March 18, 2024

Work starts on DOE’s Fortis spent fuel rail car

By ExchangeMonitor

Kasgro Rail, New Castle, Pa., started building part of a prototype heavy-duty rail car to transport spent nuclear fuel, the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy announced Monday.

Fabrication of deck components for the prototype, eight-axle Fortis railcar began “recently,” according to the office’s press release.

Fortis is one of two rail cars DOE is building to transport spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste, once DOE has anywhere to move such material.

DOE book keeps funding for both railcars in the Nuclear Energy office’s Integrated Waste Management System subprogram. According to the 2025 budget request DOE released last week, fabrication started in fiscal year 2023, which ended on Oct. 1.

The Integrated Waste Management System subprogram has a $55-million budget for 2024, under an appropriations package signed into law on March 9. DOE has requested $53 million for the account in fiscal year 2025.

At an industry conference last week in Phoenix, Paul Murray, DOE’s deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition, said the agency planned a tour of the rails for at least one of its custom cars and some of the casks it will eventually carry.

“We will take an empty…cask and we will drive it around the country,” Murray said during a panel discussion at the annual Waste Management Symposia last week in Phoenix.

Stops on the tour could include Union Station in Washington, only a few minutes by foot from the U.S. Capitol, Murray said.

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March 18, 2024

NNSA seeks study contractor for effort to mature Oak Ridge defense refining tech

By ExchangeMonitor

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Friday solicited bids for a one-year study about a pilot plant to test defense uranium-refining technology developed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Bids are due April 15, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) wrote in a procurement notice posted online for the firm-fixed-price NNSA Domestic Uranium Enrichment Pilot Plant Study contract.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) is one of two domestic uranium refining options, along with Centrus Energy Corp.’s AC-100M, that the NNSA had been considering as the foundation for its next defense-enrichment plant, which would be the first in the U.S. since the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant shut down in 2013.

DOE wants to start refining new defense-useable uranium by 2030 or so. In the meantime, Oak Ridge “is planning to demonstrate the DUECE technology in an engineering-scale cascade testbed at a facility located on their campus in Oak Ridge, Tennessee,” the NNSA wrote in a statement of work appended to the solicitation.

Testing on the second of two planned DUECE demonstration cascades should finish in the 2029 fiscal year, which runs through Sept. 30, 2029, according to a requirements report for DUECE dated January 2024 and posted online with the study solicitation.

Oak Ridge’s technology, less developed than Centrus’, has to be “tested in a pilot plant to demonstrate centrifuge reliability, production-scale cascade operations, production-rate centrifuge manufacturing, and other supporting systems,” the NNSA said in the statement of work.

NNSA estimates it has enough highly enriched uranium to meet national defense needs into the 2050s. 

After that, the agency will need more low-enriched uranium to help produce tritium for nuclear weapons at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar Unit 1 and Unit 2 civilian power reactors in Tennessee. 

Next, the NNSA will need more highly enriched uranium to make fuel rods for the Navy’s nuclear-powered warships and submarines. 

The trilateral AUKUS agreement, under which the United Kingdom and the U.S. are helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarines, has also “accelerated the need for [highly enriched uranium] for both U.S. and Australian naval propulsion needs,” according to the DUECE requirements report.

The NNSA has been careful to keep two horses in its domestic uranium enrichment race, not rushing to make a choice between the two while the slower-to-develop Oak Ridge DUECE technology caught up with Centrus’ AC100M technology.

Centrus has benefitted from a big contract from another part of DOE to produce high assay low-enriched uranium at the Portsmouth Plant near Piketon, Ohio. That potentially decade-spanning deal will give Centrus a chance to pilot AC100M technology that might one day be adapted for defense use.

The Centrus machines in Piketon now contain some foreign-made parts that carry what are known as peaceful use obligations, meaning that uranium refined with machines that contain these parts cannot be used for defense purposes, under a series of international agreements.

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March 18, 2024

In revised complaint, plaintiff Shaw points to cancer rates around Portsmouth Site

By ExchangeMonitor

A plaintiff who grew up within two miles of the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio, filed an amended federal court complaint last week against contractors he claims violated the Price Anderson Act and caused his acute myeloid leukemia.

Joshua Shaw, now in his early 50s, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2008 and even though now in remission, still suffers from pain, nausea and anxiety, according to the complaint filed March 14.

The illness is a type of cancer that starts in bone marrow and frequently spreads to the blood.

The amended complaint says cancer caused by radiation can take years to develop and Shaw assumed past and present Portsmouth contractors complied with safety regulations and prevented off-site contamination.

