Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is among a growing list of presidential candidates voicing clear opposition to disposal of nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
“Trump is proposing to send our nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain,” Sanders tweeted on May 16. “That would be a disaster. We must stop building new nuclear power plants, and find a real solution to our existing nuclear waste problem.”
His Twitter message was accompanied by a two-minute video highlighting potential dangers of the selected site about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The location is on top of an aquifer in a seismically active region, according to the video, which features a representative of the Te-Moak Tribe of the Western Shoshone, which is headquartered near Yucca Mountain in Elko, Nev.
“What’s gonna happen when we have this poison in this mountain?” Mary Gibson says in the video, which also features a clip of President Donald Trump making comments in Nevada last October suggesting his administration would consider other options for a waste repository.
The Department of Energy filed its license application for the Yucca Mountain repository in 2008 under President George W. Bush, but President Barack Obama defunded the proceeding two years later.
The Trump White House has in the last three budget cycles requested funding to resume licensing, but has yet to persuade Congress to approve any appropriation. For the upcoming fiscal 2020, the Department of Energy, the license applicant, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the adjudicator, would together receive about $150 million for the work.
In campaign stops in Nevada and in other venues, a number of candidates for the Democratic Party nomination for president have already questioned or said they outright oppose sending waste to Nevada. They include Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)., Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), along with Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee (D).
The senators are all co-sponsors to legislation from Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) that would require local and state consent for any nuclear waste disposal site.
Meanwhile, a coalition of 16 nuclear, energy, labor, and economic organizations on May 16 urged the Democratic and Republican leaders of both chambers of Congress to move forward with disposition of spent fuel from nuclear power plants.
“Another year without progress on the Yucca Mountain repository license application and consolidated interim storage is untenable. It is time for the federal government to meet its statutory and contractual obligations,” the groups said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). “Utilities and their electricity customers have done their part. They have paid more than $41 billion into the Nuclear Waste Fund. Meanwhile, taxpayers have been saddled with the federal government’s inaction, with more than $7 billion in damages having already been paid from the Judgment Fund and billions more in liability continuing to mount.”
Signatories include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, North America’s Building Trades Unions, Nuclear Energy Institute, American Public Power Association, and ClearPath Action.
Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) on Thursday introduced legislation that would put spent nuclear fuel at a shuttered nuclear power plant in his district at the top of the list for removal by the Department of Energy.
The measures in the Spent Fuel Prioritization Act of 2019 would kick in when DOE finally meets its legal obligation to remove spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste from facilities around the nation for temporary centralized storage or permanent disposal. Under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, that was supposed to begin by Jan. 31, 1998.
Levin’s bill would amend the 1982 legislation to give priority to removal of used fuel from plants that are decommissioned or undergoing decommissioning; are in areas with the highest populations; and are in regions that have been determined by the U.S. Geological Survey to have “the highest hazard of an earthquake.”
Those would all apply to the retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in densely populated, earthquake-prone San Diego County.
The plant in total holds over 3.5 million pounds of used fuel assemblies from its three reactors, the last two of which were permanently deactivated in 2013. Majority owner Southern California Edison is moving the spent fuel from Units 2 and 3 from wet storage into dry storage. The project has been on hold since an August 2018 mishap in loading one canister into its storage slot, but SCE and fuel offloading contractor Holtec International this week received authorization from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to proceed.
“My top priority is protecting my constituents from a potential accident at San Onofre, and the safest thing for the communities I represent is to remove spent nuclear fuel from the region quickly and safely,” Levin said in a prepared statement. “This legislation would take a clear-eyed approach to spent nuclear fuel removal by prioritizing areas with large populations and high seismic hazard, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to advance this commonsense legislation.”
The legislation makes no reference to the destination for fuel from SONGS or other nuclear plants, whether that would be a consolidated interim storage site or permanent repository.
