Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

A bill that would create a nuclear waste agency outside the Department of Energy has “good bones” and could be a rallying point for the nuclear industry, a federal official said Wednesday. The bill, filed Sept. 24 by Reps. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) and August Pfleuger (R-Texas), is the latest legislative pitch to remove management of spent […]

With less than a month left to brief the court, attorneys for New York said the state’s ban on discharging irradiated water from shuttered nuclear plants does not violate federal law. For that reason, attorneys for the state said in a Nov. 8 court filing, the U.S. District Court for the New York Southern District […]

“Regulatory impedance” is among the challenges facing the new nuclear renaissance, the chief executive officer of BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., said Monday at a professional conference. “For whatever reason, western nations, developed economies, develop maybe a little bit of a fetish around regulation, control oversight, audit,” Rex Geveden, the BWX Technologies (BWXT) chief, said in […]

t’s not exactly radioactive waste definitions for dummies, but a National Governors Association task force has produced a document to help state and federal agencies stay on the same page when discussing cleanup of government nuclear weapons testing and production. “The purpose of this document is to help states impacted by cleanup at U.S. Department […]

There will be no significant environmental impacts from allowing Diablo Canyon’s spent fuel storage to operate for another 40 years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said this week.  NRC issued its finding of no significant impact for Diablo Canyon’ sindependent spent fuel storage facility on Tuesday in the Federal Register, a little less than a month […]

In a 37-page framework for meeting its commitment to triple U.S. nuclear energy generation by 2050, the White House on Tuesday devoted about one page to disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The framework was a sort of deliverable that followed the U.S.’ 2023 pledge at the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference. Twenty four other […]

Centrus Energy Corp. will get until late June to deliver 900 kilograms of energy-dense uranium to the Department of Energy, the company said last week in a regulatory filing. Centrus, Bethesda, Md., disclosed the extension, but not its terms, in a Thursday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The extension was foreshadowed in February when Centrus […]

Forgoing a recount, a Canadian municipality on Tuesday formally acknowledged its citizens’ vote to become a potential host site for a permanent radioactive waste repository. The governing council of South Bruce, Ontario, Canada, accepted the results in a special meeting, according to a municipal news release. In late October, 51% of South Bruce voters approved the municipality’s […]

Bucking a statewide shift to the right, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) will return to Congress for another six years after narrowly edging out her Republican opponent, the Associated Press said Sunday. Rosen beat Brown, a Trump supporter and wounded Army Captain with a medical discharge who has never held elected office, by fewer than 2 percentage points, […]

The Department of Energy’s drive to site an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel was designed to survive the consequences of U.S. elections and seesawing annual appropriations, an agency official said Thursday. “We’re creating a process that is agnostic of politics,” Marla Morales, director of the Office of Consent Based Siting in the Department […]

A former employee at the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan should not be allowed to block federal regulatory relief needed to restart the plant, Holtec International said this week. In a Monday regulatory filing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Holtec said Alan Blind, the ex-employee of former plant operator Entergy, did not actually contest […]

The chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other agencies to cease “partisan work” until a new Congress and President arrive in January. “As a traditional part of the peaceful transfer of power, the NRC should immediately stop work on any partisan or controversial item under consideration, consistent […]

Most lawmakers with constituencies near civilian nuclear power plants that are awaiting, undergoing, or returning from decommissioning won reelection easily on Tuesday, according to data published by the Associated Press. Yet even after Donald Trump (R) decisively won reelection as President and Republicans captured the Senate, some races in the House, which was at deadline […]

Federal judges on Monday worried that the owner of California’s last nuclear power plant has not checked the condition of a reactor core for more than a decade but questioned whether environmentalists had grounds to force such a check. “Your argument from practicality and so on is really disturbing,” Marsha Berzon, a senior judge in […]

Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority this week authorized operation of an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Mutsu City in the Aomori prefecture, one of the northernmost points of the largest Japanese island, Honshu, the English-language publication NHK World Japan reported.  The facility, the first of its kind in Japan, will store spent fuel […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is taking public comment on its draft supplemental environmental impact statement for renewing the operating licenses of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, the agency said in a press release. The environmental review is one of the steps the NRC has to complete before approving plant owner Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) […]

There would be no significant environmental impact from keeping long-stranded transuranic waste from the Los Alamos National Laboratory at Waste Control Specialists’ disposal facility in Texas for another two years, the There Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday. The commission published its formal finding of no significant impact in the Federal Register about five months after Waste Control Specialists […]

Residents of South Bruce, Ontario, Canada, on Monday voted to become a potential host site of a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste. The difference between consenting to the repository and not came down to fewer than 100 votes, according to official results dated Tuesday. Consent carried the day though, with 1,604 voters for the repository […]

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Orano-USA has started the property transfer and licensing process for its planned uranium enrichment plant at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site, the site’s top federal cleanup official said here Wednesday. Orano-USA announced in September that Oak Ridge was its “preferred site” for its uranium enrichment plant that it would build using state […]

Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., had a net loss in the third quarter, which the uranium broker and enrichment technology developer attributed in part to costs associated with a Department of Energy uranium contract. Centrus lost about $5 million, or $0.30 a share, in the third quarter, compared with earnings of about $8.2 million or […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s in-house legal advisors this month recommended tweaking the agency’s mission statement to clarify that regulation does not unnecessarily limit beneficial civilian use of nuclear energy. Separately, NRC’s Office of the Executive Director, helmed by the agency’s top civil servant, recommended a slightly different change to the mission statement. NRC’s Office of […]

Residents of South Bruce, Ontario, Canada, began voting this week about whether they wish to host a deep geologic repository for nuclear waste. Voting began Oct. 22 and was to run through Oct. 28, according to the municipality’s website. The seven-member South Bruce council decided this spring to let residents decide directly whether the municipality […]

An attempt to wrench back $260 million in aid from Holtec International effectively ended last week when New Jersey’s Supreme Court declined to hear a state appeal of the company’s successful lawsuit. In an order dated Oct. 15, filed Oct. 18 and distributed to media Tuesday, the highest court in New Jersey on said it […]

Briefings in a federal appeal of a ban on commercial interim storage of spent nuclear fuel may not be finished until January, according to the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket. The Supreme Court case consolidates two appeals of a 2023 ruling in which a lower court, responding to a lawsuit by the state of Texas, held […]

In a letter Monday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate how the Department of Energy can displace imports of Russian isotopes. “[T]he United States still relies on obtaining several materials and commercially produced isotopes from other, sometimes adversarial countries, like Russia, on which it may not be expedient […]

“Funding needs to happen” for the International Atomic Energy Agency, the State Department’s undersecretary for arms control said Tuesday at a think-tank event about nuclear power. “People hear the word energy, I mean nuclear, and they kind of run. A lot of people run for the hills,” Bonnie Jenkins, the undersecretary of state for arms […]