Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

The federal government, Holtec International and a coalition of mining and environmental groups this week filed final briefs in another big federal lawsuit over the company’s proposed spent nuclear fuel storage site in New Mexico. Not yet scheduled for oral arguments, the two-and-a-half-year-old case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia […]

Industry will wait at least until May before seeing the rationale Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff used to justify parts of a coming rule to expand disposal options for Greater-Than-Class-C radioactive waste, officials said Tuesday in an online public meeting. The two-hour, online-only meeting was the latest in a long string of opportunities for the public […]

Representatives of Holtec International and its ex-chief financial officer will not see each other in court until February because the former employee’s lawyer had a conflict, according to a filing last week in a New Jersey court. Kevin O’Rourke sued Holtec, Jupiter, Fla., in June, but the company in December said that news stories and […]

Media reported this week that the White House did not plan to renominate Jeffrey Baran for another term as a commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Baran’s nomination was returned Jan. 3 to the White House, like all nominations that did not get a floor vote during the first of two year-long sessions of the […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission started an environmental review of Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s plan to keep California’s last nuclear power plant open until 2030, the agency announced Wednesday. The commission plans an online public meeting about the proposed review on Feb. 1 and an in-person meeting at the Embassy Suites Hotel in San Luis Obispo, Calif., on […]

Funding for the Department of Energy’s effort to rebuild a commercial U.S. uranium refining industry is hung up in a debate over a supplemental spending bill between House Republicans and the White House.  In remarks to reporters this week before and after a meeting at the White House, Speaker of the House Rep. Michael Johnson […]

All of the active and shuttered nuclear power plants in the U.S. either had enough money in their decommissioning trust funds as of the end of 2023 or had a good explanation for why they did not, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wrote in a report dated December and published online this week.  That’s according to […]

President Joe Biden (D) on Friday signed a spending bill to keep agencies including the Department of Energy open until March 1. The Senate passed the bill 77-to-18 on Tuesday afternoon. The House followed quickly after, approving the month-and-a-half stopgap budget 314-to-108.  The measure will keep DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other agencies funded […]

In a prelude to the main event a the nine-month old lawsuit against Holtec International, a state judge was to hold oral arguments Friday, after deadline for RadWaste Monitor, about whether the company can sue an ex-employee for defamation. Kevin O’Rourke, former chief financial officer of the Jupiter, Fla.-based company, sued Holtec in June, alleging […]

On Thursday, two Democrats on a House Oversight subcommittee forcefully condemned expanding nuclear power in the U.S. before the federal government builds a permanent repository for nuclear waste. Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mich.), ranking member of the House Oversight economic growth, energy policy, and regulatory affairs subcommittee, used the hearing as a platform to again demand […]

Commissioner Annie Caputo on Thursday questioned whether it made sense for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue a blanket guidance for detecting buried low-level radioactive waste at power plants undergoing decommissioning. NRC staff plan to finish the guidance by Sept. 30, a commission spokesperson said. Staff opened comments on the draft guidance in December. The […]

The Department of Energy on Tuesday solicited bids for a contract under which it could acquire up to 145 metric tons of high assay low-enriched uranium to help commercialize nuclear reactors that need the fuel. Under the contract, only U.S.-based companies will be allowed to perform the final step of enriching to the high assay […]

Congressional leaders over the weekend announced they had reached a sort of agreement in principle to fund the federal government for the nine months that remain in fiscal year 2024. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Speaker of the House Rep. Michael Johnson (R-La.) agreed to limit federal spending in the fiscal year that […]

In the first courtroom action for a lawsuit opposing a life extension of California’s last nuclear plant, federal judges on Wednesday asked if the case belonged in their court and whether keeping it there could unleash a tide of new environmental lawsuits. “I’m trying to decide the floodgate here,” said Circuit Judge Consuelo Callahan, an […]

Holtec International holds out hope that it will receive a major chunk of change from the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office to help restart the shuttered Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan by 2025, a spokesperson said Thursday. The company expects DOE to make a decision in “late January/Early February at the earliest,” the […]

Jeffrey Baran’s nomination for five more years at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was sent back to the White House on Jan. 3, leaving President Joe Biden’s (D) administration with the choice of repeating a hard fight to get Baran through the Senate again or moving on to another candidate. There are two sessions in each […]

Raymond Furstenau will temporarily become the Nuclear Regulatory Commission executive director on Jan. 27, when Daniel Dorman, the current director is set to retire, the commission announced Wednesday. Furstenau, who leads the NRC’s Office of Research, will act as the commission’s chief operating officer, managing personnel and delegating technical and regulatory work on NRC-licensed facilities […]

On the Friday before Christmas, President Joe Biden (D) signed the fiscal year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, setting a year’s worth of spending limits and policy for national security programs, including those at the Department of Energy. The bill is separate from annual appropriations bills that fund government agencies. Agencies including DOE and the […]

As part of a six-month old lawsuit against the company, Holtec International, Jupiter, Fla., recently accused a former employee of defamation over allegedly false language that appeared in a publicity campaign and news stories. The Superior Court of New Jersey in Camden County planned to decide on Jan. 19 whether to allow the defamation claim […]

The Air Force’s mishandling and possibly inadequate monitoring of radioactive material over several years at the Kirtland Air Force Base is still on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s radar, a Christmas-week regulatory filing shows. Though the Air Force has dealt with half the 14 apparent violations identified in 2022 by NRC at the base near Albuquerque, […]

The Department of Energy this week formalized its decision to award Pacific Gas and Electric Co. some $1 billion in financial aid over four years to keep the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant running. DOE on Monday published its record of decision in the Federal Register, making official the award the agency announced in 2022, […]

The Daniel Poneman era ended Monday at Centrus Energy Corp., when the longtime chief executive, a former Department of Energy No. 2 who took over the company after its bankruptcy restructuring, turned the reins over to ex-Orano USA president Amir Vexler. Centrus announced the transition in November. Poneman joined Centrus in March 2015 and over […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will review environmentalists’ claims that Holtec Decommissioning International illegally paid for the upkeep of Michigan’s Palisades Nuclear Plant with funds intended to pay for the plant’s teardown, the commission said this week. The NRC the referred groups’ “concerns that Holtec has misused the decommissioning trust fund to the Executive Director for […]

RadWaste Monitor will not publish on Friday, Dec. 29, 2023 in observance of the New Year’s holiday. Look for the next issue in your inbox on Friday, Jan. 5, 2024.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week said it accepted Pacific Gas & Electric’s application to extend the operating license of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California. The decision, announced in a Federal Register notice, officially begins what could be a contentious, year-long, federal review of California’s plan to keep nuclear power alive in the Golden […]

A Minnesota regulator fined Xcel Energy $14,000 for storing tritium contaminated groundwater without a permit at the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant, the state agency said last week. The contaminated groundwater came from leaks that began in November 2022 and continued into March 2023. Xcel cleaned up the leaks, blamed on failed plumbing, but got fined […]

A group of lawmakers recently urged the Department of Energy to speed up its consideration of Holtec International’s request for a large federal loan to restart the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan. “[W]e urge the Department of Energy to give its fair, full, and swift consideration to the application,” the bipartisan, nine-member bloc of […]