U.S.
The Department of Energy’s solicitation for deep borehole nuclear waste storage field test closes Monday.
The estimated five-year, $35 million project would produce data on the feasibility of storing DOE-managed nuclear waste in 16,000-foot boreholes drilled into crystalline rock formations. It is one storage method the Obama administration is exploring as an alternative to the canceled geologic repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Georgia-based Enercon Federal Services Inc. and DOSECC Exploration Services have presented plans for a potential test site in Quay County, N.M. Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute, which failed to secure two separate sites in the original field test contract earlier this year, has shown interest in submitting another bid. Pennsylvania-based TerranearPMC, which also submitted a bid last round, said that it would file another proposal. Five groups are said to be bidding on the contract. DOE expects to announce the selection or selections for the contract sometime in January.
A new heat extraction system is now operable in the neck area of the Bridgeton Landfill, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday as it works with landfill owner Republic Services to install an isolation barrier intended to prevent an underground fire from coming into contact with nuclear waste material.
The underground fire has been burning since 2010 at the Missouri landfill, which is adjacent to the West Lake Landfill. West Lake contains waste from the former uranium production facility at Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in St. Louis.
At the state’s request, Republic Services agreed to build the barrier in 2013, but plans stalled because the EPA did not have enough information on radioactive contamination in the area. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster denied Republic Services’ appeal against building the isolation barrier at Bridgeton in April, and the company has reached a settlement agreement with the EPA for the installation.
The heat extraction system, which serves as a fire deterrent, is located between the North Quarry and South Quarry portions of the Bridgeton Landfill. Future work includes installation of temperature monitors; an ethylene vinyl alcohol cover over the North Quarry portion of the Bridgeton Landfill; and use of inert gas injection, among other measures intended to prevent the underground fire from coming into contact with nuclear waste material. Total cost of EPA oversight associated with the entire project is estimated at $728,000.
The EPA has long been criticized for its 25-year management of the West Lake site, and lawmakers and residents have called for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take over. The U.S. Senate in February passed legislation that would transfer remediation authority of the site from EPA to the Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program. Members of the House of Representatives have introduced companion legislation, but the Corps has said it probably wouldn’t be able to clean up the site any faster than the EPA.
INTERNATIONAL
The U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority successfully delivered 28 containers of vitrified highly active waste to Würenlingen, Switzerland on Oct. 13, the NDA announced this week.
Delivered to Swiss utilities AXPO AG and BKW Energie, the shipment represents the second and final movement of vitrified waste between the two countries under the U.K.’s vitrified residue return program. According to AREVA, the containers arrived in four transport casks at the Zwilag interim storage facility on Thursday.
The waste return program is the U.K.’s approach to repatriating highly active waste to its country of origin. This particular shipment was byproduct material from reprocessing and recycling activity at the Sellafield site in the U.K., where fuel from Swiss nuclear reactors was shipped. The first waste delivery to Switzerland was completed in September 2015, also involving 28 containers.
“This is the completion of the third European return of highly active waste from Sellafield, and continues the programme of successful overseas returns,” Sellafield Ltd. VRR Programme Manager Will Watson said in a statement Monday. “I’d like to say a big thank you to all the teams at Sellafield Ltd and INS who form the VRR Programme and have achieved another milestone in the government strategy to return highly active waste to overseas customers.”
Sellafield Ltd. collaborated on the shipment with fellow NDA subsidiary International Nuclear Services (INS), which contracted AREVA to manage overland transportation of the material. The vessel transporting the waste departed from the port of Barrow-in-Furness on Oct. 7, arriving days later in Cherbourg, France, where it was unloaded and prepared for rail shipment to Switzerland.
A new interim spent fuel storage facility (ISFSF) at Lithuania’s Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant (INPP) accepted its first spent nuclear fuel container on Oct. 14, the Russian national nuclear corporation Rosatom announced Wednesday.
The ISFSF was designed and built by NUKEM Technologies GmbH, a branch of Rosatom’s engineering division, and GNS Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service mbH. The project was funded by the Ignalina International Decommissioning Support Fund and overseen by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
Located in Visaginas, the storage facility will hold about 190 containers housing roughly 16,000 spent fuel rods for 50 years.
