[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 89 (Tuesday, July 11, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7334-S7336]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. JEFFORDS (for himself and Mr. Leahy):
  S. 3634. A bill to amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 to 
improve the material control and accounting and data management systems 
used by civilian nuclear power reactors to better account for spent 
nuclear fuel and reduce the risks associated with the handling of those 
materials; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Spent Nuclear 
Fuel Control and Accounting Act of 2006. I am pleased to be joined by 
the Senior Senator from Vermont, Mr. Leahy, in introducing this 
legislation. In the other body, our colleague from Vermont, Congressman 
Sanders, is introducing a companion measure. This legislation is 
designed to improve the safety and security of spent nuclear fuel 
generated by our Nation's nuclear powerplants.
  Approximately 2,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel are generated 
by the Nation's 103 nuclear powerplants each year. Spent nuclear fuel 
is no longer able to generate power but is still intensely radioactive 
and continues to generate heat for tens of thousands of years. 
Radiation produced by the fuel can kill a person within minutes if they 
are directly exposed.
  Terrorist attacks in the U.S. have heightened public concern 
generally about whether this highly radioactive material could be 
stolen and used maliciously. Although the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission, NRC, argues that spent nuclear fuel is ``self-protecting'' 
because of its high radioactivity, the potential for harm to human 
health and the environment warrants close attention to the control and 
accounting of this material.
  I am introducing this legislation because there have been several 
instances of lost spent nuclear fuel at operating plants in the past 
few years, including in my own home State. Such losses have eroded 
public confidence in the job the NRC is doing. Following the loss of 
spent fuel rod fragments at Vermont Yankee in 2004, I requested that 
GAO study the issue of how the NRC controls such material. In its April 
2005 report, the GAO recommended that the NRC establish requirements 
for the control of individual fuel rods and fragments and develop 
inspection procedures to verify plants' compliance.
  NRC currently has no regulations that specifically deal with the 
tracking and recordkeeping of spent nuclear fuel of this type. While 
the NRC generally has regulations requiring plant operators to maintain 
records of their spent nuclear fuel they do not specify how individual 
fuel rods and fragments should be tracked. Additionally, the NRC 
requires plant operators to inventory spent fuel at least once a year, 
but does not specify how that inventory should be conducted. Because of 
this lack of specificity in its regulations, there is considerable 
variation among nuclear powerplants in how regulations are implemented. 
Plus, the NRC no longer monitors plants' compliance with its tracking 
and accounting regulations.
  While the NRC has been working administratively to address the issues 
identified in the GAO report, the proposed legislation would require 
the NRC to more effectively control and account for spent nuclear fuel. 
The NRC needs to redouble its efforts to shore up public confidence in 
its regulatory efforts. This is a difficult task, but one that is 
critically important.
  This bill will focus on the safe operation and management of existing 
nuclear powerplants. The NRC and the nuclear industry are planning for 
a ``nuclear renaissance'' with the construction of new nuclear plants. 
The NRC estimates that it will receive 18 new license requests between 
now and the year 2012. But, we must maintain continued oversight over 
existing plants and pay particular attention to the safe management of 
spent nuclear fuel. The public needs to be confident that the current 
system operates well, or they will likely not accept a new generation 
of plants.
  The Spent Nuclear Fuel Control and Accounting Act of 2006 directs NRC 
to develop regulations which would improve the current system of 
control and accounting for spent nuclear fuel and would help prevent 
incidents like the one which occurred at Vermont Yankee.
  In the case of Vermont Yankee, operated by Entergy, the plant's 
operators discovered that two pieces of a radioactive fuel rod were 
missing from the plant's storage facilities on April 21, 2004. During a 
scheduled fuel outage, the plant conducted a special inspection 
requested by the NRC to document the location of its fuel rods, both 
spent and unspent.
  The documentation of the pieces' location was requested by the NRC as 
part of a follow up to the loss of two complete spent fuel rods at the 
Millstone plant in Connecticut in 2000. At Vermont Yankee, the missing 
pieces were 7 and 17 inches long, and came from a fuel rod sent to the 
Vermont Yankee plant by General Electric in 1979 that arrived broken. 
When the rod broke, the pieces were placed in a lead bucket at the 
bottom of the spent fuel pool, in which low-level waste was 
periodically also stored. Later it was learned that a special storage 
container was ordered from General Electric to house these pieces, and 
that they were stored in a different part of the fuel pool.
  The NRC was involved in Entergy's efforts to use a remote-control 
camera to see if the misplaced rod pieces were among the spent fuel 
rods in the plant's spent fuel pool. Entergy also reviewed paper 
records to see if two missing fuel rods from the plant were shipped to 
waste storage facilities in South Carolina or the State of Washington. 
The spent fuel rods were eventually located on July 15, 2004, after a 
search in which Entergy estimates company employees and outside 
contractors had spent between 9,000 and 10,000 hours involved in the 
search.
  A similar event occurred at the Millstone nuclear powerplant in 
Connecticut in 2000 and at the Humboldt Bay plant in California in July 
2004. Pacific Gas and Electric officials searched for three missing 
uranium components of a used nuclear fuel rod in the reactor pool at 
the decommissioned Humboldt Bay nuclear powerplant near Eureka, CA. 
Each of the pieces of the missing Humboldt Bay fuel rod is 18 inches 
long, has the width of a pencil and contains uranium fuel encased in 
steel. The rods from the Humboldt Bay and Millstone plants are still 
missing. The Millstone plant paid a $288,000 fine for the loss of its 
fuel.
  When the Millstone incident occurred, the NRC said that fuel rods had 
never before gone missing in the history of commercial nuclear power in 
the United States. While I know that the materials at Vermont Yankee 
were found to be missing due in part to a special inspection the NRC 
instituted after Millstone, the sad fact is that fuel again went 
missing. I do not want missing fuel to become the norm. It is not 
enough to tell the public that we ``think'' it is likely that highly 
radioactive material went to storage. Certainly it is poor government 
management not to look carefully at how the

