A recent meeting between senior U.S. and South Korean officials ended with a pledge to cooperate on dealing with used nuclear reactor fuel and other atomic operations, according to the Department of Energy.
Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette and South Korean Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun on Friday led the second plenary of the High Level Bilateral Commission in Washington, D.C.
The commission, established in 2016, offers a venue for the two countries to address civil nuclear issues of shared interest. Topics of discussion last week between Brouillette and Cho included sued fuel, the nuclear fuel market, collaboration on export controls, and nuclear security and nonproliferation, according to a DOE press release. The two officials “agreed upon future joint technical activities in each of these areas,” the department said.
The release did not state what those activities might entail and DOE said no further information would be made public at this point.
Nuclear power reactors around the United States have generated roughly 80,000 metric tons of used fuel over decades of operation. The federal government has at least since 1982 sought to site, license, and build a permanent underground repository for that radioactive waste. Congress in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the location for the disposal facility, but the government has made little progress since then in making the repository a reality. For now, the spent fuel is kept on-site at reactor facilities.
South Korean power plants stored roughly 14,000 metric tons of spent fuel as of the end of 2015, according to the World Nuclear Association. The material is eventually to be consolidated into a temporary storage site scheduled to open by 2035. A permanent disposal site is to be selected by 2028, Reuters reported in 2016.
BWX Technologies on Aug. 6 announced completion of its purchase of Sotera Health’s Nordion medical isotope business. The deal involves about 150 Nordion employees and two facilities: Nordion’s primary medical isotope production facility in Ontario and an isotope processing site in British Columbia.
The acquisition is part of the Lynchburg, Va.-based company’s move into the market for production and sales of the medical isotope molybdenum-99 (Mo-99). It was first announced in April, a few weeks before BWXT rolled out a new proprietary patent-pending neutron capture process for manufacturing Mo-99.
BWXT is one of several companies looking to re-establish the U.S. capacity for production of Mo-99, which decays into the isotope technetium-99m, which is used each year in more than 30 million medical procedures globally.
“We are extremely pleased to complete this strategic acquisition,” BWXT President and CEO Rex Geveden said in a press release. “With Nordion’s medical isotopes business, we inherit a growing portfolio of radioisotope products. Equally important, we will employ the Nordion medical isotopes team, infrastructural assets and channels to market to launch our previously announced Mo-99 product line and a number of future radioisotope-based imaging and therapeutic products.”
The company’s medical isotopes operations will be housed within BWXT’s Nuclear Power Group as of this financial quarter. That business brought in $75.7 million in revenue for the company’s second quarter of 2018, up 39 percent on a year-over year-basis. The increase was driven by “increased field service and refurbishment activity,” BWXT said in its Aug. 6 earnings report. Operating income landed at $7.8 million for the quarter, rising by 37 percent from the same period of 2017.
The isotopes business should start providing revenue for BWXT through the remainder of this year, but “we do not anticipate the business will have a meaningful impact to revenue guidance and will not be dilutive in 2018,” Chief Financial Officer David Black said during the quarterly earnings call with financial analysts.
Company-wide revenue was $439 million for the second quarter, a 7.1 percent improvement from the $410 million BWXT brought in a year ago. Net income was $60.7 million ($0.60 per share). That was down slightly from $61.3 million ($0.61 per share) in second-quarter 2017.
One of the members of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) on Monday shifted over to serve as the agency’s new executive director. He was quickly replaced on the commission by a former TCEQ staffer and short-term U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employee.
The state agency, with nearly 3,000 employees overseen by three commissioners, regulates management of nuclear waste in Texas. That includes the Waste Control Specialists disposal complex in Andrews County, one of four active facilities licensed by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for disposal of low-level radioactive waste.
Toby Baker joined the commission in April 2012, appointed by then-Gov. Rick Perry, now U.S. energy secretary. Baker became TCEQ executive director at 1 p.m. Monday. He succeeds Richard Hyde, who retired at the end of March, according to a press release from the agency.
Before becoming a full-time environmental commissioner, Baker served Perry as a policy adviser for energy, natural resources, and agricultural matters, his TCEQ biography says. He previously was a policy adviser on natural resources for state Sen. Craig Estes (R) and a staffer for the Texas Senate Agriculture, Rural Affairs, and Coastal Resources subcommittee.
