Waste Control Specialists filed a permit renewal application for its low-level radioactive waste disposal site in West Texas, David Carlson, the president of the company told the Exchange Monitor this week at the annual National Cleanup Workshop in Arlington, Va.
Waste Control Specialists operates a state-owned low-level radioactive waste disposal facility alongside its commercial facilities and still has about 12 months left on its existing permit from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
A Veolia Nuclear Solutions subsidiary has hired Bob Miklos, a retired nuclear waste manager at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, as Veolia Nuclear Solutions Federal Services’ executive vice president of program assurance, the company announced last week.
Miklos will help Veolia Nuclear Solutions (VNS) target opportunities for its GeoMelt and similar technology at the Department of Energy, VNS said in a Sept. 6 press release. Last December VNS opened its second commercial-scale GeoMelt unit, designed to convert small batches of low-level radioactive waste into glass form at Waste Control Specialists’ Andrews County, Texas facility.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission planned an Oct. 19 hearing on a proposal by Kairos Power to build a demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tenn., on land once used for a Department of Energy gaseous diffusion plant.
The hearing at Nuclear Regulatory Commission headquarters in Rockville, Md., marks the final phase of the agency’s review of Kairos Power’s application to build a non-power demonstration model of its 35-megawatt Hermes reactor, according to a Sept. 5 commission press release.
A group of mostly Democratic state senators in Ohio last week introduced a pair of bills intended to prevent another scandal like the one that rocked the state in 2019, when Republicans in Ohio’s House of Representatives executed a pay-to-play scheme by passing big bailouts for struggling nuclear power plants, formerly operated by a FirstEnergy subsidiary, after receiving campaign donations that originated from the company.
State Sen. Kent Smith (D) is the primary sponsor for both bills. Senate Bill 149, which would block utilities from paying lobbying bills with public money, has no Republican cosponsors. Senate Bill 151, which would repeal subsidies for a pair of coal-fired power plants, has one: state Sen. Mark Romanchuk (R). The local ABC News affiliate in Cleveland last week reported that the proposals have little support in the state House.
The Navy officially decided that it will dismantle the decommissioned, defueled, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier formerly known as the USS Enterprise at a commercially operated shipyard, according to a record of decision published last week.
The carrier’s reactor and associated waste will go to authorized Department of Energy or commercial disposal sites, according to a Navy website.
This week, a small Japanese city on an island in the middle of the Korea Strait narrowly approved its own candidacy to become a host site for a nuclear waste repository, an English-language, Japanese newspaper reported.
The city assembly of Tsushima, part of Japan’s Nagasaki prefecture, voted 10-8 in favor of the candidacy, the Asahi Shimbun reported. It was the second close vote on the issue in as many months, the paper said. Tsushima has roughly 28,000 residents, according to the results of a 2020 Japanese census posted on the city’s website.
BWX Technologies, Lynchburg, Va., got a two-year contract from the Wyoming Energy Authority to explore the viability of deploying small nuclear reactors in the state.
The company announced the news this week in a press release.