[[Page S7335]]

utilities conducted these searches for missing fuel rods, draw out 
lessons, develop best management practices, and safeguard and protect 
the existing paper trail we have for the waste stored at our Nation's 
nuclear power plants. We must improve our nuclear materials accounting 
system, and my legislation is the first step in doing so.
  This legislation calls for NRC to pay special attention to loose 
individual spent fuel rods and rod fragments like those lost at the 
Vermont Yankee plant. It requires NRC to report when loose fuel rods 
and fragments result and requires NRC to conduct an annual inspection 
to make sure that plants are complying with waste tracking 
requirements. Additionally, the bill instructs NRC to develop best 
management practices for the safe storage of individual rods and 
fragments and for the inventory of spent nuclear fuel. The legislation 
will require NRC to modernize its data management systems by developing 
an updated electronic system for storing data and for tracking the 
location of spent nuclear fuel. The creation of an electronic database 
of spent fuel storage records would help secure this important 
information from aging plants that are being uprated and relicensed and 
also require the new fleet of plants to use a uniform electronic 
system. Finally, this bill would track the movement of spent nuclear 
fuel onsite at nuclear powerplants and offsite to other facilities by 
requiring that manifests indicate whether shipments contain fuel rods 
or fragments.
  I believe that this bill will be an important step towards improving 
security related to one of the most hazardous materials made by 
humans--spent nuclear fuel. This bill would increase the scrutiny on 
the tracking of this material and ensure that spent nuclear fuel 
remains safely stored in appropriate facilities and does not end up in 
the wrong hands.
  I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my bill be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be 
printed in the Record, as follows:

                                S. 3634

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Spent Nuclear Fuel Control 
     and Accounting Act of 2006''.

     SEC. 2. FINDINGS.

       Congress finds that--
       (1) several incidents involving missing or unaccounted-for 
     spent nuclear fuel have occurred at civilian nuclear power 
     reactors, including--
       (A) the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant;
       (B) the Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant (California); and
       (C) the Millstone Nuclear Power Station (Connecticut);
       (2) weaknesses in the accounting and control of spent 
     nuclear fuel have been identified at several other civilian 
     nuclear power reactors;
       (3) data provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
     indicate that--
       (A) operators of most civilian nuclear power reactors have 
     removed spent fuel rods from their fuel assemblies; and
       (B) those rods are stored onsite in spent fuel pools or dry 
     casks or have been shipped offsite to a storage facility;
       (4) individual spent fuel rods and fragments may also 
     result from the loading of a new assembly and therefore may 
     be new fuel;
       (5) individual spent fuel rods, and especially fragments of 
     spent fuel rods, are--
       (A) highly radioactive; and
       (B) much smaller and lighter than fuel assemblies;
       (6) while regulations promulgated by the Nuclear Regulatory 
     Commission require civilian nuclear power reactors to control 
     and account for spent nuclear fuel, they do not cover--
       (A) individual spent fuel rods that have been removed from 
     an assembly; and
       (B) fragments of spent fuel rods;
       (7) the storage and oversight of individual spent fuel rods 
     at civilian nuclear power reactors have not been managed in a 
     consistent manner;
       (8) the lack of specific guidance in the regulations 
     promulgated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission relating to 
     how civilian nuclear power reactors should conduct physical 
     inventories has resulted in inconsistent compliance with 
     those regulations;
       (9) the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not evaluate the 
     compliance of civilian nuclear power reactors with the 
     material control and accounting regulations promulgated by 
     the Commission;
       (10) the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has much to do to 
     implement the recommendations listed in the report published 
     by the Government Accountability Office titled ``NRC Needs to 
     Do More to Ensure that Power Plants Are Effectively 
     Controlling Spent Nuclear Fuel''; and
       (11) the effective implementation of material control and 
     accounting regulations by civilian nuclear power reactors is 
     of great importance to the United States because of the 
     potential safety and security consequences for failing to 
     manage spent nuclear fuel, especially in the aftermath of 
     terrorist attacks in the United States.

     SEC. 3. MATERIAL CONTROL AND ACCOUNTING OF DISMANTLED FUEL 
                   ASSEMBLY.

