Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

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 […]

Holtec Decommissioning International this week pitched the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on restarting the shuttered Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan via a license amendment request, according to company documents posted online Monday. It was the first time the company, which wants to find a buyer to reopen and operate Palisades if suitable federal subsidies can be […]

With infusions of federal funding shifting industry’s focus to recapitalizing nuclear power plants from decommissioning them, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans next week to conduct more public comment about proposed revisions to the environmental paperwork associated with renewing reactor licenses. The NRC in March proposed changes to the generic environmental impact statement the agency conducts whenever a […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission understands the need to move quickly to renew the operating license for Diablo Canyon, California’s last operating nuclear power plant, an executive with plant operator Pacific Gas and Electric said Thursday in a webinar hosted by the American Nuclear Society.  The NRC seems to “get the urgency of this,” Maureen Zawalick, […]

By John Stang NuScale Power Corp. hopes to add three new clients 2023 to the two that it already has. The small modular reactor developer pinned down its second client in 2022, RoPower Nuclear S.A, which will build six reactors at a decommissioned coal-fired power plant site in Romania. “2022 was a year of increased […]

The budget for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy would fall about 12% to around $1.56 billion in fiscal year 2024 if the White House’s latest federal spending request became law. That’s about $210 million less than the 2023 appropriation Congress provided in December in an omnibus spending bill for the part of […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would wind up with close to a flat budget in 2024 if a request sent to Congress Monday becomes law. The independent federal civilian nuclear power regulator seeks some $979.2 million for fiscal year 2024, about $52 million million more than the roughly $927 million Congress approved for fiscal year 2023 […]

Consent-based siting, or securing support at all levels of government for a nuclear-waste repository, “won’t be fun,” a Nuclear Regulatory Commission commission said Wednesday at an agency conference. “Even a consent-based process is going to take time and it’s not going to be fun, but it’s the only way that’s going to be lasting,” NRC […]

Nevada’s senior senator last week expressed skepticism about the safety of spent-nuclear-fuel casks, which the director of the Idaho National Laboratory touted during a hearing about nuclear energy and waste. The Thursday hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee veered into a discussion of a Feb. 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, […]

A bill that would broadly prohibit storage of spent nuclear fuel in New Mexico was set up for a final vote in the New Mexico legislature on the final day of the session. On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee of the New Mexico House of Representatives passed an amended version of Senate Bill 53, “Storage […]

The Nuclear Waste Administration Act is all set and ready to go for this session of Congress, the chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee said Thursday in a hearing — it just hasn’t been filed yet. “We have a text ready to go,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WVa.) said during the hearing, in […]

An environmental group continued to raise objections with a regional water authority about the decommissioning of the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission effectively rejected the groups concerns last week. The NRC, through the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, on March 1 rejected Three Mile Island Alert’s contention to a […]

In offering California’s last nuclear power plant a new lease on life, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sidestepped a legal argument from antinuclear activists who said the agency might be illegally extending the plant’s operating license. The NRC on Wednesday published a roughly five-page explanation in the Federal Register explaining the agency’s decision to conditionally let Pacific Gas […]

WASHINGTON — It will still be another decade or so before the Department of Energy identifies a willing host community for a federal interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel, a senior official said here. “We probably won’t have constructed interim storage acceptance for 10 years, 15 years,” Kathryn Huff, the agency’s assistant secretary for […]

PHOENIX — It’s still unclear whether the final version of a proposed rule change aimed at streamlining nuclear power plant decommissioning  will require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to okay licensees’ plans for dismantling their sites, officials said here this week. NRC staff, who are currently putting together the agency’s final decommissioning rulemaking, “are looking at” […]