As part of its Test Bed Initiative (TBI) demonstration project, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management completed two shipments of treated, low-activity tank waste from the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. The approximately 2,000 gallons of TBI waste will be solidified in grout and permanently disposed of at Waste Control Specialists’ (WCS) federal disposal facility in Andrews County, Texas, and at EnergySolutions’ disposal facility in Clive, Utah.

Utah-based waste management company EnergySolutions announced that it has signed a memorandum of understating with the Intermountain Power Agency and the state of Utah to explore the development of advanced nuclear power generation at the Intermountain Power Project (IPP) site near Delta, Utah.

Utah-based EnergySolutions has announced it has been awarded two contracts worth a combined $84.6 million from the U.S. Navy to support waste management operations across multiple Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program sites. According to the company, the indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts will enable the secure transportation, receipt, processing, recycling and reduction, and disposal of nuclear materials from key naval sites nationwide.

While attendance at the 2025 Waste Management Conference was noticeably down this year due to the ongoing federal retrenchment, the conference, held March 9-13 in Phoenix, Ariz., still drew a healthy and diverse crowd of people working on the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, both domestically and internationally.

Advanced reactor developer Terrestrial Energy and Utah-based waste management company EnergySolutions announced they have signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on the siting and deployment of Terrestrial Energy’s integral molten salt reactor plants at EnergySolutions-owned sites.

In October 2012, Dominion Energy announced it was closing the Kewaunee nuclear power plant, a two-loop 574-MWe pressurized water reactor located about 27 miles southeast of Green Bay, Wis., on the western shore of Lake Michigan. At the time, Dominion said the plant was running well, but that low wholesale electricity prices in the region made it uneconomical to continue operation of the single-unit merchant power plant.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) expressed its confidence in the decommissioning work taking place at the damaged Three Mile Island Unit 2 during a recent meeting of the TMI-2 Community Advisory Panel (CAP). “We cannot be more pleased with the progress being made,” said Dwight Shearer, director of the DEP, during the meeting, held on September 13 in Middleton, Pa.

Oneid

EnergySolutions announced that it has launched Management Consultants International (MCI) to provide specialized consulting services for the nuclear, energy, chemical, oil, gas, technology, and manufacturing sectors. Operating separately from EnergySolutions, MCI will provide expertise to clients addressing multiplex issues before federal, state, and international agencies.

Nuclear industry veteran Pierre Oneid has been appointed president of MCI. He will also continue in his current role as executive vice president supporting EnergySolutions’ growth efforts. Formerly senior vice president and chief nuclear officer for Holtec International, Oneid joined EnergySolutions in May of this year.

Utah-based waste management company EnergySolutions is expanding its operations in the United States and Asia, announcing last week that it had acquired Cabrera Services, a U.S. provider of environmental and radiological remediation services. It also signed a memorandum of understanding with Germany’s GNS Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service to provide services to the Asian nuclear market.

The Japan-U.S. Decommissioning Workshop Series continues on February 8–9 when its second forum meets to discuss the handling of low-level radioactive waste (LLW) generated during the decommissioning process and how improved LLW management can reduce risk.

Registration for the online event is required. The registration deadline is 2:00 a.m. (EST) on February 5.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has released for “unrestricted use” most of the land on and around where the Zion nuclear power plant once operated in northeastern Illinois. This means that any residual radiation is below the NRC’s limits and there will be no further regulatory controls by the agency for that portion of the property.

Currently, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is overseeing 17 nuclear power plants that are undergoing active decommissioning. For 10 of those plants, the NRC licenses have been transferred, either through sale or temporary transfer, from the plant owner and operator to a third party, nonutility company for decommissioning. To be profitable, those companies are decommissioning the nuclear plants as expediently as they safely can, while still protecting workers and the environment, using proprietary techniques and processes.

Utah-based EnergySolutions announced that it has completed its acquisition of essentially all of the assets and business lines of Williams Industrial Services Group and its subsidiaries, including its nuclear, fossil fuel, energy delivery, and paper mill operations. The Williams business lines will now become part of EnergySolutions’s newly created Nuclear Services division

Utah-based decommissioning company EnergySolutions has entered the early phases of exploring the possible use of former nuclear sites acquired by the company, such as the closed Kewaunee nuclear power plant in Wisconsin, as potential locations for future new nuclear generation sites.

EnergySolutions subsidiary KewauneeSolutions is hoping to begin site restoration work at the closed Kewaunee nuclear power plant in Wisconsin later this year and has submitted a request to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to use the plant’s decommissioning trust fund to do so.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has released the site of the La Crosse boiling water reactor in Wisconsin for unrestricted public use. The action comes after the NRC found that EnergySolutions subsidiary LaCrosseSolutions had met the agency’s radiation protection standards in decommissioning the nuclear power plant.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued an environmental assessment for Qal-Tek’s license application for a radioactive waste handling and temporary storage facility in Idaho. The NRC concluded that there would be no significant impacts to environmental resources from the proposed facility and subsequently issued a finding of no significant impact, notice of which was published in the February 6 Federal Register.

The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) recently shared a few videos on its YouTube channel, showing recent progress Southern California Edison has made in dismantling the plant’s turbine building. Decommissioning of the nuclear power plant, which permanently ceased operations in 2013, is being conducted by SONGS Decommissioning Solutions, a joint venture of EnergySolutions and AECOM.

The 26th Annual Nuclear Generator and Supplier Executive Summit, hosted by Utilities Service Alliance (USA), was held at the Coeur d’Alene Golf and Spa Resort in Idaho from June 28 through July 1. About 375 attendees were present for this year’s meeting, themed “Nuclear’s Next Wave” which featured presentations and discussions on emerging nuclear technologies and designs, as well as an integrated tradeshow with about 50 industry suppliers exhibiting products, services, and ideas.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the transfer of the operating license of the shutdown Kewaunee nuclear power plant from Dominion Energy to EnergySolutions. The transfer, which includes the general license for the Wisconsin site’s spent fuel storage facility, is contingent upon approval by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.

EnergySolutions entered into an agreement with Dominion in May 2021 to acquire the Kewaunee site for decommissioning.