“Similarly, Plaintiff did not know, nor should he have known by exercising reasonable diligence that he had ever been exposed to radionuclides from PORTS, let alone at doses sufficient to cause bodily injury of any kind,” according to the complaint. This is because “exposure and dose can only be established by complex, costly and time-consuming expert testing and analysis well beyond the means or abilities of an ordinary person.”

The week prior to Shaw’s amended complaint, the group of current and former Portsmouth contractors asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio to throw out Shaw’s case, partly for failure to state a claim.

Reports by DOE, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show “multiple” releases of contamination into the air, water and soil, over time, according to Shaw’s complaint.

The counties surrounding the Portsmouth plant, “namely Pike, Scioto, Vinton, Adams, and Lawrence Counties, are among those having the highest cancer rates in Ohio,” according to the complaint.

Shaw is one of several locals who have sued Portsmouth contractors after Zahn’s Corner Middle School closed in May 2019 after enriched uranium was detected inside the building, according to the complaint.

Defendants are Bechtel Jacobs Company, BWXT Conversion Services, Centrus Energy, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, LATA/Parallax Portsmouth, Mid-America Conversion Services, United States Enrichment Corporation and Uranium Disposition Services.

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March 18, 2024

DOE rejects deadline extension for Portsmouth-Paducah tech support RFP

By ExchangeMonitor

At least for now, the Department of Energy will not extend the April 9 proposal deadline for a solicitation for a new five-year Technical Support Services contract at the Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office.

In a set of questions and answers posted last week, DOE turned down a questioner who asked the final request for proposals (RFP) deadline be extended two weeks until April 23. “No. DOE does not anticipate extending the due date for proposals,” the agency said.

The RFP was published in late February and proposals are due by 4 p.m. Eastern Time on April 9. Dozens of businesses showed at least enough interest to kick the tires during a January pre-solicitation session.

During the 60-day transition period from incumbent Pro2Serve, the winning contractor will be expected to set up offices at all three locations: the Portsmouth Site in Ohio; the Paducah Site in Kentucky; and the central office at Lexington, Ky., according to DOE.

A $179-million contract held by Pro2Serve’s Enterprise Technical Assistance Services runs through March 2025.

DOE is shopping for a small business provider of administrative and technical support to the agency and its contractors serving the two former gaseous diffusion plant campuses.

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March 18, 2024

This week

By ExchangeMonitor

Here are some events related to defense and civilian nuclear matters that Exchange Monitor staff are tracking this week:

March 

18: Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Holtec International. Hybrid meeting. “Palisades Pre-submittal Meeting with Holtec Decommissioning International, LLC on Emergency Plan for Resumption of Power Operations.” 9:30 a.m. Eastern time to to 11:20 a.m. Eastern time. Join the Microsoft Teams meeting online. Detailed agenda online.

19: Meeting: The Department of Energy’s and its prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant hold a hybrid meeting and town hall starting at 5:30 p.m. Mountain Time from the  Lawrence Harris Occupational Technology Center at the University of New Mexico-Roswell. 

21: Meeting: The Citizens Advisory Board for the DOE Paducah Site in Kentucky meets starting at 5:30 p.m. Central Time  at the est Kentucky Community and Technical College, Emerging Technology Center, Room 215, 5100 Alben Barkley Drive, Paducah, Ky. for information, email [email protected].

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March 18, 2024

Former Veolia manager takes new job with Alpha

By ExchangeMonitor

Michael Moulin-Ramsden, a former Veolia Nuclear Solutions manager, joined Alpha Safety last month as its director of business development for the United Kingdom and Continental Europe, according to a LinkedIn post.

Moulin-Ramsden, who spent about eight years with Veolia in business development roles, is also a founding director of a consulting firm, Haslam Advisory Ltd.

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March 18, 2024

Idaho DOE managers to brief congress on spent fuel plans

By ExchangeMonitor

PHOENIX —A trio of managers from branches of the Department of Energy at the Idaho National Laboratory planned to travel to Washington, D.C., later this month to brief congressional staffers on sitewide spent nuclear fuel management at the lab.

Connie Flohr, who is retiring from DOE next month, said at the Waste Management Symposia conference she will be part of a team to brief Senate and House of Representatives staff March 28 on a new sitewide waste spent fuel management plan.

Flohr now holds the title of special adviser for the Idaho Cleanup Project after passing the DOE cleanup manager post to her former deputy Mark Brown, last week.

Flohr will be accompanied by DOE Office of Nuclear Energy manager at Idaho, Lance Lacroix, and Gil Pratt, a manager for the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program within DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration. All three were part of an Idaho National Laboratory panel discussion Wednesday at the conference.

