Congress skipped town, and so did many other readers, but that didn’t stop news from breaking during the ExchangeMonitor’s annual August publication break. As chronicled in the Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, here are a few stories that we’ve been following.
NRC Planning Yucca Info Gathering for Fall
Although it has yet to officially rematerialize, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is preparing to review the Energy Department’s application to license the planned Yucca Mountain permanent nuclear-waste repository in Nevada.
The regulator announced this week it will spend some $110,000 on “information-gathering activities,” to include a virtual meeting of the commission’s Licensing Support Network Advisory Review Panel, which will gather input about resurrecting a voluminous database — the Licensing Support Network — containing roughly 4 million documents intended to support the adjudicatory hearing the NRC would be charged to conduct if DOE reactivates its Yucca license application.
“These next steps involve information-gathering activities related to the suspended adjudication on the application,” the NRC stated in a Tuesday press release. “These activities will enable efficient, informed decisions in support of executing any further appropriations of funds for the High-Level Waste Program.”
The virtual meeting is not scheduled yet, but an NRC spokesperson said Wednesday it would likely take place sometime in the fall.
Congress in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as the sole repository for high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. The George W. Bush administration in 2008 filed an application with the NRC to license the repository. The Barack Obama administration pulled the plug on that application in 2010, and the Donald Trump administration wants to resume the licensing process in fiscal 2018.
Congress is split about whether to let that happen. The House has approved a 2018 spending bill that would give DOE the $120 million the White House is seeking for Yucca licensing. The Senate’s 2018 energy spending bill, approved by the chamber’s Appropriations Committee last month, provides nothing for Yucca, but would allow DOE to move forward with at least one consolidated interim storage facility for spent fuel.
Svinicki Sidesteps Heller’s Baited Barbs in Capitol Correspondence
The head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission tiptoed carefully around barbed inquiries from Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) about the Energy Department’s plan to license Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a permanent nuclear waste repository, according to recently released correspondence between the two.
Heller has been prodding DOE and NRC officials about Yucca Mountain practically from the moment the Donald Trump administration announced it would move forward with the project, which then-President Barack Obama effectively canceled in 2010.
To that end, Heller on June 19 sent NRC Commission Chairman Kristine Svinicki eight pointed questions about Yucca Mountain. In a reply dated July 28 — and posted online Monday by the NRC — Svinicki declined to be baited about whether Yucca Mountain was a safe and affordable disposal site for U.S. commercial and defense nuclear waste.
Instead, the newly reappointed NRC commissioner acknowledged again the agency’s request for fiscal 2018 funds to judge DOE’s license application, and acknowledged the hundreds of points of contention the state of Nevada has already raised against that application.
“All contentions admitted for hearing will be resolved before the NRC makes a final determination on the application,” Svinicki wrote.
The Energy Department has not yet resumed its Yucca licensing process, which means the NRC is not yet reviewing the application.
A DOE budget proposal the House of Representatives approved before breaking for August recess provides $120 million for Yucca Mountain, including $30 million for the agency to prepare defense nuclear waste for permanent disposal. The NRC would get $30 million in 2018 to judge the fitness of DOE’s application, should the House’s bill become law.
The Senate’s corresponding bill provides no Yucca money for either DOE or NRC. Instead, the upper chamber’s energy budget would authorize the agency “in the current fiscal year [2018] and subsequent fiscal years, to conduct a pilot program, through 1 or more private sector partners, to license, construct, and operate 1 or more government or privately owned consolidated storage facilities to provide interim storage as needed for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.”
The NRC estimates it would cost about $330 million and take three to five years to vet DOE’s Yucca license. At the end of that process, DOE could if authorized start building the repository, according to Svinicki’s letter to Heller.
Heller Draws Primary Challenge
Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) has drawn a primary challenge from the right in Danny Tarkanian: a man Heller, the Senate’s antagonist-in-chief for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in his state, quickly dismissed as a political failure.
Tarkanian announced his candidacy on Aug. 8 on Fox News.
The Tarkanian camp did not reply to multiple requests for comment regarding the candidate’s current stance on Yucca Mountain. During a previous election bid in 2012 Tarkanian said he opposed making Yucca Mountain a nuclear waste repository, but supported reprocessing spent nuclear fuel at the site.
