The Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects in March to issue a final report on revising its inspection regime for independent spent fuel storage installations (ISFSIs) at U.S. nuclear power plants.
“The final report and recommendations, incorporating internal and external feedback, is undergoing internal review,” agency spokesman David McIntyre said by email on Jan. 29. “Once this review is complete and NRC has made a final decision, the report will be made publicly available. We anticipate doing so by the end of March.”
The recommendations were developed by a working group comprised of staffers from NRC headquarters in Rockville, Md., and the regulator’s four regional offices. The group asked itself “What did we learn from doing inspections of these facilities for the last 30-plus years, and how can we really focus on looking at the oversight of the more risky activities and spending less time on those that aren’t significant,” John Lubinski, director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, said last week at an industry conference.
Staff preliminary determined that more time should be spent on oversight of the used-fuel movement and loading into storage, and that the reduced risk of material once it is storage could allow for fewer inspections.
Lubinski will have final say on the recommendations. As of Jan. 28, he said he was still a couple days from seeing the report.
The preliminary recommendations called for the agency to offer 35 hours of annual inspection time per site of used nuclear fuel from cooling pools to dry storage, reduced from the current 62 hours. That would overall tighten dry-storage site inspectors from 2.94 full-time equivalents (FTE) to 1.56, with each FTE representing 1,500 hours of annual work.
The proposal is intended to reduce redundancies in the NRC’s operations, Executive Director for Operations Margaret Doane said during a Jan. 15 hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Committee Ranking Member Tom Carper (D-Del.) and other members of Congress have expressed concerns about the recommendations.
The changes would be instituted in fiscal 2021, which begins on Oct. 1 of this year, Lubinski said.
As has been its practice for the better part of a year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December spent less than $1,000 of its remaining balance from the federal Nuclear Waste Fund.
The $780 outlay for unspecified program planning and support left the agency with an unspent, unobligated balance of $405,246, according to the latest spending update to Congress.
The Nuclear Waste Fund is intended to be used to pay for a radioactive waste repository, which the Department of Energy by law must build under Yucca Mountain, Nev. The Energy Department in 2008, during the George W. Bush administration, submitted its application to build and operate the facility to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Obama administration defunded the proceeding two years later. But a federal appeals court in August 2013 ordered the NRC to resume work on the license application.
At the time the regulator had a balance of more than $13.5 million from the fund. As of December, it had spent just over $13.1 million – using nearly $8.4 million to complete a safety evaluation report on the application, along with nearly $1.6 million for a supplement to the environmental impact statement for the project.
The NRC has said it would need Congress to appropriate additional money from the fund to actually carry out its review of the DOE license application. The Trump administration has proposed funding in its last three budget plans to resume licensing at DOE and the NRC, but has been rebuffed each time by Congress. Issue watchers at an industry conference last week said they do not expect the White House to try again in the upcoming fiscal 2021, but the administration said it will not discuss its intentions until the release of its budget proposal on Feb. 10.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) cited the danger from radioactive waste in making the case for new legislation that would establish a nationwide prohibition on fracking for production of oil and natural gas.
The Ban Fracking Act is being introduced in both the Senate and House of Representatives. If passed, it would automatically ban the federal government from issuing new permits for “fracking related infrastructure.” All hydraulic fracturing within 2,500 feet of homes and schools would be stopped by 2021, and the practice would be fully outlawed by 2025.
Fracking involves high-pressure pumping of water and additives into horizontally drilled holes to break up rock and access deep-underground deposits of oil and natural gas. The safety and environmental impacts of the practice are a matter of heated debate.
Sanders’ bill, filed on Jan. 28, cites a long list of dangers from fracking, including earthquakes, groundwater contamination, air pollution, and worker exposure to toxic substances.
“Each year, fracking produces nearly a trillion gallons of radioactive waste – sometimes in concentrations hundreds of times more radioactive than the legal limit for nuclear power plant discharges,” according to an explainer for the legislation. “Workers regularly transport this waste without protective safety gear, and it is often disposed of spraying on roads next to homes and farms.”
Uranium, thorium, radium, and other naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) are found in the geologic formations that hold oil and gas resources accessed through fracking, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Those materials are concentrated and brought to the surface through energy extraction; they are then characterized as technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) in forms such as mineral scales within pipes, sludges and sediments, and contaminated gear.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) sponsored the Senate version of the bill with Sanders, who is campaigning for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.
An executive with the U.K. government-owned organization that manages the Sellafield nuclear site has been promoted to chief executive.
Martin Chown began his new role on Feb. 1, according to a press release from the U.K.’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. He succeeds Paul Foster, who stepped down in January after four years on the job.
Chown previously served as Sellafield Ltd.’s deputy chief executive and supply chain director. “It’s an honour to become the Chief Executive of one of the most important companies in Britain,” he said in the release. “We’re responsible for some of the most significant and exciting environmental and engineering challenges anywhere in the world.”
Sellafield Ltd. manages nuclear fuel reprocessing and cleanup at the Cumbria complex that supported the United Kingdom’s nuclear weapons and power programs, including through production of plutonium. The company in April 2016 became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the nondepartmental, executive agency that heads remediation of the nation’s nuclear complex.
All reprocessing at Sellafield is scheduled to stop this year, the NDA noted in its draft business plan for April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2023. The agency expects to spend nearly £2.2 billion on Sellafield operations in the 2020-2021 budget year, with £1.1 billion of that on decommissioning and cleanup. The Sellafield total is well over half of the £3.4 billion to be spent across the NDA complex.
Chown’s first job at Sellafield Ltd. was as supply chain director. He was elevated to deputy chief executive in September 2019. He previously spent over three years as procurement and supply chain director for Balfour Beatty Construction Services U.K. and in other senior positions in government and the private sector.
The nuclear dismantlement branch of Orano has received secured a contract valued at millions of euros to fully disassemble the stainless-steel walls and metal structure of two retired spent fuel storage pools at France’s Marcoule nuclear facility.
Dismantlement operations will “commence shortly,” according to a press release from Paris-based Orano. The release does not cite a specific schedule or value for the award from the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).
The project will use novel technologies, including a 12-metric-ton remote-cutter that is the most sizable tool of its type commercially available. That both increases efficiency of the operation and reduces radiological exposure for personnel, the release says.
“It makes us proud to see that the technical solution developed by the teams from Orano DS has been selected by the CEA,” Alain Vandercruyssen, senior executive vice president for Orano’s Dismantling and Services business, said in prepared comments. “The challenge and the resources involved are considerable but I have full confidence in our ability to complete this unprecedented worksite at Marcoule successfully, thus serving as a reference for other similar operations in the future.”
Established in 1955 in the south of France, Marcoule is the nation’s leading nuclear fuel cycle research facility in areas including spent fuel reprocessing and radioactive waste management. It is also home to a large-scale program for disassembly of nuclear facilities and extraction of radioactive waste. A September 2011 explosion in a waste storage facility at the complex killed one person.
From The Wires
From Forbes: Draft report from expert panel supports allowing pouring radioactive water from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific Ocean.
From Reuters: French regulator says utility EDF needs better organization for decommissioning of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant.
From The Blade: Little yet known about the financial supporters for campaigns for and against bailouts of nuclear power plants in Ohio.
From Gongwer News Service: Lawmakers serving the Detroit area decry state decision to allow expansion of US Ecology waste facility.
