Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), up for reelection in 2024, touted her opposition to Yucca Mountain in a press release listing her contributions to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.
The bill, Rosen, wrote in her presser, has “Zero dollars authorized for defense nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain.” Yucca, which Nevada politicians have effectively stonewalled, was conceived as a dual-use, civil-military geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste, including spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and waste leftover from the Cold War nuclear-arms race with the Soviet Union.
Antinuclear activists on Wednesday sent a letter to the Michigan legislature urging state lawmakers not to approve a $300 million grant to help Holtec International restart the Palisades Nuclear Generating Station.
In a letter dated Wednesday and mailed to all 148 michigan lawmakers — 110 representatives and 38 senators — 79 people and 43 organizations opposed to restarting Palisades called the plant in Covert County, Mich., “uniquely bad” and told legislators to instead spread the $300 million grant Holtec seeks among public transit programs and training for technicians who could work on wind- and solar-power equipment.
The antis face stiff headwinds in Michigan, where Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) supports a Palisades restart and has written to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in support of a federal loan for Holtec.
Shahram Ghasemian on Aug. 11 will temporarily replace Dennis Scott as Centrus Energy Corp’s general counsel, chief compliance officer and corporate secretary. Ghasemian will serve on an acting basis. He is currently Centrus’ senior assistant general counsel and director of legal affairs and corporate compliance.
Scott on June 9 notified the Bethesda, Md.-based company that he would retire, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Centrus, the former U.S. Enrichment Corp., is a uranium reseller and uranium, enrichment technology developer.
The Idaho National Laboratory’s official Twitter account cheered a pregnant woman’s photoshoot next to a concrete cask of spent nuclear fuel.
Madison Hilly, the mother-to-be and paid pro-nuclear campaigner, posted the photos taken at the Idaho lab on her Twitter account, where several general circulation media outlets picked them up.
In the terms of its new state-issued operating permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, the Department of Energy agreed to provide Santa Fe with updates about the federal government’s progress with siting a geologic radioactive repository outside New Mexico.
The state will publish the WIPP permit with the modified conditions on Aug. 15, and a public meeting will be held Sept. 22 to discuss the permit renewal. The final permit will be issued in October and take effect 30 days later, the state’s press release said. WIPP, which is a repository for defense-related transuranic waste only, is currently operating on an expired, administratively extended permit.
Politically blockaded from building the permanent, congressionally authorized repository at Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., and legally prohibited from building an interim storage facility for spent fuel until there is a permanent repository, the DOE’s latest work toward locating a storage site for high-level radioactive waste involves paying 13 groups a combined $26 million to help define whose consent DOE should seek to site a repository and what consent means.
Publicly traded stock of advanced nuclear reactor developer NuScale, which is majority-owned by Fluor Corp., hit an all-time low this week.
The company’s stock, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, plunged to $6.42 a share on Tuesday, down by about 40% compared with the Oregon-based company’s first day of trading on May 2, after its initial public offering.
By RadWaste Monitor’s deadline this week, NuScale stock had clawed back only a thin gain, finishing the day above $6.80 a share. At its highest, in August of 2022, the per-share price was nearly $16. It’s been a steady downhill march in the roughly one year since that apex, but June has been especially bad for the NuScale stock, which has dropped about $2 a share during the month.
