Commercial Decommissioning

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 5/2/2014 Entergy is seeking damages from the U.S. government for failure to remove the spent nuclear fuel at its Vermont Yankee site, according to a lawsuit filed late last week in the Federal Court of Claims. The litigation is “Round 2” for seeking repayment for costs incurred to deal with […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 4/18/2014 Japan’s International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID), along with the Mitsubishi Research Institute (MRI), is set to host a workshop on April 25 in Tokyo that will discuss the results of the Request For Information that IRID issued last year on innovative approaches to fuel debris removal at […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 2/14/2014 The International Atomic Energy Agency backed the decommissioning plan that Japan and Tokyo Electric Power Company are using for the cleanup of the Fukushima Daiichi Power Station, according to a report issued by the IAEA to the Japanese government this week. The two-part report, led by a team of […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 2/14/2014 Exelon warned that it may shut down some of its nuclear plants if the economic environment does not improve, Exelon President and CEO Christopher Crane said during an investor’s call late last week. Exelon, which operates 10 nuclear plants in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, said the competition from […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 2/7/2014 The owners of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station announced late last week that they would decommission the facility “expeditiously” with the spent fuel pools being moved to dry-cask storage as quickly as possible. With the two-year anniversary of the discovery of a leak that forced the premature shutdown […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 1/17/2014 As an aging fleet of nuclear reactors begin to cease their operations,  an increasing amount of public stakeholders are taking an active interest in the decommissioning of the reactors, according to a panel held this week at the 29th Annual Institute of Nuclear Materials Management’s Spent Fuel Management Seminar. […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 1/10/2014 The Tokyo Electric Power Company has announced it will form a new internal company responsible for the decommissioning of the Units 5 and 6 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The main objectives of creating the new organization, which will begin operations in April 2014, is to better […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 1/10/2014 Vermont and Entergy have come to an agreement after months of back and forth on a timeline for the decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee Power Station in Vernon, Vt. The agreement stipulates that Entergy will place the plant in SAFESTOR only until its decommissioning fund collects enough money to […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 1/17/2014 As an aging fleet of nuclear reactors begin to cease their operations,  an increasing amount of public stakeholders are taking an active interest in the decommissioning of the reactors, according to a panel held this week at the 29th Annual Institute of Nuclear Materials Management’s Spent Fuel Management Seminar. […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 1/10/2014 The Tokyo Electric Power Company has announced it will form a new internal company responsible for the decommissioning of the Units 5 and 6 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The main objectives of creating the new organization, which will begin operations in April 2014, is to better […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 1/10/2014 Vermont and Entergy have come to an agreement after months of back and forth on a timeline for the decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee Power Station in Vernon, Vt. The agreement stipulates that Entergy will place the plant in SAFESTOR only until its decommissioning fund collects enough money to […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 1/10/2014 The Tokyo Electric Power Company has announced it will form a new internal company responsible for the decommissioning of the Units 5 and 6 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The main objectives of creating the new organization, which will begin operations in April 2014, is to better […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 1/10/2014 Vermont and Entergy have come to an agreement after months of back and forth on a timeline for the decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee Power Station in Vernon, Vt. The agreement stipulates that Entergy will place the plant in SAFESTOR only until its decommissioning fund collects enough money to […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 5/16/2014 Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) led a chorus of state stakeholders criticizing the lack of state and local input into the decisions behind a utility’s decommissioning plan for commercial reactors during a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on nuclear reactor decommissioning held this week. Sanders, whose home state […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 5/9/2014 As Dominion’s Kewaunee Power Station reaches its one year anniversary of ceasing operations this week, the plant has begun preparations to enter into SAFESTOR mode, according to Dominion spokesman Mark Kanz. Dominion announced that it would be shutting Kewaunee down in 2012 due to economic reasons, and it ceased […]

