Yucca Mountain

Amid her campaign for a second term, Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) on Tuesday filed a bill that would if enacted remove Yucca Mountain’s designation as a nuclear waste repository. The bill would also terminate the not-quite-dead Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding that the George W. Bush (R) administration started with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the […]

Party-line divisions about future spent nuclear fuel policies emerged in a Wednesday House hearing, during which one lawmaker said work on the issue could stretch into the next Congress. “I’m not for interim storage,” Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) said during the hearing of the House Energy climate, and grid security subcommittee, which he chairs. “I […]

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee plans a hearing next week on spent fuel management for the U.S. nuclear power plants. The hearing, dubbed “American Nuclear Energy Expansion: Spent Fuel Policy and Innovation,” is set for Wednesday April 10 at 10:30 a.m. at the Rayburn House Office Building, according to a press release. The session […]

No, the Secretary of Energy said this week during the first budget hearing of the 2025 fiscal year, the Department of Energy does not plan to fund a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. “I just want to ask you if you can quickly confirm on the record what the department’s fiscal year 25 funding […]

Contractor North Wind Portage has now removed 14 million tons of uranium mill tailings from the Moab, Utah site near the Colorado River, the Department of Energy announced this week. Removing 14 million of the 16 million tons of tailings from the Moab Uranium Mill Tailings Remedial Action Project is a big step toward remediation […]

The No. 2 Department of Energy manager at the West Valley Demonstration Project in western New York, Craig Rieman, has left to take another job within the agency, members of a local task force heard last week. Bryan Bower, DOE’s manager of the West Valley cleanup, announced the move last Wednesday, June 28, during a […]

The Department of Energy has a nickname: “the Department of Everything,” the acting DOE nuclear cleanup boss told weapons complex citizen advisory board chairs this week.   The DOE Office of Environmental Management senior adviser William (Ike) White retold the joke during a Washington, D.C., meeting Tuesday. The description applies to an agency involved in issues […]

PHOENIX — An executive with an industry trade group thinks that the U.S. could have a geologic repository for its nuclear waste inventory by mid-century, he said here this week. Rod McCullum, senior director of decommissioning and used fuel at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), said Monday during a panel at the Waste Management Symposium […]

The Department of Energy needs to “prioritize” a 2019 policy change that said much high-level radioactive waste is not hazardous enough to require deep underground disposal, a Washington-based group said in a report Thursday. “DOE should re-energize its use of the HLW [high-level waste] interpretation, including pursuing a pilot implementation at Hanford for a single-specific […]

Two members of Nevada’s congressional delegation this week reintroduced a bill that, if made law, would spell the final end of the proposed Yucca Mountain permanent nuclear waste repository. The Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act, unveiled in a Tuesday press release by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev), “will ensure that […]

Two members of Nevada’s congressional delegation on Tuesday reintroduced a bill that, if made law, would spell the final end of the proposed Yucca Mountain permanent nuclear waste repository. The Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act, unveiled in a Tuesday press release by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev), “will ensure that […]

ARLINGTON, VA. — Just because Republicans took control of the House does not mean that Congress has any more desire to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain than it had before the midterms, a senior Department of Energy official said here this week. Asked Tuesday after a speech at the Institute of Nuclear […]

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management is distributing $30 million in grant money to minority serving institutions to bolster math, science and technology education among non-white students in South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington state. The funds should help develop science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) proficiency among students at traditionally black, hispanic and […]

In congressional races in Washington state, incumbents who help control the purse strings for the Hanford Site, the Department of Energy’s largest and most expensive nuclear cleanup property, won re-election. Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), whose 4th congressional district includes Hanford and who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, was declared the winner by the Associated […]

Three days after Americans went to the polls for the midterm election, it remains unclear whether two staunch opponents of a Nevada geologic repository will remain in power in the Silver State, according to election data. As of Friday, incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) trailed her Republican opponent, former state attorney general Adam Laxalt, […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission told a Nevada congresswoman in a recent letter that it was still considering a motion from the Silver State aimed at killing the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. NRC has Nevada’s Sep. 20 request to reopen the agency’s licensing proceedings for the Yucca Mountain site “under advisement in its adjudicatory […]

WASHINGTON — Though the government lags private industry in the development of centralized nuclear waste storage, Washington can still be part of the solution, the Secretary of Energy said here this week. “I understand that there are private efforts going on, but we believe that the government has a role in a [nuclear waste] repository […]

  The Nuclear Regulatory Commission told a Nevada congresswoman in a recent letter that it was still considering a motion from the Silver State aimed at killing the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. NRC has Nevada’s Sep. 20 request to reopen the agency’s licensing proceedings for the Yucca Mountain site “under advisement in its […]

Ahead of the midterm elections, plans for disposing of spent nuclear fuel currently stranded at a California nuclear power plant are among the issues at play in one battle to represent the Golden State in Congress. The issue of nuclear waste disposal is especially personal to the candidates for California’s 49th congressional district — incumbent […]

Ahead of the midterm elections, plans for disposing of spent nuclear fuel currently stranded at a California nuclear power plant are among the issues at play in one battle to represent the Golden State in Congress. The issue of nuclear waste disposal is especially personal to the candidates for California’s 49th congressional district — incumbent […]

The contest for a Nevada Senate seat up for grabs in the upcoming midterm elections is, according to one poll, too close to call with around a month remaining until Silver Staters cast their votes. Incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) trails her challenger, former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt (R), by just two percentage […]

The Department of Energy could have its own interim storage facility to store U.S. spent nuclear fuel within a decade or so, the Office of Nuclear Energy’s newly-minted head of waste disposition said during a webinar this week. “We will have a federal interim storage facility within the decade, if not fifteen years, with a […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not have a schedule for when it will address a recent request from the state of Nevada aimed at reopening, and eventually ending, the agency’s licensing proceedings for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a spokesperson said this week. Although Nevada’s Sep. 20 request is in front of NRC’s […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not have a schedule for when it will address a recent request from the state of Nevada aimed at reopening, and eventually ending, the agency’s licensing proceedings for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a spokesperson said Tuesday. Although Nevada’s Sep. 20 request is in front of NRC’s five-member […]

In the state’s latest attempt to kill the project for good, Nevada this week asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to end the long-idled licensing review of the U.S.’s only congressionally-designated storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. Gov. Steve Sisolak’s (D) request, if approved by NRC, would re-open licensing proceedings for the Yucca Mountain site so […]

In the state’s latest attempt to kill the project for good, Nevada on Tuesday asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to end the long-stalled licensing review of the U.S.’s only congressionally-designated storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. Gov. Steve Sisolak’s (D) motion, if approved by NRC, would re-open licensing proceedings for the Yucca Mountain site — […]

John Cowles, who at the turn of the century was chief engineer for the nation’s only federally-authorized repository for high-level nuclear-power waste, passed away in his sleep July 22, according to an obituary published in The Boston Globe Thursday. He was 88 years old. Cowles, who began his nearly 40 years in the energy industry […]

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee was scheduled this week to consider a proposed bill that would create an independent federal agency to oversee the development of nuclear waste storage sites. The new organization proposed in Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) Nuclear Waste Administration Act, set for debate Thursday during a meeting of the upper […]

It might be years before there is any legal way for the Department of Energy to build a federally operated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel before first building a permanent repository, the agency’s acting head of nuclear waste management said at an industry conference this week. “We recognize that there are a limited […]

It might be years before there is any legal way for the Department of Energy to build a federally operated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel before first building a permanent repository, the agency’s acting head of nuclear waste management said at an industry conference Wednesday. “We recognize that there are a limited amount […]