The Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted to review a construction permit application of Dow Chemical Company’s subsidiary Long Mott Energy, as announced in its Tuesday press release.
Dow and X-Energy previously submitted a construction permit application for a proposed advanced nuclear project in Seadrift, Texas on March 31.
The project would use a four-unit facility using X-Energy’s Xe-100 reactors to replace the current energy and steam generation that is powered by natural gas that has end-of-life in the early 2030s, at Dow’s UCC Seadrift Operations manufacturing location.
The Department of Interior will expedite its permitting review for a major energy project in Utah under its recently established emergency procedures.
Under the Donald Trump administration declaration of a national energy emergency, the project will proceed through an expedited environmental review by the Bureau of Land Management. The process is expected to be completed in 14 days.
If approved, the Utah project, the Velvet-Wood Mine in San Juan County, Utah, will produce uranium and vanadium by accessing old Velvet Mine workings and developing the Velvet-Wood mineralization, according to the Department of Interior’s Monday press release.
The Idaho National Laboratory’s Fire Department has begun to prepare for the 2025 wildland fire season, according to its May 8 press release.
Before every summer, the department reviews its procedures to ensure the preparation and safety of its firefighters to protect people, property and environment from fires at its desert site.
The INL fire department has three different stations on the desert site in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Since 1994, the INL desert site has averaged five fires that burned around 14,000 acres. However, INL has been able to avoid any major facility damage during that time frame.
Finland has pushed forward in its pursuit to find a permanent storage for spent fuel as the country dug out an underground space for a repository in southwestern Finland.
Currently being built by Posiva Oy, a Finnish environmental technology company, the repository, known as Onkalo, is being tested. Onkalo is 430 meters deep in the bedrock.
In March, Posiva completed its first trial run at the Onkalo repository in which they successfully transported five spent fuel canisters, filled with nonradioactive materials, to its underground storage.
