Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

The company decommissioning the Duane Arnold Duane Arnold Energy Center plans to start moving spent fuel from the shuttered plant’s reactor to dry storage this year, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector said this week. NextEra should have the fuel on the move “starting in 2021,” Rex Edwards, an inspector working out of NRC’s Region III […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission promoted Daniel Dorman to director of operations, the agency announced this week in a press release. Dorman is assuming his new post as NRC’s highest-ranking career official effective Oct. 10, the  Tuesday press release said. The former deputy executive director of the commission’s reactor and preparedness programs is stepping up to […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a top electric power research group are renewing an unfunded five-year research agreement aimed at addressing nuclear plant aging and other challenges facing the aging fleet, according to a memo published this week. In the memorandum of understanding signed last week by both parties, NRC and the Electric Power Research […]

Editor’s Note: This story has been corrected to say that Exelon owns and operates 12 nuclear power plants. In a leadership shuffle last week Exelon Corp., Chicago, appointed leadership for a new offshoot company that would separate its power generation business — including nuclear — from its electric and gas sales and distribution businesses, the […]

The utility company in charge of two financially-struggling nuclear power plants in Illinois is reversing course on its shutdown plans after a state bailout in September gave the reactors a new lease on life. In Federal Register notices published Oct. 1, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved Exelon’s withdrawal of license amendments that would have let […]

A majority of staff at the nation’s top regulator for civilian nuclear power are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, an agency spokesperson said this week. Roughly 65%, or around 1,859, of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s 2,860 employees have “certified that they are fully vaccinated,” a spokesperson told RadWaste Monitor via email Tuesday.  Despite that statistic, NRC […]

A pair of Democratic lawmakers this week introduced a bill that would allow a mostly non-federal taskforce, appointed in large part by the Environmental Protection Agency, to help define consent-based siting of nuclear waste and consider whether such waste could be regulated by states. If it became law, the “Nuclear Waste Task Force Act,” unveiled […]

The lights were still on in Washington Friday after Congress approved a stopgap budget to prevent a government shutdown, at least through Dec. 3, while it works on other legislation and works toward a permanent 2022 budget. President Joe Biden signed the bill Thursday evening not long after the House voted 254-175 to send congressional […]

A new Texas ban on high-level nuclear waste could be “potentially quite a playing field for lawyers coming up,” a member of an interstate nuclear waste compact told a citizens advisory panel in Vermont recently. The Lone Star state put the anti-nuclear-waste law on the books earlier this month and now, Austin and Washington must […]

About half of a Massachusetts nuclear power plant’s spent fuel inventory has been moved to dry storage, setting up the project for completion in late fall, the company in charge of decommissioning the sites said in a recent press release. Seventeen of Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station’s 34 spent fuel canisters have been transferred to the […]

A federal court last week gave anti-nuclear groups two more weeks to coordinate next steps in their lawsuit challenging a recently-licensed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Texas. The groups, which include Beyond Nuclear and the Sierra Club, now have until Oct. 12 to move forward in their case against the proposed Interim […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is planning to meet next week with the company in charge of decommissioning a New Jersey nuclear power plant to discuss several security violations at the site earlier this year. NRC was to host a pre-enforcement conference with Holtec International Oct. 6 to discuss an unspecified number of physical security violations […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s environmental justice review needs to prioritize actionable outcomes, stakeholders and members of the public said during an agency conference call Monday. “[I]t’s not enough for NRC just to review its policies,” said Leona Morgan, co-founder of New Mexico community organizer Nuclear Issues Study Group. “What we need to see is change, […]

The next phase of the Department of Energy’s spent fuel storage inquiry should begin next year, the head of the agency’s nuclear energy office told congressional investigators this month. DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy (ONE) is “resuming consent-based siting activities,” acting ONE assistant secretary Kathryn Huff told the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in a Sep. […]

Congress needs to make some changes to federal law before the Department of Energy can tackle the spent fuel storage problem, congressional investigators said this week.  “Congress needs to take action to break the impasse over a permanent solution for commercial spent nuclear fuel—used fuel removed from nuclear power reactors,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) […]

Texas started legal proceedings this week aimed at overturning the Nuclear Regulatory’s Commission’s decision to license a commercially operated interim storage site for spent nuclear fuel in the Lone Star state. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, alongside Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), asked a judge in the U.S. […]

A possible government shutdown loomed closer at deadline, as Senate Republicans threatened to filibuster a stopgap budget to keep federal agencies, including the Department of Energy, funded when the 2022 fiscal year begins on Oct. 1. The continuing resolution, which passed the House Tuesday on a 220-211 party-line vote, will keep federal agencies at their […]

A state regulator didn’t violate environmental law when it signed off on the decommissioning of a California nuclear power plant, a judge ruled last week. In the ruling dated Sep. 13, Superior Court of California judge Mitchell Beckloff torpedoed the environmental watchdog Samuel Lawrence Foundation’s argument that the California Coastal Commission ignored its own regulations […]

Nuclear energy and advanced nuclear technologies should be a “critical part” of a net-zero energy economy, the secretary of energy said in Vienna this week at the U.N.’s big nuclear conference. “[T]oday, we see that transitioning to net-zero represents a great economic opportunity: a global clean energy market that will grow to at least 23 […]

A bipartisan group of lawmakers recently pressed the Joe Biden administration in a resolution to oppose a Canadian geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel planned for the Great Lakes Basin. In the Sep. 17 resolution led by Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), the coalition of delegates from Great Lakes states like Michigan, Ohio and Minnesota urged […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission again extended the deadline on the license transfer agreement for an Illinois nuclear power plant under decommissioning to give agency staff more time to clear the site for unrestricted use, according to a recent notice. The transfer of Zion Nuclear Power Station back to Exelon from EnergySolutions won’t need to be […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission nixed a New York county executive’s request for a full-time inspector to oversee the decommissioning of a recently-shuttered nuclear power plant, according to a recent letter from the agency. Placing a full-time resident inspector at Indian Point Energy Center “is not necessary to provide for the protection of the public health […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s reactor regulation department is building a team to assess some key takeaways from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a draft mission statement. NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) will designate a working group to investigate “lessons learned and best practices on the oversight of power reactors during the COVID-19 pandemic […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s highest-ranking career executive is leaving the agency next month, according to a press release this week. Margaret Doane, who currently serves as NRC’s executive director of operations, will leave her post effective Oct. 8, the agency said in a statement Monday. Doane is headed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) […]

Westinghouse is bringing in a former Holtec Decommissioning International c-suite executive to take over its biggest business line, the company announced recently. Pamela Cowan, who was senior vice president and chief operating officer of Holtec’s decommissioning branch, will become president of Westinghouse’s Americas operating plant services unit, according to a press release published Sep. 9. […]

The Army Corps of Engineers gave North Wind Portage the green light to continue its cleanup work at a former beryllium manufacturing plant in Ohio, a company spokesperson said this week. North Wind, which was awarded the $82 million contract for the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) Luckey site on August 18, has […]

A group of Maryland environmental activists Monday protested Congress’s proposed tax credits aimed at saving economically-troubled nuclear power plants, according to a press release. Activists from Beyond Nuclear and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) among others delivered letters Monday to Reps. Jamie Raskin and John Sarbanes (both D-Md.) during a “national day of […]