Interim Storage & Waste Disposal

The Department of Energy filed an appeal this week with the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to extend the time period it has to decide if it wants to file for a rehearing in the Nuclear Waste Fee case. Two weeks ago, the court decided that DOE had to halt the collection of […]

The Senate’s Nuclear Waste Administration Act, originally planned for markup before the holiday break, will be pushed to 2014 due to scheduling conflicts. “Sen. Wyden had aimed for sometime before the end of the year,” Senate Energy and Natural Resources spokesman Keith Chu said. “Obviously, with the schedule in the next two weeks, it’s going […]

Both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Staff and the state of Nevada argued this week in separate filings to the NRC that a group of local and state governments’ motion for reconsideration regarding the Yucca Mountain re-licensing Order did not have the merits needed for reconsideration. The group, made up of Nye County, Nev., the state […]

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Environment and Economy Subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-Ill.) are looking for answers concerning the Department of Energy’s willingness to implement the court’s recent decisions upholding the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in a letter sent to Secretary Ernest Moniz yesterday. In August, the court issued a writ […]

An Inspector General’s report on the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Waste Fund revealed that the Department accurately reported the amount of money in the Fund. The audit, conducted by KMPG and overseen by the Inspector General, showed that the NWF holds $36.6 billion in securities purchased from the U.S. government in the 2013 fiscal year, […]

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said yesterday that he plans on moving the Nuclear Waste Administration Act to markup in January when the Senate reconvenes after the holiday break. Previously, Wyden had said he wanted to mark up the bill in December, but a tight legislative schedule bumped the markup until the […]

The Department of Energy filed for a re-hearing en banc late last week in the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit concerning the court’s decision to reduce the Nuclear Waste Fund fee to zero. DOE argued that the three-judge panel’s unanimous ruling places it in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” […]

Mitigation strategies and security issues with spent fuel pools dominated the questions posed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at a briefing held yesterday to discuss the NRC staff’s recent report that recommended that spent fuel pools need not expedite transfer of used fuel to dry cask storage. The line of questioning from a majority of […]

he Yucca Mountain Safety Evaluation Reports should be completed and released by January 2015, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission Deputy Director of Operations Michael Weber in a talk given yesterday at the 29th Annual Institute of Nuclear Materials Management’s Spent Fuel Management Seminar. Weber also said that the NRC would release each SER as soon as […]

Judges from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals grilled Department of Energy attorneys yesterday during oral arguments in a suit filed by the National Association of Nuclear Utility Commissioners regarding the collection of fees for the Nuclear Waste Fund. The line of questioning focused on whether or not DOE was in violation of the Nuclear […]

A bi-partisan group of 81 Congressmen sent a letter to Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Allison Macfarlane late last week, asking for the speedy completion of the Safety Evaluation Reports for the proposed Yucca mountain nuclear waste repository. An August federal court decision issued a mandamus for the NRC to complete the licensing review, which was […]

The first of 12 public meetings on the Waste Confidence proposed rule and generic environmental impact statement will be held Oct. 1 at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Rockville headquarters. The NRC appears to be standing behind its 2010 determination that spent fuel can be safely stored for 60 years. The draft revised rule states, “The […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided not to appeal a Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling that compelled the Commission to complete the licensing review for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository that had been stopped in 2010. While the NRC will not join the appeal process, the state of Nevada filed a […]

The group appealing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Allison Macfarlane’s denial of a recusal motion is seeking an injunction concerning her participation in Yucca Mountain decisions in exchange for a time extension to respond to the appeal. The NRC had originally filed a motion for a time extension earlier this week, but a filing from […]

A large group of stakeholder comments called for the release of the Yucca Mountain Safety Evaluation Reports as the first step the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should take to re-start the license review for the nuclear waste repository. The comments come in response to an Order issued by the NRC asking for input into how to […]

