Concerns about water supply for the Wolf Creek nuclear power plant have prompted a document calling for a new dredging method at John Redmond Reservoir nearby.
The Kansas Water Office has affiliated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Kansas and Bowersock Mills and Power Company to develop what’s called a whitepaper — essentially an in-depth report with at least one potential solution included. The report focuses on the ongoing sediment concerns at John Redmond, which has lost about 44 percent of its water storage capacity since it was build in 1964.
It has been 10 year since the state dredged 3 million cubic yards of dirt from the reservoir at a cost of $20 million, or nearly $7 a cubic yard. Updated to 2025 prices, the cost would have been around $11 a yard — and the report says it could cost more than $13 million a year just to remove the annual sediment deposit of almost 750 acre-feet. The report calls the total maintenance cost “very high for long-term use.”
Wolf Creek, meanwhile, generates electricity for more than 800,000 homes, or over 20 percent of the state’s total energy production, and it gets its off-channel cooling water directly from John Redmond. Without a major and ongoing effort to remove the dirt from the lake, the paper says Wolf Creek’s continued function will be jeopardized, especially after 2045.
With traditional dredging considered cost-prohibitive, the report champions a process called hydrosuction, which essentially siphons out the dirt. The report also says John Redmond has a little-used 30-inch pipe that would be good for hydrosuction and the process could result in an 85-percent cost saving or around $11 million per year when compared to standard dredging, but it says more research is needed because the hydrosuction process has not been widely used and operating processes have not been set. The amount of power needed, possibly 120 kilowatts, and other “grid integration infrastructure” also need to be considered.
The state has set aside $1.5 million in the current budget to pursue a hydrosuction option at John Redmond.
