Dry Cask Storage Project Complete

The project to safely and efficiently transfer used nuclear fuel from Dairyland’s LACBWR (La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor) shut-down nuclear facility to the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) on the south end of the Genoa Site (Genoa, Wis.) was completed in September 2012.

Final decommissioning of the LACBWR facility is nearly complete and has included demobilizing equipment, shutting down systems and draining the fuel pool among other tasks.

Decommissioning Milestones & Project Background

LACBWR has been shut down since 1987; however, the used fuel remained on-site. Although the fuel was safe in LACBWR’s storage pool, it was not intended as a long-term storage solution. Additionally, Dairyland could not proceed with final decommissioning of the facility while the fuel was on-site.

Dairyland prepared for several years to remove LACBWR’s used fuel from the fuel pool and place it into a dry cask storage system on the south end of Dairyland’s Genoa Site. The fuel is monitored around the clock at the Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation site (ISFSI), in accordance with Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations.

In 2007, Dairyland contracted with Energy Solutions, a national radioactive waste services contractor, to facilitate the removal and disposal of LACBWR’s Reactor Pressure Vessel and other low-level, non-fuel waste to a disposal site in South Carolina.

On March 15, 2023, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) formally transferred the license for the La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor (LACBWR) site in Genoa back to Dairyland. The site’s license was transferred from Dairyland to La Crosse Solutions in 2016 to complete decommissioning. The licensed site is reduced to the area covered by the La Crosse Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) at the Genoa Site.