HBO’s satirical “Last Week Tonight” on Sunday gave over much of its 30-minute broadcast time to the potential threat posed to the United States by its growing stockpile of nuclear waste.
Using data from sources including the Nuclear Energy Institute and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, host John Oliver called attention to more than 71,000 tons of spent fuel from commercial reactors and over 100 million gallons of liquid waste from U.S. nuclear weapons manufacturing.
“You may live closer to nuclear waste than you think,” Oliver warned. “One out of three Americans live within 50 miles of high-level nuclear waste, some of which, like plutonium, is lethally dangerous and will be around for an incredibly long time.”
Congress in 1982 demanded that the Department of Energy build a permanent repository for U.S. spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste, and five years later directed that the facility be built at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Subsequent presidential administrations have alternately advanced or halted that project, with the Trump administration most recently requesting funding for licensing the facility. In any event, it remains years away from realization – a point “Last Week Tonight” emphasized by airing a clip from a 1990 television news report on the lack of agreement on where to store radioactive waste.
Disposal measures over the decades have included sealing radioactive waste in barrels dumped off the East Coast (per the Tampa Bay Times’ “The Atomic Sailors”) and considering sending it into space (a dismissed idea illustrated by video of a rocket spectacularly coming apart after launch), Oliver said.
Leaks of waste from locations such as DOE’s Savannah River and Hanford sites create their own environmental danger, according to the host – for example, two radioactive alligators in South Carolina.
The clip was widely tweeted out by industry and others throughout the week — House Energy and Commerce Committee senior adviser Jordan Davis highlighted the segment to call attention to legislation intended to finally force Yucca Mountain into being – Rep. John Shimkus’ (R-Ill.) Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017.
Others took Last Week Tonight to task for misrepresenting the issue. In a Thursday article published in Forbes, titled “Please, John Oliver, Please Talk To A Real Nuclear Scientist,” writer and energy consultant James Conca said nuclear waste is not a major threat to humans and the environment and that Oliver failed to note the distinction between commercial and defense nuclear waste.
Sen. Dean Heller’s (R-Nev.) primary challenger, the strongly pro-Trump campaign-trail veteran Danny Tarkanian, has yet to stake out an official position — in this U.S. Senate race, anyway — on disposing of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev.
Tarkanian has given many interviews since declaring his latest run for office but has not drawn a line in the sand on Yucca, to which the Donald Trump administration has proposed sending the nation’s nuclear waste in accordance with the 1987 amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
Opposition to Yucca is ordinarily a no-brainer in the Silver State, where successful politicians from both major parties have vowed to fight the project until their last breath. Heller himself belts out retired Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) old refrain at practically every opportunity: “Yucca Mountain is dead.”
Tarkanian has been harder to pin down during his third run for Congress in the last four election cycles. The matter is particularly tricky this time, as the Trump administration has requested $120 million in fiscal 2018 to resume the Energy Department’s efforts to open Yucca.
Anything other than full-throated support for Yucca Mountain as a permanent nuclear-waste disposal site would put Tarkanian at odds with his otherwise full-throated support for the president’s agenda from day one.
Tarkanian did not reply to a request for comment from RadWaste Monitor about whether he supported the Trump administration’s proposal.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), the former Nevada attorney general, also opposes waste disposal at Yucca Mountain. So does the rest of Nevada’s congressional delegation — though the state’s lone GOP congressman, Rep. Mark Amodei, supports nuclear research at the site.
Tarkanian has at least two campaign websites, though neither lists any policy position on Yucca Mountain. Nor, for that matter, has any mention of the mountain popped up among the policy pronouncements he has made on Twitter.
In a 2012 race to represent Nevada’s 4th District in the House of Representatives, Tarkanian took a public position something like Amodei’s current position.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Aug. 16 that it has completed its inspection of the dry cask storage facilities at Entergy’s retired Vermont Yankee nuclear plant and found no significant safety concerns.
The NRC in May and June inspected work on the second independent spent fuel storage installation being built at the plant. Inspectors observed pad construction and loading of dry casks that will hold the used fuel, conducted interviews with Entergy officials, and reviewed records and procedures.
