Waste Management Symposia announced that the theme of next year’s Waste Management Conference (WM2025) will be “Empowering A Sustainable Future—Advanced Technologies, AI, and Workforce Development across the Nuclear Landscape.” To be held in Phoenix, Ariz., March 9–13, the conference will showcase how new technologies and the evolving digital world are transforming the global nuclear landscape, supply chains, infrastructure, and work norms.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has issued a final request for proposals for an infrastructure support services (ISS) contract at the department’s Paducah Site in Kentucky, which is the former home of the Paducah gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment plant. DOE-EM has conducted extensive cleanup and environmental remediation activities at the site since the late 1980s.

Team members at Oak Ridge National Laboratory achieved a milestone with the removal of a lower reactor vessel, according to a U.S. Department of Energy news release.

Workers with the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) contractor UCOR successfully lifted and removed the lower reactor vessel from the Oak Ridge Research Reactor, also known as Building 3042.

The OPTIMUS-H transportation cask from NAC International. (Photo: NAC)

NAC International announced that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has certified a highly shielded version of the company’s OPTIMUS (Optimal Modular Universal Shipping) transportation package for radioactive materials and waste. NAC’s OPTIMUS-H is now approved under 10 CFR Part 71 with Certificate of Compliance (CoC) USA/9392/B(U)F-96, effective Aug. 5, 2024.

The OPTIMUS-H CoC follows licensing approvals of the cask in Canada and Australia. Previously, the lightweight version of the OPTIMUS package, OPTIMUS-L, received certification from the NRC and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

NAC unveiled its first OPTIMUS to the public at the 2020 Waste Management Conference in Phoenix. Since then, NAC has delivered 22 OPTIMUS-L and nine OPTIMUS-H systems to support North American packaging and transportation projects.

The International Atomic Energy Agency announced on Aug. 7 that its experts have confirmed that the tritium concentration in the latest batch of water to be released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is far below Japan’s operational limit. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) began discharging the treated and diluted water that day.

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which provides safety oversight of Department of Energy sites, is holding a public hearing on August 14 on benchmarking of best practices in the management of aging infrastructure.

According to the DNFSB, the goal of the hearing is to gather information from relevant organizations on best practices in infrastructure aging management to inform the development of potential safety improvements to DOE programs.

Sogin (Società Gestione Impianti Nucleari), the state-owned company responsible for the decommissioning of Italy’s nuclear plants and the management of radioactive waste, announced on July 30 that it has completed the first phase of dismantling Garigliano nuclear power plant’s reactor vessel with the removal of contaminated metal components from the deflector.

The Department of Energy has issued a request for information to gather input on its proposed package performance demonstration, which is intended to demonstrate the robustness of spent nuclear fuel transportation casks in hypothetical accident conditions. By simulating severe accident scenarios, the DOE said it intends to show to the public and stakeholders the safety and reliability of transporting SNF by rail, heavy-haul truck, and barge.

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) announced it will hold a public meeting on August 29 to review information on the Department of Energy’s management and plans for disposing of its spent nuclear fuel. The hybrid (in-person/virtual) meeting will begin at 8:00 a.m. EDT and is scheduled to adjourn at approximately 5:00 p.m. EDT.

Workers at the Savannah River Site have recently completed the replacement of a piece of equipment that the Department of Energy said in a July 31 press release is “essential for operations in the site’s H Canyon chemical separations capable facility.”