Greg Sosson, one of the top feds at the Department of Energy’s nuclear cleanup office, took part this month in the ninth annual forum on decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Japan.
The annual gathering brings together international cleanup specialists to discuss nuclear remediation and track the progress of remediation following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident.
“This event brings together such a tremendous wealth of knowledge, expertise and experience from nuclear leaders across the globe,” said Sosson, DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) associate principal deputy assistant secretary for field operations in a Tuesday press release. Sosson spoke during a panel discussion at the forum. The two-day forum, held in early August, is sponsored by Japan’s Nuclear Damage Compensation & Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation.
The Department of Energy and its cleanup contractor have received necessary regulatory approvals to start dismantling a third defueled naval reactor prototype vessel at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Federal and state entities as well as tribal and citizen representatives have agreed to an action memorandum plan for decommissioning and demolishing the Submarine 5th Generation General Electric (S5G) prototype, at the Naval Reactors Facility, DOE said this week.
Out of four possible alternatives, including no action, the parties elected to go with complete removal of the prototype reactor, DOE said in an Aug. 26 press release.
The Office of Inspector General did not find that the National Nuclear Security Administration failed to follow export control regulations, despite complaints to that effect, according to a recent report.
The report, published Aug. 7, said the Office of Inspector General (OIG) received a complaint through a hotline alleging the DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the agency in charge of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, was publishing research to the public domain, a potential violation of export controls to protect sensitive information.
Export controlled information, according to the report, is information, technology, technical data or software that must be controlled under either trade or economic sanctions or regulations due to its sensitivity. While the report found no violations in research publications from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and one from Lawrence Livermore National Laborato California, the OIG did recommend some changes to the publishing process.