Vol. 9, No. 61 Deal close? DOE, NMED get 90 more days for Los Alamos settlement talks
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Vitrification & Grout
Hanford’s second melter comes online
The Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state has brought online the second melter at the multibillion-dollar facility designed to solidify liquid radioactive waste into a solid glass-like form, the agency said this week. DOE said in a Tuesday press release that the second 300-ton melter at Bechtel’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant has […]
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Interim Storage & Waste Disposal
Yucca alive in House committee; Dem leader prefers interim storage; another lawmaker says action on spent fuel could take til after election
Party-line divisions about future spent nuclear fuel policies emerged in a Wednesday House hearing, during which one lawmaker said work on the issue could stretch into the next Congress. “I’m not for interim storage,” Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said during the hearing of the House Energy climate, and grid security subcommittee, which he chairs. “I […]
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Decommissioning
More Palisades decommissioning funds misappropriated, enviros say in meeting with NRC staff
The company that was to decommission the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan inappropriately withdrew more than $160 million from the plant’s decommissioning trust fund and did not pay it back, environmental and anti-nuclear activists said Wednesday in a meeting with NRC staff. The activists said Wednesday that they had identified in public reports filed […]
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Budget & Policy
Rep. Bush urges House vote on radiation compensation bill
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) last week called on House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to bring to set a vote on S.3853, a bill to extend the Radiation Exposure Compensation Reauthorization Act, before it expires June 7. The Senate has done its job, Bush said, passing the bill by more than a two-thirds margin […]
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Cleanup & Remediation
COVID-19 vaccination was ‘reasonable precaution,’ UCOR says in wrongful termination suit
The Amentum-led prime at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee told a federal appeals’ court this week its COVID-19 vaccination mandate fulfilled a contractual obligation to take “reasonable precautions” to protect worker health. UCOR’s contract with DOE, awarded in July 2010, required the Amentum-Jacobs joint venture to “take all reasonable precautions to […]