Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

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 […]

President Joe Biden (D) this week signed a bill intended, among other things, to ease domestic and foreign deployment of U.S. nuclear technology and reform the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The reforms of the Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act were nested inside the Fire Grants and Safety Act of 2023, an unrelated bill used […]

Groups opposed to restarting the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant may still get a hearing over alleged misappropriation of decommissioning funds at the plant, according to a notice published Tuesday. According to Tuesday’s Federal Register notice, an NRC petition review board on July 2 ruled against the environmentalists and denied them a hearing but also said that the […]

Groups in Colorado, South Carolina and Washington state each got 12-month grants from the Energy Communities alliance, worth up to $150,000 each, to develop public engagement processes for nuclear-waste management. The Energy Communities Alliance (ECA), based in the Washington, D.C., area, announced the grants in a press release July 2, before the U.S. Independence Day […]

Environmental groups had standing to challenge a utility’s request to renew its operating license for California’s Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant but the groups’ complaints are inadmissible, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission board ruled. “With this Order, we chronicle yet another chapter in the ongoing narrative of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant,” the Atomic Safety […]

A subprogram responsible for consent-based siting of spent nuclear fuel from power plants would drop by more than half if a bill approved this week by the House Appropriations committee becomes law. The Integrated Waste Management System (IWMS) within the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy would get $25 million for fiscal year 2025, […]

The Department of Energy seeks industry input about a long-term contract to design, build, license and operate a federally owned interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel, according to a notice released last week. Responses to the request for information are due Sept. 6, the Friday after the U.S. Labor Day holiday. DOE released the […]

Department of Energy contractors should consider requiring “diversity training” when developing diversity plans, according to the latest version of its acquisition guide, published this week. That’s despite recent pushback by Republican House appropriators. Diversity plans were already required by DOE’s acquisition regulation. The changes published this week, dated June 2024, ratchet up requirements to monitor […]

The House Appropriations Committee was scheduled to mark up a 2025 spending bill on Tuesday that would keep the budget for DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy about flat at $1.8 billion and preserve unrequested funding for the office’s advanced nuclear reactor programs. The markup of the 2025 Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will not exempt from environmental review Holtec International’s plan to restart the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan, the agency said last week. Holtec wants to restart the plant, which closed two years ago, in August 2025 and had asked NRC for what is known as a categorical exemption from environmental […]

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) this week signed a bill that would give Pacific Gas & Electric $400 million more to keep the Diablo Canyon Power Plant open for the rest of the decade. Newsom signed the bill June 29, days after the state legislature passed it. The funding, which Newsom proposed, is part of the […]

Meeting IAEA’s 2023 nuclear projections of doubling the world’s nuclear power capacity by 2050 will require doubling investments in nuclear power to $100 billion U.S. dollars annually, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday.  Countries seeking to add nuclear energy to their arsenal need technical and financial expertise through deployment of nuclear energy and low […]

Owen Barwell will take over as chief financial officer of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on July 14, the agency announced last week. NRC’s chief financial officer (CFO) is responsible for the management and auditing of the agency’s finances and is the five-member commission’s top financial policy adviser. Barwell was most recently CFO of Independence Hydrogen, […]

WASHINGTON — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission could approve changes to rules governing disposal of Greater-Than-Class-C waste by the end of the year, the head of the agency said here Wednesday. As for exactly when the commission will act, “I’m not sure,” Christopher Hanson, the newly reconfirmed chair of the civilian nuclear regulator told the Exchange Monitor on […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff on July 17 will hold a virtual public meeting about a California-based environmental group’s request to shut down the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, the commission said June 21. The comment-gathering meeting was scheduled to begin at 3:00 p.m. Eastern time. The public may join via Microsoft Teams to observe interactions […]