SAVANNAH, Ga. — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should next week receive agency staff’s proposed rule package for nuclear power reactors transitioning from operations to decommissioning, a senior official said Wednesday.
The proposal is going through its final concurrence process by NRC offices, and as of this week was at the Office of the Executive Director for Operations — the last stop before going to the commission itself. The document should be submitted to the commissioners on Monday, according to Meena Khanna, chief for the NRC’s Reactor Rulemaking and Project Management Branch.
“I can’t speak to how long the commission will take to review, but obviously they’ll take the appropriate time that they need to make sure that they’re comfortable with the proposed rule, possibly ask us questions,” Khanna said during a panel discussion at the Nuclear Energy Institute’s Used Fuel Management Conference here.
The process formally started in 2015 is intended to set clear rules in a number of operational areas as plants cease operations, relieving the need for operators to apply for license amendments or rules exemptions. In late 2017, NRC staff designated a number of areas that would be subject to the rulemaking, including physical security, cybersecurity, decommissioning trust funds, and drug and alcohol testing. Staff recommended providing guidance, but not directives, in other areas, such as the role of state and local governments in the decommissioning process.
Upon commission approval, staff would release the proposed rulemaking and draft guidance documents for a public comment period of around 75 days, Khanna said. A public meeting would be part of the process.
Staff will then use the received comments to develop the final rule package, which is expected to be submitted to the commission for a vote in fall 2019. Assuming the rule package is approved, it would be published and take effect in early 2020.
US Ecology on Thursday reported increases in revenue and income for the first quarter of 2018 from the same period a year ago.
The Boise, Idaho-based environmental services company’s quarterly revenue of $120.1 million was up by 9 percent on a year-over-year basis, from $110.2 million, according to a US Ecology press release. Operating income landed at 13.4 million, an 11 percent spike from $12.2 million in the first quarter of 2017. Net income was $9.2 million in this year’s first quarter, up from $5.2 million in 2017.
“Overall, business conditions continue to steadily improve, consistent with our expectations coming into the year,” US Ecology President and CEO Jeff Feeler said in the press release. In the company’s quarterly earnings call Friday, Feeler said US Ecology expects its business to grow 3 percent to 5 percent in 2018.
For the latest quarter, US Ecology’s Environmental Services revenue totaled $86.5 million, up from $81.3 million in the first quarter of 2017. This increase can be traced to 5 percent growth in treatment and disposal revenue and 12 percent growth in transportation revenue, the company said.
The company’s Environmental Services business line includes its radioactive waste disposal operations. US Ecology operates one of four active low-level radioactive waste disposal sites licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state.
US Ecology’s Field and Industrial Services revenue rose from $28.9 million in the first quarter of 2017 to $33 million in the first quarter of 2018.
US Ecology’s first-quarter bottom line was helped by the major tax overhaul Congress passed in 2017, according to Chief Financial Officer Eric Gerratt.
Zero-emissions credits for Exelon’s nuclear power operations in Illinois and New York state boosted the company’s earnings in the first quarter of 2018, but net income nonetheless dropped on a year-over-year basis.
In its latest earnings report, the company said generally accepted accounting principles net income dropped from $990 million ($1.06 per share) in first-quarter 2017 to $585 million ($0.60 per share) this year. Exelon utilities sustained $200 million in capital and operating expenses to recover from three major East Coast storms during the quarter, President and CEO Christopher Crane said during a conference call with financial analysts.
Adjusted (non-GAAP) operating earnings, though, rose from $600 million ($0.64 per share) to $925 million ($0.96 per share). Contributing to that increase were “the favorable impacts of the New York Clean Energy and Illinois Zero Emission Standards, including the impact of zero emission credits generated in Illinois from June 1, 2017 through December 31, 2017,” Exelon said.