Jeremy L. Dillon RW Monitor 5/9/2014 A group of senators called on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission late last week to stop granting exemptions to security and emergency response requirements at shutdown reactor sites.  The senators, made up of Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), said […]

The following interview with Kazuhiro Suzuki, Executive Director of Japan’s International Research Institute for Decommissioning, was conducted last week on the sidelines of the 2014 Waste Management Symposium by ExchangeMonitor Publications CEO Martin Schneider and RW Monitor Reporter Jeremy L. Dillon. To start, can you talk a little about what people can expect from your […]

The owners of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station announced late last week that they would decommission the SONGS facility as “expeditiously” as possible with the spent fuel pools being moved to dry-cask storage as quickly as possible. With the two-year anniversary of the discovery of a leak that forced the pre-mature shutdown of the […]

Exelon warned that it may shut down some of its nuclear plants if the economic environment does not improve, according to Exelon President and CEO Christopher Crane during an investor’s call held late last week. Exelon, which operates 10 nuclear plants in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, said the competition from natural gas along with […]

Entergy gave its nuclear fleet a ‘vote of confidence’ yesterday during its 2013 fourth quarter earnings call, saying it would continue to own and operate the plants for the “foreseeable future.” With the growing economic competition from natural gas as well as a harsh energy policy towards nuclear, many utilities are taking a hard look […]

The Zion nuclear facility decommissioning project is on the verge of moving the spent fuel into the recently completed independent spent fuel storage installations, said ZionSolutions project manager Patrick Daly yesterday during remarks at the Nuclear D&D Supply Chain Conference in Charlotte, NC. Originally, the fuel was supposed to be moved in November, but delays […]

Duke Energy announced yesterday that it has chosen SAFESTOR as its decommissioning method for its Crystal River nuclear station. The decommissioning plan, which has been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, calls for the plant, located about 80 miles north of Tampa Bay, to sit under surveillance until 2074 so that radioactivity levels can decrease. […]

The Tokyo Electric Power Company announced two weeks ago that it would form a new internal company responsible for the decommissioning of the Units 5 and 6 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. The main objectives of creating the new organization, which will begin operations in April 2014, is to better plan and organize […]

Waste Control Specialists re-affirmed its capability to provide disposal for waste from the decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee nuclear facility at the Texas-Vermont Compact Commission meeting yesterday. WCS President Rod Baltzer said at the meeting, “We look forward to working with Entergy, the State of Vermont and the Compact Commission to safely and securely facilitate […]

Entergy announced yesterday that it will be shutting down its Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in late 2014. The plant will cease power production after its current fuel cycle ends and move to safe shutdown at that time. Entergy plans on using the decommissioning process known as “Safe Store,” which allows the plant to be […]

Dominion Resources, Inc., yesterday began the shutdown of its Kewaunee nuclear power plant in Wisconsin. The utility announced early this year that it planned to shut down the 556-megawatt reactor in May for financial reasons after seeking unsuccessfully to sell the plant since 2011. Yesterday the plant was removed from the grid, and the fuel […]

  EnergySolutions late last week filed a more detailed proxy with the Securities and Exchange Commission that provides information shareholders have requested, including more detail on the economics of the Zion license stewardship cleanup project, detailed calculations of company value, and further insight into the decision to replace the company’s CEO and CFO in June. […]

Uncertainty over the financial viability of the Zion license stewardship project soured several serious offers from entities that expressed serious interest in buying EnergySolutions over the last two years, according to the proxy statement the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Feb. 8. The proxy statement details EnergySolutions’ pursuit since February 2011 for […]

Weaknesses in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decommissioning fund oversight may lead some nuclear reactors to be short on cleanup funds when they shut down, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report released yesterday. The report was requested by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass) in his former role as Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy […]

The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has released key dates anticipated for the competition for cleanup at the Magnox and Research Sites Restorations sites. The NDA announced Friday it plans to publish a contract notice on July 16, which will be followed by a bidder’s conference in Manchester, UK, starting July 19. The agency has […]