Well, what is a spent fuel pool?
Most people’s experience of “fuel” is gasoline. Thus, the image that comes into most people’s heads when you say “spent fuel pool” is somebody draining spent nuclear gasoline from the reactor and pouring it into a spent fuel pool. Unsurprisingly, this image is far enough from the reality of what a spent fuel pool is that the general public does not understand how we can say that a leak from a spent fuel pool is irrelevant.
Spent fuel pools look very much like swimming pools, but with a rack at the bottom. That rack is used to store fuel rods that have already been through the reactor and are awaiting long-term storage, disposal, or the recovery of unused energy. Hence, a spent fuel pool.
The term “spent fuel pool” does not accurately describe what it is. It is more correctly described as an “underwater rack”–so why can’t we call it one?
Easy. Because we don’t. We always do what we always have done, simply because we always have done it; accordingly, we haven’t changed our approach and the industry hasn’t changed its products since about 1975. If someone had decided in 1975 that it was a violation of professional ethics to speak languages other than Romanian, nuclear engineers all would have said “OK,” learned Romanian, and conducted every meeting, hearing, and public briefing in Romanian. When the public shows up to an NRC hearing and listens to two hours of rapid-fire Romanian, they (a) don’t understand anything and (b) start throwing eggs at those onstage.
We can’t please the loons. But we can communicate to the public in a way that they can understand; the packaging is independent of the content and there is nothing more ethical than transparency.
More important, I suppose, is “why does the industry insist on calling it a spent fuel pool?”
I agree with the article in that leaks aren’t convincing. They’re a lot less convincing when we’re unwittingly misleading people about what’s leaking.
As usual with The Journal News articles, the comments section is more encouraging; the article is a better barometer.
Link.
Filed under Activism, Industry Performance, Missing the Point, Waste
