Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

NorthStar Group Services plans to acquire the Vallecitos Nuclear Center, in Sunol, Calif., from General Electric Hitachi, adding four reactors to the privately held company’s decommissioning fleet. As of Friday, privately held NorthStar, New York, had not filed for a license transfer with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Neither NorthStar nor General Electric (GE) Hitachi have […]

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week advanced a bill that would require the Department of Energy to report on the costs of implementing a federal bailout for struggling nuclear power plants.  S. 452, the Nuclear Fuel Security Act of 2023, would require DOE to report by 180 days after the measure becomes […]

House and Senate panels this week approved bans on importing Russian uranium, with Senators calling for a quicker end to the practice than their House colleagues. It was uncertain this week what prospects the differing bills had for reconciliation, or whether President Joe Biden (D), whose secretary of energy has cautioned that the U.S. cannot […]

The Department of Energy and Canadian nonprofit Nuclear Waste Management Organization signed an agreeement to cooperate on used nuclear fuel management, the Canadian organization announced Tuesday. “The agreement reflects the U.S. and Canada’s shared commitment to safely managing used nuclear fuel, including that from small modular reactors,” the Nuclear Waste Management Organization wrote in a […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to have BWX Technologies process nearly twice as much high-assay low-enriched uranium as recently planned after more than a metric ton of the material was found at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee.  A notice of intent filed May 3 on the government’s contracting website outlines NNSA plans […]

A man who threatened to sue the Nuclear Regulatory Commission over the failure of a neutron imaging business can have his day in court if he wants it, the commission said late last week. “Your claim did not reveal that you suffered any damage to or loss of property or personal injury or death caused […]

In a Tuesday hearing about his nomination to a third term on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Republican Senators painted Commissioner Jeffrey Baran as an impediment to nuclear progress. However, none of the Republicans who questioned Baran in his Wednesday nomination hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said they would oppose his nomination. […]

Holtec International’s cost estimate for decommissioning a Michigan nuclear power plant is justifiable, Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff said recently in a review that did not touch on the state’s biggest gripes about the plan. Excluding unforeseen increases, Holtec, Jupiter, Fla., estimates it will cost about $644 million in 2020 dollars to safely bring down Palisades, […]

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm is holding out hope that the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan, which she governed from 2003 to 2007, will roar back to life. “There is hopefully an effort to try to revive that,” Granholm testified Thursday during a frequently contentious hearing of the House Energy and Commerce energy, climate, […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week licensed Holtec International to operate a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in New Mexico, where politicians vowed to block the project. Holtec’s is one of two proposed consolidated interim storage facilities the NRC has licensed over the last two years to receive spent fuel. If built, […]

Environmentalists sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop the planned extension of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant in California, according to a court filing dated April 28. San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, Friends of the Earth, and Environmental Working Group sued the commission in the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that NRC’s […]

Utah’s state-backed Carbon Free Power Project may need an exemption to existing Nuclear Regulatory Commission decommissioning funding requirements for the six NuScale Power small modular reactors the company plans to build at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, commission staff wrote in a letter to NuScale. The letter was published online May 1 and […]

The Maritime Administration planned to welcome visitors for an open house visit to the Nuclear Ship Savannah, which is still docked in Baltimore Harbor and had its reactor removed and shipped to Utah for disposal last year. The open house was planned for Sunday, May 21, as part of the Port of Baltimore’s observance of National […]

Construction continued on an expanded fuel storage facility at New York’s shuttered Indian Point Energy center, where a subcontractor started building a vehicle barrier system to protect 127 casks of spent fuel, decommissioning lead Holtec International said last week. Holtec International, Jupiter, Fla., briefed the local Decommissioning Oversight Board about the development April 26 at […]

About a year after acquiring the company for about $2 billion, Republic Services, Phoenix, has nearly integrated the operations of the old US Ecology with its own, according to Republic’s latest earnings report. US Ecology operates radioactive waste disposal sites in Idaho, Michigan, and Washington state. The Richland, Wash. site accepts low-level radioactive waste from […]

One of the nuclear industry’s main trade groups planned to host a new conference for nuclear power plant decommissioning companies, an executive with the group told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Tuesday in a public meeting. “We’re targeting January, February 2024 to have a conference,” Bruce Montgomery, director of decommissioning and used fuel at the Washington-based […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration cold-shouldered Saudi Arabia recently when the Kingdom sought U.S. help establishing a civilian nuclear power industry, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said in a hearing Wednesday. “I believe it’s imperative that we have that relationship with Saudi,” Manchin told the heads of the Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security […]

The White House sent Jeff Baran’s nomination for another five years on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the Senate, where the chair of the committee in charge of vetting the commissioner has vowed swift advancement, if possible. The Joe Biden administration officially nominated Baran on Tuesday, according to a White House press release, fulfilling the […]

It was a banner week for nuclear waste disposal reports. Even as the U.S. Department of Energy published a new consent-based siting strategy, the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Waste Services, a government group, published a 23-page roadmap about its efforts to build waste repositories. The U.K. government created Nuclear Waste Services in 2022, folding existing waste […]

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission board in May plans to decide whether a citizen’s group can contest a utility’s plan to renew a license for storing the spent fuel of California’s last nuclear power plant, the commission said Monday. An NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board planned to hear arguments on May 24 from the San […]

The Department of Energy on Tuesday published a new report about the agency’s plans for finding a willing host for a federal interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. The document, which puts a federal interim storage site some 10 or 15 years in the future, assuming Congress changes existing law to make such a […]

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 […]