SAVANNAH, GA — Here are a few takeaways from this week’s 19th Radwaste Summit held here this week.
The mood conveyed by most speakers and many attendees was generally upbeat.
There seems to be news of a proposed new small modular reactor or revival of a mothballed nuclear plant, such as Palisades in Michigan, every week. At the same time, President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders seek to speed nuclear license approvals and stimulate construction of nuclear reactors on Department of Energy and Department of Defense sites.
The executive orders, coupled with rising demand for electricity and public appetite for carbon-free power, create a huge opportunity for the sector’s growth in the United States, said speakers such as Bruce Montgomery, decommissioning and spent fuel director for the Nuclear Energy Institute.
But judging by the reaction to President Trump’s prior executive orders, the May nuclear orders are likely to be challenged in court, Montgomery said.
Likewise, other speakers openly wondered if agencies such as DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission — which will see the term of its chair expire at the end of June — will be too hobbled by brain drain in order to meet the challenge of a new nuclear age.
When it comes to federal reductions in force, the buzz among DOE watchers seems to fall into two camps, said Eric Knox, an Amentum vice president. One camp believes many of those leaving won’t be missed much, while another claims the agency has been cut to the bone and fears safe operations are in peril.
When Knox asked Edwin Deshong, DOE Environmental Management executive at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Deshong promptly replied that Savannah River is operating safely. At the same time, Deshong said DOE would be relying more on its corporate partners, meaning its contractors.
Some former federal managers have already signed on with DOE contractors. One recently-retired DOE manager, Jay Mullis, now chief nuclear officer at United Cleanup Oak Ridge, spoke to the conference as part of a panel on nuclear cleanup’s relationship to nuclear energy growth.
Perhaps because of federal layoffs, and government travel restrictions, attendance at this year’s Radwaste Summit was down from last year. A phenomenon that was also apparent at the large Waste Management Symposia in Phoenix during March.
One thing that continues to travel, however, is nuclear waste, said speakers such as Joe Heckman, president of waste management at EnergySolutions in Utah.
Showing various slides, Heckman said EnergySolutions together with its industry peers, Waste Control Specialists and US Ecology together have experience with all kinds of low-level radioactive waste that might be generated by announced new reactors.
Likewise, EnergySolutions Chief Technology Officer Tim Milner believes at some future date that virtually every part of old nuclear reactors will no longer be seen as merely waste. “Potentially every single part of the reactor” could find future uses in products ranging from lithium batteries to medical applications.
Milner likened it to an old English farmer who used to brag about being able to use every part of a pig, from the snout to the tail.
