Commercial Low-Level Waste

Waste Control Specialists was unsuccessful in persuading the Texas Compact Commission to block export of Class A radioactive waste from Texas and Vermont at the commission’s meeting Friday in Austin, Texas. The Commission voted 5-2 to extend export approval for the South Texas Project, Luminant Energy and Entergy Vermont Yankee for four months—to September 19—though […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is promoting Susan Jablonski, who has been spearheading the agency’s licensing efforts with Waste Control Specialists as director of the agency’s Radioactive Materials Division, to Area Director for Central Texas, effective May 1. TCEQ’s Andrea Morrow confirmed to RW Monitor that in her new job, Jablonski will not have […]

The Texas Compact Commission will hold a public hearing tomorrow to get stakeholder input on its proposed radwaste import rule. The rule would outline forms and procedures required for generators outside of Texas or Vermont to ship low-level radioactive waste to Waste Control Specialists’ Andrews, Texas disposal facility. The public comment period for the rule […]

Vermont radioactive waste generators on Friday found themselves defending language in the Texas-Vermont Compact’s proposed import rule that reserves 20 percent of Waste Control Specialists’ disposal capacity for their state. The language outlining reserved capacity for Vermont was pivotal in securing the votes of the Vermont representatives of the Compact to pass the import rule […]

EnergySolutions is calling on the nuclear waste industry to prod Utah regulators into broader acceptance of a proposed sealed source initiative. In a presentation at the Waste Management conference in Phoenix yesterday, EnergySolutions’ Sean McCandless outlined the hot-and-cold stance that the Utah Division of Radiation Control has presented the company on the issue of accepting […]

Perma Fix announced yesterday that its acquisition deal for the Safety & Ecology Corp was sweetened further this week when, after SEC was unable to secure a new contract before the end of the year, $1.5 million of the original purchase price was refunded to Perma Fix. “In negotiations there were some requirements we put […]

Among the reasons that Waste Control Specialists’ Andrews, Texas low-level waste disposal facility has not yet been certified to begin operations, state regulators told the company in a letter this week, is the fact that construction in some areas differs from its license-approved design and some systems and features have yet to be completed. After […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff hope to push back the release of the draft revisions to the Branch Technical Position on Concentration Averaging and Encapsulation to sometime this spring, RW Monitor has learned, giving them time to incorporate comments they received at an Oct. 20 meeting. “Staff are inclined to ask for an extension to the […]

The Utah Radiation Control Board will meet today, at 3 p.m. MT, with Utah’s Division of Radiation Control giving the Board an update both on its review of EnergySolutions’ revised site-specific performance assessment, but also on the progress of SEMPRASAFE, a joint venture by EnergySolutions and Studsvik to blend Class A, B and C wastes […]

EnergySolutions reported increased revenue in its third quarter earnings report released yesterday, but the company continued to run a net loss and reported reduced gross profits. EnergySolutions reported in its Nov. 8 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that its revenue for the third quarter of 2011 rose to $421 million, compared with $417.7 […]

Waste Control Specialists now estimates that its disposal facility will be operational on Jan. 3, 2012, President Rod Baltzer said at the Texas Compact Commission meeting held in Austin, Texas yesterday. “We have submitted all of the requirements to [the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality], the 60-day clock started for most on November 4, so […]

In its first meeting since Texas Gov. Rick Perry shook up most of its membership, the Texas Compact Commission yesterday approved several Class A LLRW export petitions. The export permits will allow the companies, including the South Texas Project, Luminant, and Entergy, to continue sending their Class A waste to EnergySolutions’ Clive, Utah facility through […]

Perma-Fix Environmental Services’ recently completed acquisition of Safety and Ecology Corp. may be getting off to a rocky start, with the company now likely to have to address issues concerning a set of SEC’s contracts. In its most recent earnings report, filed Nov. 7, Perma-Fix outlined performance concerns on three of SEC’s projects. Although, Perma-Fix […]

The Texas-Vermont Compact Commission is hosting a workshop today to get stakeholder input on what regulations should govern the group’s approval decisions regarding importing low-level radioactive waste to Waste Control Specialists’ Andrews, Texas disposal facility. The questions of what requirements out-of-compact generators must meet in order to secure import agreements—whether imported waste should be given […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commissioners will hold a public meeting today to vote on a staff petition to keep the NRC from acting as steward to the millions of Yucca Mountain licensing documents, and to hear from the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards on the effort to incorporate site-specific performance assessments into 10 CFR Part 61. […]

In coming weeks the NRC Commissioners will be intervening in staff’s ongoing Site Specific Assessment Rulemaking effort, Commissioner William Magwood confirmed yesterday, potentially directing the NRC staff to reconsider a handful of controversial provisions, including a recommendation to institute a 20,000-year period of performance. On the sidelines of a Commission meeting yesterday, Magwood told RW […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will present their proposed revisions to the Branch Technical Position on Concentration Averaging and Encapsulation to the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards today. Staff previously presented changes to the BTP—the guidance document that establishes guidelines for blending of different classes of low-level radioactive waste—to the ACRS’ Radiation Protection and Nuclear Materials […]

The Texas Compact Commission has scheduled its first meeting since being reconfigured by Texas Gov. Rick Perry in September. The Commission will meet Nov. 9 in Austin, just a day before Waste Control Specialists will host its opening ceremony at the company’s Andrews, Texas disposal facility. Though the agenda has not yet been decided upon, […]

Waste Control Specialists next week will open a satellite office in Los Alamos, New Mexico, near the Los Alamos National Laboratory in order to “better support the cleanup mission of the U.S. Department of Energy,” the company said in a release. The company said it will use the office to “provide waste management and logistics […]

Members of the Low Level Radioactive Waste Forum put Waste Control Specialists on the hot seat yesterday at the group=s fall meeting in Santa Fe, N.M., quizzing the company on how it would prioritize what waste it will import from out-of-compact generators. Rich Janati, chief of the Pennsylvania Division of Nuclear Safety, asked WCS President […]

With the opening of a commercial disposal pathway for sealed sources—Waste Control Specialists’ radioactive waste disposal site in Andrews, Texas—on the horizon, and the National Nuclear Security Administration shifting its priorities to hold licensees more responsible for sealed source disposal, companies are finding loopholes to stockpile disused sources in Texas for access to disposal, a […]

Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. has closed on its acquisition of Safety & Ecology Holdings Corporation and its subsidiaries from Homeland Security Capital Corporation. The purchase price was $19.4 million, about $5 million less than Perma-Fix originally estimated after adjustments to the agreement were made last month. “It’s now official—they’re part of Perma-Fix. So that’s done, […]

US Ecology reported its second-best quarter in company history yesterday, with revenue up 53 percent to $39.7 million, and gross profit up 47 percent to $15.3 million for the third quarter of 2011 compared to the same quarter in 2010. “During the third quarter we grew revenue, grew operating income and grew cash flow significantly […]