Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

U.S. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has agreed to implement five Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommendations for improving high-impact system controls, according to documents released Tuesday. High-impact systems are characterized as federal security systems that hold sensitive information, which if lost could cause “catastrophic harm” to individuals, the government, or the country, according to the documents. […]

Registration is open for the ExchangeMonitor’s newly revamped Global Environmental Management Forum & Showcase, formerly the Decisionmakers’ Forum. The event, scheduled for Nov. 1-3 at the Omni Shoreham in Washington, D.C., will offer decision makers in the nuclear industry an opportunity to discuss new markets and new technologies being developed to reduce nuclear dangers and […]

U.S. Advanced nuclear reactor work, light-water reactors, and the accident-tolerant fuel program are expected to be among the topics officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission discuss with Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy officials on June 20. Representatives from the two offices are set to meet at NRC headquarters. Bill Wicker, senior adviser for […]

The House Energy and Commerce Committee will not consider legislation that would transfer cleanup authority at the West Lake Landfill Superfund site in Missouri from the Environmental Protection Agency to the U.S. Army Corps’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP), a committee aide told RadWaste Monitor on Monday. Residents near the Bridgeton, Mo., landfill have […]

In what many of the members described as the hardest decision of their tenures, the Omaha Public Power District’s (OPPD) Board of Directors unanimously agreed on Thursday to close the Fort Calhoun Station by December 2016. OPPD now faces a $1.2 billion decommissioning project at the Blair, Neb., nuclear power plant, which began operating in 1973. […]

An environmental group is asking the Vermont Public Service Board (PSB) to reconsider its denial of new evidence in reviewing Entergy’s plans to build an independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) at the closed Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. Entergy plans to transfer nearly 3,000 spent fuel assemblies into 45 dry casks by the end of 2020, […]

New York state Sen. Patty Ritchie (R) is trying to force power provider Entergy to sell its James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant to the state, the latest attempt to keep the Oswego County facility alive and save the jobs of more than 600 workers. Ritchie, who has championed zero-emission credits in the name of […]

Energy company Exelon said this week it will close its Nine Mile Point Nuclear Generating Station Unit 1 and its single-reactor Ginna Nuclear Power Plant if New York state officials don’t approve nuclear incentives under the Clean Energy Standard (CES) by September. Gov. Andrew Cuomo in December directed the Public Service Department to create the […]

The Department of Energy has failed to secure another location for its proposed deep borehole field test, this time in South Dakota, where the Spink County Commission on June 10 sent a letter to lead contractor Battelle Memorial Institute opposing the $35 million nuclear waste storage experiment. This comes after the Pierce County Commission in March similarly thwarted […]

AREVA is selling its nuclear reactor manufacturing unit as it shifts its focus to nuclear fuel cycle services in forming a new spinoff called New Co, the French company announced Wednesday. The mass restructuring is expected to raise at least 5 billion euros for the company through government investment and asset sales, according to spokeswoman […]

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) doesn’t anticipate a resurrection of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada after he leaves office in January, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “I can’t imagine Yucca Mountain’s going to come back,” Reid said Tuesday during a meeting with the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce […]

The Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in New Hampshire is “degraded but operable,” the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this week in response to Massachusetts lawmakers’ continued calls to close the 26-year-old facility. State Sen. Kathleen O’Connor Ives (D), who first brought the issue up in 2013, and state Sen. Daniel Wolf (D) joined state Reps. […]

Cotter Corp. will pay the Environmental Protection Agency about $1 million for past and future contamination analysis at the company’s uranium mill at the Lincoln Park Superfund site, near Cañon City, Colo., according to an agreement EPA announced Wednesday. The agreement dictates that the uranium production company pay for EPA oversight costs incurred from 2012 to 2014, […]

Australia’s Greens political party wants to cancel resources minister Josh Frydenberg’s plan that has identified farmland in South Australia as the location for the country’s first permanent storage site for low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste, and instead maintain storage operations just outside of Sydney, allowing for an independent investigation into storage options. The Greens’ nuclear […]

Attorneys general in four northeastern states are weighing options after a defeat in federal court last week, in which the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied their request to vacate a Nuclear Regulatory Commission rule allowing indefinite storage of nuclear waste at American power plants. The court on June 3 rejected a petition from Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, […]

Southern California ratepayers are paying about $500 million less in premature shutdown costs at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) than the plant’s majority owner, Southern California Edison, had sought  in a settlement agreement, according to the company’s latest filing with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). CPUC announced in April the reopening of the […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it could not clean up Missouri’s West Lake Landfill Superfund site any faster than the Environmental Protection Agency, which state lawmakers have been trying to take off the job. That’s one of the takeaways from a June 2 letter a top Corps official sent to Rep. Fred Upton […]

MANCHESTER, England — While Germany is looking at extending interim storage of national nuclear waste by as much as 80 years, allowing interim to become permanent storage is not an option. That’s according to German engineer Holger Volzke, who spoke here Wednesday at the conclusion of the 2016 Nuclear Decommissioning Conference Europe. Volzke is a division […]

MANCHESTER, England — Stakeholders leading the cleanup at the Sellafield nuclear fuel reprocessing and decommissioning site in Cumbria, England, cannot tolerate decommissioning cost spikes, like the 25 percent increase experienced at the site in 2005, an executive for Sellafield partner EDF Energy said Wednesday. “(The 2005 hike) is not something that we can tolerate with the funding decommissioning […]

MANCHESTER, England — Transparency will be the focus as the U.K. government tries to avoid failing for a third time to build a geologic disposal facility (GDF) for high-level radioactive waste, an official with the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) said Tuesday. “There’s quite a lot of trust that needs to be built in the communities, […]

MANCHESTER, England – Like the United States, the United Kingdom is holding off on defining the term “community consent” in its most prominent nuclear waste storage project, the geological disposal facility (GDF). “Standing here right now, I don’t have in front of me a formula which addresses those issues,” Ivan Stone, stakeholder engagement and communications […]

INTERNATIONAL U.K. authorities underestimate the risks of attack on nuclear facilities and transports, a local government adviser concluded in a report Sunday. The Nuclear Free Local Authorities (NFLA) in what it called a “carefully researched and considered analysis of the U.K. and international nuclear security,” urged government, nuclear regulators, and industry to address issues associated with information […]

Utility Exelon said Thursday it will close its Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear power plants respectively in 2017 and 2018, citing uncertainty surrounding a controversial energy plan it pushed for in the Illinois General Assembly this cycle. The state legislature, which wrapped up its spring legislative session on Tuesday, failed to send a budget to Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner […]

Against a backdrop of controversial amendments, a looming White House veto threat and the impending U.S. Memorial Day holiday, House lawmakers failed Thursday to pass the spending bill that contained the chamber’s proposed 2017 budget for the Energy Department. House members now will leave town for a week-long Memorial Day recess, after which the Republican […]

Exelon defended a controversial piece of energy legislation proposed in Illinois this week, after state Attorney General Lisa Madigan blasted it as an unnecessary bailout for profitable companies. Exelon announced earlier this month that it would close two of its Illinois nuclear power plants, the Quad Cities Generating Station and the Clinton Power Station, if […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not gone far enough in improving safety at American nuclear plants in response to the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, an independent, NRC-funded study claims. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in its second and final report on Fukushima lessons learned found that while NRC has implemented most of its […]