Interim Storage & Waste Disposal

RadWaste Monitor will not publish next week in observance of the Christmas holiday, nor the week after in observance of New Year’s Day. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Friday, Jan. 8. Happy holidays!

Had it not been for the coronavirus upending operations at nuclear power plants across the country, the highlight of 2020 might have been the Donald Trump administration giving up on Yucca Mountain. In February, with campaign season in full swing, Trump leveraged his influential Twitter account to make a swing-state appeal to Nevada: one that […]

Dr. Fred Dilger, a staunch Yucca Mountain critic, has been named Executive Director of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects by Gov. Steve Sisolak.  “Dr. Dilger has been at the forefront in our State’s efforts in nuclear waste policy and in halting the Yucca Mountain Project,” Sisolak tweeted Monday evening.  Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects/Nuclear Waste […]

Dr. Fred Dilger, a staunch Yucca Mountain critic, has been named Executive Director of Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects by Gov. Steve Sisolak.  “Dr. Dilger has been at the forefront in our State’s efforts in nuclear waste policy and in halting the Yucca Mountain Project,” Sisolak tweeted Monday evening.  Nevada’s Agency for Nuclear Projects/Nuclear Waste […]

By John Stang Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board is examining geologic research conducted in Europe for nuclear waste repositories in part to get a head start on such studies if the Yucca Mountain project is permanently rejected.  The board, an independent advisory and review panel, keeps tabs on the nation’s radioactive waste repository and spent […]

Some residents of South Bruce, Ontario, the pop. 5,000 potential host site of Canada’s sole permanent geological repository, don’t approve of or don’t understand the government’s plan to store waste there, according to a poll. South Bruce is one of two potential sites being considered by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), the Canadian agency […]

President-elect Joe Biden will announce his Secretary of Energy soon, according to his newly appointed chief of staff Ron Klain.  Likely contenders include people who served in the Department of Energy during the Obama administration, including former secretary Ernest Moniz, Arun Majumdar and Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall. Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee is another rumoredly potential pick. […]

The Nuclear Waste Fund held $42.6 billion in U.S. Treasury securities at the end of the 2020 fiscal year, up from $40.9 billion last year, according to this year’s annual independent Department of Energy audit. Accounting firm KPMG performs the audit each year under the DOE’s Office of Inspector General. The federal fund is meant […]

RadWaste Monitor will not be published on Nov. 27 in observance of the Thanksgiving Day holiday. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Friday, Dec. 4.

One of the heads of the advisory group overseeing the decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee power plant wants to retract the group’s endorsement to send the plant’s spent fuel to an interim storage facility.  Vice Chair Lissa Weinmann doesn’t believe a letter signed in 2015 by the board’s former chair is representative of the current […]

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a bill that would require the Department of Energy secretary to present an annual report on the U.S. inventory of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Starting in January 2022, the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act of 2020 (ANIA) would require DOE to report: how much money the […]

Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization has been charged by the federal government to develop a plan for dealing with the country’s supply of low- and intermediate-level waste. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is a non-profit established in 2002 in accordance with Canada’s Nuclear Fuel Waste Act to find a solution for the permanent storage […]

One of the heads of the advisory group overseeing the decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee power plant wants to retract the group’s endorsement to send the plant’s spent fuel to an interim storage facility.  Vice Chair Lissa Weinmann doesn’t believe a letter signed in 2015 by the board’s former chair is representative of the current […]

Deep Isolation has finished its $20 million Series A fundraising efforts, the Berkeley, California company announced Tuesday. This capital investment venture has been underway since January. That money is intended to help line up a targeted $50 million worth of sales and contracts. On top of this amount, Deep Isolation has lined up roughly $5 […]

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a bill that would require the Department of Energy secretary to present an annual report on the U.S. inventory of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Starting in January 2022, the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act of 2020 (ANIA) would require DOE to report: how much money the […]

Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization has been charged by the federal government to develop a plan for dealing with the country’s supply of low- and intermediate-level waste. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is a non-profit established in 2002 in accordance with Canada’s Nuclear Fuel Waste Act to find a solution for the permanent storage […]

President-elect Joe Biden unveiled his transition team this week, and though the landing team bound for the Department of Energy was 20 deep and stacked with nuclear-savvy ex-DOEers, the announcement revealed little about the incoming chief-executive’s thinking on nuclear waste issues. On the website, President-elect Biden outlines plans to drive cost reductions in clean energy […]

In a budget bill released Tuesday, Senate appropriators agreed with their House colleagues that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should get about $850 million in fiscal year 2021, with $27.5 million for a non-Yucca-Mountain consolidated nuclear-waste storage facility. The proposal released Tuesday by the Senate Appropriations Committee recommends the requested $849.9 million for the Nuclear Regulatory […]

The Senate unveiled its appropriations bill this week and Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) got what they asked for: No Yucca Mountain funding this year. The U.S. senators wrote a letter in opposition to the facility to the Senate committee tasked with appropriating the funds Nov. 6. “The Yucca Mountain site […]

In a budget bill released Tuesday, Senate appropriators agreed with their House colleagues that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should get about $850 million in fiscal year 2021, with $27.5 million for a non-Yucca-Mountain consolidated nuclear-waste storage facility. The proposal released Tuesday by the Senate Appropriations Committee recommends the requested $849.9 million for the Nuclear Regulatory […]

With the presidential election in the rearview and Congress preparing for a lameduck session that will include budget negotiations, Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) asked energy and water appropriations leaders not to include money for Yucca Mountain in any 2021 funding bills. “The Yucca Mountain site is both a geologically and […]

Holtec International and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy have signed an agreement to implement Holtec’s HI-STORM UMAX dry cask storage canisters in Japan.  The technology provides an alternative to the typical spent fuel dry storage technologies currently used in Japan, a Holtec press statement said. Japanese storage technologies are challenged by unique conditions such as regulator-mandated extremely […]

Holtec International and Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy have signed an agreement to implement Holtec’s HI-STORM UMAX dry cask storage canisters in Japan. The technology provides an alternative to the typical spent fuel dry storage technologies currently used in Japan, a Holtec press statement said. Japanese storage technologies are challenged by unique conditions such as regulator-mandated extremely […]

Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) is bidding farewell to Congress after a more than 20 year stint as an Illinois representative, and he says Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) could be one of the congressmen to replace him as the lower chamber’s main advocate for a permanent nuclear-waste disposal site. Shimkus credited Duncan for helping secure the […]

Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) is bidding farewell to Congress after a more than 20-year stint as an Illinois representative, and he says Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) could replace him as the lower chamber’s main advocate for a permanent nuclear-waste disposal site. Shimkus credited Duncan for helping secure a $600 million settlement the federal government paid […]

Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization will begin preparing borehole sites this year at the South Bruce site in the province of Ontario and plans to begin drilling next spring, according to a recent update to the South Bruce Community Liaison Committee. South Bruce is one of two sites the organization is considering to build a […]

By John Stang Transportation, potential terrorism and environmental justice were among the concerns voiced Thrusday at web-based public hearing on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s draft environmental impact statement on Interim Storage Partners’ proposal to build a spent nuclear fuel storage site in western Texas.  “We don’t want high-level radioactive wastes dumped in our home,” said […]

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Democrat New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham may come from ideologically opposite sides of the spectrum, but now they have at least one gripe in common: neither is interested in hosting a nuclear waste storage facility in their state.  Abbott wrote a letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday […]

In a scathing court filing this week, Holtec International slammed Lacey Township’s reasoning for rejecting a key part of the company’s plan to expand spent fuel storage space for the shuttered Oyster Creek power plant in New Jersey. The Florida-based company sued the township and its planning board in the U.S. District Court for New […]

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Democrat New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham may come from ideologically opposite sides of the spectrum, but now they have at least one gripe in common: neither is interested in hosting a nuclear waste storage facility in their state.  Abbott wrote a letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday […]