The National Nuclear Security Administration’s strategy for managing nuclear waste from nuclear weapons maintenance and modernization activities is not comprehensive and does not fully address all statutory requirements, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office.

Lujan

Legislation that aims to leverage the best available science and technology of U.S. national laboratories to support the cleanup of legacy nuclear waste has been introduced in the Senate by Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D., N.M.).

The Combining Laboratory Expertise to Accelerate Novel Solutions for Minimizing Accumulated Radioactive Toxins (CLEAN SMART) Act, introduced on December 12, would codify and fund the Department of Energy to accelerate the development, demonstration, and deployment of breakthrough technologies and innovations for nuclear waste cleanup.

Legacy waste: Currently, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management is responsible for the remediation of 15 legacy sites across the United States that hold nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project and the Cold War era. According to Luján, the cost to decommission these remaining sites continues to grow and is estimated to be nearly $700 billion, for a completion date near the end of the century.

Work to prepare Hanford’s Reduction Oxide Plant (REDOX) for decontamination and demolition has been put on hold as the Department of Energy shifts focus to higher-priority work at the nuclear site in Washington state.

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) and contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR) have finished fieldwork and have begun monitoring groundwater elevations for a study at the Environmental Management Disposal Facility (EMDF) project site in Tennessee.

The Department of Energy’s Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP) has improved transuranic waste operations to address aging waste containers being stored at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) at the Idaho National Laboratory Site, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management announced on December 10.

Finland’s regulatory authority, the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK), announced that it was further delaying issuing a statement on the safety case for the Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository until 2025, saying that Posiva’s license application material is not yet ready.

While the United States was celebrating Thanksgiving Day, Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) announced that it has selected a site in northwestern Ontario for a deep geologic repository to hold the country’s spent nuclear fuel

DeepGeo, a Rhode Island–based company seeking to develop multinational spent nuclear fuel repositories, and Denmark-based thorium reactor developer Copenhagen Atomics have signed a collaboration agreement that will see the companies work together on the management of nuclear fuels and waste streams associated with a thorium breeder reactor.

As of last week, crews with Department of Energy cleanup contractor Idaho Environmental Coalition (IEC) processed more than 142,000 gallons of radioactive sodium-bearing tank waste at Idaho’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) this year.

The Department of Energy’s estimated overall liability for failing to dispose of the country’s commercial spent nuclear fuel jumped as much as 10 percent this year, from a range of $34.1 billion to $41 billion in 2023 to a range of $37.6 billion to $44.5 billion in 2024, according to a financial audit of the DOE’s Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF) for fiscal year 2024.