PHOENIX— Contaminated old buildings at U.S. nuclear weapons sites are being torn down and, internationally, nuclear power is increasingly seen as a legitimate source of carbon-free electricity, participants in the Waste Management Symposia heard Monday.
“For people familiar with EM [the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management], there is no better illustration of progress than seeing buildings come down to piles of rubble,” William (Ike) White, senior adviser for the DOE cleanup office said in his presentation at the morning kickoff session.
In a recorded message, International Atomic Energy Agency director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said nuclear power is gaining traction, alongside wind and solar, as a carbon-free source of electricity.
“Each year nuclear pulled its chair up closer to the decision table” at international climate change meetings, Grossi said, “ … and the world family agreed to back nuclear as part of the global solution to net zero.”
There has been an international call for the tripling of nuclear power capacity, said Bill Magwood, head of the Paris-based Nuclear Energy Agency, said in his presentation. Small modular reactors in particular can be used for not only electricity but other uses, such as industrial heat, Magwood said.
Even DOE’s nuclear management office is involved in a program to tap unused land at weapons complex sites for carbon-free power, White said.
White also said DOE negotiators are getting closer to settlement with New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) on the approach to cleaning up old legacy waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“Our Los Alamos team is in the process of developing a new planning tool with input from stakeholders, pueblos and the public and we’re engaged in discussions with NMED on potential revisions to the 2016 Consent Order,” White said. The state and federal agencies are seeking to settle litigation brought by NMED in federal district court in New Mexico.
White also hopes to release more details “in the near future” on the deal hashed out between DOE, the Washington state Department of Ecology and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to address high-level tank waste at Hanford.
On the international front, Magwood said Finland will soon open a deep radiological depository for nuclear waste, which will serve as an example for other countries.
More than 3,300 people from 29 countries are attending this year’s Waste Management Symposia, said Greg Meyer, senior vice president of operations at Fluor.
