The Nuclear Regulaotory Commission’s inspector general last week issued its annual list of the commission’s biggest regulatory challenges; safe regulation of new and existing nuclear technology and decommissioning oversight topped the list.
The top three challenges, in the Inspector General’s own words, are: “1. Ensuring safety and security through risk-informed regulation of established and new nuclear technologies, as well as cyber and physical security activities impacting the NRC’s mission; 2. Overseeing the decommissioning process and the management of decommissioning trust funds; 3. Implementing new legislative requirements related to NRC core mission areas and corporate support.”
Citing a lack of customers for its energy, a Utah-owned energy company decided to cancel a project to build a small modular reactor designed by NuScale, Portland, Ore., a company majority owned by Fluor.
Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems and NuScale “mutually determined that ending the project is the most prudent decision for both parties,” according to a joint press release.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a centrist who often rankled his party by refusing to go along with President Joe Biden’s (D) signature stimulus legislation, announced Thursday he would not seek a third full term in the U.S. Senate.
A former West Virginia governor, Manchin was elected to the Senate in 2010 in a special election. He won his first general election in 2021. Manchin chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Manchin faces a challenge from West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) who was once a Democrat.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposed a $43,750 fine for Holtec Decommissioning International for inappropriately shipping radioactive equipment from the decommissioning of the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in New Jersey.
Holtec shipped “radioactive materials in a package exceeding regulatory transportation limits,” the commission wrote in a press release Thursday. The material was carried “in an open transport vehicle” to the site of another Holtec-owned nuclear decommissioning site, the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, N.Y., the commission wrote in its release.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission released the land that once housed the Zion Nuclear Power Station for unrestricted use, the commission said Wednesday in a press release.
Zion operated from 1973 until 1997 in Zion, Ill., after which its operator Commonwealth Edison sold the plant to an EnergySolutions subsidiary for decommissioning.
Doosan Enerbility, Changwon, South Korea and NAC International, Peachtree Corners, Ga., got a contract from Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power to finalize design of a dry cask storage system for spent nuclear fuel.
The contract, terms of which the companies did not disclose, also covers “a cask for transporting spent nuclear fuel in transportable storage canisters,” the companies said in a joint press release this week.
