The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has begun procurement for a contractor to help prepare for a major cleanup job at the Niagara Falls Storage Site in New York state under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP).
The Army branch ultimately intends to hire an architectural and engineering services provider for the removal, partial treatment, and off-site disposal of radiologically and chemically contaminated waste at the site’s Interim Waste Containment Structure.
“The A-E will assist the USACE by developing plans to implement the work. The A-E will propose the work breakdown structure and sequence, ensuring that the work is performed in a logical and cost-effective manner,” according to an Aug. 13 pre-solicitation notice. “The A-E will propose and assist in the preparation of individual contract bid packages for future construction and remediation contracts. The A-E will assist the USACE in construction management tasks including answering contractor requests for information (RFI), change management, construction quality assurance oversight, and cost and schedule control through Earned Value Management.”
The 10-acre Interim Waste Containment Structure is one of three operable units at the site in the town of Lewiston, all of which will eventually be remediated. It holds 278,072 cubic yards of waste, including roughly 6,030 cubic yards of highly radioactive material, the notice says. That encompasses “K-65” residues that are just 1% of waste in the containment structure by volume but over 90% of the radioactive hazard, The Army Corps said. They will need to be solidified in a cement form and stabilized before they can be sent elsewhere for disposal.
A detailed synopsis, with a request for submission of architect-engineer qualifications, is due in September.
Since the 1940s, the 191-acre Niagara Falls Storage Site has held uranium ore residues and other wastes generated by the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. The Interim Waste Containment Structure is an engineered landfill dating to the 1980s.
Thirteen nuclear power reactors were permanently retired in 2019, including two in the United States, according to an industry performance report issued Tuesday by the World Nuclear Association.
“This is the joint second highest number of reactors shut down in a single year,” the report says. “However, for the majority of these reactors, 2019 was only the formal shutdown date, having ceased generation between 2011 and 2017.”
Owner Entergy shut down the single boiling-water reactor at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts on May 31 of last year, after nearly 47 years of service. That was followed by the Exelon-owned Three Mile Island Unit 1 pressurized-water reactor on Sept. 30, 2019, after over 45 years of operation.
The other shuttered reactors were in Germany, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, and Taiwan, the World Nuclear Performance Report 2020 states. That encompassed the four reactors at Japan’s Fukushima Daiini plant, which have not operated since the earthquake and tsunami that hit the nation in March 2011. The facilities in Germany, South Korea, and Taiwan fell victim to nuclear phase-outs by their respective governments.
U.S. operators have generally said that existing nuclear power plants are not financially feasible in today’s energy market, given challenges including the lower price of natural gas.
Another three reactors have been retired this year, as of Aug. 21: two reactors at the Fessenheim facility in France and Unit 2 at the Indian Point Energy Center in upstate New York. On Thursday, power company Exelon said it would in fall 2021 retire the four reactors at its Byron and Dresden plants in Illinois.
Energy technology company Holtec International last year acquired and began decommissioning the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. Entergy also hopes to sell Indian Point to Holtec.
Exelon has said it will place the Three Mile Island reactor into SAFSTOR mode, under which final decommissioning can be put off for 60 years. Nuclear services firm EnergySolutions aims to buy and decommission Unit 2 at Three Mile Island, which never restarted after its March 1979 partial meltdown.
Stakeholders in the United Kingdom have more than 10 weeks to provide input on the latest version of the strategic plan for cleanup of nuclear sites managed by the government’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).
The agency on Aug. 17 issued the fourth iteration of its draft strategy, starting the clock on a 12-week comment period. The documents are published every five years and cover no less than a century of anticipated operations across the NDA’s 17 nuclear properties.
Planned milestones along the way include completion of reprocessing all Magnox fuel this year, retrieving all legacy waste in 2046, treating and disposing of all intermediate-level waste by 2120, and decommissioning all buildings by 2125. Two centuries past that, in 2333, the NDA anticipates that all land at Scottish sites will be dedesignated.
The strategy covers operations in decommissioning and site remediation, spent fuels, nuclear materials, and integrated waste management, along with “critical enablers” such as security and cybersecurity.
In the plan, the NDA acknowledged the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Whilst the acute phase has been effectively managed by the NDA group, with minimum staffing levels achieved to maintain nuclear safety, the longer-term consequences are far from clear,” the agency stated. “At this stage, there is no definitive understanding of the long-term integrity of our delivery plans and the future decisions that will need to be made, or when.”
The 15-year-old nondepartmental agency has been funded at over £3 billion annually since the government’s 2012-2013 fiscal year. The NDA uses site license companies to manage its facilities, and in recent years has moved to shift them to its ownership rather than using hired contractors. In July, the agency said the entities that manage the U.K.’s low-level radioactive waste repository and decommissioning of the Dounreay fast-reactor sites in Scotland would become wholly owned NDA subsidiaries in 2021.
The last day for comments is Nov. 8. Comments can be submitted by email, to [email protected]; or by mail, to Strategy Consultation, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Herdus House, Westlakes Science and Technology Park, Moor Row, Cumbria CA24 3HU. Input will be used to develop the final version of the strategy, which is due for publication by March 31, 2021.
From The Wires
From TAPinto: Lacey Township Planning Board rejects request from Holtec International approval to expand spent-fuel storage pad at Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station.
From World Nuclear News: Nuclear fuel reprocessing facility in Japan now expected to be completed by the first half of country’s fiscal 2022.
From Blackburn News: Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization releases draft planning framework for transportation of used nuclear fuel to eventual geologic repository.
From Energy Live News: Dounreay fast-reactor site in Scotland would not be available for other uses before 2033.