Flohr said greater coordination between DOE entities in Idaho has been sought by congressional appropriators. Flohr also said the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management’s ongoing cleanup of old naval reactor facilities at the lab is an example of inter-office cooperation. The spent fuel plan referenced by Flohr is not yet available for public release, a DOE spokesperson said.

Demolition and decommissioning of S1W and A1W prototype nuclear submarine reactors began in August 2022

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March 18, 2024

WIPP should have reported when 2 miners were stuck in hoist

By ExchangeMonitor

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant should have reported a Jan. 23 incident, where two miners were stuck up to 30 minutes in a waste hoist lowering them underground, to the Department of Energy’s accident reporting system, a federal safety watchdog says.

“Site personnel determined that an erroneous digital signal caused a breaker to trip, resulting in a complete loss of power” to a man cage that had lowered two miners 1,500 feet below the surface, according to the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) staff report posted recently.

Within 30 minutes of the issue developing, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) operators “successfully lowered the cage to the underground,” according to the report.

The DNFSB staff “consider a loss of hoist control due to the power outage to be an unsafe condition that was properly mitigated by the credited braking system,” according to the DNFSB document. “It appears that this event should have been reported” in the Occurrence Reporting and Processing System.

Bechtel’s Salado Isolation Mining Contractors “contend that it was not due to an actual unsafe condition because food, water, and an eventual escape through dynamic lowering could have been made available to the miners,” DNFSB said.

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March 18, 2024

DOE agrees to install mobile showers at Hanford disposal site under settlement

By ExchangeMonitor

Under a settlement with the state, the Department of Energy will install portable showers at the Integrated Disposal Facility once it starts receiving canisters of glass made from radioactive waste at the Hanford Site in Washington state.

The agreement, dated March 4 and signed by attorneys for DOE and the Washington Department of Ecology, was announced Thursday by the state.

The deal would resolve a legal dispute that arose between the agencies while DOE sought permit modifications for the disposal facility that figures prominently in plans to convert liquid low-level radioactive tank waste into solid glass.

In June 2023, DOE appealed a Washington Ecology permit action directing DOE and contractor Central Plateau Cleanup to install decontamination showers at the Integrated Disposal Facility.  DOE balked, saying it has exclusive authority to regulate Hanford health and safety and decide if any decontamination showers are needed.

With the settlement, the Washington Pollution Control Hearings Board dismissed the DOE appeal on March 13.

The settlement agreement stipulates a portable shower, also known as a drench shower, will be installed at either the mobile support office, the restroom trailer, or both. 

The shower “assists in flushing chemicals/grout used for treatment/landfill leachate from personnel,” according to the five-page document. The shower can capture the water and any contaminants washed off the workers so it could be managed “as dangerous waste, if applicable.”

Once the Washington Treatment and Immobilization Plant built by Bechtel starts operations next year,  the Integrated Disposal Facility in the 200 Area will receive canisters of less radioactive waste solidified into a glass-like solid.

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March 18, 2024

Fifth Circuit will not give NRC another chance to prove commercial interim storage is legal

By ExchangeMonitor

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will have to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if it wants another chance to prove that it can legally license commercial interim storage of spent nuclear fuel.

According to an order dated Thursday, judges of the Fifth Circuit voted 9-7, with one recused, not to rehear the NRC’s argument that the Atomic Energy Act authorizes the commission to license interim storage of spent fuel away from the reactors that generated it.

“We continue to adhere to our position that the judiciary has not only the authority but the duty to review the NRC’s actions, which may threaten significant environmental damage in the Permian Basin, one of the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world,” the court wrote in its opinion.

In August, as part of a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas, a panel of three Fifth Circuit judges ruled that the Atomic Energy Act did not give NRC this authority, effectively striking down a license the NRC granted to a joint venture of Waste Control Specialists and Orano to store spent fuel in Andrews County, Texas.

The Fifth Circuit’s ruling last year also killed a similar commercial interim storage license the NRC gave to Holtec International for a proposed facility in eastern New Mexico.

Three Fifth Circuit judges disagreed with the majority’s opinion last week, writing among other things that the court’s ruling will allow people to evade regulatory agencies using maneuvers with no basis in federal law.

“This exercise of jurisdiction has grave consequences for regulated entities’ settled expectations and careful investments in costly, time consuming agency proceedings, inviting spoilers to sidestep the avenues for participation that Congress carefully created to prevent this uncertainty,” the three dissenting judges wrote.

Among other things, NRC argued that Texas never participated in the commission’s debate about licensing the Andrews County facility and that therefore the state had no right to sue over the commission’s final licensing decision.

Meanwhile, the NRC continues to argue in a separate but related case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit that the Atomic Energy Act allows the agency to license commercial interim storage of spent fuel.

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