No findings of safety significance were found. “We have a standardized approach when it comes to reviewing new dry cask storage pads, including such areas as the spacing of the rebar and the strength of the concrete,” NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said on Aug. 18.
In December 2015, Entergy indicated it expected to spend $145 million on a project to transfer 3,000 spent fuel assemblies into dry casks by the end of 2020. That funding covered construction of a second storage pad, acquiring the casks, and moving the fuel to dry storage. Since then, the power provider has expedited the process to the point where moving the fuel to dry storage should be finished by the end of 2018.
According to Entergy, there are 13 casks on the first ISFSI pad from the previous fuel loading campaigns. Eight more casks have been placed on the pad placed during the current fuel move campaign.
Entergy closed Vermont Yankee at the end of 2014 and in November 2016 announced plans to sell the plant to New York City-based decommissioning specialist NorthStar Group Services. The companies hope to close the sale by the end of 2018, pending approval from the NRC and Vermont Public Utility Commission.
The Vermont Public Utility Commission is giving extra time to the town where the now-retired Vermont Yankee nuclear plant is located to file testimony on the station’s proposed sale from Entergy to NorthStar Group Services.
The PUC on Tuesday agreed to the request from the town of Vernon’s Planning and Development Commission for two additional weeks to file testimony in the case. The deadline, which had been Aug. 30, has been extended until Sept. 13.
The town had noted that it had recently brought on legal counsel in the matter, and also stated that none of the other parties in the sale opposed the extension. Most other parties will still be required to file their initial testimony by Aug. 30, according to the PUC.
The town will also get until Sept. 20 to file first-round discovery requests for documents related to the deal. Other non-petitioners will be required to file such requests by Sept. 7.
Entergy closed Vermont Yankee at the end of 2014 and in November 2016 announced plans to sell the plant to New York City-based NorthStar for decommissioning.
The PUC conducted an information session and public hearing on the proposed sale early this year. A second public hearing is tentatively set for Jan. 4 in Vernon.
One to two weeks of evidentiary hearings are currently scheduled to start the week of Jan. 22 in Montpelier.
On the federal level, Entergy filed a license transfer application for Vermont Yankee with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in February. The nuclear plant operator has said that it hopes the regular will conclude its review by the end of this year.
Entergy said in its last quarterly earnings report that it hopes to secure approval of the Vermont PUC in the second quarter of 2018. It would then close the sale by the end of next year.
A report from the newly established Energy Futures Initiative chronicles the growing number of U.S. nuclear plants that are retiring long before their Nuclear Regulatory Commission license expires.
In the last six years alone, five nuclear power stations totaling 5,000 megawatts have closed in Florida, California, Vermont, Nebraska, and Wisconsin.
The United States maintains a large but shrinking nuclear power fleet, according to the report from the nongovernmental group led by former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. As of July, 61 nuclear stations with 99 commercially active reactors operated across 30 states. This is twice as many reactors as operate in the next two most significant nuclear markets combined, France and Japan, EFI said.
But the Energy Information Administration puts the average age of commercial domestic reactors at 36 years, with the oldest operating reactors having started service 48 years ago, according to the report.
By 2050, EIA estimates that 25% of plants now operating will be retired. A slew of power market factors, ranging from weak demand to competition from electricity generated by cheap natural gas and subsidized renewable projects, are often cited for nuclear retirements.
The situation seems ripe for companies involved heavily in the back-end business, including AREVA, to expand. AREVA Nuclear Materials said recently that it had reached a deal to extract and ship the reactor pressure vessel from the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant. The contract is dependent on NorthStar Group Services closing the deal to purchase the shuttered plant from current owner Entergy for decommissioning.
Another six plants are scheduled to retire in the next nine years, according to the EIA. For example, Entergy plans to retire the Pilgrim plant in Massachusetts by mid-2019, while Exelon will close the Three Mile Island facility in Pennsylvania that year absent a change in government policy, such as some type of state energy incentive.