Levin’s bill has nine co-sponsors. All are Democrats and only one, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (Ore.), is not from California. The measure was directed to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) on Thursday fined US Ecology Texas $457,669 for violations of state rules on air and water quality, industrial hazardous waste, and waste disposal wells.
US Ecology Texas, a branch of Idaho-based environmental services company US Ecology, operates a hazardous waste treatment and disposal facility at the city of Robstown, west of Corpus Christi. This site handles hazardous and industrial wastes including lab packs, refined products, petrochemicals, agricultural chemicals, and pharmaceuticals.
Of US Ecology Texas’ fine, $228,834 will be paid to the Texas Association of Resource Conservation for remediation of unauthorized trash dumpsites and household hazardous waste collections in Nueces County, Texas.
The fine comes from five inspections of the Robstown facility from 2013 to 2017, resulting in 30 violations, according to TCEQ records.
The 2013 inspection resulted in 14 violation citations, including handling unauthorized hazardous wastes, storing liquid wastes in the wrong area, having containers in inadequate conditions, and allowing stormwater to flow into the wrong area.
The 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 inspections led to 16 violations, including failing to minimize the likelihood of a fire or explosion; a 2014 fire sending volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide emissions into the air for 45 minutes; three 2016 fires in part of a landfill after a bag of hazardous materials was torn; and not having enough top soil covering a burial site.
US Ecology Spokesman David Crumrine said most of the TCEQ’s findings were administrative matters that occurred over several years. US Ecology self-reported some of the violations, he said.
“Although USET does not agree with some of the findings US Ecology Texas has been working cooperatively with the TCEQ to resolve all issues and to calibrate expectations moving forward,” Crumrine said by email. “All findings have been resolved with USET taking corrective measures as part of its continuous improvement efforts. There were, and currently are, no threats to the public health or environment resulting from any of the findings.”
US Ecology operates more at more than 40 locations around the nation, including facilities licensed for treatment and management of radioactive waste. Its facility at the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state is one of four sites throughout the United States licensed for disposal of low-level radioactive waste.
A November explosion at a US Ecology hazardous waste disposal site in Grand View, Idaho, killed one worker and injured eight. The site in February resumed waste acceptance and disposal, but treatment operations are not expected to begin again until the second half of this year. The cause of the explosion remains under investigation. The Grand View location handles some extremely low-level radioactive material.
SHINE Medical Technologies said this week it has filled two newly established executive positions: chief strategy officer and general counsel.
As chief strategy officer, Harsh Singh will work directly with SHINE CEO Greg Piefer. His duties will encompass fundraising, sales, marketing, investor relations, and corporate development, according to a company press release.
General Counsel Nathan Schleifer will report to President Todd Asmuth, providing oversight of legal, intellectual property, and compliance matters.
Singh joined the company last week. He most recently served since December 2016 as vice president, head of corporate development, for Hologic Inc., a medical technology provider headquartered in Marlborough, Mass., according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to that, he spent nearly three years as a vice president at Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals in the Chicago area, focused on corporate strategy and mergers and acquisitions.
Singh “comes to SHINE with 18 years of experience structuring private capital financings, public offerings such as IPOs, and strategic transactions,” the press release says. “He has led strategy, business development, and general management positions at Fortune 500 companies in the nuclear medicine, medical device and pharmaceutical sectors.”
Schleifer started at SHINE in February, his LinkedIn profile says. Previously, he was associate counsel for two years and nine months at YETI Coolers, assisting in the company’s 2018 initial public offering. He has also done stints in senior counsel positions for Harley Davidson, W.W. Grainger, and API Healthcare.
Earlier this month, SHINE broke ground on its Janesville, Wis., production plant for the medical isotope molybdenum-99. It must still receive an operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The company is not releasing the schedule for submitting the license application, a spokesperson said Thursday.
From The Wires
From the Brattleboro, Vt., Reformer: Cooling towers at retired Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant set for demolition as decommissioning advances.
