The NWTRB’s six overarching recommendations for the DOE’s nuclear waste management program.
Sandia National Laboratories Photo: SNL
The ANS Young Members Group will focus on Sandia National Laboratories for the latest installment of its webinar series, Spotlight on National Labs, on May 11 at 10:30 a.m. CT.
Register now for the free event.
The B Complex area tank farm at the DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington. Photo: DOE
The Department of Energy announced that it has determined that an underground single-shell waste tank at its Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., is likely leaking into the soil beneath the tank. The DOE said that the leaking tank poses no increased health or safety risk to the Hanford workforce or the public.
Vogtle-3 turbine generator. Photo: Georgia Power
Southern Company is targeting December for placing Vogtle-3 in service, according to Tom Fanning, the company’s chairman, president, and chief executive officer, who spoke with financial analysts on April 29 in its first-quarter earnings call. “The site work plan now targets fuel load in the third quarter and late December 2021 in-service date for Unit 3,” Fanning said. “Of course, any delays could result in a first-quarter 2022 Unit 3 in-service date.”
In 2020, the DOE announced real progress made in the management of liquid radioactive waste at its sites at Savannah River, Idaho, and Hanford.
Plant startup employees work in the process cell area of the Low-Activity Waste Facility at Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant.
During the annual National Cleanup Workshop, held virtually in September of last year due to the COVID-19 health crisis, William “Ike” White, senior advisor to the under secretary for science in the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, said that despite the pandemic, 2020 was an inflection year for the DOE and his office.
SRNS subcontractors Donald Miles and Richard Mooney drill for soil samples as part of a project to immobilize I-129 in the groundwater and soil at the Savannah River Site. Photo: DOE/SRNS
A silver chloride–based cleanup technology is expected to reduce radioactive iodine-129 contamination found in soil and groundwater near the center of the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina to levels well below regulatory limits. The I-129 was created during the production of plutonium and tritium at the site throughout the Cold War era.
Indian Point-3’s turbine hall and generator. Photo: Entergy
The disturbingly long list of U.S. nuclear plants prematurely closed in recent years will get even longer tonight when the last reactor at the Indian Point Energy Center, Unit 3, powers down for the final time. The shutdown, scheduled for 11 p.m. local time, will mark the end of nearly 60 years of zero-carbon electricity generation at the Buchanan, N.Y., facility.
Two of the state’s six nuclear plants nearly closed in 2016, but legislative action saved them. Now two more are at risk.
If there is one U.S. state you might think would be on top of the nuclear-plant-retirement problem, it’s Illinois: With 11 power reactors, more than any other state, it is number one in nuclear generating capacity. In 2019, 54 percent of its in-state generation came from nuclear power. So why, at this writing in mid-April, does Illinois still face the possibility of losing two of its nuclear plants later this year?
The Hope Creek nuclear power plant. Photo: Peretzp
New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU) yesterday voted unanimously to extend, for an additional three years, the zero emission certificate (ZEC) program benefitting the state’s two operating nuclear power plants, Hope Creek and Salem. The two facilities produce more than 90 percent of New Jersey’s carbon-free electricity and about 40 percent of its overall power.
Author Joshua Goldstein, from the video "The Nuclear Option"
Climate activists rarely mention nuclear power as a tool in the battle against climate change, consumer reporter John Stossel comments during the video "The Nuclear Option" on his YouTube channel.
Participating in the ceremony to hand over the ISF-2 operating license are (from left) Valery Seyda, acting director general of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; and SNRIU Chairman Grigoriy Plachkov.
Ukraine’s State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate (SNRIU) has authorized the operation of Chernobyl’s Interim Storage Facility (ISF-2), allowing spent nuclear fuel from the plant’s three undamaged reactors to be loaded into the dry storage facility. The handover of the ISF-2 operating license was carried out during a ceremony held on April 26, the 35th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, and was attended by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Peter Lyons, former Nuclear Regulatory Commission commissioner (2005–2009) and assistant secretary of energy for nuclear energy (2011–2015), has passed away.
