Wrap Up; EnergySolutions seeks Kewaunee site permit; ex-prosecutors join firm; Ecology fills Hanford job; more

EnergySolutions, Salt Lake City, said Tuesday it is planning to seek an Early Site Permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the shuttered Kewaunee nuclear power plant in Wisconsin.

The company is collaborating with WEC Energy Group (WEC) to explore new nuclear generation in Wisconsin, EnergySolutions said in a press release. WEC is a Milwaukee-based utility holding company and one of its subsidiaries, We Power, builds and owns power plants.

The new nuclear generation will be a “newbuild” and a specific reactor type has not been chosen yet for Kewaunee, an EnergySolutions spokesperson said by email. EnergySolutions said recently it was working on a new nuclear power project in Utah.

Two former federal prosecutors central to many U.S. Justice Department legal cases involving the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, have joined San Diego-based plaintiffs’ law firm with offices across the Western United States.

Singleton Schreiber announced in an April 28 press release that former U.S. Attorney Vanessa Waldref and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Fruchter have joined the firm as partners in the  Spokane office.

Waldref became the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Washington in October 2021 and opened a Tri-Cities Department of Justice office. The new branch helped Justice “to better protect Southeastern Washington communities and fight fraud that impedes the environmental remediation of the Hanford Nuclear Site,” according to the law firm’s website. Fruchter, who participated in Hanford cases,  has two decades of public service experience prosecuting complex civil and criminal matters, Singleton Schreiber said. 

The Washington state Department of Ecology has promoted John Temple to a waste management section manager position.

The job opened up when a prior section manager, Eddie Holbrook was promoted to deputy program manager, according to an Ecology spokesperson. Temple’s new post was announced May 7 by Program Manager Stephanie Schleif during a meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board. Ecology is the state regulator that monitors the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site.

Temple has been with Ecology since 2015 and his prior positions include environmental scientist. 

In April, Department of Energy Hanford Site contractor Navarro-ATL shut down the 222-S Laboratory’s power for a week in order to make infrastructure upgrades, DOE said this week.

The lab, which analyzes radioactive waste samples at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., is about 70 years old, according to a DOE release.

Key modifications included restoring the programmable logic controller, which runs the tie breaker in the substation and installation of two new air compressors, according to DOE.