March 17, 2014

BLUE RIBBON WASTE PANEL SET TO DELIVER REPORT THURSDAY

By ExchangeMonitor

With the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future expected to release its final report on waste disposal this Thursday, industry officials hope that Congress will move quickly to consider the recommendations. “Congressional interest in this is already beginning, so we are quite hopeful that it is not going to be a report that simply sits on a shelf somewhere. This is, of course, a challenging year in terms of trying to get action in Congress,” Everett Redmond of the Nuclear Energy Institute said in a conference call with reporters yesterday. The Blue Ribbon panel’s charter requires it to provide a report to the Department of Energy by Jan. 29, and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has scheduled a hearing on it for Feb. 2. “We are optimistic with the hearings, the hearing that has already been scheduled plus any additional hearings that will be scheduled, that it will be given good and serious consideration,” he added.  

No big surprises are expected in final report, which will likely closely align with a draft report released last summer that included a call for interim storage sites, a new federal entity dedicated solely to nuclear waste management and a reformation of collections for the Nuclear Waste Fund. “We are confident that if the recommendations are heeded result will be an integrated, sustainable used fuel management program for the federal government. While we support all of the recommendations outlined in the draft report, we believe special attention should be paid to fixing the waste fee, the concept of consolidated or centralized storage and a new management entity,” Redmond said.

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NEW: Via public records request, I’ve been able to confirm reporting today that a warrant has been issued for DOE deputy asst. secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition Sam Brinton for another luggage theft, this time at Las Vegas’s Harry Reid airport. (cc: @EMPublications)

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