Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

There were strong objections on both sides of the border this week to a planned nuclear waste repository near Lake Huron in Canada, even as the facility took another step toward possible regulatory approval. Canada’s Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) said Tuesday it has accepted as complete the latest data tranche from provincial utility Ontario Power Generation […]

By Wayne Barber The U.S. Senate on Monday overwhelmingly approved the nomination of Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Kristine Svinicki to another five-year term on the body. Meanwhile, two other nominees will have to wait until July for a committee vote on confirmation. Svinicki was confirmed in an 88-9 floor vote. Most of the opposition came […]

By Wayne Barber The opinion detailing the reasoning for a federal judge’s June 21 ruling blocking the $367 million merger of Waste Control Specialists and EnergySolutions had not been made public by Friday, a week after the companies walked away from the deal. The office of Judge Sue L. Robinson, of U.S. District Court for […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would get about $950 million in fiscal 2018 under one congressional spending plan: a roughly 5-percent year-over-year budget cut that still provides $30 million to review the Energy Department’s revived application to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent nuclear waste repository. The proposed budget is part of a nearly […]

Veolia Nuclear Solutions said last week it has picked up its first nuclear remediation contract in Canada. The nuclear cleanup services branch of French waste management group has been selected to design, build, and commission a system for remediation of intermediate- and low-level waste stored at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ shuttered Whiteshell Laboratories in Manitoba. The […]

The California Public Utilities Commission must direct Southern California Edison to stop collecting ratepayer revenue in the settlement for the early closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, consumer attorneys said in a new filing Monday. The commission in May 2016 reopened the 2014 settlement, under which ratepayers would pay $3.3 billion of the […]

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked the planned $367 million buyout of Waste Control Specialists by radioactive waste management rival EnergySolutions, raising new questions about the financially troubled company’s plans for interim storage of U.S. commercial nuclear reactor fuel and its future in total. The merger announced in November 2015 would have brought WCS’ waste […]

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 […]

By Wayne Barber In a race to beat the clock, the Senate on Thursday invoked closure on the nomination of Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chair Kristine Svinicki to a new five-year term. Senators approved the cloture measure, effectively ending any debate on the renomination, by a vote of 89-10, according to Congress.gov. An actual vote […]

Energy Secretary Rick Perry raised eyebrows this week by listing facilities in Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas as possible interim storage sites for U.S. nuclear waste, then a day later clarified that his agency has made no decisions on any potential locations. In successive budget hearings before House and Senate Appropriations committees, though, Perry left no […]

By Wayne Barber Now that Entergy has completed its final refueling for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass., the company and other stakeholders are increasingly looking toward plant retirement in 2019 and the decommissioning process. Entergy completed its final refueling in May. On June 15, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held an agency […]

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. […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on June 9 said it has begun the technical review of the Energy Department’s request for a 20-year license extension for storage in Idaho of debris from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. The Energy Department submitted the request by letter on March 6, after which the NRC carried out an acceptance review […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Chair Kristine Svinicki took a step toward a new five-year term Thursday when the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approved her renomination on a voice vote. The vote came just two days after the confirmation hearing for Svinicki and the NRC’s two prospective new members: longtime Capitol Hill staffer Annie […]

By Wayne Barber Duke Energy expects to finish building a dry cask storage facility at the retired Crystal River 3 nuclear plant in Florida sometime this year, and all used nuclear fuel assemblies will be transferred from the fuel pool into dry casks by February 2018, a utility spokesperson said this week. Crews will begin […]

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 […]

Disputes over several pieces of language did not stop the House Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee on Thursday from sending legislation to advance interim and permanent storage of U.S. nuclear waste to the full panel for consideration. Democrats offered three amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017 during a markup session, but […]

The parties to the planned sale of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station have not proven there is sufficient funding available to carry out the full decommissioning of the shuttered facility, the state of Vermont said this week. In a filing Tuesday with the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, the state requested intervention and […]

The deadline to comment on proposed changes to Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rules for power reactors transitioning to decommissioning is June 13. The NRC has already received 178 comments on the issue. An NRC preliminary draft regulatory analysis for the decommissioning rulemaking was filed in the Federal Register in May. It provides options and cost and […]

A local advisory committee on Tuesday urged the Energy Department not to accept shipments of spent nuclear fuel from Germany at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The recommendation was one of three approved during the meeting of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board’s (CAB) Nuclear Materials Committee. The three recommendations all complement positions widely […]

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senators plans to reintroduce a bill that, in its most recent form, would have created a new federal agency dedicated to dealing with nuclear waste, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said during a Wednesday hearing here on Capitol Hill. Alexander would sponsor the legislation along with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). The […]

A shipment of radioactive waste from a nuclear cleanup site in Scotland was sent over the weekend to the U.S. Energy Department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, on its way to Tennessee, the Scottish Sunday Post newspaper reported. The radioactive waste was loaded onto a U.S. Air Force cargo plane and took off from Scotland on […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said this week that workers have removed the reactor pressure vessel from the STURGIS barge, a key step in completion of dismantlement of the radiologically contaminated vessel. Work began in 2015 at the Port of Galveston in Texas to decommission and disassemble the onetime World War II Liberty Ship […]

By Wayne Barber The federal government does not have to return more than $4 million in Nuclear Regulatory Commission fees to Southern Co. subsidiaries Alabama Power and Georgia Power, a Court of Federal Claims judge ruled Monday. In granting summary judgment to the U.S. government in this third round of litigation by the utilities, Judge […]

WASHINGTON — The federal government should prioritize interim storage of spent nuclear fuel at privately licensed sites instead of fast-tracking a permanent disposal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the head of the Senate panel in charge of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s budget said in a hearing Wednesday. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate […]

A bipartisan group of 32 members of the House of Representatives this week asked Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for an assist in the fight against a planned nuclear waste disposal site near Lake Huron in Canada. The letter to the Trump administration’s top diplomat was spurred by new reporting from Canadian utility Ontario Power […]