Decommissioning

The spread of radioactive and hazardous contamination in the Hanford Site’s REDOX processing complex is escalating, according to a new Department of Energy engineering evaluation and cost analysis. The plant is not expected to be demolished until about 2032, but might be left standing longer due to its proximity in central Hanford to the 222-S Laboratory. […]

San Diego Gas & Electric Co. on Dec. 27 requested that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) authorize $84 million in disbursements from the San Onofre Generating Station decommissioning trust funds for expenses projected in 2017. The request follows a separate request from plant majority owner Southern California Edison, which asked that CPUC authorize $302.7 million in […]

Southern California Edison announced Tuesday that it has selected an AECOM-EnergySolutions partnership as its general contractor for about $1 billion in dismantlement work for the $4.4 billion decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). The news follows a 10-month selection process in which a Bechtel-Westinghouse team and Team Holtec also competed for the […]

Japan is calling it quits on the Monju prototype reactor, an experimental, costly, and failed system that officials had hoped would serve a critical role in national nuclear fuel recycling. According to BBC News, the reactor was operational for only 250 days of its 22-year lifespan and cost Japan $9 billion. The Japanese government formally […]

Southern California Edison (SCE) on Tuesday requested that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) authorize $302.7 million in disbursements from the San Onofre Generating Station (SONGS) decommissioning trust funds for expenses projected in 2017. The two remaining reactor units operating at SONGS were retired in 2013 after replacement steam generator issues proved too expensive to […]

The U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and partners are offering £3 million ($3.8 million) in investment for nuclear decommissioning technology innovation projects, according to an announcement Wednesday. NDA has partnered with Sellafield Ltd. and Innovate UK, and the group is seeking projects that integrate technologies into a single platform or a small number of platforms. They […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still waiting for Centrus Energy to submit a cost and schedule estimate for decommissioning an industrial-scale uranium-enrichment demonstration plant in Piketon, Ohio. “We expect to submit the plan in the coming weeks,” Centrus spokesman Jeremy Derryberry said by email Monday. Centrus, the former United States Enrichment Corp., was to have submitted […]

Entergy has notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that 885 spent fuel panels at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Massachusetts are susceptible to degradation that could challenge their effectiveness by September 2017. The panels act as neutron absorbers. A decline in their effective use increases the possibility of fissioning reactions in spent fuel pools, which […]

The House of Representatives on Tuesday introduced the second stopgap spending bill of the 2017 fiscal year, under which federal agencies including the Department of Energy would keep their fiscal 2016 spending levels through most of April. If passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama as expected, the bill will extend fiscal 2016 […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still waiting for Centrus Energy to submit a cost and schedule estimate for decommissioning an industrial-scale uranium-enrichment demonstration plant in Piketon, Ohio. “We expect to submit the plan in the coming weeks,” Centrus spokesman Jeremy Derryberry said by email Monday. Centrus, the former United States Enrichment Corp., was to have submitted […]

Europe on Tuesday celebrated sealing off the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant’s destroyed Reactor 4 with a giant metal arch, as authorities look to secure the Ukrainian site in an environmentally stable condition by November 2017. According to Tuesday’s announcement from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which managed funds for the 1.5 billion-euro ($1.6 […]

Global engineering company Amec Foster Wheeler said Tuesday it will lead a team of firms that will study the optimum means for decommissioning the ITER fusion device now being built in southern France. The yearlong project will encompass “a concept-level study of the duration, sequencing and cost for dismantling the ITER machine, once it comes to the […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday began its third and final increased oversight inspection at the troubled Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts. In a conference call Monday with reporters, agency managers leading the inspection said there are no immediate safety concerns at the plant, but that the team of about 20 NRC officials will […]

Europe on Tuesday celebrated sealing off the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant’s destroyed Reactor 4 with a giant metal arch, as authorities look to secure the Ukrainian site in an environmentally stable condition by November 2017. According to Tuesday’s announcement from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which managed funds for the 1.5 billion-euro ($1.6 […]

Friends of the Earth on Tuesday requested that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) enforce an emergency hold on an agenda item to further consider the environmental group’s compensation for intervening in CPUC’s investigation of the settlement for the 2013 closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. CPUC announced in April it was reopening the SONGS […]