Using Yucca for nuclear fuel reprocessing, or at least as a nuclear site that is not a waste repository, is not an original Tarkanian idea. Nevada’s lone GOP congressman, Rep. Mark Amodei, supports nuclear research at Yucca Mountain as a means of producing some economic benefit for the state. The concept has never gotten serious traction in Congress.
Rather, Congress in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain as the sole repository for U.S. spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste. In 2008, then-President George W. Bush’s Energy Department filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to license Yucca as a waste site. In 2010, then-President Barack Obama effectively canceled that application by defunding it.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump announced his administration wanted to reopen the application.
Tarkanian has won several Republican nominations but lost every general election he entered. Most recently, he lost a 2016 bid for the U.S. House to the strongly anti-Yucca Rep. Jacky Rosen (D).
Rosen has already declared she will run for Heller’s seat in 2018, which would, if Tarkanian wins his primary challenge, set up a rematch of last year’s close race for Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District. Rosen, a political neophyte, won that contest by fewer than 2 percentage points.
Yucca is located in Nye County, which is within Nevada’s 4th Congressional District. Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D), another reliable anti-Yucca vote, represents the district.
In a prepared statement to the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper, Heller’s office derided Tarkanian as a “perennial candidate” who “will lose in the primary.”
NRC Upholds Key Finding on Energy Northwest Waste Shipment
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has upheld a key violation finding against the operator of a Washington state nuclear power plant in connection with shipment of radioactive waste to a disposal site last fall.
Energy Northwest, owner of the Columbia Generating Station, said Wednesday it is still considering whether to appeal the NRC decision.
In November 2016, a shipment of spent-fuel pool filters and other radioactive waste from the power plant near the city of Richland arrived at the US Ecology low-level radioactive waste disposal facility about 10 miles away “with dose rates that significantly exceeded those documented on the shipment manifest,” the NRC said in a July 31 letter to Energy Northwest CEO Mark Reddemann.
US Ecology rejected the waste shipment and informed the Washington state Department of Health, which suspended the plant’s disposal use permit privileges. The state restored those privileges in June, then suspended them again last month in relation to a separate matter, according to Energy Northwest spokesman John Dobken.
The NRC had documented a preliminary white finding and apparent violation, a green finding, and seven non-cited violations that all stemmed from the waste shipment. The regulator evaluates licensees’ regulatory performance on a color-coded system of growing safety significance for green, white, yellow, and red findings.
The agency said in the July letter that two of the non-cited violations and the green finding would be upheld. It did not issue a fine in connection with the green finding.
The NRC said that, prior to the shipment to US Ecology, Energy Northwest knew dose rates from the waste could pose a problem for the transportation cask. With that level of planning and oversight, dose rates on the final shipment had presumably been resolved, according to the July 31 letter.
“Since this shipment took place last November, EN has implemented improvements in both processes and procedures in the low-level radioactive waste shipping program, with guidance from industry peers. We are continuing to look for ways to improve the program,” Dobken said by email.
Nuclear Plants Sufficiently Addressing Cyber Threats, NRC Says
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission believes that licensed operators of U.S. nuclear plants are providing sufficient resources to counter cyber threats, according to the agency’s response to a letter from Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.).
Markey raised concerns in a July 10 letter to the heads of the NRC and several other federal agencies following news reports of cyberattacks on U.S. nuclear power installations. The lawmaker expressed specific concern about the potential for sabotage of a reactor core or storage pool for used nuclear fuel.
NRC Chair Kristine Svinicki on Aug. 9 responded with a three-page list of answers to Markey’s query; the document was posted on the regulator’s website on Wednesday.
“From the NRC’s perspective, adequate actions are being taken [by licensees], based on our understanding of the threat assessment,” the agency said, adding that the large majority of license holders are due by the end of the year to implement all cybersecurity regulatory requirements established in 2009 by the NRC. The exceptions include plants that will be decommissioned before 2019.
The cyber-attacks on NRC license holders did not affect safety, security, or emergency readiness operations, but rather was restricted to their business networks, the agency told Markey. It said more specific information would be available in a classified briefing Markey requested of the NRC and its partner agencies in cybersecurity.
The NRC said it has the funding it needs to carry out its cybersecurity activities, which includes operation of its Cyber Security Directorate.
