The U.S. Transportation Department would receive the $3 million it requested for fiscal 2018 to continue storing a retired nuclear-powered freighter in Baltimore Harbor as part of a $56.5-billion Transportation, Housing and Urban Development spending bill the House Appropriations Committee approved Monday.
The merchant ship NS Savannah, now moored at Canton Marine Terminal’s Pier 13, was launched in 1959 as part of then-President Dwight Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program. The ship was taken out of service in 1971, and fuel from its reactor core was sent to the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. Babcock and Wilcox, the forerunner to the current BWX Technologies of Lynchburg, Va., built the ship’s nuclear reactor.
The U.S. Maritime Administration owns and maintains the NS Savannah. The administration, part of the Transportation Department, received $24 million to start decommissioning the ship’s Cold War-era reactor as part of the fiscal 2017 omnibus spending bill that was signed into law on May 5. That was three times what the Barack Obama administration requested for 2017 to begin decommissioning the ship’s reactor. The administration sought no decommissioning funding for 2018, and the committee bill would provide none.
The Maritime Administration estimates it will cost almost $110 million to decommission and decontaminate the reactor, according to a now year-old annual report on the vessel’s decommissioning funding status — the latest such report available. The Maritime Administration’s NRC reactor license is good through 2031 but could be renewed.
The Maritime Administration had not sought information from potential decommissioning contractors at deadline for RadWaste Monitor.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting an environmental assessment as part of its review of the Energy Department’s application for a 20-year extension of its license for storage in Idaho of waste from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant.
“The purpose of the EA is to assess potential environmental impacts that may significantly affect the human environment,” Cinthya Román, environmental review chief in the NRC’s Fuel Cycle Safety, Safeguards, and Environmental Review Division, wrote in a July 6 letter to Susan Burke, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) oversight coordinator at the state Department of Environmental Quality. “The EA will include an analysis of potential impacts to environmental resources such as land use, air quality, socioeconomic environment, historic and cultural resources, and occupational and public health (radiological and non-radiological).”
The Three Mile Island Unit 2 Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI) at INL holds 341 canisters of spent nuclear fuel core debris left by the partial meltdown of the Pennsylvania reactor in March 1979. The Department of Energy does not plan to expand the storage pad or bring in any additional waste should the license be extended, Román wrote.
The license is scheduled to expire on March 19, 2019. The requested extension would allow the facility to operate through March 19, 2039. However, an agreement with the Idaho government directs DOE to ship the spent fuel from the ISFSI out of state by Jan. 1 of 2035.
Three Mile Island’s other reactor remained operational after the accident, but plant owner Exelon in May announced plans to close the plant in 2019.
The European Commission last week gave five nations two months to provide overdue information regarding their domestic programs for management of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. Should they fail to meet their commitment, Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Italy, and Portugal could be directed to the European Union Court of Justice, the commission said in a July 13 alert.
The commission’s 2011 Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Management Directive places a number of obligations on EU member nations, including establishing a national program for dealing with such material produced within their borders, and ensuring funding and independent oversight for this work.
All EU countries produce radioactive waste through power, medical, research, industrial, and agricultural operations, the European Commission said. “Member States were required to notify their national programmes by 23 August 2015,” according to the notice. “The Member States concerned have two months to comply with their obligations; otherwise, the Commission may decide to refer them to the Court of Justice of the EU.”
The European Commission statement did not specify what penalties, if any, the five nations could face for continued failure to meet their obligation under the radioactive waste directive. A commission official did not respond to a request for additional detail on the process.
Former Nuclear Regulatory Commission member William Ostendorff has become a senior adviser for decision-support consulting firm Predicus, the company announced Tuesday.
Ostendorff served just over six years on the commission, leaving in June 2016 to become a visiting professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. He previously served in the Navy from 1976 to his retirement in 2002, and then at the National Academies, as a staffer on Capitol Hill, and as principal deputy administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration.
“Bill will be focused on regulatory and program risk issues associated with spent fuel management,” James Voss, a senior partner at Predicus and until recently managing director of Waste Management Symposia, told RadWaste Monitor by email Tuesday.
Issaquah, Wash.-based Predicus offers the “Predicus Process,” a system for supporting corporate project decision-making in the energy, transportation, environmental sectors.
The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said Wednesday it spent £3.2 billion ($4.2 billion) through its 2016-2017 fiscal year in carrying out its mission to clean up 17 nuclear sites around the country.
Milestones during the year included extracting all bulk stocks of nuclear fuel from the Pile Fuel Storage Pond at the Sellafield site in West Cumbria, eliminating all sodium potassium alloy once used to cool the fast reactor at Dounreay in Scotland, and installing the first of three devices that will remove radioactive debris known as “swarf” from the Magnox Swarf Storage Silo at Sellafield, according to the latest NDA Annual Report.
Roughly 60 percent of the NDA’s budget was spent on remediation operations at Sellafield, the largest and most technically complex of the cleanup sites, David Peattie, the new CEO of the nondepartmental public body, said his yearly review. Making cleanup contractor Sellafield Ltd. a wholly owned subsidiary of the NDA saved more than £200 million over the 12-month period, he added.
“Despite our good progress, however, the Board remains concerned by the number of safety incidents reported across the estate last year. It is a disappointing increase and a priority area of focus for the Board and our new Chief Executive Officer,” NDA Chairman Tom Smith said in his introduction to the report.
Smith also expressed regret over NDA’s decision in March to pay out about £100 million to EnergySolutions and Bechtel, which had separately sued over its management of the procurement process for the contract for remediation of the nation’s Magnox plants. The settlements followed a July 2016 ruling from the U.K. High Court that NDA had mishandled the process.
From The Wires
From World Nuclear News: Two federal lawsuits against Illinois’ zero emissions credit program, which is intended to ensure Exelon does not close its Quad Cities and Clinton nuclear power plants, are dismissed.
From The Guardian: The United Kingdom says it is prepared to send nuclear waste back to its point of origin in European nations as it progresses with exiting the European Union.
From Politico EU: The prime barrier to permanent disposal of nuclear waste in Europe is political, rather than technical.