But government regulation is key to maximizing longer-term growth in the U.S. back-end business, according to AREVA. “Clarity in federal regulations for consolidated storage and decommissioning continues to be an important need in business planning and financial investment,” said AREVA spokesman Curtis Roberts.
With an eye toward potential consolidated interim storage of spent fuel from U.S. commercial reactors and its eventual disposal in a deep geological repository, an AREVA business is also teaming with U.S. rail companies to support the Energy Department in developing a new railcar to move spent fuel canisters cross-country, Roberts said.
The Australian government on Thursday began the next phase of considering two sites in South Australia to house the planned National Radioactive Waste Management Facility.
Two property owners close to the rural town of Kimba, on the Eyre Peninsula, in January separately proposed using their land for the facility. The National Radioactive Waste Management Facility Project Office opened its Kimba location Thursday with a sausage sizzle, according to a press release from Australia’s Department of Industry, Innovation, and Science.
“During this second phase, we will take an in-depth look at the two volunteered sites at Kimba, to understand whether either of them could be suitable for the national facility,” facility task force General Manager Bruce McCleary said in a press release. “This involves looking into the technical aspects of the project, the individual site characteristics and whether the land would be suitable for a facility like this.”
The nearly 100-acre facility would be used for permanent storage of low-level radioactive waste and temporary storage of intermediate-level waste. Australia holds roughly 4,250 cubic meters of low-level waste and 656 cubic meters of intermediate-level waste, left by production and use of nuclear medicine, research reactor operations, and other activities.
Only one other location is still being considered after years of site selection: Wallerberdina Station, in Barndioota, South Australia. That land is also in second-phase study.
International Isotopes announced this week that it has assumed management of a New Hampshire company that manufactures quality control products for the nuclear medicine and imaging industries.
The Idaho Falls-based company already owned 25 percent of RadQual LLC, and International Isotopes President and CEO Steve Laflin, the firm’s current and former board chairmen, and an unidentified major shareholder have now purchased the remaining 75 percent of the member units. The purchase price was not disclosed.
“Following this purchase, INIS has been voted by the new members to become the primary managing member of RadQual, and will be responsible for oversight of all business activities and management of RadQual,” according to an Aug. 21 International Isotopes press release. The new owner said it would evaluate expanding the company’s product line and distribution of PET and SPECT imaging products.
“Evaluating and adding new products will be a gradual and continuous process based upon perceived market opportunity,” Laflin told RadWaste Monitor by email on Wednesday.
Prior RadQual majority owners Keith Allberg, director of manufacturing and regulatory affairs, and Peter Ouimette, who managed sales and product distribution, sold their units after deciding to retire, Laflin said.
“We have greatly enjoyed our sixteen years of owning and managing RadQual and we’re very proud of the great reputation the RadQual products have achieved in that time,” Allberg and Ouimette said in a prepared statement. “INIS has been the sole manufacturing facility for all RadQual products since the beginning and their contract manufacturing performance has been a key reason for our product success. RadQual has always taken pride in providing the best customer service in the industry and we are certain that INIS will continue that proud tradition after this management change is complete.”
British engineering consulting firm Amec Foster Wheeler said Wednesday it had been awarded two contracts worth a total of 4 million pounds ($5.1 million) from the company that manages the United Kingdom’s Low Level Waste Repository.
Each contract is worth roughly 2 million pounds and will last roughly four years, according to an Amec Foster Wheeler press release. Both are reappointments for services the company already provides to LLW Repository Ltd., Amec Foster Wheeler spokesman Stephen Brauner said by email.
The company, under a contract that runs from April 2017 to March 2021, will be the sole provider of hydrogeological and geological support for environmental safety case services. It will also join three other firms in providing general technical support to the company.
The other contract, from this month to March 2021, calls for Amec Foster Wheeler to supply analytical support services and environmental monitoring support – specifically analysis of waste samples — through its analytical laboratories, the release says.
The 272-acre Low Level Waste Repository in West Cumbria is used as the final resting place for all categories of solid low-level waste from across the United Kingdom. LLW Repository is fully owned by UK Nuclear Waste Management, a partnership of AECOM, AREVA, and Studsvik UK.