The U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) on Wednesday released a quarterly performance report for NDA sites managed by Sellafield Ltd., Magnox Ltd., Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd., and Low Level Waste Repository Ltd. The quarterly progress report covers performance targets from April to June 2016 for site decommissioning and remediation; spent fuels; nuclear materials; integrated waste […]

The Spent Fuel Management Division of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled its 2016 Regulatory Conference for Dec. 7-8 in Rockville, Md. The event “will allow NRC staff, industry representatives and stakeholders to discuss regulatory and technical issues related to spent fuel storage, decommissioning and the transportation of radioactive material,” the agency said Monday […]

Centrus Energy Corp., of Bethesda, Md., is stretching out decommissioning and decontamination of the American Centrifuge Project site in Pike County, Ohio, by more than a year, cutting staff and slowing the pace of work there, the company’s chief executive said in a Thursday conference call. “The schedule of that work has changed after some […]

It will take more than a year longer than lately expected for Centrus Energy Corp., of Bethesda, Md., to decontaminate and decommission the industrial-scale uranium enrichment demonstration in Pike County, Ohio, the company wrote In a third-quarter earnings statement released after market close Wednesday. The American Centrifuge Project was shut down in October 2015 after […]

U.K. nuclear company Magnox Ltd. said Monday it has retrieved the first fuel skip from the Oldbury Site’s cooling pond, marking the start of a campaign to clear 60 tons of waste from the pond before draining and decontamination. Located in South Gloucestershire, the Oldbury nuclear power plant operated between 1967 and 2012. Magnox used […]

Energy Department contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. on Tuesday began demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Hanford Site in Richland, Wash., beginning with the south canyon airlocks of the plant’s Plutonium Reclamation Facility. Demolition had been slated to start Monday but was delayed by high winds. Tuesday was another windy day on the central plateau, but CH2m […]

Energy Department contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. on Tuesday began demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at the Hanford Site in Richland, Wash., beginning with the south canyon airlocks of the plant’s Plutonium Reclamation Facility. Demolition had been slated to start Monday but was delayed by high winds. Tuesday was another windy day on the central plateau, but CH2m […]

The Energy Department’s prime cleanup contractor on the former West Valley spent-fuel reprocessing facility in upstate New York on Wednesday shipped the first of three massive loads of contaminated vitrification equipment on its way to a private disposal facility in Texas. Lynette Bennett, a spokeswoman for CH2M Hill BWXT West Valley, confirmed Thursday the equipment […]

By Dennis Carr It was the proverbial mouse that roared: The Feed Materials Production Center in Ohio, a seemingly insignificant 1,050-acre Department of Energy uranium metals plant nestled between farmland and cow pastures just 18 miles northwest of downtown Cincinnati. It was puny by DOE standards, where sites like Hanford, Savannah River, Oak Ridge, and […]

One of the Hanford Site’s longest-running cleanup projects has been completed, leaving the Columbia River better protected from contamination from carbon tetrachloride. The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed that a plume of the carcinogenic chemical in central Hanford has been cleaned up to legal standards after more than three years of monitoring to ensure that […]

One of the Hanford Site’s longest-running cleanup projects has been completed, leaving the Columbia River better protected from contamination from carbon tetrachloride. The Environmental Protection Agency has agreed that a plume of the carcinogenic chemical in central Hanford has been cleaned up to legal standards after more than three years of monitoring to make sure […]

A $10.5 million grant from the Department of Energy will finally enable the University of Arkansas to move ahead with demolition of the Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) facility, which has gone unused for 30 years. The funding will pay for a series of cleanup operations culminating in decommissioning and dismantlement of the facility […]

The last major activity is underway at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant before demolition starts on the facility’s large, central building and attached annexes. In late September a crane removed the topmost part of the roof of the Plutonium Reclamation Facility, a fifth and sixth floor rising above the rest of the plant. Since […]

The University of Arkansas in Fayetteville has received a $10.5 million grant from the Department of Energy for a host of cleanup operations for the Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) near West Fork, Ark. SEFOR was an experimental fast breeder reactor used in the late 1960s for testing the suggested inherent safety features of the oxide fuel/sodium […]

The U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority released a report Friday laying out 17 options for improving management of the United Kingdom’s so-called problematic radioactive waste. Problematic wastes are defined as those that are unsuitable for existing processing facilities. The materials include: intermediate-level waste; radium/thorium-contaminated waste; bulk fines/particulates; reactive metals; and some 30 other materials. Some of these […]