Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

In a notice published online Tuesday, the Department of Energy formalized a $1.5 billion loan needed to restart the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant next year. DOE announced its guarantee of the loan to plant operator Holtec International, Jupiter, Fla., in a Federal Register notice. The agency conditionally approved the loan in March. Holtec has said […]

Earnings more than doubled year-over-year at Centrus, Bethesda, Md., in the second quarter, during which the company’s flagship uranium brokerage business almost tripled, according to a press release.  The company’s quarterly earnings call was scheduled for Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time. Centrus often has what it sometimes calls lumpy quarters, where uranium fuel orders […]

Earnings rose at AtkinsRéalis, Montreal, Canada, in the second quarter, which the nuclear services and infrastructure company partially attributed to a brisk business in life extensions for power reactors, according to a Friday press release. Net earnings for the second quarter ended June 30 were C$82.2 million [US $59.9 million], or C$0.47  [U.S. $0.34] a […]

RadWaste Monitor will not be published on Friday Aug. 16, 2024 and Friday Aug. 23, 2024, as part of the Exchange Monitor’s annual August recess.

In a final guidance published Monday, Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff took advice from EnergySolutions and gave reactor operators more leeway to prove they should be allowed to use decommissioning funds for equipment replacements. However, operators will still be barred from tapping into the funds, which are supposed to be reserved for cleaning up nuclear power […]

By JOHN STANG Two union pipefitters have agreed to drop their federal lawsuit against Energy Northwest over radiological contamination suffered during a 2021 refueling outage at the Columbia Generating Station power reactor near Richland, Wash. U.S. District Judge Mary Dimke in Eastern Washington ordered the case closed Tuesday following a joint motion to dismiss by […]

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board meets on Thursday, Aug. 29 near the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina to review DOE’s plans to dispose of spent nuclear fuel.  The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) plans a hybrid in-person/online meeting from the Crowne Plaza Hotel in North Augusta, S.C., the board […]

It’s “too late for the Energy Department,” a former commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wrote this week in an essay for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “I don’t think any state would ever trust the Energy Department to build and operate a nuclear waste repository.” Former NRC commissioner Victor Gilinsky recounted the saga […]

Senate appropriators this week approved a roughly $1.7-billion budget for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, more than requested but less than what House appropriators recommended. The fiscal year 2025 budget, approved unanimously on Thursday by the Senate Appropriations committee as part of a larger Energy and Water appropriations act, is down $10 […]

A bill introduced in the House Tuesday would charge companies for emitting greenhouse gasses and reserve some of the proceeds for states and tribes hosting permanent nuclear-waste disposal sites. Filed in the second half of a contentious presidential election year in which control of Congress teeters on eight seats in the House and only one […]

The Department of Energy on Wednesday started market research for high-profile, public demonstrations of the many severe kinds of abuse transport systems for spent nuclear fuel are designed to withstand. The agency’s Office of Nuclear Energy on Wednesday released a request for information about a wide range of things it might need to conduct what […]

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) last week signed a bill that includes $150 million more in state funding to help restart the Palisades Nuclear Plant.  The new tranche of funding, passed as part of a supplement to the state’s 2024 budget, brings Michigan’s total aid package for the plant to $300 million. Lansing approved another […]

Nano Nuclear this week pushed back against a story by the publishing arm of a private equity company that said the New York-based advanced reactor developer’s stock was highly overvalued.  “We’re not sure what we did to deserve any attention from these so-called ‘journalists’ who also short sell the stocks that they write about,” founder […]

Holtec International may not dump wastewater from the decommissioning of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant into Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts said last week. The final decision to deny Holtec a state permit modification for the wastewater discharges had been simmering for about a year. In July 2023, Massachusetts made a tentative determination that Holtec’s permit application, if granted, would […]

President Joe Biden (D) on Tuesday announced his intent to nominate Senate staffer Matthew Marzano to be a Member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and fill the agency’s last vacancy. Marzano is an Idaho National Laboratory detailee on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee where he advises lawmakers about clean air, climate and energy, […]

After hours of debate on more than 60 amendments this week, the House of Representatives canceled a planned vote on several 2025 appropriations bills, including the one that funds the Department of Energy. Media reported Wednesday that a fractious, razor-thin Republican majority could not wrangle enough votes in their own party to pass the bills […]

The federal government should create a new strategy for disposing of spent nuclear fuel from power plants or recycling it, a Democratic congresswoman said in a hearing Tuesday. “We have to find a storage solution for nuclear waste that does not abandon the communities that host nuclear reactors, whether that way is through reprocessing, permanent […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission needs less than a year to finish regulatory approvals for restarting Michigan’s Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, the head of the agency said Tuesday. Plant owner Holtec International, Jupiter, Fla., “has submitted all of the regulatory filings that we need to do [and] we expect to reach a decision on those filings […]

Vice President Kamala Harris’ (D) positions on radioactive waste, when she’s taken any at all, hew closely to the Democratic orthodoxy of coupling any expansion of nuclear energy to the consent-based disposal of spent nuclear fuel. Harris, fast becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee for President following President Joe Biden’s (D) July withdrawal from the race, […]

About two months after the U.S. made it illegal in most cases to import Russian uranium, Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., got a waiver to continue imports from the Federation in 2024 and 2025. The waiver, granted by the Department of Energy on July 18, allows the company to continue imports of low-enriched uranium “for […]

The Township of Ignace last week formally told the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization that it is a willing host community for a nuclear waste repository for which the agency planned to select a site this year. The township in Ontario, the province where Canada is considering building the repository, announced the decision in a July […]

AtkinsRéalis US Nuclear is promoting its chief operating officer Joe McBrearty to acting president, succeeding Jim Rugg, who will become a senior vice president concentrating on new builds, the company announced Thursday. McBrearty has been chief operations officer since joining the U.S. branch of AtkinsRéalis in May. He will continue to lead AtkinsRéalis US Nuclear’s […]

Editor’s note: the election digest tracks lawmakers whose constituencies include civilian nuclear reactors that are being decommissioned. Most lawmakers with big nuclear constituencies look, as usual, safe to win reelection this November. However, a few are retiring and some are in tight races. The Exchange Monitor’s election digest is tracking them all. Senate: Among the expected Senate […]

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) wants to amend the House Appropriations Committee’s 2025 energy and water bill to strip out a GOP provision to zero-fund the Department of Energy’s Justice40 Initiative. Stansbury, whose district includes Albuquerque, filed an amendment with the House Rules Commitment to strike part of the bill that prohibits funds from being used to support […]

The NRC is considering a request from Constellation Energy Generation, LLC to approve the release of 172.2 acres of land to DeWitt County, Illinois for a new marina, according to a regulatory filing posted online.  A previous licensee for Clinton Power Station, Unit 1, AmerGen Energy Company, LLC had executed a Quit Claim Deed for […]

A conservative policy document written in part by former advisors to former President Donald Trump (R) recommends restarting federal licensing for the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level waste repository in Nye County, Nev. The 900-plus-page Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership also said the Department of Energy should find a site for a second high-level waste repository […]

Congress need not authorize every interim storage site for nuclear waste and an appeals court’s decision that it must destroyed long-held expectations, a nuclear-industry trade group said last week in a filing with the U.S. Supreme Court. A 2023 ruling by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that outlawed commercial interim storage licensed by […]