Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) came out against allowing the nuclear industry to tap into power plant decommissioning trust funds to pay for major equipment replacements during a plant’s lifetime. The reliably tough-on-nuclear Markey took his stand Wednesday during a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. He told the five members of the […]

News about the Department of Energy’s $26-million program to define consent-based siting of nuclear waste could drop next week, the agency’s top nuclear-energy official hinted Wednesday. DOE is putting together what it calls a consent-based siting consortia to help the agency decide not which spots could be suitable for a federally operated interim storage site […]

WASHINGTON — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a morale problem and needs to do something about it, a senator representing the state where agency headquarters is located said in a hearing Wednesday. “It needs to be first acknowledged that you have a problem,” Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-Md.) told Christopher Hanson, the NRC chair. “You then […]

President Joe Biden has nominated Jeff Baran to serve another term on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the White House announced this week. Baran has been on the five-member Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) since October 2014, after first being nominated by President Barack Obama and then confirmed by the U.S. Senate, according to the Biden administration’s […]

An environmentalist group on Tuesday sued the operator of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California, seeking to keep the facility’s recently bailed-out reactors from operating beyond 2025. If it keeps Diablo Canyon open until at least 2030, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) would violate a 2016 contract with Friends of the Earth which stipulated […]

Holtec Decommissioning International wants the state of Michigan to provide $300 million to restart the shuttered Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, a state lawmaker confirmed Tuesday. State Rep. Pauline Wendzel (R), first reported as one of two sources of the information by the local Herald-Palladium, confirmed the figure in an email Tuesday to the Exchange Monitor. State Rep. Joey Andrews […]

The Department of Energy recently released a roughly four-year contract that will fund the agency’s evaluation of financially struggling nuclear reactors that could qualify for billions of dollars in bailouts Congress made available last year. The contract, administered by the DOE Idaho operations office, will begin on May 6, 2023 and run through Dec. 31, […]

A man who tried to resurrect commercial imaging services at a shuttered, 1960s-vintage reactor recently threatened to sue the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for allegedly ruining his business plans. In a letter to NRC, David Slaughter, the current president of Aerotest Operations in San Ramon, Calif., said he wanted to restart the imaging business in 2018 […]

Michigan should work with the U.S. Department of Energy to reopen the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, two state lawmakers opined this week in the Detroit Free Press. “The Palisades Nuclear Power Plant used to produce enough electricity to power over half a million homes in Michigan, yet it currently sits idle,” the two lawmakers, one […]

In late May, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will publish draft guidelines for power plant owners who wish to use decommissioning funds to replace plant equipment, an agency official said Thursday. When the interim guidance from NRC staff appears, the public, including the nuclear industry, will be allowed to comment on it and suggest changes that […]

Holtec will delay decommissioning work at the shuttered Oyster Creek Generating Station in Ocean Township, N.J., citing financial and operational factors, the company told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently. In an annual decommissioning funding report, posted online Wednesday by NRC and dated March 31, Holtec, Jupiter, Fla., said it would delay cutting up the shuttered […]

Holtec recently filed a permit modification request with the Environmental Protection Agency aimed at assuaging the agency’s reservations about whether the company is allowed to discharge irradiated wastewater into Cape Cod Bay in Massachusetts. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) posted Holtec’s permit modification request, and some supporting documents, online this week. The company filed the request […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week invited four senior managers of companies decommissioning nuclear power plants to share their experiences with the commission in May at agency headquarters in Rockville, Md., near Washington. “On May 2, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be holding a public meeting to discuss Decommissioning Lessons Learned from the past and […]

A bipartisan group of 10 senators, led by Sen. Shelley Capito (R-WVa.), on Monday published the text of a nuclear policy bill that among other things would extend a cap on industry liability for catastrophic nuclear accidents. The bill would extend the $13-billion liability cap known as the Price-Anderson Act by 20 years to 2045, […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission planned next week to formally declare its position on a major industry wish-list item: paying for maintenance of nuclear power plants with funds that are supposed to be reserved for tearing the plants down. During the virtual meeting scheduled for April 13, officials with the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety […]

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited is proceeding with previously-announced plans to seek bidders seeking to run Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, the federal Crown corporation said Friday. Canadian National Energy Alliance, an SNC-Lavalin-led team with Jacobs and Fluor as minority partners, currently runs daily operations of Canada’s national labs under a 10-year contract set to expire in […]

Holtec Decommissioning International will participate in but not pay for an independent study of discharging wastewater from the shuttered Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts into Cape Cod bay, the company told the state’s junior U.S. senator Friday. “We believe your independent panel will confirm the scientific facts to inform the public,” the company wrote […]

Howard Osborne will leave IBM to become chief financial officer of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on April 23, the agency said Monday in a press release. As chief financial officer, Osborne is responsible for the management and auditing of the agency’s finances and is the five-member commission’s top financial policy adviser. Osborne was most recently […]

It will take about another $1.1 billion to completely decommission the Three Mile Island Unit-1 reactor in Pennsylvania, Constellation Energy Generation told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a new detailed cost estimate published this week. The roughly 40-page updated site-specific decommissioning cost estimate for Three Mile Island Nuclear Station Unit-1 (TMI-1), appended to a letter […]

The chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was preparing a response to a request by the governor of New Mexico that the commission stop working on a license for a proposed interim storage site in the state. That’s according to a letter the NRC sent to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) on Friday. The NRC […]

A New York town downstream from a shuttered nuclear power plant passed a resolution asking state lawmakers to make a proposed ban against discharging radioactive wastewater in the state stricter. The five-member Greenburgh Town Board approved the resolution over the weekend. The town in Westchester County, N.Y., over the northern border of the city borough of the […]

Xcel Energy this week finished replacing leaky pipes at the Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant in Minnesota, which had shut down to deal with the leaks, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesperson said Thursday. The commission sent three inspectors to Monticello, about 50 miles northwest by road from Minneapolis near the Mississippi River, to witness “critical steps […]

U.S. lawmakers from Michigan again went on the record about their opposition to Canada’s proposal to permanently dispose of Canadian nuclear waste in South Burce, Ontario, some 30 miles inland from Lake Huron and one of two sites, along with Ignace, Ontario, where the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization could build the province’s deep geologic […]

Perma-Fix, Atlanta, closed out a tough 2022 with bigger losses and less revenue than a year ago, but the ill-effects of COVID-19 on the company’s business tapered off last year, the chief executive officer said last week. “While 2022 was a challenging year due to the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed projects […]

By John Stang The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board is working on reports about transferring spent fuel from five storage near power plants to a temporary repository, the board said this week in a meeting held in Florida. These upcoming reports will address the commercial reactor sites at Crystal River, Fla., La Crosse, Wis., Rancho […]

New Mexico on Friday legalized a ban on the storage of spent nuclear fuel in the state, potentially complicating Holtec International’s proposal to build a spent-fuel storage depot there. On Friday, the state House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 53 by a margin of 35 to 28. Gov. Michelle Lujan (D) signed the bill the […]

Citing a lack of resources, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday delayed its decision to license a proposed commercial interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel by up to two months. NRC delivered the news in a letter to Kimberly Manzione, Holtec International’s director of licensing, from the agency’s Bernard White, who signed the missive […]