La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor - LACBWR

The La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor (LACBWR) was built in 1967 as part of a joint project with the federal Atomic Energy Commission to demonstrate the peacetime use of nuclear power. Dairyland built the turbine, generator and plant auxiliary systems. In 1973, the reactor and fuel were transferred to Dairyland Power Cooperative. At the time, both parties believed that spent nuclear fuel would be reprocessed and would not become a long-term storage problem. Reprocessing was terminated through a presidential executive order by Jimmy Carter in April 1977.

LACBWR was shutdown and placed in SAFSTOR in April 1987.

Until the spent fuel at LACBWR is removed, Dairyland cannot fully decommission the facility. Although the current method for storing fuel is safe, the storage pool was not intended for long-term storage. It currently costs Dairyland member-owners $5.5 million a year for security, maintenance and monitoring of this site.

Dairyland is one of eight U.S. utilities comprising Private Fuel Storage, LLC (PFS), a group which has worked since 1994 to develop a temporary spent fuel storage facility. PFS signed a lease agreement for the development of such a facility with the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians in Utah. This central storage facility would be used while awaiting a permanent site, such as the one proposed at Yucca Mountain, Nev. The PFS facility was licensed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in February 2006. However, obstacles to constructing the facility remain.

Dairyland is currently studying the feasibility of removing the fuel assemblies to a secure dry cask storage system on the LACBWR site, while awaiting the availability of a temporary or permanent centralized national repository for spent fuel.

Dairyland contracted with Energy Solutions, a national nuclear waste service contractor, to facilitate the removal and disposal of LACBWR’s reactor pressure vessel (RPV) and other low-level nonfuel waste. Click here to read more about the RPV removal project.