Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

Holtec Decommissioning International plans this fall to demolish water tanks at the shuttered Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant that held radioactively contaminated water and, by mid-winter, package much of the radioactive waste from the plant’s reactor vessel. Members of the Massachusetts Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel heard that and more Monday from Dave Noyes, Holtec’s compliance […]

By Oct. 24, the government could ask a federal court to revisit a ruling that essentially killed commercial consolidated interim storage of spent nuclear fuel in the U.S. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Justice, plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by Texas to stop an interim storage site in its territory, need that […]

Lawmakers left town this week without passing a short-term budget bill to keep federal agencies open beyond Sept. 30, but media reported on Friday that congressional leaders are considering moving full-year spending bills that include budgets for civilian nuclear programs. The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy only stands to gain if House Republicans […]

The annual must-pass defense policy bill that sets spending limits for nationals ecurity programs is headed for its final debate in Congress after the House this week voted for a conference with the Senate. But in a twist this year, those negotiations will include debate about substantial policy reforms proposed by the Senate for the […]

A day after an all-hands meeting at NRC headquarters, which largely focused on remote work, Dan Dorman, the agency’s executive director for operations and chief steward of its latest remote work rules, faced questions from a House committee about post-pandemic telework policies. Congress this year has grilled the NRC about reported dips in employee morale. […]

EnergySolutions, Salt Lake City, completed its acquisition of Williams Industrial Services Group, the company announced Monday in a press release. EnergySolutions operates a low-level waste facility in Clive, Utah, and is decommissioning the partially melted-down Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor in Pennsylvania. The company said in July it was buying Williams out of chapter 11 […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has launched its market research for up to $40 million worth of environmental restoration work around the Superfund site in Maywood, N.J., according to a procurement notice published online Friday. A sources sought notice was issued online Friday in the Systemwide Awards Management website (SAM.gov) for small businesses to […]

Most Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioners are open to taking control of the agency’s telework rules, teeing up yet another shift in remote-work policy at an agency that has struggled to settle on one. The issue is now “a voting matter” for the commissioners, who “agreed that October 31 was the date in order to prompt […]

ARLINGTON, VA — Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) this week prodded hundreds of people here for the National Cleanup Workshop to urge their congressional representatives to avoid a federal government shutdown but stopped short of predicting a stopgap agreement before fiscal 2023 ends Sept. 30. “Reach out to your member of congress,” said Fleischmann, who chairs […]

Waste Control Specialists filed a permit renewal application for its low-level radioactive waste disposal site in West Texas, David Carlson, the president of the company told the Exchange Monitor this week at the annual National Cleanup Workshop in Arlington, Va.  Waste Control Specialists operates a state-owned low-level radioactive waste disposal facility alongside its commercial facilities […]

In a court filing this week, Holtec International’s ex-finance chief said he neither disclosed corporate secrets nor violated a nondisclosure agreement by publicly suing his former employer. Kevin O’Rourke sued Holtec, Jupiter, Fla., June 1 in the Superior Court of New Jersey in Camden County, alleging the company overvalued itself in an effort to get […]

On Tuesday, SNC-Lavalin, the Montreal-based engineering and project managing company, rebranded itself AtkinsRéalis, company officials said this week. The company’s chief U.S. subsidiary, Atkins Nuclear Secured is now AtkinsRéalis Nuclear Secured. The parent company, which is involved in the nuclear industry and trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange, will officially change its stock ticker Monday […]

The Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy and Grid Deployment offices got new chiefs of staff, the agency announced this week. Emily Doran, a former campaign staffer for President Joe Biden (D), will be the staff chief at the Grid Deployment Office while Rory Stanley, most recently a staffer on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources […]

California waded into a lawsuit filed by environmental groups opposed to a life-extension for the state’s last nuclear power plant, writing in a legal filing last week that the plan “presents no undue risk” to the public. In a friend-of-the court brief uploaded Friday and dated Sept. 5, California asked the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court […]

Two electric cooperatives would purchase electricity generated by the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan if the plant restarts, plant owner Holtec International said this week in a statement. If Palisades restarts, something Holtec has said could happen in August 2025, if everything goes according to the company’s unprecedented plan, Wolverine Power Cooperative will purchase […]

With less than a month left until fiscal year 2024 begins, the White House has asked Congress for a short-term continuing resolution to freeze federal budgets at 2023 levels. Media reported last week that leaders in the House and Senate have remained open to the requested stopgap bill, which may be necessary due to an […]

Dominion Energy South Carolina applied with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend the life of the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Station’s Unit 1 nuclear reactor for another 20 years, to Aug. 6, 2062.  The commission posted the plant operator’s application online on Tuesday. The application is dated Aug. 17. Located in Jenkinsville, S.C., Unit 1 […]

Centrus Energy Corp., Bethesda, Md., said Wednesday it will begin enriching energy-dense uranium fuel at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio, in October. Centrus is in the prove-it phase of a contract, awarded in 2022 and worth up to $1 billion over 10 years, to operate a cascade of 16 AC100M centrifuges the […]

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission board should toss an environmentalist group’s effort to block a license extension for Diablo Canyon Power Plant’s spent fuel storage facility, commission staff recommended Sept. 5. The group, San Luis Obsipo Mothers for Peace, had successfully used a legal technicality to steer the renewal application toward a hearing with an NRC […]

Bill Richardson, a secretary of energy during the Bill Clinton administration who at various points of his career was a Democratic congressman and New Mexico governor, and became something of a specialist in international hostage negotiation, died Sept. 1 at age 75, according to major media accounts. Richardson was first elected to Congress in 1982 […]

The Department of Energy did not make an Aug. 29 target to announce the winner, or winners, of the second round of a federal bailouts to buoy financially ailing nuclear power plants. “DOE has not yet made any announcements around Award Cycle 2,” a spokesperson for the agency’s Office of Grid Deployment wrote in an […]

Members of a federal board on Wednesday questioned whether Department of Energy grantees could make inroads with state governments as part of the agency’s drive to find a host community for a federal interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel. At their annual meeting, held this year in Idaho Falls and streamed online, members of […]

A state court ruled last week that California can proceed with its effort to keep the Diablo Canyon Power Plant online into the 2030s, spurning an environmentalist group’s argument that the plan violated a contract. A 2022 state law that allowed a five-year life extension for the plant’s two reactors essentially voided the contract that […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had no authority to license an Orano-Waste Control Specialists joint venture in Texas to build and operate an interim storage site for spent fuel, a federal court ruled Friday. In 2021, after the NRC granted the Interim Storage Partners joint venture a license to store spent fuel at Waste Control Specialists’ […]

The shuttered Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan could restart in about two years, plant owner Holtec International told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a public meeting Tuesday. The date will depend among other things on whether Holtec, Jupiter, Fla., can get a billion-dollar loan from the Department of Energy, but it may also depend […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week appointed Brooke Clark its new general counsel, effective Oct. 15. Clark will be the agency’s chief legal advisor. She will replace Marian Zobler who was to retire, the agency wrote in a news release. Since 1998, when she joined the NRC for the first time, Clark has bounced to […]