Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

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 […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not have the staff it needs to license new nuclear reactor designs and needs to take another look at its hiring programs before that can change, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office. The agency, which regulates civilian nuclear power plants and the waste they produce, has […]

RadWaste Monitor will not be published on Friday Aug. 18, 2023 and Friday Aug. 25, 2023, as part of the Exchange Monitor’s annual August recess.  

The public is invited to a quick gold-cart tour of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station next week, the plant’s community engagement panel wrote in a press release this week. The tour is on the slate for Aug. 17, just ahead of the panel’s next scheduled briefing with plant owner Southern California Edison, which is […]

Two congressmen recently reintroduced a bipartisan bill to require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to keep a federal inspector at shuttered nuclear power plants until all fuel at the plants is in dry storage. Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Mike Levin (D-Calif.) reintroduced their bill, the Increasing Nuclear Safety Protocols for Extended Canister Transfers (INSPECT) Act […]

Severe thunderstorms along the East Coast knocked out power and damaged property near Department of Energy nuclear sites from South Carolina to Washington, but much service was restored by Friday. Federal employees in the Washington region got an early dismissal on Monday as storms rolled in, but federal offices returned to normal operating schedules for […]

The Department of Energy said Friday it cleared a paperwork hurdle for a planned five-year extension of California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant by adopting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s environmental reviews of the plant. DOE had a duty under federal law to do environmental diligence on Diablo Canyon after the department in 2022 agreed to provide […]

After almost four years on the job, Philip Strawbridge on Aug. 4 announced he would retire as Centrus Energy Corp.’s chief financial officer by the end of the month. Strawbridge, who was 64 when he took the job, has served as a senior vice president, chief financial officer, chief administrative officer and treasurer of Centrus since […]

Holtec International planned to meet with Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff Aug. 29 to discuss what the company says is the biggest regulatory hurdle to restarting the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station. The commission posted a notice of the meeting online Tuesday. Executives with Holtec International will join members of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation and Office […]

Shine Technologies, Janesville, Wis., plans to start talking to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission soon about building a used nuclear-fuel recycling facility, the company said in a recent regulatory filing. “SHINE intends to begin regulatory engagement with the NRC in the 4th Quarter 2023,” reads a letter to the commission from Jim Costedio, the company’s vice […]

The Massachusetts legislature stripped a proposal to create a radioactive wastewater commission from the final version of the state budget sent to the governor this week. Lawmakers sent a compromise version of the state’s $56-billion budget proposal to Gov. Maura Healey (D) on Monday after a six-person conference committee of the state’s bicameral legislature hammered […]

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) on Monday signed into law a state budget that would conditionally provide $150 million to restart the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Covert county. The funding, about half of what plant owner Holtec International says it needs from the state, is contingent on the federal Department of Energy providing a […]

The Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant’s Unit 3 reactor, the newest nuclear reactor in the country, started delivering electricity to the grid in Georgia, Georgia Power announced this week. Unit 3 in Waynesboro, Ga., started generating electricity in April. It is the first reactor project to become operational under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Part […]

Locals and activists this week renewed calls for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) to sign the legislature’s ban on radioactive wastewater discharges into the Hudson River, but the governor made no move. In a meeting this week of the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board, state officials got an earful from locals and activists who […]

WASHINGTON —Department of Energy properties used for nuclear weapons work could soon be tapped for development of new carbon-free energy under an effort unveiled Friday in Washington by Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm. The program, dubbed DOE’s Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative, would repurpose parcels around the weapons complex for non-carbon-emitting electricity, potentially creating enough […]

Thomas Ashley will take over as the permanent director of the office of investigations at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on July 30, the agency announced this week.  Ashley had been the acting director of the office since February, when Tracy Higgs, the previous director, retired. The offices of investigations investigates allegations of wrongdoing by NRC […]

EnergySolutions, Salt Lake City, will acquire bankrupt construction company Williams Industrial Services Group, Atlanta, for about $60 million, the Utah-based company said Monday in a press release. Williams has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The company specializes in construction of heavy industrial infrastructure. EnergySolutions […]

Massachusetts on Monday forbade Holtec International from discharging irradiated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant, but the company could still get a federal permit to do so. The state Department of Environmental Protection published the decision in a tentative determination to deny Holtec’s application to modify a discharge permit the […]

Using leftover appropriations, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s budget for fiscal year 2024 would be essentially what the agency requested, if a proposal approved last week by Senate appropriators becomes law. An energy and water appropriations bill passed Thursday by the Senate Appropriations would provide a net appropriation for the NRC of about $940 million. That […]