Michigan state Rep. Graham Filler (R) last week unveiled a bill to promote development of advanced nuclear reactors in the state.
The measure has 24 co-sponsors and would change Michigan law to adapt the federal definition of advanced nuclear reactors into the state’s laws and legally define the phrase “advanced nuclear reactor technologies” as any that have “significant improvements, including additional inherent safety features, compared to reactors operating before January 1, 2016, in the United States.
Sellafield Ltd., removed a zeolite skip from the Sellafield site’s first generation Magnox storage pond, according to a press release issues this week by the U.K. government-owned company, which is cleaning up the British nuclear site near the city of Seascale on the Irish-sea coast of Cumbria, England. The pond stores fuel from the U.K.’s Magnox reactors, versions of which operated between the 1950s and 2015.
The skips are containers filled with the mineral zeolite, which can absorb radioactive particles. There are more than 230 additional skips left in the pond and all of them must be removed so that Sellafield Ltd. can clean up radioactive sludge that has settled on the bottom of the ponds, according to a video that the company, a subsidiary of the U.K.-owned Nuclear Decommission Authority, posted on YouTube.
The United Kingdom’s Office for Nuclear Regulation plans to have Sellafield Ltd. prosecuted for “information technology security offences during a four year period between 2019 and early 2023,” according to a statement released Thursday.
The regulator said there was no court date set yet. “There is no suggestion that public safety has been compromised as a result of these issues,” the Office for Nuclear Regulation wrote in its statement.
David Bryant, is Massachusetts’ new state liaison officer to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy wrote in a March 14 letter to the NRC, which the commission published online this week.
Bryant is the assistant director for planning and preparedness at the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. State liaison officers are a state’s first point of contact with the NRC. The commission’s Office of Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards runs the state liaison program.
Krishna Singh, president and CEO of Holtec International, was one of four people recognized on March 22 for their achievements as members of the Indian diaspora from the eastern Indian state of Bihar, on the country’s northern border with Tibet and just west of Bangladesh.
The Bihar Foundation East Coast Chapter of the U.S. wrote about the awards on the website X. The foundation presented the awards at an event held in New York at the Consulate General of India.
Precedent-setting antinuclear attorney Diane Curran, who is representing environmental and antinuclear groups in several pending lawsuits about nuclear power plants and radioactive waste storage, celebrates her birthday March 29, according to San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace, one of Curran’s clients.
Curran is involved with lawsuits against both the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in San Luis Obispo County in California and a proposed interim storage facility for commercial spent nuclear fuel planned by Holtec International in eastern New Mexico.
