Decommissioning

Brookfield Business Partners, a global asset management firm, announced Thursday it would purchase ailing nuclear energy and infrastructure giant Westinghouse Electric from Toshiba for $4.6 billion. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that Westinghouse is looking to focus more on nuclear services, including reactor decommissioning. The company already offers a broad range of services in […]

President Donald Trump plans to nominate consultant Anne M. White of Michigan to head the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, which oversees cleanup of DOE’s Cold War complex sites, the White House announced Wednesday. White, founder of Bastet Technical Services LLC, has worked for more than 25 years within the nuclear sector, including a […]

A public hearing scheduled for today on the planned sale of the retired Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant was canceled Wednesday in the face of the oncoming “bomb cyclone” storm. The storm was expected to deliver snow, ice, strong winds, and frigid temperatures across the East Coast starting Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. […]

The number of contaminated vehicles identified after a spread of radioactive contamination at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant has increased to 21. Fourteen of those are government and contractor vehicles, and seven belong to workers. The last worker-owned car with contamination was released to its owner Wednesday. Surveys of vehicles are continuing at the […]

After extending the deadline for an extra week due to Southern California wildfires, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has closed out the public comment period on two major reports on the cleanup of the radioactively contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory. The public comment period for the Santa Susana draft program environmental impact […]

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has authorized Waste Control Specialists (WCS) to store radioactive waste from the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory for an additional two years, to nearly the end of 2018. The decision is one of a long list of updates to the company’s state radioactive material license approved […]

A lapse in communication procedures likely contributed the spread of radioactive particles at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site that contaminated 14 vehicles and led to checks at seven workers’ homes. As of midday Thursday, 240 workers at the Washington state facility had requested bioassays to determine whether they had inhaled radioactive particles. The spread […]

The total number of vehicles at the Hanford Site with possible specks of radioactive contamination rose to 14 Wednesday after a spread of contaminants that appeared to start Friday at the facility’s Plutonium Finishing Plant. At least two vehicles might have been contaminated before workers drove them home Friday after completion of demolition of the […]

Radioactive contamination has been found on eight vehicles that were parked at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant after a spread of contamination in recent days. Four of the vehicles belonged to employees working on plant demolition and two of them might have already been contaminated when workers left Hanford for the weekend on Friday […]

A new stop work order was declared at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant over the weekend after another radioactive contamination spread, likely linked to the final demolition of the plant’s Plutonium Reclamation Facility. Small amounts of contamination were found outside the demolition zone Friday night, after a 13-month project to raze the reclamation facility […]

After extending the deadline for an extra week due to Southern California wildfires, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) has closed out the public comment period on two major reports on the cleanup of the radioactively contaminated Santa Susana Field Laboratory. The public comment period for the Santa Susana draft program environmental impact […]

Workers at the Hanford Site in Washington state on Friday finished demolishing the most highly contaminated section of the Plutonium Finishing Plant, its Plutonium Reclamation Facility. Demolition of the reclamation facility began in November 2016 and was almost complete before contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. issued a stop work order Wednesday following possible worker […]

A federal judge has agreed to push the trial date in the Hanford Site chemical vapors lawsuit out to Nov. 26, 2018, more than three years after the case was filed. The new trial date comes after the expiration of the current contract period of one of the plaintiffs, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), unless […]

With settlement talks continuing, parties in the chemical vapors lawsuit at the Hanford Site in Washington state have asked a federal judge to delay the trial date for another three months. Parties are requesting that the trial date be extended until Nov. 27, 2018. If a trial occurs then, it would be three years after […]

The contaminated Molten Salt Reactor Experiment at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee could be encased in concrete, according to the top nuclear cleanup official at the Department of Energy site. Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) Manager Jay Mullis told an environmental advisory board in November that DOE is considering the plan. […]

The Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff have both formally affirmed their intention to participate in any renewed adjudication of DOE’s license application for the planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The parties’ easily anticipated confirmations were included in responses submitted in recent weeks to an Oct. 27 request for information […]

Members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday it has been years since any U.S. company has expressed interest in developing spent fuel reprocessing or recycling capabilities. “I think in 2009, the agency received some expressions of interest from potential developers of reprocessing capability in the United States,” NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki told members of […]

Citing the devastating wildfires in Southern California, the California Department of Toxic Substances Control has extended by a week the public comment period on two major environmental documents for the Santa Susana Field Laboratory cleanup. DTSC said last week that it was extending the comment deadline from Dec. 7 to Thursday Dec. 14 for the […]

With settlement talks continuing, parties in the chemical vapors lawsuit at the Hanford Site in Washington state have asked a federal judge to delay the trial date for another three months. Parties are requesting that the trial date be extended until Nov. 27, 2018. If a trial occurs then, it would be three years after […]

An executive with Stoller Newport News Nuclear said Wednesday she had not heard of her rumored consideration for nomination as the Department of Energy’s assistant secretary for environmental management. An official in the defense cleanup industry told Weapons Complex Monitor recently that Stoller Vice President Barbara Mazurowski could be under consideration for the EM-1 post […]

Controlling the costs of multibillion-dollar Cold War cleanup projects remains a struggle for the Energy Department and its Office of Environmental Management, the DOE Office of inspector General said in a Nov. 27 special report. In the report, the Inspector General’s Office analyzed management challenges facing the department and its semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration […]

Thomas Gardiner While the U.S. government seeks a permanent home for tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel, the waste can safely be stored at the power plants that generated it, the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said recently. “The NRC has concluded that storage of spent fuel at reactor sites […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said its rulemaking for nuclear power reactor decommissioning will address both physical and cyber security, along with six other operational areas. The list is included in the final regulatory basis for the rulemaking, posted Nov. 20 on the NRC website. The commission in December 2014 mandated the rulemaking, which is aimed […]

Medical authorities have given the green light for three workers at the Hanford Site in Washington state to return to work after receiving precautionary medical checks for odors reported Tuesday inside the 271-AW instrument building. That’s according to Washington River Protection Solutions, a Hanford contractor responsible for radioactive and chemical waste stored in 177 underground […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is weighing a request from the Omaha Public Power District that would exempt the utility from certain emergency planning requirements for the recently-retired Fort Calhoun nuclear plant in Nebraska. The Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) says now that Fort Calhoun is permanently shut down and defueled it poses less risk and […]

The Energy Department has announced that Portsmouth Site Lead Joel Bradburne has been promoted to deputy manager of the Office of Environmental Management’s Portsmouth/Paducah Project Office (PPPO). The federal office manages both the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site in Ohio as well as the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion plant site in Kentucky. Until a replacement is […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is taking the next step toward revising some of its rules that apply to commercial power reactors that are being retired and entering decommissioning. The NRC, in the Monday edition of the Federal Register, is publishing a regulatory basis to support a rulemaking on decommissioning. With early retirements being announced for […]

Congress has received the Department of Energy’s report on options for disposal of Greater-Than-Class C and Class-C-Like Waste, setting the stage for legislative approval of the department’s preferred alternative. The Energy Department projects the United States will hold roughly 12,000 cubic meters of GTCC low-level radioactive waste and GTCC-like waste by 2083. That would be […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday its rulemaking for nuclear power reactor decommissioning will address both physical and cyber security, along with six other operational areas. The list is included in the final regulatory basis for the rulemaking, posted Monday on the NRC website. The commission in December 2014 mandated the rulemaking, which is aimed […]

A new Mercury Treatment Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., took a step closer to becoming reality Monday as U.S. lawmakers and Energy Department officials participated in a groundbreaking ceremony. The facility is considered necessary for further cleanup at the DOE nuclear-weapon site, because once some of the old buildings […]