Exelon operates six nuclear power plants in Illinois, and had announced its intention to close the Quad Cities and Clinton facilities before the state legislature in 2016 passed a subsidy package for zero-emissions energy sources. The company has three nuclear facilities in New York state, last year buying the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant from Entergy after the state government instituted its own credit program.
Exelon Generation, which operates the company’s nuclear plants, reported a steep drop in GAAP net income, from $418 million in first-quarter 2017 to $136 million in the same period of 2018. Non-GAAP operating earnings were up from $167 million to $474 million on a year-over-year basis, again with an assist from New York and Illinois.
The company is also waiting to see whether New Jersey Gov. Philip Murphy will sign nuclear subsidy legislation the state legislature passed in April. Absent that, Exelon has announced plans to close its Oyster Creek Generating Station in October.
Two new contracts worth just over $9 million ($11.7 million CAN) have been issued for radioactive waste cleanup in the municipality of Port Hope, Ontario, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) announced Wednesday.
Arcadis, an Amsterdam-based design and consultancy firm that already has one contract for radiological testing in Port Hope, is expected this spring to begin a $7.8 million ($10 million CAN) work package to excavate an estimated 58,000 cubic meters of waste from three locations along Port Hope’s waterfront. Most of the material is low-level radioactive waste, but one of the sites is expected to include a small amount of industrial waste, CNL spokesman Bill Daly said by email. The work should wrap up in 2020.
Canada’s Milestone Environmental Services will conduct similar work for a number of residential properties and one commercial property. A significant number of additional work packages for residential cleanup are anticipated, according to a CNL press release.
After removing the waste, the companies will transport it to the new storage facility at Port Hope, replace the contaminated material with clean soil, and conduct landscape restoration.
The Port Hope Project is the larger of two cleanup programs overseen by the privately operated CNL’s Port Hope Area Initiative, a $1.3 billion (CAN) program for remediation of low-level radioactive waste left by former uranium and radium refining activities in the region near Lake Ontario.
The newly awarded work will be conducted alongside removal of contaminated soil from three temporary holding sites in Port Hope. A broader remediation program for Port Hope Harbor and the Center Pier is due to start in 2019.
“The cleanup of the harbour will represent one of the largest scopes of work for the PHAI,” Daly wrote. “It will involve stabilizing the harbour walls, isolating the turning basin from Lake Ontario, dredging the harbour sediment down to bedrock, on-site water treatment and transportation of the contaminated material along designated haul routes to the engineered long-term waste management facility located in the Municipality of Port Hope.”
An organization comprised of 82 mayors in the Montreal area last week unanimously issued a resolution of objection to plans for a radioactive waste disposal facility at Chalk River, Ontario.
The Montreal Metropolitan Community (CMM) “is initiating a process to oppose this nuclear dump development project and intends to work with the City of Gatineau and the Union of Quebec Municipalities to develop a common position that will be forwarded to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission,” Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, president of CMM, said in a press release.
The mayors worry that radioactive material from the facility could leak into drinking water supplies for Quebec and Ontario.
The full resolution, in French, can be found here.
The private Canadian Nuclear Laboratories contracts with the government for management and operations of sites and programs under the oversight of Atomic Energy of Canada. That includes the Chalk River Laboratories, where it aims to build an engineered mound for up to 1 million cubic meters of radioactive waste.
About 1 percent of that would be intermediate-level waste, and the rest low-level material, CNL determined in 2016.
The project has also drawn opposition from senior members of the First Nations, CBC News reported last week.
France’s Orano said Friday it has received a contract to evaluate whether it can reprocess used fuel from the VVER-1000 nuclear reactors operated by the Ukrainian utility EnergoAtom.
Reprocessing would potentially occur at Orano’s La Hague spent fuel recycling plant, the company formerly known as AREVA said in a press release.
Ninety-percent of spent fuel can be recycled for reuse in nuclear power production, the release says. The La Hague facility separates that material from the remaining 4 percent of waste that cannot be recycled.
Terms of the contract were not released.
