The Savannah River Site’s HB Line facility is located on top of the H Canyon chemical separations facility. (Photo: DOE)
The Department of Energy has announced that workers at its Savannah River Site in South Carolina recently removed legacy uranium materials from the site’s HB Line as part of an effort to clear the facility of its inventory of legacy nuclear materials. The removed legacy uranium was originally produced by the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Deep Isolation’s Rod Baltzer and Deep Fission’s Elizabeth Muller. (Photo: Deep Fission)
Nuclear start-ups Deep Fission and Deep Isolation will collaborate on the management of spent nuclear fuel from Deep Fission’s advanced underground reactors under a memorandum of understanding signed by the companies.
SRNL senior scientist Travis Deason demonstrates for lab fellow David Diprete the search for appropriate crystals of novel actinide materials using a microscope located in a radiological containment unit. (Photo: SRNS/Lj Gay)
Savannah River National Laboratory researchers are building on the laboratory’s legacy of using cutting-edge science to effectively immobilize nuclear waste in innovative ways. As part of the Center for Hierarchical Waste Form Materials, SRNL is leveraging its depth of experience in radiological waste management to explore new frontiers in the industry.
The reactor hall of the Halden research reactor in Norway. (Photo: IFE)
The government of Norway has granted the transfer of the Halden research reactor from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) to the state agency Norwegian Nuclear Decommissioning (NND). The 25-MWt Halden boiling water reactor operated from 1958 to 2018 and was used in the research of nuclear fuel, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.
Researchers at the University of Sheffield are exploring new cement technologies to safely encapsulate nuclear waste. (Photo: University of Sheffield)
The University of Sheffield announced that it has engaged in a new £1 million (about $1.29 million) research partnership with Sellafield Ltd., the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and the U.K. National Nuclear Laboratory that will seek to address some of the challenges of nuclear waste encapsulation by looking at new cement technologies to provide safe and reliable disposal solutions.
Students use materials bought with funds from the IEC’s Full STEAM Ahead in the Classroom grants to make robots. (Photo: DOE)
The Idaho Environmental Coalition (IEC) has provided funding to 15 classrooms in southeastern Idaho to support local educators and encourage the next generation of workers to pursue technical careers, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced. The IEC, which is led by Amentum and includes North Wind Portage as a partner, was awarded a 10-year, $6.4 billion contract in 2021 to manage cleanup operation at the Idaho National Laboratory Site.
The Vallecitos Nuclear Center site in northern California. (Photo: NRC/Don Sleeter)
NorthStar Group Services has announced that it has closed on an agreement to acquire ownership of the Vallecitos Nuclear Center from GE Vernova and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy for NorthStar's nuclear decontamination, decommissioning, and environmental site restoration.
A 3D model shows areas of West Valley's main plant process building demolition project that have been completed in yellow. Workers have removed 52 of the building’s 56 cells since the start of the demolition in September 2022.(Image: DOE)
The KIF document is meant to engage the reader to share, imagine, and renew nuclear waste information. (Photo: Per Wistbo Nibell)
The preservation of records, knowledge, and memory is recognized as an important component of nuclear waste management, preventing future generations from unnecessary interference with a waste repository and supporting future societies to make informed decisions about such sites.
The DOE designed the Atlas railcar to eventually ship spent nuclear fuel to consolidated storage. Before it begins shipping fuel, the department wants to demonstrate the safety of transportation casks through its Package Performance Demonstration project. (Photo: DOE)
Inspired by a history of similar testing endeavors and recommended by the National Academy of Sciences and the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, the Department of Energy is planning to conduct physical demonstrations on rail-sized spent nuclear fuel transportation casks. As part of the project, called the Spent Nuclear Fuel Package Performance Demonstration (PPD), the DOE is considering a number of demonstrations based on regulatory tests and realistic transportation scenarios, including collisions, drops, exposure to fire, and immersion in water.
March 7, 2025, 2:21PMRadwaste SolutionsRichard “Ricky” Furr, Larry McDougal, and John Mayer The CR-3MP is loaded on the barge at the Crystal River-3 site in Florida on January 17, 2024. (Photos: Orano DS)
The Optimized Segmentation process patented by Orano Decommissioning Services was successfully implemented for the first time at the Crystal River Unit 3 (CR-3) decommissioning project in Florida [1]. Using this approach, Orano was able to avoid the time- and resource-intensive process of packaging components into numerous standardized waste containers and significantly reduced the required segmentation activities.
Fig. 1. The systems that make up the IWMS and their interdependencies.
Nuclear energy produces about 9 percent of the world’s electricity and 19 percent of the electricity in the United States, which has 94 operating commercial nuclear reactors with a capacity of just under 97 gigawatts-electric. Each reactor replaces a portion of its nuclear fuel every 18 to 24 months. Once removed from the reactor, this spent (or used) nuclear fuel (SNF or UNF) is stored in a spent fuel pool (SFP) for a few years then transferred to dry storage.
An international team of researchers have collaborated to reduce operational risk and realize a vision of long-term success for the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash.
Above: WTP workers add glass beads, called “frit,” to the melter inside the plant’s Low-Activity Waste Facility. (Photo: Bechtel National Inc.)
For over a decade, the DOE’s Hanford Field Office (HFO) has been working with national laboratories, universities, and glass industry experts to establish capabilities and generate data to increase the confidence in a successful startup and transition to full-time operations at the WTP.
HEPA filters located within the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System facility at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. (Photo: DOE)
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced that it has completed the commissioning of a new, nearly $500 million, large-scale ventilation system at its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the DOE’s geologic repository for defense-related transuranic waste in New Mexico.
The DOE’s Joel Bradburne speaks to attendees of the Energy, Technology & Environmental Business Association’s Business Opportunities Exchange. (Photo: DOE)
Cleanup progress at the former Portsmouth and Paducah uranium enrichment plants is helping enable new opportunities for local communities to continue advancing U.S. energy and U.S. security goals, according to Joel Bradburne, manager of the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Paducah Project Office (PPPO).
The U.S. Supreme Court. Front row, from left: Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Back row, from left: Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (Photo: Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States)
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing of Interim Storage Partners’ consolidated interim storage facility in Andrews County, Texas. Both the NRC and ISP petitioned the Supreme Court to review a decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that invalidated the NRC-granted license for the facility. Those two cases were consolidated into one, NRC v. Texas, which was heard by the court.
Concept art of Moltex’s SSR–W and WATSS facility. (Image: Moltex)
Advanced reactor company Moltex Energy Canada said it has successfully validated its waste to stable salt (WATSS) process on used nuclear fuel bundles from an unnamed Canadian commercial reactor through hot cell experiments conducted by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.
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