       The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (42 U.S.C. 10101 et 
     seq.) is amended by adding after section 137 the following:

     ``SEC. 138. MATERIAL CONTROL AND ACCOUNTING OF INDIVIDUAL 
                   RODS AND FRAGMENTS FROM A DISMANTLED FUEL 
                   ASSEMBLY.

       ``(a) Promulgation of Regulations.--The Commission shall 
     promulgate regulations to require each civilian nuclear power 
     reactor to provide to the Commission a report that contains a 
     detailed record of each individual spent fuel rod, and each 
     fragment of a spent fuel rod, that results from the loading 
     or dismantling of a fuel assembly.
       ``(b) Annual Inspection.--The Commission shall promulgate 
     regulations to require an annual inspection by the Commission 
     of each civilian nuclear power reactor to determine the 
     compliance of the civilian nuclear power reactor with 
     regulations relating to the material control and accounting 
     of spent nuclear fuel promulgated by the Commission.

     ``SEC. 139. GUIDANCE FOR STORING INDIVIDUAL FUEL RODS AND 
                   FRAGMENTS.

       ``The Commission shall develop and make available to each 
     civilian nuclear power reactor guidance that describes--
       ``(1) best management practices relating to--
       ``(A) the procedures that a civilian nuclear power reactor 
     should use to store individual fuel rods and fragments on 
     site; and
       ``(B) the selection of suitable locations for the storage 
     of individual fuel rods and fragments; and
       ``(2) suitable inventory practices relating to--
       ``(A) the manner in which a civilian nuclear power reactor 
     should conduct an annual inventory of any spent nuclear fuel, 
     including individual fuel rods and fragments; and
       ``(B) the manner in which a civilian nuclear power reactor 
     should catalogue each item of spent nuclear fuel, including 
     individual rods and fragments located at the civilian nuclear 
     power reactor.

     ``SEC. 140. ELECTRONIC DATA MANAGEMENT AND WASTE TRACKING 
                   SYSTEM.

       ``(a) Development of System.--The Commission shall develop 
     an electronic data management and waste tracking system--
       ``(1) to store and access the records of each civilian 
     nuclear power reactor; and
       ``(2) to track the location of spent nuclear fuel including 
     individual rods and fragments.
       ``(b) Adoption of Electronic Data Management and Waste 
     Tracking System by Civilian Nuclear Power Reactors.--The 
     Commission shall promulgate regulations to require each 
     civilian nuclear power reactor--
       ``(1) in the case of a civilian nuclear power reactor that 
     is licensed before the date of enactment of this section, to 
     digitize the existing records of the civilian nuclear power 
     reactor; and
       ``(2) in the case of a civilian nuclear power reactor that 
     is licensed on or after the date of enactment of this Act, to 
     implement and use the electronic data management and waste 
     tracking system described in subsection (a).
       ``(c) Evaluation of Existing Electronic Data Management and 
     Waste Tracking Systems.--The Commission may evaluate existing 
     electronic data management and waste tracking systems to 
     determine whether those systems could be modified for 
     purposes of complying with subsection (a).''.

     SEC. 4. MANIFEST REQUIREMENT FOR SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL.

       The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (42 U.S.C. 10101 et 
     seq.) is amended by inserting after section 180 the 
     following:

     ``SEC. 181. MANIFEST REQUIREMENT FOR SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL.

       ``(a) Development of Manifest.--The Commission shall 
     develop a detailed manifest form for the onsite 
     transportation of spent fuel that indicates whether the 
     package containing the spent fuel contains individual rods or 
     fragments.
       ``(b) Promulgation of Regulations.--The Commission shall 
     promulgate regulations to require each civilian nuclear power 
     reactor to provide to the Commission a completed detailed 
     manifest form developed under subsection (a) to identify and 
     track any spent fuel rod or rod fragment that is transported 
     within the premises of the civilian nuclear power reactor.

     ``SEC. 182. IDENTIFICATION OF SPENT FUEL OR ROD FRAGMENTS 
                   TRANSPORTED OUTSIDE PREMISES OF CIVILIAN 
                   NUCLEAR POWER REACTORS.

       ``The Commission, in consultation with the Department of 
     Transportation, shall identify any spent fuel rod or rod 
     fragment that is transported outside the premises of the 
     civilian nuclear power reactor through use of manifests used 
     by the Department of Transportation.''.

     SEC. 5. CONFORMING AMENDMENTS.

       The table of contents of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 
     1982 (42 U.S.C. 10101 note; 96 Stat. 2201) is amended--
       (1) by adding after the item relating to section 137 the 
     following:

``Sec. 138. Material control and accounting of dismantled fuel 
              assembly.

[[Page S7336]]

``Sec. 139. Guidance for storing spent nuclear fuel.
``Sec. 140. Electronic data management and waste tracking system.''.

       and;
       (2) by adding after the item relating to section 180 the 
     following:

``Sec. 181. Manifest requirement for spent nuclear fuel.
``Sec. 182. Identification of spent fuel or rod fragments transported 
              outside premises of civilian nuclear power reactors.''.
    
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