Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

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 […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to downgrade the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station’s safety rating for the second year in a row, following another inspection violation at the New Jersey plant, which is owned by Exelon Corp. NRC’s “white” finding, which signifies a low to moderate safety issue, stems from a Jan. 4 failure […]

Entergy, owner of the shuttered Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant, has reached a property tax agreement with Vernon, Vt., that will see the utility pay the town significantly less annually as the plant moves toward decommissioning. The plant’s value is now set at $78 million, down from the previous $250 million valuation. The agreement was […]

The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station continues to operate safely, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s second of three increased-oversight inspections at the troubled Massachusetts plant. Following a series of unplanned shutdowns and safety relief valve concerns, NRC in September lowered Pilgrim’s safety rating to Column 4, which is the lowest rating a facility can have […]

U.S. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved on Tuesday the transfer of the license for the La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor in Genoa, Wis., from the Dairyland Power Cooperative to EnergySolutions subsidiary LaCrosseSolutions LLC. The license transfer, which Dairyland requested in October, allows LaCrosseSolutions to expedite decommissioning activities at the site, NRC said in a press […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner William Ostendorff offered a frank assessment Friday on the events that led to former Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko’s resignation in 2012. Ostendorff, who is leaving his post in June, said Jaczko’s colleagues tried for many months to form a collegial, working relationship before reaching last resort and sending a letter to the […]

Perma-Fix Environmental Services on Tuesday announced a steep acceleration in both operating and net loss for the first quarter of 2016. Net loss attributable to common stockholders rose from $2.1 million ($0.18 per share) in first-quarter 2015 to $3.8 million ($0.33 per share) this year, while the operating loss jumped from $1.8 million to $3.6 […]

International Isotopes on Tuesday reported a 118 percent spike in year-over-year net loss for the first quarter of 2016, which it attributed to a lower gross profit and rising research and development costs. The Idaho company listed a $374,518 net loss for the three months ended March 31, up from $171,548 in the first quarter […]

South Australia Premier Jay Weatherill said Tuesday the government will ultimately decide the fate of the state’s proposed nuclear waste disposal facility, the same day he approved a new government agency to facilitate community engagement on the project. In its final report issued last week, the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission recommended that South Australia […]

The estimated $16.8 million cost increase for the now-$51.5 million STURGIS barge decommissioning is largely due to the anticipated 12-month extension in completing the project, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday. The STURGIS, a onetime World War II Liberty Ship that was fitted with a nuclear reactor that powered military and civilian operations in the […]

An anti-nuclear advocate and adviser to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission warned officials on Tuesday not to make the same mistake as the Japanese in letting industry overpower the regulator. A Japanese parliamentary panel in 2012 found that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster the year before was profoundly man-made and a result of “regulatory […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has denied two petitions from 34 environmental groups, which claim the regulator’s “piecemeal” approach to its continued storage rule hides the environmental significance of certain regulations on spent fuel storage and disposal at nuclear power plants. The continued storage rule, formerly known as the waste confidence rule, includes a sweeping, generic […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials on Wednesday defined the agency’s role in the Department of Energy’s consent-based siting effort for nuclear waste storage, saying the best approach is to monitor the effort’s progress rather than becoming involved in the direction of the program NRC Spent Fuel Storage and Transportation Director Mark Lombard and Yucca Mountain Directorate chief James […]