Rowe Board of Selectmen chair Marilyn Wilson said the town over the summer heard from Illinois Republican Rep. Robert J. Dold concerning a bill that would help towns that host a “stranded spent nuclear fuel storage site.”
A plainclothes guard with an assault-style rifle stood at the front gate. Reporters were told to point their cameras away from the facility.
Rowe seeks federal compensation for hosting nuclear waste at former atomic power plant http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/10/rowe_seeks_federal_compensatio.html ROWE — Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station shut down in 1992, and was demolished and decommissioned by 2007, but the fenced and isolated site on the upper Deerfield River still hosts 127 tons of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste in 16 concrete casks under 24-hour security.
The tiny town of Rowe is one of about a dozen communities nationwide affected by the presence of nuclear waste, but no longer benefiting economically from the presence of a functioning reactor.
On Monday, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal and state Sen. Paul Mark (D-Peru) toured the site as guests of the Rowe Board of Selectmen. Mark is a member of the Yankee Rowe Spent Fuel Storage & Removal Citizens Advisory Committee. Neal, who represents the state’s 1st Congressional District, assured local officials that he supports bipartisan legislation in Washington that would compensate communities that are forced to store nuclear waste.
The “Interim Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage Compensation Act” would seek up to $100 million for 13 towns ranging from Zion, Illinois to Wiscasset, Maine.
“The federal government is obligated to provide mitigation costs to communities such as Rowe, considering that the Department of Energy failed to remove the waste as promised,” said Neal, a Democrat.
It was never the intention of the federal government for small towns such as Rowe to host spent fuel rods forever.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 directed the U.S. Department of Energy to take ownership of the nation’s nuclear waste. The plan was to build a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but the facility was never built. Capping decades of gridlock, the Obama administration withdrew support for the plan in 2011.
Various nuclear plant owners, who over the years paid into a Department of Energy Fund to handle their waste, repeatedly sued the government over the broken promise, and dozens of settlements to date have cost taxpayers a combined $4 billion.
Rowe Board of Selectmen chair Marilyn Wilson said the town over the summer heard from Illinois Republican Rep. Robert J. Dold concerning a bill that would help towns that host a “stranded spent nuclear fuel storage site.” She said the proposed bill recognizes that such communities have become de facto interim nuclear waste sites.
Wilson said when Yankee Rowe was fully operational, the company paid for the town’s police, fire, and emergency response budgets, on top of paying substantial property taxes. Now taxes are diminished and public safety expenses are borne by local taxpayers. The town continues to bear other plant-related costs, she said.
Event without the nuke, Rowe enjoys a solid tax base thanks to several hydro-electric facilities on the Deerfield River. With a population of 358, its own elementary school, and hundreds of acres of conservation land, the residential tax rate remains at $6.03 per thousand valuation. The commercial and industrial tax rate stands at $13.31. The tax history of the Yankee Rowe plant was not immediately available. The company owns more than 1,700 acres.
Members of the press, initially invited by Neal’s office to attend Monday’s tour, were blocked from attending by plant officials, who cited security reasons. A plainclothes guard with an assault-style rifle stood at the front gate. Reporters were told to point their cameras away from the facility.
Robert Capstick, a spokesman for Yankee Rowe, said he is as eager as town officials to see a solution. The company spends millions every year to host the waste that the government failed to remove, he said. In New England, other plants with stranded waste are Maine Yankee, Vermont Yankee, and Connecticut Yankee.
Meanwhile, the Department of Energy is considering privately-owned interim storage to overcome the impasse in Congress over authorizing a permanent site. Waste Control Specialists proposes an interim facility for 40,000 tons of nuclear waste in West Texas. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has said siting of interim facilities would be done under a “consent-based” model.
Moniz still acknowledges the need for an permanent, underground geological repository. About 2,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel is created every year.