Scotland’s Oldest Reactor to be Demolished
The contractor in charge of cleanup of the retired fast-reactor research and development facility at Dounreay, Scotland, said Friday it expects next year to select a subcontractor to demolish the country’s oldest nuclear reactor.
A formal notice for bids to manage teardown of the Dounreay Materials Test Reactor (DMTR) will be posted in the Official Journal of the European Union, according to a press release from Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd. The release did not say when the notice would be published.
The three-year contract is expected to be valued at roughly £7 million ($9.1 million), and to be awarded in the first six months of 2018.
The reactor operated from 1958 to 1969, used to analyze how irradiation would impact metals. It was defueled shortly after closure, and the ongoing remediation program at Dounreay has already eliminated cooling towers and other nearby support infrastructure for the reactor, the release says. The last remaining support building is due for demolition before the close of 2017.
“The removal of DMTR from the skyline will be a significant step for Dounreay, and will be a real and visible sign of the decommissioning progress being made,” project manager Bill Lambie said in prepared comments.
Dounreay Site Restoration is a partnership of Cavendish Nuclear, CH2M, and AECOM.
Scottish Lawmaker Worried About Dounreay Cleanup, Staffing
Scottish lawmaker Roseanna Cunningham on Sunday raised concerns about the state of environmental cleanup and personnel at the former Dounreay fast-reactor research and development site.
“There continues to be cause for concern in Dounreay’s environmental performance, with the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) having to take action. In addition, the recently published [Nuclear Decommissioning Authority] annual report presented in stark terms the lack of progress at Dounreay across a wide range of projects,” Cunningham, a member of the Scottish Parliament and cabinet environment secretary, wrote in a letter to Richard Harrington, U.K. parliamentary undersecretary for the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
For 2016, SEPA rated Dounreay “at risk” for radioactive waste management and “poor” for management of the site’s low-level waste vaults, NDA acknowledged in its annual report. The agency said Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd., the contractor in charge of cleanup at the facility, is expected to improve its practices to the level demanded by both NDA and SEPA.
Cunningham also questioned plans to cut the workforce at Dounreay given the significant amount of work that remains to be done at Dounreay. “Local stakeholders have told me they cannot understand why the current substantial voluntary redundancy programme is in place where there is still so much work to complete on the site,” she wrote.
Dounreay Site Restoration said in April it anticipated cutting up to 200 positions, among its staff of roughly 1,000, over the coming year as decommissioning progresses.
The NDA and BEIS said Monday they would respond to Cunningham’s letter at a later time. “The NDA continues to monitor progress at the Dounreay site closely to ensure that it is delivering high quality work and that it remains value for money,” a BEIS spokesperson said by email.
Bruce Power, AREVA Move Closer to Commercial Radioisotope Production
Bruce Power and AREVA NP have agreed to advance their efforts at joint commercial production of medical radioisotopes at the Bruce nuclear power station in Ontario.
The two companies’ memorandum of understanding, signed Tuesday, follows from their December 2014 agreement to evaluate the feasibility of developing online radioisotope production capabilities at the power plant.
Radioisotopes are used in a variety of forms in health care, including medical imaging and targeted cancer treatment. Ensuring a future supply of these isotopes for medical purposes has become a concern in recent years. The Western Hemisphere risks being without a supplier of molybdenum-99 as of March 2018, when Canada’s National Research Universal reactor fully shuts down.
Bruce Power hopes to use the Bruce facility to produce radioisotopes such as molybdenum-99, lutetium-177, and iridium-192 “with a system that inserts and removes targets with little impact on the normal operation of the nuclear reactors,” according to an AREVA press release. The companies did not include any details on when actual licensing and production might commence.
Their agreement calls for AREVA NP to design and provide hardware that would enhance the plant’s manufacturing capacity for radioisotopes.
In the United States, a number of companies seek to become the first new domestic commercial producer of molybdenum-99, a medical isotope used in imaging procedures for cancer, heart disease, and bone and kidney disease.
When contacted, an AREVA spokesperson said she could not disclose any financial details of the MOU for commercial reasons. She also declined to say if AREVA and Bruce Power have potential isotope customers lined up. The pilot and study portions of the work are complete, the AREVA spokesperson said.