Westinghouse Electric Company announced earlier this week that it has received a contract from ENRESA (Empresa Nacional de Residuos Radiactivos), Spain’s nuclear waste and decommissioning agency, to provide engineering services on the construction of an interim waste facility to host spent nuclear fuel and high level waste. The multi-million dollar contract calls for Westinghouse to revise […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced late last week that it has postponed two of the Waste Confidence public meetings scheduled for this week as the government shutdown begins to affect the Commission’s day-to-day operations. The meetings, scheduled for Oct. 7 in San Luis Obispo, Calif. and Oct. 9 in Carlsbad, Calif., were meant to discuss […]

A new survey has found that a majority of Americans would prefer a corporate organization rather than a new independent federal agency to handle a nuclear waste storage facility. The survey, sponsored by the Nuclear Energy Institute, found that 57 percent voted in favor of a corporate organization that would report to a board of […]

The group that filed an appeal for a writ of mandamus compelling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete the licensing review for Yucca Mountain filed a response to the state of Nevada’s appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit yesterday for a re-hearing en banc on the court’s decision to issue […]

Two researchers from a 2003 study criticizing the storage of spent fuel in pools re-asserted their claims that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should quicken the process of moving the spent fuel to dry cask storage. The researchers, Gordon Thompson, executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, and Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at […]

Two Michigan U.S. senators wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry yesterday, asking for his intervention to stop a proposed Canadian nuclear waste repository located near the Great Lakes. The senators, Debbie Stabenow (D- Mich.) and Carl Levin (D- Mich.), asked Kerry to talk with the International Joint Commission, a board set […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has rescheduled three out of five Waste Confidence public meetings that were postponed during the government shutdown. According to a blog post by Keith McConnell, director of the Waste Confidence directorate, the meetings in Illinois and California will be held in mid-November. The Oak Brook, Ill. meeting will […]

A group of Republican U.S. senators late last week joined the list of stakeholders calling on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to release the Safety Evaluation Reports for Yucca Mountain in a letter to NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane. The group was signed by Jeff Sessions (R- Ala.), David Vitter (R- La.), John Barrasso (R- Wyo.), Mike […]

A federal court yesterday denied an appeal for a re-hearing en banc for the court’s Aug. 13 decision to issue a writ of mandamus that compelled the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete the licensing review for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The appeal, filed by the state of Nevada, asked for the Court […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced yesterday the new dates for the postponed Waste Confidence meetings in Ohio and Minnesota along with an extension of the public comment period for an extra three weeks. The new dates and time extension were attributed to delays caused from the government shutdown two weeks ago. The two meetings in […]

The Department of Energy and the state of Nevada plan to hold two public meetings next month on the Department’s plans to dispose of a portion of the uranium-233 stockpile at Oak Ridge at the Nevada National Security Site. The 403 canisters of uranium-233, known as the Consolidated Edison Uranium Solidification Project material, have been […]

New York’s attorney general Eric T. Schneiderman challenged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposed Waste Confidence ruling due to its lack of site-specific analysis last night in a prepared statement given by an assistant attorney general at the NRC’s Waste Confidence meeting in Tarrytown, N.Y. “Attorney General Schneiderman led the successful challenge in 2012 to the […]

The delivery of four Type-B shipment casks to EnergySolutions–capable of shipping Class B and C low-level radioactive waste–should occur at the beginning of next year, EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said. “We are expecting all 4 casks to be delivered no later than early Q1 of 2014,” he said in an email. EnergySolutionsowns and operates the […]

The lack of a final disposition path for U.S. spent nuclear fuel may be hindering U.S. nonproliferation efforts, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz suggested yesterday. In remarks at this year’s American Nuclear Society winter meeting, held in Washington, Moniz said that the United States’ current lack of a final disposal plan for spent fuel constrained […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Allison Macfarlane remained mum yesterday at the American Nuclear Society’s Winter Meeting on the Commission’s strategy for restarting the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository license review.  Macfarlane told reporters after her speech at the meeting that no decisions have been made yet. The Commission is still considering all the information it […]