The Department of Energy has $19 million in grant funding available for disadvantaged communities affected by decades of nuclear work, the agency said in a Tuesday press release.
Comments on the draft funding opportunity announcement for DOE’s Community Capacity Building Grant Program are due by Oct. 10, the agency said in the press release.The program will award multiple grants, lasting from one-to-three years. The grants are meant to further economic development goals, promote revitalization and “promote inclusive community engagement practices,” DOE said in the release.
The grants would be worth between $1 million and $5 million each. Independent school districts, state, county as well as federally-recognized tribal governments could be eligible, according to a brief synopsis of the program. Comments should be emailed to [email protected].
The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has seen its remediation responsibility expand in recent times, the agency said in an annual report filed with the House of Commons on Sept. 19.
“We have been asked to use our specialist expertise and skills, to decommission newer reactors as they reach the end of their power-generating lives,” according to the report. “Arrangements have been agreed by the UK Government, Scottish Government and EDF Energy for the NDA [Nuclear Decommissioning Authority] group to decommission Britain’s seven advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) stations” as the units are retired over the next decade.
After defueling, the spent fuel from the units will be shipped to Sellafield for interim storage, according to the report. Overall the authority, which has 17,000 workers, is responsible for decommissioning 17 nuclear sites, tearing down from than 800 buildings and cleaning up 950 hectares, which translates to more than 2,300 acres of land.
The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee has a new entrepreneurial start-up program it hopes will spur business growth and speed commercialization of the lab’s technology.
The Oak Ridge lab’s “Safari” program seeks to attract “serial entrepreneurs,” who have sold at least one company, and acquaint them with some of the “hundreds of innovations” developed at the DOE research facility, according to an online procurement notice posted Tuesday. The program’s aim is “successfully matching the entrepreneur to a technology for licensing.” Recent lab research highlights range from supercomputing to “restoring the nation’s ability to produce plutonium-238 for deep space missions,” according to material included with the notice.
Safari is an addition to the DOE Office of Technology Transitions Practices to Accelerate the Commercialization of Technologies program. To learn more, contact Zeba Chowdhury ([email protected]) or Jennifer Caldwell ([email protected]) by 12 p.m. Eastern Time on Jan. 30, 2024.
William “Bill” Dewitt, a five-year member of the Department of Energy’s Nevada Site Specific Advisory Board, died Sept. 5, board chair Anthony Graham announced at the outset of Wednesday’s meeting.
Graham described Dewitt as a rancher who worked in the aerospace industry and was always active in organizations including the Rotary Club and the Nevada Farm Bureau.
