AMEREN CORPORATION

Interim Storage Risk Reduction

2005 – AMEREN (Union Electric)

~~AMEREN CORPORATION~~

WHEREAS:

As long as the Callaway nuclear plant operates, it will continue generating radioactively and thermally hot, irradiated fuel rods. In order to replace some irradiated fuel rods every few years with new fuel rods, the irradiated rods must be transferred from the Reactor Vessel to the on-site Spent Fuel Pool for wet storage and cooling for at least five years. Callaway’s irradiated fuel rods have been accumulating in the fuel pool since 1986. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted Ameren permission to store far more irradiated rods in the Callaway fuel pool than had been intended in the pool’s initial design.

Irradiated fuel rods must be kept isolated from the biosphere for hundreds of thousands of years.

According to a February 2001 NRC study, even in a shutdown plant undergoing decommissioning, a spent fuel pool catastrophe could raise the risk of radiation-induced cancer as far away as 500 miles, and of fatalities from radiation poisoning near the plant. The risks from a fuel pool accident at an operating plant are at least as great.

In 2002 the President and the Congress approved the siting of a federal underground repository for irradiated fuel rods at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The repository is not yet finally designed or licensed.

Even if it were to be licensed, its construction would not be completed until at least 2015.

In July 2004 the US Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, ruled that the EPA standard for the Yucca Mountain facility (that regulates radiation releases for 10,000 years) does not reflect the 1995 National Academy of Sciences findings that peak risks to public health “might occur tens to hundreds of thousands of years or even farther into the future.”

The nuclear industry describes Yucca Mountain as one single site where all the nation’s irradiated fuel rods could be consolidated. However, capacity at Yucca Mountain is limited by law. Irradiated fuel rods now being stored at reactors older than Callaway would have priority for disposal space. There may not be room for a sizable amount of Callaway’s fuel rods in this first national repository.

Since each nuclear power plant’s irradiated rods must be kept submerged in water at that plant’s site at least temporarily, highly radioactive rods will continue to be generated and stored at every operating plant nationwide as long as nuclear plants continue operating.

RESOLVED:

In light of heightened public safety concerns, shareholders request that Ameren prepare a report, at reasonable cost, that outlines the current substantial radiation risks of the interim storage of irradiated fuel rods at the Callaway Plant and that proposes measures to reduce those risks. A copy of the report, omitting proprietary and security information, should be available to shareholders on request by August 2005.

SUPPORTING STATEMENT:

Ameren remains morally responsible and financially liable for Callaway, for seeking to secure its radioactive wastes, and for protecting its workers and the public into the indefinite future. We believe this study is essential for realistic and responsible economic and ethical planning.

~~498 words. 10/15/04~~

~~Contact: Susan Jordan, phone and fax: 314-638-5453; e-mail: SuMaJor@aol.com~~