U.S.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in May spent $96,246 on activities for licensing of the suspended Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, the agency said in a June 21 submission to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and other lawmakers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in August 2013 ordered the NRC to resume review of the Department of Energy application, which had been halted at the DOE’s request in the wake of the Obama administration’s decision to kill the project.
Since the 2013 court order, the NRC through May had spent $11.93 million of Nuclear Waste Fund moneys on the licensing process, with more than $8.3 million going toward completion of the site safety evaluation report and over $1.5 million used for the supplement to the Yucca Mountain environmental impact statement. The SER was completed in January 2015 and the EIS supplement was published in May.
The majority of the spending in May was for developing the EIS supplement ($49,288) and loading other documents onto the NRC’s online public document library ($45,334).
The Nuclear Waste Fund had $13.5 million in unexpended funds at the time of the court decision; $1.6 million remained as of May 31. Unobligated funding was listed at just over $1.1 million.
INTERNATIONAL
U.K. nuclear firm Magnox said Wednesday that 18 underground waste storage vault at the former Bradwell nuclear power plant had been cleared and decontaminated.
Magnox, which manages 12 nuclear facilities in the United Kingdom for the nation’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, said in a press release this is the first of the company’s locations to prepare all such storage vaults for “care and maintenance.” It represents another step in the ongoing decommissioning at the facility near Essex, which provided power from 1962 to 2002.
“This is a real demonstration of the huge steps forward the Magnox team is making to safely deal with the hazards at Bradwell,” Closure Director Scott Raish said in the release. “This work isn’t as obvious to see in the local area as some of the big construction and demolition projects we have delivered, but completion represents a significant reduction in the radiological risk we are managing.”
The cleanup includes filling 41 containers with intermediate-level waste sludge and resin, retrieving 2,893 drums of fuel element debris for reprocessing, and decontaminating 972 square meters of vault space – roughly the size of five tennis courts. Some of the waste is being processed in a dissolution plant while other material is being prepared for interim storage until the U.K. establishes a geological disposal facility for permanent safekeeping of nuclear waste.
The vaults will now be left in care and maintenance until the entire facility is cleared.
Bradwell decommissioning is expected to be completed in 2019, the first of the Magnox sites to reach that milestone, NDA spokesman Jonathan Jenkin said Thursday. The care and maintenance phase begins once the major hazards at the site have been reduced, and will last for 60-70 years to allow for natural radioactive decay. The plant will subsequently be dismantled and the site cleared.
French multinational AREVA on Thursday announced that it had sealed a number of fuel cycle-related contracts at the World Nuclear Exhibition in Bourget, France.
The company’s contract for used fuel management at the Belgian Nuclear Research Center’s BR2 research reactor has been extended through 2020. The facility’s operations include production of medical radioisotopes, according to an AREVA press release.
AREVA will also carry out a prefeasibility study for building a fiber concrete container manufacturing installation at Saligny in Romania for the nation’s nuclear energy and radioactive waste agency. “The containers will allow to safely condition low and intermediate level waste at the repository currently under implementation at the same location,” the release says. “Such fiber concrete containers are already used by nuclear waste management facility operators in France and the U.S., among other countries.”
Finally, AREVA TN, which handles the company’s nuclear logistics work, will provide 75 NUHOMS EOS dry shielded canisters for two Dominion Virginia Power facilities through 2038. The canisters are designed for secure storage of used nuclear fuel.
The company did not disclose financial terms of the contracts.
AREVA in June announced a major restructuring, highlighted by establish of a new entity, New Co., that will focus on nuclear fuel cycle operations.
