Decommissioning

The Vermont Public Utility Commission is giving extra time to the town where the now-retired Vermont Yankee nuclear plant is located to file testimony on the station’s proposed sale from Entergy to NorthStar Group Services. The PUC on Tuesday agreed to the request from the town of Vernon’s Planning and Development Commission for two additional […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Aug. 16 that it has completed its inspection of the dry cask storage facilities at Entergy’s retired Vermont Yankee nuclear plant and found no significant safety concerns. The NRC in May and June inspected work on the second independent spent fuel storage installation being built at the plant. Inspectors observed […]

A report from the newly established Energy Futures Initiative chronicles the growing number of U.S. nuclear plants that are retiring long before their Nuclear Regulatory Commission license expires. In the last six years alone, five nuclear power stations totaling 5,000 megawatts have closed in Florida, California, Vermont, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. The United States maintains a […]

The contractor in charge of cleanup of the retired fast-reactor research and development facility at Dounreay, Scotland, said Friday it expects next year to select a subcontractor to demolish the country’s oldest nuclear reactor. A formal notice for bids to manage teardown of the Dounreay Materials Test Reactor (DMTR) will be posted in the Official Journal […]

URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), the managing contractor for cleanup of the East Tennessee Technology Park at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site, is quickly moving forward on the teardown of the Poplar Creek facilities. The facilities are a network of 23 buildings constructed in the 1940s and 1950s to support uranium enrichment operations at […]

Progressing toward the end of decontamination and decommissioning of an industrial-scale uranium-enrichment demonstration in Ohio, uranium fuel broker Centrus Energy Corp. saw its quarterly losses widen and revenue shrink in the three months ended June 30. The results were not a surprise to the company, CEO Daniel Poneman, the former U.S. deputy energy secretary, said in […]

By Wayne Barber Entergy’s efforts to sell the retired Vermont Yankee nuclear plant after its retirement could set a pattern for the nuclear power plant operator, Chairman and CEO Leo Denault said Wednesday. “As we move toward the complete wind-down of our merchant operations we will continue to look for opportunities to divest our nuclear […]

Demolition began Wednesday on the Hanford Site’s Z Plant, the main processing building at the Plutonium Finishing Plant. “Starting the work on the main processing facility complex marks the final step in demolition” of the Plutonium Finishing Plant, which was used during the Cold War to shape the material for use in nuclear weapons, said […]

Edison International is “intellectually open” to revising the $4.7 billion settlement for the early closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) that best serves its customer and ownership base, President and CEO Pedro Pizarro said Thursday. Speaking to financial analysts during the company’s quarterly earnings call, Pizarro also made it clear the utility […]

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has issued a final contingent hazardous waste permit modification for the Bannister Federal Complex in Kansas City, which was previously used for the manufacture of non-nuclear components for nuclear weapons. A 225-acre portion of the old complex is set to be transferred to a private developer and redeveloped for […]

The 200-foot-tall ventilation stack at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant crashed to the ground Saturday in an explosive demolition. It was another step toward bringing the plant down to slab on grade by the end of September as required by the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) covering cleanup at the former plutonium production complex in Washington […]

Contractors from CTI and Associates Inc. are finishing the final paperwork on a demolished switchyard at the old Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Tennessee. Last week, CTI hauled the last pieces of the switchyard away from the site, now called the East Tennessee Technology Park. Constructed in 1944, the 4-acre K-732 switchyard was one […]

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has issued a final contingent hazardous waste permit modification for the Bannister Federal Complex in Kansas City, a site that was previously used for the manufacture of non-nuclear components for nuclear weapons. A 225-acre portion of the old complex is set to be transferred to a private developer and […]

The 200-foot-tall ventilation stack at the Hanford Site’s Plutonium Finishing Plant crashed to the ground Saturday in an explosive demolition. It was another step toward bringing the plant down to slab on grade by the end of September as required by a Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) milestone. Demolition work at the plant had shifted in recent […]

NorthStar Group Services is filling out its team for decommissioning of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station, even as it faces continued questions about its capacity to carry off the project. The New York City-based decommissioning specialist hopes by the first quarter of 2018 to secure state and federal regulatory approval to acquire the plant that […]

