Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel should decide this summer whether to force Pacific Gas and Electric to formally defend its request to relicense the Diablo Canyon Power Plant’s spent fuel storage facility. The environmental group San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace has mounted a multipronged legal attack on Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) effort to […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission could be down to four commissioners come Friday, with the Senate out of town and Commissioner Jeffrey Baran’s term was scheduled to expire. Baran’s nomination remained on the Senate’s executive calendar this week, but lawmakers returned home Thursday for their annual July 4 recess and were not scheduled to conduct any business […]

The Michigan legislature on Wednesday evening easily passed a bill that would provide a $150-million grant to help restart the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Covert County. If signed by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the bill would provide half the funding that Holtec International, the current Palisades owner, has said it needed from the state […]

New York’s governor had yet to decide whether she would sign a bill, passed Monday by the state legislature, that would punish anyone who discharges irradiated water into the Hudson River. The bill, S06893, passed the General Assembly 101-44 on the first day of a special session of the bicameral legislature’s lower chamber, where Democrats […]

Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions is exploring the idea of using the shuttered Kewaunee Nuclear Generating Station in Wisconsin and some of its other decommissioning sites as potential locations for future new nuclear power sites. “We are in the early phases of exploring the use of EnergySolutions -owned former nuclear sites such as Kewaunee,” for new […]

Georgia-based NAC International, a provider of nuclear fuel services and  products, said this week it has bought Niagara Energy Products, which will become a Canadian subsidiary of NAC. Niagara Energy Products, based in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, supplies nuclear containers and pressure boundary components for the nuclear energy, defense, natural resource extraction industries and Industrial […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would receive just under $1 billion, as requested, for 2024, under a spending bill the House Appropriations Committee was to mark up Thursday. Separately, a much smaller nuclear waste agency would also get its requested budget if the 2024 energy and water development appropriations bill becomes law. NRC is the primary […]

The House Appropriations Committee on Thursday was to mark up a bill that would increase funding for next-generation nuclear energy programs at the expense of accounts that fund nuclear waste, among other things. Generally, the bill would provide DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy with more funding than requested for development of high assay low-enriched uranium […]

Southern California Edison (SCE) is in the final stages of dismantling the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s (SONGS) reactor and a campaign to remove greater than Class C low-level waste from the shuttered plant is about 75% complete, Vince Bilovsky,  director of the utility’s SONGS decommissioning project told a citizens group Thursday in a joint […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would receive its requested budget for fiscal year 2024, under a Republican-authored spending bill unveiled this week in the House. The civilian nuclear power and waste regulator would get about $979.2 million for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 if the bill, written by the House Appropriations energy and water development […]

Some House Democrats told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a hearing this week that development of new nuclear power plants should be yoked to development of a permanent nuclear waste storage facility. In the same Wednesday hearing of the House Energy and Commerce energy, climate and grid security subcommittee, another Democrat, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), […]

Jeffrey Baran’s nomination for another term on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was before the full Senate Thursday after a committee this week approved his nomination in a razor-thin party-line vote. In a Wednesday business meeting, the Democrat-controlled committee approved Baran’s nomination 10-9. Though the nomination was placed on the Senate executive calendar on Thursday, the […]

The New York state legislature could return to Albany for a special session, during which the body’s state Assembly could take up a bill passed by the state Senate that would ban discharge of irradiated water into the Hudson River. The local Albany Times Union reported June 10 that lawmakers in the Assembly could return for a […]

The story “Disposal pros critique low-level waste compact system, license reciprocity at conference,” [RadWaste Monitor Vol. 16 No. 23] should have attributed certain price swings for radioactive waste disposal services to license reciprocity policies of individual states. The story “EnergySolutions eyes state approval for DUF6 disposal in 2024” [RadWaste Monitor Vol. 16 No. 22] should […]

SUMMERLIN, NEV — Spurred by audience members and a moderator, a pair of radioactive-waste-disposal professionals critiqued the nearly 40 year-old U.S. low-level radioactive waste compacts here on Wednesday. “There’s no continuity here between the compacts,” John McCormick, founder and vice president of Bionomics, Inc., Oak Ridge, Tenn., said here at the Exchange Monitor’s annual RadWaste […]

The Department of Energy on Friday announced it split $26 million among 13 teams who will help the agency define consent-based siting. The list includes trade groups, universities, local and tribal interest groups and even a few outright antinuclear groups. Some groups are part of multiple teams. Awards max out at $2 million. Consent-based siting […]

Editor’s note: The Exchange Monitor hosted its annual RadWaste 2.0 Summit in Summerlin, Nev., this week. The summit brings together managers responsible for the day-to-day operations of sites and businesses that treat, transport, store and dispose of radioactive waste. Two of the Monitor’s reporters attended the show and, in addition to news coverage nearby, returned […]

Antinuclear activists and state lawmakers on Tuesday demonstrated outside the New York governor’s office, demanding that she sign a bill to outlaw dumping of irradiated waste water into the Hudson River from the shuttered Indian Point Nuclear Energy Center. Food & Water Watch, a Washington-based nonprofit founded by activist Wenonah Hauter of Virginia, publicized the protest […]

The Department of Energy this week released a draft solicitation for a contract under which it could acquire up to 145 metric tons of high assay low-enriched uranium to help develop new nuclear reactor designs. Also this week, the agency released a draft solicitation for converting the energy-dense uranium into reactor fuel. DOE did not […]

Antinuclear activists want the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to speed up oral arguments in a federal lawsuit aimed at blocking a life extension for California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant. The groups, San Luis Obsipo Mothers for Peace, Friends of the Earth and Environmental Working Group, asked the U.S. Ninth Circuit of Appeals bump the scheduled briefings […]

The chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission paid a visit to the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in Avila Beach, Calif., last week, local media reported. Chair Christopher Hanson toured the facility, located about 200 miles northwest of Los Angeles, while commission staff are working with plant operator Pacific Gas & Electric to keep the plant […]

SUMMERLIN, NEV. — EnergySolutions’ radioactive waste disposal site in Clive, Utah, may be able to accept depleted uranium from the Department of Energy early next year, a company executive said here this week. EnergySolutions has worked with DOE Office of Environmental Management waste director Doug Tonkay “to come up with an MOU [memorandum of understanding] […]

SUMMERLIN, NEV — Holtec International is considering several companies as possible operators of the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan, which the Florida-based decommissioning company hopes to restart, a company representative said here Thursday.  “We’ve been involved in conversations with a couple of different potential buyers for the power,” Patrick O’Brien, director of government affairs […]

A bill that would force reviews of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s efficiency and extend caps on industry liability for catastrophic nuclear accidents cleared a Senate committee Wednesday on a 16-3 bipartisan vote. Only three Democrats opposed the bill, the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act of 2023. Sens. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), […]

Mark Menezes, who was deputy secretary of energy under President Donald Trump, will become the United States Energy Association’s new president and chief executive officer, the organization said Friday. Menezes will become the top boss at the U.S. Energy Association (USEA) June 15, replacing acting executive director Sheila Hollis, who has led the group since […]

A company seeking to build a small modular demonstration reactor at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site has received a qualified endorsement from a Nuclear Regulatory Commission advisory panel. Kairos Power said last week on Twitter the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards has recommended issuance of the construction permit for the […]

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee was supposed to vote Wednesday on whether to give Jeffrey Baran another five years on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but the vote never happened. “Why did we not vote Baran?” someone in the committee room said near a hot microphone after the body wrapped up its other business […]