U.S.
Pacific Gas & Electric intends on July 28 to file with the California Public Utilities Commission its “joint proposal” to close the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant ln less than a decade and focus its energy production on other greenhouse-gas-free sources.
The utility in June announced the plan developed with labor and environmental groups that would boost investment in energy efficiency, renewables, and energy storage beyond current California mandates. That includes closing Diablo Canyon reactor units 1 and 2 in 2024 and 2025, respectively, as their Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses expire.
The State Lands Commission last month approved lease extensions to 2025 for Diablo Canyon infrastructure located on state property. While officials from the San Luis Obispo area largely supported the decision, environmentalists and others called for an environmental impact review of the lease extension and argued that Diablo Canyon should actually be closed earlier than planned.
Ahead of the CPUC filing, PG&E has scheduled public meetings on the joint proposal. They are scheduled for: noon to 3:45 p.m. and 4:15 to 8 p.m. June 20 at the Embassy Suites, 333 Madonna Road in San Luis Obispo; and noon to 3:45 p.m. and 4:15 p.m. to 8 p.m. July 22 at the South San Francisco Conference Center, 255 S. Airport Blvd. in South San Francisco. PG&E staff at the meetings will offer information on the proposal and take questions and comments from participants, according to a press release. The company subsequently will issue a report encompassing the questions and input taken at the meetings, which will be included in the filing with CPUC.
Decommissioning the independent spent fuel storage installation at the shuttered Maine Yankee nuclear power plant is expected to cost up to $28.1 million, according to the latest price estimate.
The three-year update to the ISFSI decommissioning funding plan was issued on Dec. 16, 2015, by the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co. and made public this week on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission website.
The cost projection was $27.4 million in 2015 dollars and $28.1 million in 2016 dollars, covering removal of both radiological and nonradiological materials. The cost in the prior update in December 2012 was $27.4 million. “There is no material difference between the 2012 and 2015 ISFSI decommissioning cost estimate other than the consideration for inflation,” Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes said by email on Wednesday.
Maine Yankee, the state’s sole nuclear power plant, closed in 1997, and the plant itself was decommissioned by 2005.
A total of 1,434 spent fuel assemblies are stored within the ISFSI. In total, 60 steel containers of spent fuel and four with Greater-Than-Class-C waste are held inside casks made of steel and concrete.
Maine Yankee affirmed that the ISFSI account within its decommissioning trust fund has enough money to cover the cost of the cleanup project, whenever that occurs. The ISFSI cannot be removed until the Department of Energy meets its legal mandate to establish a permanent storage facility for the more than 70,000 metric tons of spent fuel now stored at reactor sites around the country. The agency, under its consent-based waste storage plan, intends to establish consolidated interim facilities by 2025 and one or more permanent repositories by 2048.
Nuclear waste management technology provider Kurion on Monday announced the hiring of a vitrification and spent fuel reprocessing specialist as the company’s new technical director.
Jean-Christophe Piroux comes to Kurion from AREVA, where he served as chief technical officer for back-end international operations. His more than 32-year career has taken him to France, Japan, Ukraine, the United States, and the United Kingdom. He will work in France, with responsibilities including “development of vitrification opportunities in Europe as well as providing technical expertise and support to other Kurion vitrification projects,” according to a Kurion press release.
Vitrification is the process of converting nuclear waste into a glass form for long-term storage.
“We are very pleased to add the depth of experience and high level of technical and operational talent that JC brings to our current team,” David Carlson, Kurion senior vice president for stabilization and separation technologies, said in the release. “This addition of JC is a strategic hire that will accelerate the growth of our vitrification business.”
Kurion, headquartered in Irvine, Calif., this year was acquired by Paris-based environmental solutions company Veolia in a $350 million deal.
A longtime nuclear industry manager has joined medical isotopes company SHINE Medical Technologies as vice president of project delivery.
George Hansrote’s job will be to oversee construction of SHINE’s isotope production facility in Janesville, Wis., according to a press release this week. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in February issued a construction permit for the plant. SHINE plans to start building the 57,000-square-foot site next year, and to produce test batches in 2018. It will ultimately produce molybdenum-99 and other isotopes.
Hansrote’s three decades in project management includes stints working on nuclear power projects, and more recently on “first-of-a-kind nuclear facilities,” the release says. He has worked at the Sellafield site in the United Kingdom and the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state, among other facilities, and on projects with costs ranging from $100 million to $3 billion, SHINE said.
Hansrote most recently was executive director for nuclear dismantling and decommissioning with CB&I’s Power Division.
International
Sellafield Ltd. said this week it saved nearly $400,000 by using an advanced rolling scaffolding in the decommissioning of the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond at the Sellafield site.
The rolling scaffolding is easy to assemble, lightweight, and relatively inexpensive, according to a Sellafield press release. It cost just less than $170,000. Money savings are derived from the work hours saved in assembly and the reduced amount of equipment necessary for the structure.
“Creating one moveable structure rather than one which spans the entire length of the pond wall reduced construction and handling time heavily – the actual movement of the tower requires minimal time, effort and manpower,” the company said by email. “There was no need for the expanse of traditional tube and fitting scaffold, only the section that moves so a massive reduction in kit.”
The First Generation Magnox Storage Pond was a component of the Magnox Storage and Decanning Facility, which was built starting in the 1950s to hold irradiated fuel from Magnox reactors and to extract the fuel cladding ahead of fuel reprocessing. Fuel was last placed in the pond in 1992.
The pond is a priority project among the various facilities being decommissioned at Sellafield, according to the press release. The first “bulk” sludge export occurred in March of this year, and most of the main sludge content is expected to be removed by 2022.
