Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

Two decommissioning workers at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan were sprayed with radioactive waste while cleaning out pipes at the shuttered plant, the Associated Press reported this week. Neither of the workers, who were both wearing protective gear, ingested any radioactive waste, AP reported, citing a statement from plant owner Tokyo Electric […]

A House subcommittee this week approved several bipartisan bills with nuclear policy reforms, including at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy. The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s energy, climate and grid security subcommittee began considering the bills in a Tuesday markup session that was briefly delayed by internal Republican caucus meetings about […]

The head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy hopes the agency can select its first clean power project at the Idaho National Laboratory within a year. “A year from today” is the target, Kathryn Huff, DOE’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy, told reporters on the sidelines of the Idaho lab’s Cleanup to […]

The U.S. government and Interim Storage Partners this week asked an entire appeals court to overturn a decision by three of the court’s judges that effectively killed commercial interim storage of spent nuclear fuel. Two other courts have ruled that the “plain text” of federal law allows the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to approve the temporary […]

On Thursday, after a two-week squabble about who to elect as speaker, the House of Representatives passed a bill to fund defense and civilian nuclear nuclear programs for the rest of fiscal year 2024. Civilian nuclear programs at the Department of Energy and elsewhere would essentially remain flat under the House’s bill. Active nuclear weapons […]

Holtec Decommissioning International moved all the spent fuel at the New York’s shuttered Indian Point Nuclear Energy Center into dry storage, a state agency announced Monday. In total, the company has filled 127 concrete casks with 3,998 spent fuel assemblies that are now stored at the Buchanan, N.Y., plant’s independent spent fuel storage installations, according […]

The Department of Energy this week posted a new video online showing off the Atlas railcar the agency plans to use to transport spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants. The agency’s Office of Nuclear Energy posted video, among other places, on the social network X.   The Japanese foreign ministry condemned Russia’s decision to […]

The vice president of Holtec’s small modular reactor business is excited about the prospect of developing such units at the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan. “The details remain [to be worked out] as far as the exact timing and the financial conditions,” Tom Marcille, vice president and chief nuclear officer at Holtec International SMR, said […]

Fred Bailly joined Southern California Edison as vice president of nuclear decommissioning, according to Bailly’s LinkedIn profile. Bailly will be responsible for decommissioning of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. He joins Southern California Edison from Westinghouse, where he was most recently vice president of decommissioning services. He was with Westinghouse for about two years […]

The most expensive item needed to restart the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan is a new steam generator that will cost half a billion dollars, according to a federal grant application from Holtec International obtained by an antinuclear group and distributed Monday to the media. The Washington-based group Beyond Nuclear obtained Holtec’s 42-page application for […]

Paul Murray this week had his first official day as the the Department of Energy’s deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition.  Murray was internally announced as the full-time head of the agency’s civilian nuclear waste programs on Sept. 28. On Oct. 8, DOE added his name to the Nuclear Energy office’s organization […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week declined to rule on a request by a group of environmentalists to shut down one of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant’s reactors. Instead, commission staff will look at the request by a pair of perennial antinuclear groups. It is the outcome that both NRC staff and plant operator Pacific […]

The decommissioning site of a barge used for more than 50 years to service nuclear-powered Navy ships appears safe for unrestricted release, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in documents posted online Tuesday. The Surface Ship Support Barge’s decommissioning site in Mobile, Ala., is not an NRC-licensed site, but if it were, it “would have met […]

Idaho-based North Wind Group has appointed Jeff Dulgarian as its new Northeast regional director, the Department of Energy contractor said last week. Dulgarian was previously deputy Northeast regional manager as well as head of operations for North Wind Site Services, according to the company’s Oct. 3 press release. He spent the past five years with North […]

New Mexico officials on Tuesday briefed state lawmakers near Carlsbad, N.M., about enforcing a new state law that prohibits storage of spent nuclear fuel in the Land of Enchantment. Passed in March, the law, SB 53, prohibits the New Mexico Environment Department from granting permits vital to the operation of Holtec International’s proposed consolidated interim […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission repeatedly failed to ensure the safety of test reactors across the country, including at a government agency in Maryland and a shuttered imaging facility in California whose owner had complained of lax commission oversight, according to a recent report from the agency’s Inspector General. The Inspector General uncovered the lapses by […]

Holtec International made its first filing with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to support a restart of the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Covert, Mich., the company announced Friday. Holtec on Sept. 28 asked the NRC for relief from a commission regulation that forbids refueling a shuttered reactor that has been emptied in preparation for decommissioning. […]

Paul Murray, most recently chief technology officer for Orano Federal Services, will lead spent nuclear fuel programs in the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy effective next week. Murray will join the agency at its headquarters in the Forrestal Building in Washington on Oct. 10 as the deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and […]

EnergySolutions, Salt Lake City, planned to open a manufacturing facility in southeastern Tennessee to make parts for nuclear power plants, the company announced this week. For the task, the company plans to “immediately” begin refurbishing a 200,000 square-foot building it owns in Roane County, Tenn., according to the press release, which hit the wire less […]

An environmental coalition’s “last-ditch attack” on California’s only operating nuclear plant is riddled with legal errors and willfully disregards the state’s plans for the plant, Pacific Gas and Electric wrote in a recent court filing. The lawsuit does not belong in court in the first place and the anti-nuclear groups’ argument rests on a faulty […]

Holtec International is creating a new subsidiary to switch back on the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan in less than two years, company executives told Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff Tuesday at agency headquarters in Rockville, Md. The new operating company will eventually employ about 500 people, including more than 200 who are working on […]

Environmentalists say their plea to shut down Diablo Canyon’s Unit 1 reactor is too important to be treated like a routine Nuclear Regulatory Commission proceeding and should be sent directly to the commission immediately. The environmental groups, San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace and Friends of the Earth, say Unit 1’s reactor pressure vessel is […]

Still deadlocked over whether to spend the maximum allowed by a law passed this spring, Congress on Friday still had not passed a bill to keep federal agencies open in the new government fiscal year that begins Sunday. On Friday, even before it failed by a 198-232 vote to pass in the chamber in which […]

A citizens group heard this week that the Department of Energy plans to release by year’s end Orano’s plan for removing spent nuclear fuel from the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Vernon, Vt. The company has been decommissioning Vermont Yankee in earnest since 2019, four years after its shutdown. In slides briefed Monday to […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should not vote on environmentalists’ requests to shut down one of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant’s two reactors until agency staff weigh in on the request, staff said Monday. It is the latest in a series of attempts by the groups to have Diablo Canyon shut down prior to 2030, the […]

Antinuclear activists suing the U.S. government to stop a life extension for the Diablo Canyon Power Plant could present oral arguments to a federal court in Pasadena, Calif., in early 2024, a recent court filing shows. In an order last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said it might order the parties to court […]