liner. They have multiple, redundant back-up cooling systems.
- The spent fuel pool for Indian Point 1 is in a fully-enclosed concrete building.
- Both Indian Point pools are 99% to 100% underground making them virtually impossible to compromise from the sides.
- The roof of the spent-fuel pool building has no nuclear safety function. Damage to it would not have safety consequences.
- The fuel pools can easily be re-filled with water and have several backup mechanisms for doing so.
- It is very unlikely there would be significant off-site radiological consequences even if the pools were drained of their water.
Spent Fuel Pools
There are also several measures in place to protect each of the spent fuel pools at Indian Point. Once removed from the reactor core, the fuel rods which hold the radioactive isotopes are transferred under water to the spent fuel pool. The fuel assemblies, or fuel rods, rest in a pool of water approximately 40 feet deep to help cool the rods. The assemblies themselves stand 13 feet tall, so there is an ample 27 feet of water on top of them. This is important because water is a natural barrier to radioactive isotopes. Internally, there are other cooling systems in place and back up systems to replenish the water supply in the event of an emergency. As long as there is water covering the spent fuel, no radioactive materials will escape.
It is important to know that the fuel pool for Indian Point 2 is completely underground and Indian Point 3 is nearly 100% underground, so they are protected on all sides by rock and gravel and the 6 foot steel. External to the pools themselves, they are further protected by the containment structure on the north and west and hills to the south and east.
The fuel recently moved from IP3 remains safe in its new containment structure called dry cask. As the pools get closer to reaching capacity, we will continue to move spent fuel into these dry cask storage containers on the dry cask pad located on site.