Southern California Edison (SCE) is in the final stages of dismantling the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s (SONGS) reactor and a campaign to remove greater than Class C low-level waste from the shuttered plant is about 75% complete, Vince Bilovsky, director of the utility’s SONGS decommissioning project told a citizens group Thursday in a joint virtual meeting with the Department of Energy.
At the same meeting, Natalia Saraeva, team lead for consent-based siting at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, briefed members of the SCE SONGS Community Engagement Panel about the federal agency’s drive to find a home for spent nuclear fuel from U.S. power plants. The effort is in its early stages. DOE last week spread $26 million among 13 awardees who will help the feds define exactly what consent-based siting is.
SONGS decommissioning started in 2013 and will last roughly into the early 2030s, according to Southern California Edison.
Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and James Risch (R-Ida.) this week introduced a bill that attempts to make exports of U.S. nuclear technology easier by amending laws affecting the U.S. Export-Import Bank
At deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor, the Civil Nuclear Export Act of 2023 had not been scheduled for a hearing or a vote in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Manchin chairs.
Former President Donald Trump (R), who again seeks the Republican nomination to run against President Joe Biden (D) in 2024, said in May that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who also seeks the nomination, would make Nevada a nuclear waste dump.
The DeSantis campaign, which officially has only existed since May 24, had issued no statements about Yucca Mountain at deadline Friday for RadWaste Monitor. DeSantis voted in favor of legislation that would have allowed waste storage at Yucca in his time as congressman during the Trump administration.
Early in his presidency, Trump himself sought to resume the licensing of the Yucca Mountain deep geologic repository in Nye County, Nev. The effort ran aground amid resistance from then-Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who made resistance to nuclear-waste storage in the Silver State a cornerstone of his failed reelection bid. Trump subsequently reversed course on Yucca ahead of the 2020 election, writing on Twitter that he would no longer support construction of the facility.
Holtec International, Jupiter, Fla., said this week its HI-LIFT heavy lifting systems saved big bucks at the Indian Point Nuclear Energy Center, which the company is decommissioning in Buchanan, N.Y., on the banks of the Hudson River.
The company detailed some of the HI-LIFT system’s work at Indian Point in a press release.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy on Thursday announced more than $56 million in funding for 68 nuclear energy projects at universities across the country.
The biggest tranche funding went to 46 research and development projects, the office wrote in a press release. The money came from several DOE programs, including the agency’s Nuclear Energy University Program, Integrated Research Projects, Nuclear Science User Facilities, and Distinguished Early Career Program.
