U.S.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) doesn’t anticipate a resurrection of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada after he leaves office in January, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
“I can’t imagine Yucca Mountain’s going to come back,” Reid said Tuesday during a meeting with the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce in Washington, the newspaper reported. “There’s nothing out there now.”
Reid, who has made the fight against Yucca Mountain a cornerstone of his 30-year tenure, is retiring after the November election.
The Obama administration canceled the Yucca Mountain facility in favor of a “consent-based” approach for selecting storage sites for permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Congress, the House in particular, has not given up on the project, though, as President Barack Obama’s tenure nears its end.
INTERNATIONAL
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors on Tuesday adopted new safety standards the U.N. organization says emphasize senior management roles at nuclear facilities in protecting human life, health, and the environment from radiation risks.
“The safety standards are a cornerstone for nuclear and radiation safety, and they have to be updated to reflect developments,” IAEA Deputy Director General Juan Carlos Lentijo said in a statement Wednesday. “This important update introduces substantive changes that highlight that prioritizing safety is a responsibility not only for staff on the control room floor, but also for chief executive officers and all personnel. Implementing these requirements will ensure a good safety culture.”
The newly adopted IAEA General Safety Requirements document, which draws lessons from the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster, dictates that senior management establish and continuously improve a management system that ensures safety and “requires senior managers to identify and provide the resources needed to ensure safety.”
The revised safety standards also widen the scope to include a greater number of facilities in all IAEA member states, ranging from multi-reactor nuclear power plants to small medical facilities. The measures, the IAEA said, are meant to ensure that safety measures prevent accidents and malicious attacks.
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant units 1-3 are now completely free of spent nuclear fuel, State Specialised Enterprise ChNPP announced Monday after unloading the Central Hall 1 cooling pool and moving it into wet storage.
Chernobyl, which experienced a catastrophic power surge in 1986, resulting in what is considered the worst nuclear accident on record, entered decommissioning in April 2015. The last Chernobyl reactor shut down in 2000, and a year later ChNPP was established to oversee decommissioning, announcing detailed plans in 2008. The plant is expected to enter SAFSTOR by 2028, and is set for equipment removal in 2046 and equipment demolition in 2064. The European Commission has pledged €730 million for the four-phase decommissioning project.
