Publications: Nuclear Energy & Radwaste Monitor

FirstEnergy couldn’t have possibly imposed fees associated with its lobbying for Ohio House Bill 6 on ratepayers because rates for those customers were set in 2008, the company argued in response to a Public Utilities Commission of Ohio probe this week.  Rates were set and frozen through May 31, 2024 based on a test year […]

The Florida Public Service Commission approved a $540 million fixed-price contract between Duke Energy and Accelerated Decommissioning Partners for the decommissioning of the Crystal River nuclear plant in Florida on Thursday.  Accelerated Decommissioning Partners is a joint venture between NorthStar Group Services and Orano USA.  The contract approval marks the final step in the regulatory […]

In a scathing court filing this week, Holtec International slammed Lacey Township’s reasoning for rejecting a key part of the company’s plan to expand spent fuel storage space for the shuttered Oyster Creek power plant in New Jersey. The Florida-based company sued the township and its planning board in the U.S. District Court for New […]

The group of cities that originally signed on to buy the energy produced by NuScales Power small reactors has agreed to extend the deadline to drop out of the project by another month after two have withdrawn over cost and waste concerns.  The original deadline to leave the Nuscales’ Carbon Free Power Project was Sept. […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will continue carrying out its duties after President Trump signed a stopgap funding bill Wednesday night averting a government shutdown, spokesman Scott Burnell said Thursday.  Burnell did not elaborate on how operations will be impacted, if at all, by the measure, which freezes most federal budgets through early December. The […]

The deadline to repeal a contentious bill pushed through the Ohio state legislature by former House Speaker Larry Householder passed on Thursday, making a $0.85 utility rate increase for ratepayers across the state all but imminent. That’s despite Householder’s criminal indictment on racketeering and corruption charges this summer, subsequent resignation as House Speaker and a […]

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to finish the draft Environmental Assessment for the proposed decommissioning of the SM-1A reactor at Fort Greely in Alaska by March 2021, according to an update released Friday. The Corps visited the site in September to collect soil and environmental samples to complete the assessment and met with […]

In the 2019 fiscal year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) almost met its security strategic goal — but not quite.  According to a powerpoint published on the commission’s website ahead of a Wednesday oversight meeting, a “single event” caused the NRC to miss the goal that year.  Commissioners are set to discuss the missed goal […]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating FirstEnergy, the Ohio electric utility tied to a bribery scheme that allegedly helped state Rep. Larry Householder become the state’s Speaker of the House in exchange for a bailout of two nuclear plants.   Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigations are typically done behind closed doors, but the […]

Rep. Mike Levin, (D-Calif.) this week filed a five-year, $500m bill through Congress to form a spent nuclear fuel research and development program at the Department of Energy. The California congressman has long petitioned to increase oversight of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which is in his jurisdiction and in the process of being […]

Holtec plans to submit its license transfer application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to acquire the Palisades Power Plant by the end of this year or early 2021, Andrea Sterdis, Holtec’s Vice President of Regulatory & Environmental Affairs, said Tuesday. The company announced plans to acquire the Covert, Michigan-based plant from Entergy Corp. for decommissioning […]

By John Stang A scenario is being investigated of private corporations moving their spent nuclear fuel — possibly independent of U.S. Department of Energy ownership — to proposed consolidated interim storage sites in New Mexico and Texas.  That scenario — being studied by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) — was discussed this week at the […]

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans to complete the Three Mile Island Unit 2 license transfer by fall of this year, according to Bruce Watson, Chief of the NRC Reactor Decommissioning Branch. If approved, GPU Nuclear, the FirstEnergy subsidiary that currently owns the reactor, will be allowed to transfer its license to a TMI-2 Solutions, […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a slap on the wrist to International Isotopes for exporting radioactive isotopes with medical and industrial applications to Iraq without a proper license in 2019, according to documents.  The company exported a combined total of 264.60 MBq of Cesium-137, Barium-133, Cobalt-57, Cobalt-60, Europium-152, and Sodium-22 without a proper license […]

The New Mexico Environment Department has “grave concerns” about the “inadequacy of the technical analysis” in Holtec’s plan to build its HI-STORE Combined Interim Storage Facility in the southeastern part of the state, according to a letter the state agency sent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The state department called Holtec’s proposed site geographically unsuitable […]

Ohio’s attorney general sued FirstEnergy and its affiliates this week, opening yet another probe of the company’s alleged connections with state Rep. Larry Householder (R), the former Ohio House Speaker facing federal racketeering charges related to a 2019 nuclear-power bailout. The state suit seeks to block Energy Harbor, a former FirstEnergy subsidiary once called FirstEnergy […]

NAC International is considering its options for responding to a recent finding from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it had seemingly breached federal regulations in a design update for a used-nuclear fuel storage cask, an executive said last week. “NAC does not at this point, having just received the details set forth in the inspection […]

By John Stang Full security training for the nation’s commercial reactors probably won’t resume “until sometime next year,” Shana Helton, acting deputy director for the Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said this week. Helton spoke Tuesday at a staff briefing for NRC commissioners about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. […]

Perma-Fix Environmental Services has begun work on a second machine for segregating radioactively contaminated soils, with deployment planned within a period of months. The initial Perma-Sort system has been in use in San Diego throughout the second quarter of 2020, Perma-Fix President and CEO Mark Duff said last month during the company’s conference call on […]

A congressional appropriator predicted this week there will be a short-term continuing resolution passed to keep the Energy Department and other federal agencies running from Oct. 1 into December. “We will not have a budget shutdown,” Rep. Chuck Fleischmann said during the virtual National Cleanup Workshop hosted by the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) in cooperation […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management says 8 gallons of recycled wastewater from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina can be hauled to a Texas disposal facility with minimal risk. Shipping the waste from the SRS Defense Waste Processing Facility to the Waste Control Specialists disposal site in West Texas will be the […]

The Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy should soon formally kick off market research for a consolidation interim storage facility for spent fuel, according to the head of that program. “We have been working on an RFI-slash-RFP,” DOE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Rita Baranwal said, referring to a request for information or request for […]

Todd Shrader, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, recently gave the keynote address at the ExchangeMonitor’s annual RadWaste Summit (held virtually this year). Even if you missed the show, you can still watch Todd’s remarks right here.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is preparing its next strategic plan, covering federal fiscal years 2022 to 2026. The agency has scheduled a meeting for Sept. 22 to receive stakeholder input on the document. It is also taking comments online and by mail. The “NRC would like input on the agency’s strategic goals, actions to realize […]

Deputy Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes is scheduled today to visit two Wisconsin companies that aim to help re-establish the United States’ production capacity for the medical isotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99). Menezes will tour facilities at SHINE Medical Technologies in Janesville and NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes in Beloit, and meet with executives from both companies, according to […]

By John Stang A panel of specialists at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected a petition from a pair of Texas-based oil and gas interests to reopen its case for a hearing in the licensing of Holtec International’s planned spent-fuel storage facility in New Mexico. The three-member Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) essentially decided […]