The Department of Energy will buy a total of $164,000 in renewable energy credits from a Virginia-based company to help the Paducah Site in Kentucky and the Portsmouth Site in Ohio comply with a presidential executive order on clean energy.
The renewable credits for Paducah and Portsmouth are being purchased from WGL Energy Services in Vienna, Va., and will help the two former gaseous diffusion plant sites comply with President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14057. The December 2021 executive order calls on federal agencies to lead the way in achieving “a carbon pollution-free electricity sector by 2035 and net-zero emissions economy-wide by no later than 2050.”
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, renewable energy credits or certificates offer a market-based means for electricity users to buy property rights to a certain amount of power by renewable sources that don’t generate carbon dioxide. Roughly $73,000 worth of such credits will be bought for Paducah and $91,000 for Portsmouth, according to Wednesday notices on the federal System for Award Management or sam.gov.
William “Ike” White, senior adviser and acting head of the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, spoke Monday to an international forum in Japan on Decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, the nuclear cleanup office said Tuesday.
The 7th annual international forum on Fukushima cleanup sponsored by Japan’s Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation, attracted more than 500 participants during the two-day event, DOE said in a news release.
This year’s forum occurs on the heels of Japan starting to release treated radioactive wastewater from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean, a move that triggered opposition from some countries, including China, CNN reported. There was a meltdown accident at Fukushima on March 11, 2011, as a major earthquake and accompanying tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Tokyo Electric Power Fukushima Daiichi reactors, in one of the world’s most severe nuclear accidents.
A Department of Energy subcontractor who was injured while clearing trees on Aug. 11 at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee has died, an agency spokesperson confirmed Monday evening.
The DOE “offers its condolences to the deceased’s family and colleagues,” the spokesperson for DOE’s Office of Science field site at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory said via email. The spokesperson declined to say when the person actually died, the victim’s age or what subcontractor the individual worked for.
“Department officials are reviewing the incident and will provide more information when available,” the spokesperson said in the email. DOE’s Office of Environmental Management last week referred Exchange Monitor’s inquiry to the DOE Office of Science at Oak Ridge.
The Oak Ridge, Tenn., City Council has voted five-to-two to hire Randall Hemann, the current city manager of Mooresville, N.C., as its new city manager, according to a notice on the Oak Ridge municipal website.
During an Aug. 18 special meeting, the council selected Hemann, over Aretha Ferrell-Benavides, a former city manager for Duncanville, Texas who also has worked in government administration in Los Alamos County, N.M., home of the Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory.
A motion was passed for the Oak Ridge mayor and city attorney to negotiate a contract agreement, and the contract has been presented to Hemann, according to the notice. Once finalized, the contract must still be approved by the city council. The salary range is expected to be between $200,000 and $215,000 annually. Hemann, who has also worked as a city manager in High Point, N.C., and Oxford, N.C., will succeed Mark Watson who retired in May. The city of Oak Ridge, population 31,000, is home to the DOE’s Oak Ridge Site.
A California- based developer of advanced reactors has signed a deal with Centrus Energy to further nuclear development in southern Ohio around the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site.
Under the memorandum of understanding, Oklo Inc. and Centrus agreed to build upon their existing relationship to support development of Oklo’s Aurora Powerhouses including supply of High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) produced by Centrus at its Piketon, Ohio, facility, according to the press release.
Under the setup, Oklo would buy HALEU from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved facility that Centrus plans for the Piketon site. Centrus would in turn buy electricity from the Aurora Powerhouse reactors that Oklo is planning to build in Piketon. These are liquid metal-cooled reactors, each capable of generating up to 15 megawatts of electricity. Oklo announced its plans for the Portsmouth reactors in May.