Gov. Greg Abbott selected Emily Lindley to replace Baker on the commission. Lindley spent over a decade in a number of positions at TCEQ, last as special assistant to Deputy Executive Director Stephanie Bergeron Perdue. Since April, Lindley had been chief of staff to Anne Idsal, the EPA’s administrator for Region 6, which covers Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and 66 Native American tribes.
The other TCEQ commissioners are Bryan Shaw and Jon Niermann.
The commission on Oct. 17 is expected to decide on adoption of a rules package that would reduce a number of charges for disposal of low-level radioactive waste at the Waste Control Specialists facility.
The California State Assembly on Monday overwhelmingly approved legislation aimed at offsetting financial impacts from the closure of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo County.
The 67-1 vote on the Assembly floor for the legislation followed a 31-4 vote by the California Senate on May 29. Senate Bill 1090 now goes back to the Senate for a concurrence vote.
A spokesperson declined to say Tuesday whether Gov. Jerry Brown (D) would sign the bill if it reaches his desk. The deadline for a decision is Sept. 30.
Utility Pacific Gas & Electric in June 2016 announced a closure plan under which Diablo Canyon reactor Unit 1 would shut down in 2024 and Unit 2 in 2025.
The bill, coauthored by state Sen. Bill Monning (D) and Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham (R), commits the California Public Utilities Commission to approving the full funding for community mitigation and employee retention laid out in the “Joint Proposal” for Diablo Canyon’s closure.
The plan, from Pacific Gas & Electric and a number of labor and environmental organizations, called for $85 million in post-closure community mitigation funding and $350 million to help keep employees on the job until the facility shuts down. While it unanimously approved much of the original Joint Proposal in January, the commission reduced retention funding to just over $211 million and axed the community support – saying utility fees should be directed only for utility services.
If signed, the bill would also require the commission to ensure “integrated resource plans” are set up to prevent Diablo Canyon’s closure from leading to higher greenhouse gas emissions.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday gave interested parties more than two additional weeks to comment on the draft version of its interim staff guidance for materials licensees’ decommissioning funding plans.
The document, when finalized, is intended to give stakeholders at the NRC and in industry “guidance based on developments and lessons learned regarding financial assurance” in areas including decommissioning cost estimates, updating select financial instruments, descriptions of the state of facilities, and assessing events after NRC approval of the prior site decommissioning funding plan, according to an NRC notice in the Federal Register.
The initial comment deadline has been extended from Sept. 17 to Oct. 5. As of Friday afternoon it did not appear any comments had been filed, but an NRC spokesman noted that input is generally filed toward the end of the comment period.
“Once the comment period closes, staff will assess the comments and revise the guidance, as appropriate, before publishing a final,” the spokesman said by email. “That timeline could depend on how many comments do come in, and how extensive they are.”
The category of materials licensees largely covers sites other than nuclear reactors, which can range from medical facilities to nuclear fuel production operations, according to the NRC. There are roughly 19,300 materials licensees in the United States, overseen by the NRC and its agreement states.
As with reactor licensees, these facilities are required under federal regulations to provide financial assurance for decommissioning operations that can cost anywhere from a few thousand dollars up to roughly $100 million.
The 12-page staff guidance covers a broad range of topics, including: the types of radioactive material in inventory (licensee-owned, customer-owned, and inventory in-process); the eight events that should be considered in preparing a new decommissioning funding plan for the NRC (including facility modifications, on-site disposal, and higher-than-anticipated estimates for waste inventory and disposal costs); and a template for the sight draft.
Comments can be submitted at www.regulations.gov, Docket ID NRC-2018-0159; or by mail to May Ma, Office of Administration, Mail Stop: TWFN-7-A60M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. 20555-0001.
From The Wires
From the Port Huron, Mich., Times Herald: Environmental organizations say nuclear waste could be shipped through Port Huron.
From the BBC: Chimney at the United Kingdom’s Sellafield nuclear site will soon be brought down.
From the Washington County, Neb., Pilot-Tribune & Enterprise: Decommissioning of the retired Fort Calhoun Station nuclear power plant remains on schedule.
From The Columbia, Mo., Missourian: Columbia school board approves property tax break for Northwest Medical Isotopes facility.
From the Eyre Peninsula Tribune: Australian Senate panel issues report on site selection on planned radioactive waste management facility in South Australia.
From the Australian Broadcasting Corp.: Court orders delay in community vote on nuclear waste facility following request from Aboriginal organization.