The remaining portions of the site that once housed the old Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Tennessee will be fully remediated within three years, well ahead of the original schedule, according to Ken Rueter, president of Energy Department site cleanup contractor URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR). The last Manhattan Project-era uranium enrichment building, K-27, came […]

AREVA Nuclear Materials said Tuesday it had signed a deal to extract and ship the reactor pressure vessel and internal reactor parts at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station for prospective plant owner NorthStar Group Services. The New York-based decommissioning specialist hopes by the first quarter of next year to secure state and federal regulatory […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday it has levied a $7,000 fine against a Puerto Rico-based medical diagnostics company for failing to carry out mandatory decommissioning activities after its NRC license expired. Somascan Inc. was licensed to employ radiopharmaceuticals and sealed sources in providing outpatient diagnostic and therapeutic medical services at its facility in San […]

Nearly two months after a decades-old tunnel containing irradiated equipment was found to have partially collapsed at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state, the Energy Department said Friday a similar tunnel is also at risk of collapse. Hanford was rocked May 9 when personnel discovered a 20-foot by 20-foot section of Tunnel 1 […]

By Wayne Barber Dominion Energy and contractor NAC International have finished moving spent fuel at the retired Kewaunee Power Station in Wisconsin into dry storage, the utility announced last week. That included transporting nearly 900 fuel assemblies this year alone from the spent fuel pool to the nuclear power plant’s dry-cask storage pad, a Dominion […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff last week approved the request from power company Entergy to use a facility in Idaho as a backup location for storage of wastewater from the shuttered Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station. Staff at the regulator in April issued an environmental assessment that found there would be “no significant impact” in a […]

Dominion Energy has finished moving spent fuel at the retired Kewaunee nuclear plant in Wisconsin into dry cask storage. The 556-megawatt Kewaunee Power Station closed in May 2013 after nearly 40 years of operation. Shortly after retirement, the plant still had fuel in both spent fuel pools as well as a generally licensed independent spent […]

By Wayne Barber Four Northeast states are calling for better consideration of states’ needs in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decommissioning rulemaking. The rulemaking, due for completion in 2019, is intended to improve the process for decommissioning of nuclear power reactors, notably by limiting the need for regulatory exemptions on emergency preparedness and other operational matters […]

Swedish nuclear power provider OKG said this week it would soon start work to move spent fuel from its recently closed Oskarshamn Nuclear Power Plant reactor Unit 1 into interim storage. The reactor had been scheduled to end operations on June 29 following 45 years of power production. However, it will not be reactivated after […]

The California Public Utilities Commission must direct utility Southern California Edison to stop collecting ratepayer revenue in the settlement for the early closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, attorneys representing one such ratepayer said in a new filing Monday. The commission in May 2016 reopened the 2014 settlement, under which ratepayers would pay […]

The state of Nevada this week urged the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to dismiss Texas’ lawsuit demanding that the federal government move ahead with the licensing and development of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. Judge Patrick Higginbotham in May authorized Nevada to intervene in the lawsuit filed in March against the U.S. […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff on Tuesday authorized shipment by road of various forms of waste from the shuttered American Centrifuge project in Ohio to the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site. The approval was signed on the same day that the NRC posted a Federal Register notice of its finding of no significant impact from the […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff on Tuesday authorized shipment by road of various forms of waste from the shuttered American Centrifuge project in Ohio to the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site. The approval was signed on the same day that the NRC posted a Federal Register notice of its finding of no significant impact from the […]

The last of the 94 vertically buried pipes filled with radioactive waste have been removed from the Hanford Site’s 618-10 Burial Ground, and other cleanup work there is nearing completion, according to the Department of Energy and cleanup contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. Former river corridor remediation contractor Washington Closure Hanford developed a plan […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff on Tuesday authorized shipment by road of various forms of waste from the shuttered American Centrifuge project in Ohio to the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site. The approval was signed on the same day that the NRC posted a Federal Register notice of its finding of no significant impact […]