Wetlands: Their impact on siting a proposed nuclear production reactor

The Savannah River Site (SRS) is a 780-km[sup 2] US Department of Energy (DOE) site managed by the Westinghouse Savannah River Company for the production of nuclear materials for defense and other purposes. Five nuclear production reactors (NPRs) constructed in the 1950s are located on the site, and all but one are either on standby or shut down. The possibility of siting a new NPR at the SRS or at other sites (Hanford and Idaho) in the DOE complex was being evaluated in an environmental impact statement (EIS) when on November 1, 1991, the Secretary of Energy decided to defer a decision on the NPR until after a programmatic EIS addressing reconfiguration of the DOE weapons complex was completed. Candidate sites at SRS for the proposed NPR were evaluated against disqualifying conditions in the categories of ecological resources and wetlands, human health effects, geology/hydrology, and engineering considerations. In initial considerations, the presence of wetlands was not determined to be a disqualifying condition. It was critical that the proposed reactor be sited on an area with optimum geologic properties so that the required load-bearing capacity under its footprint could be met. Lessons learned in this planning effort are to clearly understandmore » the real needs of the project in terms of area, hydrology, geologic criteria, etc., and conduct siting studies early in a project's life that strongly weigh wetlands and other ecological considerations. In this case, once project personnel had a clear understanding of the length of time required for processing the Sec. 404 permit (and possibly a Sec. 10 permit for the outfall) and the cost required for preparation of the permit application, mitigation, and long-term monitoring, the site selection criteria were revisited. After numerous discussions and additional geologic considerations, it was determined that the proposed NPR footprint could be oriented to avoid all but [approximately]0.5ha of wetlands.« less