Safety concerns for nuclear plant closure

KEWAUNEE COUNTY - After the jobs are gone, and the Kewaunee nuclear plant is shut down next year, what will happen at the facility that has helped power tens of thousands of Wisconsin homes?  

Dominion, the company that owns Kewaunee Power Station, says it has yet to iron out details on how the plant will be dismantled. Local leaders are wondering what effect this will have on the environment.

The plant is located in the Town of Carlton, south of Kewaunee, along the Lakeshore.

650 people will lose their jobs when it closes in the next six months.

Now that the shock of the closure’s announcement has settled in, questions about safety remain.

"Is there going to be radiation escaping while they're decommissioning it and tearing it down?" asked Town of Carlton board supervisor Ken Paplham.

On Monday, plant operators began to outline the shutdown process.

"It is currently our intention after that five to seven year fuel pool to move the fuel into the dry cask storage where it will stay until the Department of Energy takes title to the fuel,” said Daniel Stoddard, senior vice president of operations for Dominion.

Local leaders were told Tuesday morning that nuclear waste will likely remain on site in Kewaunee for decades.

"They were supposed to go to the feds but now they're sitting on the lakefront in a concrete canister in the same thing they were going to be shipped in,” said Paplham.

The federal government has abandoned plans for a nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain. There are no current alternatives.

In the meantime, Kewaunee County Emergency Management director Lori Hucek says her department will keep spending half its budget, nearly $100,000 a year, to provide safety services to the plant. Dominion does reimburse the county for that cost.

"There’s still radioactive material there. Until it is gone, and it’s turned into green space, we still have a responsibility to the general public,” said Hucek.

Dominion says it will have a small staff and security presence on site for as long as the waste remains there.

The Kewaunee County Emergency Management director says power plant staffers want to assure the public that there will be no bigger environmental threat once the plant is closed down.