A battle Friday morning between Russian and Ukrainian forces at one of Europe’s largest nuclear power plants does not seem to have threatened any of the site’s reactors, a UN group said.
Although fighting at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in eastern Ukraine resulted in a fire at a training building nearby a reactor building, “the nuclear power plant continue[s] to be operated by its regular staff and there [has] been no release of radioactive material,” the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement Friday. Safety systems for the plant’s six reactors were still online and there had been no release of radioactive material, IAEA said.
On Friday, after speaking with Ukraine Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm tweeted that Russian forces controlled the plant, which Ukrainian operators had partially shut down.
With activists protesting the Department of Energy’s decision to send diluted, surplus plutonium to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., Dale Janeway, the mayor of that town penned an op-ed in the local Current-Argus asserting the city’s support for the program.
Some of the work necessary to complete the dilute and dispose program fell a little behind schedule in fiscal year 2021, the National Nuclear Security Administration wrote in its most recent fee scorecard for lab contractor Triad National Security. The program involves pit disassembly and plutonium oxide production at Los Alamos, packaging at the Savannah River Site and final disposal at WIPP.
John Longenecker, currently president of Longenecker & Associates, will replace his wife Bonnie Longenecker as chief executive officer of the Las Vegas-based Department of Energy subcontractor, the company announced Tuesday along with other management appointments.
Martin Schneider, current senior vice president for business development at Longenecker & Associates (L&A), will become president and Christine Gelles, the senior vice president for operations, will become chief operating office, according to a company press release. The job changes to take effect July 1. Bonnie Longenecker, who will continue to chair the company board.
Schneider joined L&A as a vice president in 2015 after a long stint leading ExchangeMonitor Publications. Gelles joined Longenecker as a vice president in 2016 after leaving the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management where she held supervisor posts including deputy assistant secretary for waste management and acting manager of Environmental Management’s Los Alamos field office in New Mexico.
Alexander retired from Westinghouse in the early 1990s after a long career at the Savannah River Site, both before and after a stint with the Air Force.
