Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

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 […]

Entities hoping to convert energy-dense uranium into a form suitable for powering advanced reactors have two more weeks to prepare the bids for the Department of Energy, the agency said last week. Bids for the High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) Deconversion Acquisition are now due Feb. 13 instead of Jan. 30, the agency wrote in a procurement […]

Holtec International, Jupiter, Fla., and Ukraine’s national nuclear power company, Energoatom, announced this week that they signed an agreement in principle to build a factory in Ukraine that will make parts for the company’s SMR-300 small modular reactors.  The parties will create a “[j]oint Venture between Energoatom and Holtec for a Ukrainian manufacturing facility and […]

President Joe Biden (D) on Friday was set to sign a fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act that jettisoned a package of nuclear energy reforms that would have affected the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Both chambers of Congress approved the legislation by overwhelming majorities this week. The final bill, unveiled last […]

Local officials last week failed to pass a resolution opposing disposal of greater than class c radioactive waste at Waste Control Specialists’ site in Andrews Texas, local media reported. The resolution, considered during a Dec. 6 meeting of the Andrews County Commissioner’s Court, failed on a 2-2 vote. The tie vote means the local government […]

Holtec International this week asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to dismiss an antinuclear group’s attempt to block regulatory action needed to restart the Palisades Nuclear Plant. Holtec on Monday asked the commission secretary to deny a Dec. 5 petition by three antinuclear groups who want a hearing about the company’s Sept. 28 request for an […]

Texas this week told a federal court not to convene all of its judges to rehear a case that this summer effectively killed commercial interim storage of spent nuclear fuel in the U.S. In a 24 page brief filed Monday with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, opposed a […]

As required by state law, the California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday approved the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in Avila Beach, Calif., to operate until 2030, five years beyond its previously scheduled closure. The plant will cost $6 billion to operate between 2023 and then, the commission estimated. The commission approved the extension 3-0-1, […]

Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker’s (D) on Friday signed a law that partially repealed a 36-year ban on new nuclear reactors. The law, HB2473, also removed spent nuclear fuel and waste created by extracting uranium from spent fuel from the state’s list of high level nuclear waste materials.  Under the new law, introduced in November […]

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday agreed to vacate a national preliminary injunction against President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for federal contractors, after the Justice Department argued the issue became moot when pandemic emergency measures ended this spring. The court Monday granted a petition filed by Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar in July asking the high […]

Sen. Shelley Capito (R-W.Va.) on Friday urged Congress to pass her package of nuclear energy reforms, which were stripped this week from a must-pass defense bill as competing House reforms advanced. “If the United States wants to get serious about our long-term energy security and our environmental goals, nuclear energy is the clear answer. Passing […]

A House committee this week sent two nuclear energy bills to the floor, one with workplace reforms for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and another to encourage domestic production of uranium fuel. The first bill approved Tuesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the Atomic Energy Advancement Act, rolls up a number of smaller legislative […]

In October, Orano USA finished cutting up and packaging the vessel for the Unit 3 reactor of the shuttered Crystal River Nuclear Plant in Florida, the company announced this week. Orano USA, the Bethesda, Md.-based U.S. arm of the French nuclear company, announced in August it had started cutting the reactor into pieces. The parts […]

Holtec International on Monday announced it plans to file construction permits in 2026 to build a pair of small modular reactors at the site of the shuttered Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, which the company hopes to restart in 2025. Notionally to be commissioned as soon as 2030, the two SMR-300 reactors are “likely to be […]

The U.S. and 21 other countries at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai on Saturday agreed to work together on “tripling nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050,” according to a Department of Energy press release. Among other things, including the continued development of new nuclear reactors and encouraging financial organizations to invest in […]

By John Stang The former head of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio pleaded not guilty on Monday to bribery and embezzlement in the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati in a case related to two financially struggling nuclear power plants in that state, a court filing shows. A federal grand jury on Nov. 29 indicted […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy has put $7 million in funding up for grabs for nuclear energy programs at U.S. universities, the agency announced this week.  The University Nuclear Research Infrastructure Revitalization grant will account for almost all of this round funding at a single $6-million award, DOE wrote in the release. The […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission illegally rejected a request for a hearing about the Unit 1 reactor vessel at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, environmental groups said this week in a new lawsuit. Friends of the Earth and Mothers for Peace filed their lawsuit, the second federal suit the groups have brought against the commission […]