Reactor Licensing & Regulation

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R- Ky.) and Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) sent a letter to Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Allison Macfarlane last week highlighting the main questions they would like answered at the Energy and Power Subcommittee and Environment and the Economy Subcommittee’s joint hearing on NRC oversight scheduled for next week. The meeting will address […]

NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane responded last week that the NRC will continue to engage with Congressional oversight committees in a transparent and constructive manner in regards to its new sensitive document policy. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) had voiced concerns regarding the NRC’s new rule that would limit the release […]

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 […]

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 […]

A majority of NRC Commissioners have voted to reduce the standard for the time of compliance in its 10 CFR Part 61 waste classification system, RadWaste Monitor has learned. The new revision would reduce the initial time of compliance for a disposal site to 1,000 years, compared to the 10,000 years proposed by the NRC staff in the […]

The omnibus spending bill released this week includes language that would stipulate the Nuclear Regulatory Commission revert its sensitive document policy towards Congressional requests for information back to its 2011 version of the Commission policy. This addition to the bill would cancel the much-maligned sensitive document policy update from September that applied restrictions as to […]

A group consisting of Nye County, Nev., the state of South Carolina, and Aiken County, S.C. filed a petition late last week to appeal Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Allison Macfarlane’s denial of a motion to recuse herself from all decisions concerning Yucca Mountain. According to the filing, “Macfarlane’s extensive independent investigations and published conclusions on […]

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 […]

While the rest of the government prepares for shutdown, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will not be affected until at least a week after the shutdown, due to excess funds from its carry-over fund. NRC spokesperson Eliot Brenner confirmed that no furloughs would go into effect for any employees until the funds had been used, which […]

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 Nuclear Regulatory Commission is preparing for shutdown sometime in the middle of this week if lawmakers can not find a solution to end the government shutdown. NRC spokesman Eliot Brenner said that Wednesday night was the target date for when NRC would begin shutdown operations, but he cautioned that could change depending on the […]

Joining the majority of the federal government, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that yesterday would be its last day of normal operations due to a lack of government appropriations from the shutdown. “Despite our best hopes, the NRC on Thursday will be joining the rest of the federal government in shutting down due to a […]

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 […]

A federal court dismissed motions for an injunction and a writ of mandamus that would force Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Allison Macfarlane to recuse herself from all decisions dealing with Yucca Mountain earlier this week. The group that filed the motions, consisting of Nye County, Nev., the state of South Carolina, and Aiken County, S.C, […]

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 Nuclear Regulatory Commission is seeking public comment on a proposed rule that would strengthen the requirements material control and accounting of special nuclear material. The proposed rule adds stricter reporting standards for licensees that have 350 grams or more of special nuclear material, and it also clarifies previous language. The public comment period will […]

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 […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is asking for feedback on a potential revision to the enforcement policy that would allow individuals to be banned from NRC-licensed activities for less than one year in some cases, and expands the use of civil penalties in cases involving deliberate misconduct by individuals, according to a Federal Register notice issued […]

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission advisory board recommended in a letter to commissioners late last week that a new rule be changed to require low-level radioactive waste sites to analyze disposal out to 1,000 years, rather than the 10,000 years currently in the draft version. The Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards said requiring site-specific analyses with […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week released its draft environmental analysis in support of a revised Waste Confidence Determination, with staff remaining on track to have a new determination in place in 2014. The commissioners approved staff’s draft, and asked for a few additional details to be added before the document is released to the […]

While the Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted on its Draft Waste Confidence Decision earlier this month, issues raised in the votes will “take some time” to resolve, NRC Commissioner George Apostolakis said yesterday. Last year, the NRC set a two-year schedule to update its waste confidence decision and complete an Environmental Impact Statement after a court […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not met all requirements in the preparation of Environmental Impact Statements, according to an NRC Office of Inspector General report released yesterday. “The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has identified areas of noncompliance with 10 CFR Part 51 relative to disclosure and public involvement,” states the report. The issues […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has named Charles Stancil to be senior resident inspector at the Nuclear Fuel Services fuel facility in Erwin, Tenn. Stancil previously served for seven years as an NRC resident inspector at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama. The NRC has cited and fined the NFS facility as a result of […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has named Charles Stancil to be senior resident inspector at the Nuclear Fuel Services fuel facility in Erwin, Tenn. Stancil previously served for seven years as an NRC resident inspector at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama. The NRC has cited and fined the NFS facility as a result of […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday agreed to withdraw a proposed $36,400 civil penalty for employment discrimination due to safety issues at Shaw Nuclear Services after the NRC worked out a settlement with parent company Chicago Bridge & Iron. The two violations at the Shaw plant involved a quality assurance supervisor who was fired after raising […]

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), ranking member on the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, and Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.) released a proposed bill yesterday that aims to provide “checks and balances” within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The bill, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Reorganization Act, would give more power to the other Commissioners and weaken the […]

Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) criticized a Nuclear Regulatory Commission draft study that said spent nuclear fuel pools were not at risk from severe earthquakes in a letter to NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane early this week. The letter also points to a peer-reviewed study from 2003, co-written by Macfarlane, which concluded that air-cooling would be “relatively […]

If the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing activities are negatively impacted as a result of automatic federal budget cuts, it could have serious repercussions for the U.S. economy, NRC Commissioner Kristine Svinicki said at a U.S. Nuclear Infrastructure Council meeting yesterday. Last month NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane said the automatic federal spending cuts could potentially impact […]

When designing fuel, the management responsibilities at the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle should be kept in mind, Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Allison Macfarlane said at the agency’s Fuel Cycle Exchange meeting yesterday. “With all this discussion about identifying areas of common ground and broadening cooperation across industries, I believe we must also […]