Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

The Trump administration is proposing a modest increase in funding from current levels for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to leaked data that appears to outline its spending plan for the next budget year. The regulator would receive just over $939.1 million for salaries and expenses in fiscal 2018, which begins Oct. 1. That would […]

By Wayne Barber Power provider Entergy is wrestling with regulatory issues for the spent fuel pool at its Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in its latest quarterly report for the Massachusetts facility. Entergy has announced plans to retire the 680-megawatt Pilgrim reactor by June 1, 2019, primarily due to continued low […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff is recommending allowing nuclear plant operators to spend money from their decommissioning trust funds on certain separate expenses without having to obtain authorization from the federal agency. The recommendation, if enacted by the NRC as part of a larger rulemaking, would still require that nuclear utilities ensure their accounts maintain a […]

The seller and buyer for the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station should not be allowed to change certain commitments for decommissioning and site restoration at the shuttered plant, the nongovernmental New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution said in a motion filed on May 5 with a state regulator. The Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) must approve the […]

The parent company of Waste Control Specialists (WCS) on Tuesday suggested deep doubts about the likelihood of securing a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license to build and operate an interim spent fuel storage facility for spent reactor fuel. The statement from holding company Valhi Inc. comes as its subsidiary is said to be wrestling with ongoing […]

Nuclear remediation and waste treatment provider Perma-Fix Environmental Services on Wednesday reported improvements in both revenue and operating losses for the first quarter of 2017. The Atlanta-based company brought in $12.7 million in revenue for the three months ended on March 31, up from $10 million in the same quarter of 2017. Revenue in the […]

AECOM, a near-ubiquitous presence on the Energy Department’s legacy nuclear cleanup sites, said this week that operating income at its Management Services division sank 55 percent year over year to slightly more than $50 million in the quarter ended March 31. Management Services’ earnings from joint ventures — including some of AECOM’s partnerships for DOE nuclear […]

The possibility that U.S. nuclear waste could be used in a radiological “dirty bomb” if not interred at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is not a compelling argument in favor of the always controversial project, experts said after a lawmaker from Texas cited the threat. Republican Rep. Pete Olson late last month at a House Energy […]

Two Nevada legislative panels on Saturday approved more than $7 million from 2017 to 2019 for the state to fight President Donald Trump’s plan to open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nye County, Nev. In a joint session that was webcast, the state’s Senate Finance Committee and Assembly Ways and Means Committee approved […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined that further action is not immediately necessary to ensure safe operations of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts. The finding follows a supplemental inspection that ended this year following three NRC site visits to the nuclear plant. “The NRC determined that programs and processes at PNPS adequately support […]

Chicago-based power provider Exelon’s adjusted income and diluted earnings per share dipped in the first quarter, which the company capped off by completing its acquisition of the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in New York state. Net income, on a non-generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis, fell from $632 million in first-quarter 2016 to […]

The fiscal 2017 congressional omnibus budget awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature would reduce fees and appropriations for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by about $65 million from the amount it requested more than a year ago. The funding cutback, though, would be partly alleviated by more than $20 million in unspent funds the agency is authorized […]

The head of the lobbying arm for the nuclear energy industry is urging the Trump administration to halt what she called “misleading budget tactics” by its predecessor related to the Nuclear Waste Fund. The account collected more than $20 billion from nuclear utilities over several decades, with the ultimate intent of paying for a geologic […]

The Community Engagement Panel for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in California will at its May 11 meeting discuss opportunities for sending the plant’s waste to other locations. The question of what to do with SONGS’ waste is already the focus of one lawsuit against the state (now in settlement talks) and much […]

The federal civil antitrust trial over the planned merger of radioactive waste management providers Waste Control Specialists and EnergySolutions was scheduled to close today in U.S. District Court for Delaware. In the two-week bench trial, the Department of Justice laid out its case why the $367 million deal would deny competitive benefits to customers for […]

There is no funding for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada in the omnibus appropriations bill Congress passed this week to keep the Energy Department and the rest of the federal government funded through September. The bill was awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature on Friday afternoon. The Trump administration wants to restart […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday it has scheduled a meeting to address apparent violations of federal low-level radioactive waste transportation regulations by U.S. uranium producer Cameco Resources. The regulator said in an April 3 letter to Cameco that it is considering “escalated enforcement action” after identifying nine seeming breaches of NRC and U.S. Transportation Department […]

The state of Texas on Monday objected to Nevada’s attempt to intervene in the lawsuit demanding that the federal government move ahead with licensing and building the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. “Texas’s Petition seeks equitable remedies for decades of federal inaction on growing, above-ground stockpiles of nuclear waste. By contrast, Nevada’s intervention seeks to […]

Low-level radioactive waste disposal providers EnergySolutions and Waste Control Specialists are each other’s top rivals, and their merger would undermine competition in dozens of states, the Department of Justice said Monday in the opening day of the federal antitrust trial against the deal. The bench trial in U.S. District Court in Delaware is scheduled to last […]

A Jacobs Engineering subsidiary has secured the $350 million contract for remediation of the Parks Township, Pa., Shallow Land Disposal Area under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP), the Defense Department announced this week. The cost-plus-fixed-free contract awarded to Jacobs Field Services North America covers “development of work plans, […]

The state of Vermont is calling on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to withdraw a series of decisions allowing utility Entergy to use money from the decommissioning trust fund for the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station for management of the plant’s spent fuel. The state government has fought this battle for years, worried about draining funds […]

Environmental services provider US Ecology on Thursday reported year-over-year dips in both revenue and net income for the first quarter of 2017. Company-wide revenue for the three-month period ending March 31 slipped from $113.3 million in 2016 to $110.2 million this year, according to a company press release. US Ecology recorded $5.2 million in net […]

The Trump administration appeared to harden its resolve to open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository over host state Nevada’s objections this week, even as word leaked that a site contractor was marshalling its workforce to restart the project and a House panel held a hearing on new pro-Yucca legislation. On Wednesday, after the hearing […]

Editor’s note: This is the final installment in a series of quarterly news summaries and analyses about President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. In his first 100 days in office, President Donald Trump has moved from an ambiguous stance on Yucca Mountain to an impending showdown with Nevada over the seemingly imminent resumption […]

Congress on Friday passed a one-week continuing resolution that would hold the Energy Department’s nuclear cleanup budget at the fiscal 2016 level of just over $6 billion through May 5. President Donald Trump was expected to sign the bill but had not at deadline Friday for Weapons Complex Monitor. The latest bill contained no new […]

An expansive nuclear-waste bill unveiled in the House of Representatives this week would strip away some of Nevada’s legal tools for resisting the moribund Yucca Mountain geologic repository the Donald Trump administration wants to resurrect. Among many other things, the highly nuanced, 45-page Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017 would if signed into law curtail […]