The head of a local government in the United Kingdom said she will not support a deep geologic disposal facility for nuclear waste, the BBC reported this week.
Anne Handley, leader of the East Riding of Yorkshire Council, said she does not want to talk to the U.K. government-owned Nuclear Waste Services about building a permanent repository in East Riding of Yorkshire, the BBC reported Tuesday.
Nuclear Waste Services in January identified South Holderness, in the county of East Riding of Yorkshire in east-central England between the Humber River and North Sea coast, as a candidate host community for a deep geologic disposal facility for nuclear waste. Nuclear Waste Services has said it will build no repository without the consent of local residents near the candidate site.
As it seeks to extend the life of the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant in Red Wing, Minnesota by 20 years to 2054, Xcel Energy last week applied with a state regulator to expand the dual-reactor plant’s independent spent fuel storage installation by adding one or two concrete pads to the facility’s existing three pads.
The company in November contracted with a subsidiary of Orano USA to move Prairie Island’s spent fuel into dry storage beginning in 2026.
The utility-chartered Diablo Canyon Decommissioning Engagement Panel solicited calls for new members. People living near the plant were invited to apply for a spot on the panel, which plant owner Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) convened to gather local feedback about decommissioning the plant.
PG&E has applied for a license extension with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to keep Diablo Canyon open beyond the 2025 expiration date of its second reactor’s operating license. The NRC license extension would be for 20 years, but the state of California has so far limited any plant life extension to five years.
The Washington state Senate was set next week to take up a bill that would give certain companies regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission another four years to claim a 10-year local property tax exemption.
The bill overwhelmingly passed Washington state’s House of Representatives on Feb.7, 94-1. The measure, sponsored by state Rep. Stephanie Barnard (R), now heads to the state Senate’s Committee on Environment, Energy & Technology for a hearing that was scheduled for 4:30 p.m. Eastern time on Feb. 20.
Barnard is one of three state representatives for Washington’s 8th legislative district, which includes Richland, Wash., just south of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site. She has framed the bill as a means of attracting clean energy jobs to Washington state.
The Kebaowek First Nation, an indigenous Algonquin tribe in Canada, petitioned Canada’s federal government to revoke the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s January decision to allow for near surface disposal of low-level radioactive waste at a planned facility near the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ Chalk River campus in Deep River, Ontario, Canada, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation reported.
Some indigenous tribes have consented to the near-surface disposal site, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported, but others, including the Kebaowek First Nation, have not.
