Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. With a long weekend behind us and a regular old weekend ahead, here are some other stories from across the civilian nuclear power space that RadWaste Monitor was tracking this week.
Next week in Vegas: Exchange Monitor’s Decommissioning Strategy Forum
Mark your calendars — Monday, June 6 is the start of the Decommissioning Strategy Forum, a two-day conference hosted by Exchange Monitor at the J.W. Marriott Resort and Spa in Summerlin, Nev.
Your RadWaste Monitor reporter will be out in the Silver State for the event, where speakers will discuss topics such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposed decommissioning rule, state oversight of nuclear plant decommissioning, repurposing of former reactor sites and much more.
NRC gives Indian Point decom clean bill of health
Everything seems ship-shape at the shuttered Indian Point Energy Center just around a year after the plant closed for decommissioning, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Holtec International last week.
A May 5 inspection at the Buchanan, N.Y. plant found “no violations of more than minor significance,” NRC told Holtec in a letter dated May 25. The inspection included reviews of documents and procedures, interviews with plant staff and a site walkthrough, the agency said.
Meanwhile, April 30 marked one year since Indian Point closed its doors for good and Camden, N.J.-based Holtec took over for previous operator Entergy. The company has said that it could finish decommissioning at the site by 2023 or so.
Holtec has a total of five decommissioning projects under its belt, including New Jersey’s Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station and Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts. Most recently, the company took over operations at Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Covert, Mich., which operator Entergy shuttered May 20.
Orano, S. Korean steel shop deliver first spent fuel cask
This week, a South Korean steel company partnered with Orano delivered its first spent fuel cask designed to be used in the U.S., according to a press release from the nuclear services company.
SeAH Besteel has delivered “the first dual-purpose used nuclear fuel dry storage cask manufactured for a U.S. utility” from its manufacturing shop in Gunsan, South Korea, Orano said in a press release Thursday. The company’s dual-purpose cask, which can be used for both transportation and storage of spent nuclear fuel, complies with both U.S. and international nuclear safety standards, Orano said.
“This first cask produced to our stringent requirements is an important milestone strengthening our international supply chain,” said Jean-Luc Palayer, COO of Paris-based Orano’s U.S. spent fuel management subsidiary TN Americas.
SeAH Besteel and Orano also worked together in 2021, when the South Korean company produced transfer equipment for a spent fuel transport cask used to move nuclear waste from South Korea to Sweden, the press release said.
Orano first ordered the new dual purpose cask in 2019.
UK Hinkley Point B plant definitely to close over the summer, utility says
A nuclear power plant in the United Kingdom is still on schedule to take its two reactors offline over the summer, the utility in charge of the facility said this week.
EDF Energy, the French-owned company running Hinkley Point B in Somerset, U.K., said Monday that it will not keep the plant online past its scheduled shutdown dates of July 8 and Aug. 1, The Guardian reported. The utility told plant staff that it would be “technically feasible” to extend Hinkley Point’s life for another six months or so, but that there was no time to safely plan continued operations in time for winter.
Although EDF could apply for an extension to keep Hinkley Point online, that would require putting together a safety case for approval by London’s Office for Nuclear Regulation, the utility said.
In the U.S., a similar scenario played out in May, as Michigan’s Palisades nuclear plant went offline despite pleas from the state to keep it running. Operator Entergy said at the time that plans to shut Palisades down had been on the books for around five years and that it would be difficult to unroll those plans and restart operations.
