Round up: NRC promotions; Advanced reactors waste workshop; Consent-based siting grants; more

Robert Lewis is the new deputy executive director for operations at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Craig Erlanger is the new director of the Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response, the commission said Thursday. 

The new appointments for the two long-time agency hands will be effective Oct. 20, NRC wrote in a Thursday press release.

The Nuclear Regulatory commission on Thursday said it is seeking “presentation proposals” for a public virtual workshop about the storage and transportation of spent fuels for advanced reactors. 

Proposals are due Nov. 7. The workshop, which will be held online, was scheduled for Dec. 3-5, NRC wrote in a press release.

The Energy Communities Alliance, which represents localities close to Department of Energy nuclear sites, extended to Nov. 1 a deadline to apply for grants the interest group made available to communities who want to help define consent-based storage of radioactive waste.

The alliance will award up to six $75,000 grants. The group is one of a dozen members of DOE’s consent based siting consortia, which is helping the agency define both what it means for a locality to consent to the nearby storage of a radioactive and who may give consent. Other consortia members are also spreading DOE funds to local governments.

“Eligibility is restricted to a municipal or local government entity or group of municipal entities, state government created councils of local governments, community reuse organizations, and municipal government-related economic development entities,” the Energy Communities Alliance wrote in a press release. Details for eligible applicants are on the alliance’s website.

A Spanish lobbying group sued the government of Spain over increased taxes on nuclear waste, Reuters reported last week.

Operators of Spanish nuclear power plants also planned legal action over the tax, Reuters said.

A journalist in the Los Angeles Times this week rebutted an opinion piece published in the Philadelphia Inquirer by actor and activist Jane Fonda, who opposes the restart of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. 

Constellation Energy in September said it would restart the Three Mile Island Unit 1 nuclear reactor in Londonderry Township, Pa., by 2028 and extend its operating license through “at least” 2054. Microsoft planned to buy power produced by the restarted reactor, which is not the reactor that partially melted down in 1979.

Fonda is a longtime environmental activist and, less than two weeks before Three Mile Island Unit 2 had a partial core meltdown, starred in The China Syndrome, which explored the possibility that a superheated mass of radioactive slag from a reactor core meltdown could burn a hole deep into the ground.