U.S.
Exelon has withdrawn filings with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission seeking to cease operation of the Clinton Power Station and the Quad Cities Nuclear Power Station, following Illinois’ passage of the Future Energy Jobs Bill.
The withdrawals are more a technicality in what has already been confirmed. Exelon had been threatening the close the struggling nuclear power plants (Clinton in 2017 and Quad Cities in 2018) unless they received significant subsidization, claiming the facilities have lost about $800 million in the previous six years. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) last month signed the bill into law; starting June 1, the plants are expected to start earning up to $235 million per year total in annual subsidies through 2030.
Exelon in its Dec. 14 letters to the NRC, which were made public Thursday, cited the bill’s passage as the reason the plants will remain open.
INTERNATIONAL
Japan is calling it quits on the Monju prototype reactor, an experimental, costly, and failed system that officials had hoped would serve a critical role in national nuclear fuel recycling.
According to BBC News, the reactor was operational for only 250 days of its 22-year lifespan and cost Japan $9 billion. The Japanese government formally announced this week that it would defuel and dismantle the system. According to the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), defueling is expected to be completed in 2022, and dismantlement by 2047. The IPFM said a recent estimate suggests that restarting the reactor would take about eight years and cost ¥540 billion (about $4.82 billion), while dismantlement is expected to cost ¥375 billion ($3.2 billion).
As detailed by the IPFM, Monju reached criticality in 1994 and plugged into the grid in August 1995, only to shut down four months later when a molten sodium coolant leak caused a fire. The reactor wasn’t restarted for 15 years, in May 2010, but it shut down again after three months, this time due to a refueling accident. The Japan Nuclear Regulatory Authority in November 2015 declared the reactor’s operator, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, unfit to maintain operation of the system, following a failed safety inspection.
The U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) last week transferred the first batch of radioactive sludge from the Pile Fuel Storage Pond at the Sellafield site as part of a £100 million ($123.8 million) sludge removal effort.
In its announcement Wednesday, NDA said the sludge was transferred in a 500-liter drum to an encapsulation plant, where it will be grouted, processed, and prepared for final disposal at the U.K.’s planned geologic nuclear waste disposal facility. The Pile Fuel Storage Pond is one of four legacy ponds and silos at Sellafield, where the U.K. is in the midst of a 100-year, 55-building decommissioning project that has an estimated cleanup cost of £70 billion ($86.7 billion). It is one of Europe’s largest nuclear sites.
The Pile Fuel Storage Pond housed nuclear fuel from early atomic weapons production in the U.K. The sludge, which is an unplanned byproduct of decaying nuclear fuel, algae, and debris, represents about a third of the radioactive material left in the pond. The sludge is pumped from the pond into an adjacent treatment plant and then moved to a drum-filling plant. According to the NDA, the £100 million ($123.8 million) project is 10 years ahead of schedule at half the anticipated cost.
“This is one of the first examples of a legacy facility producing a waste ready for a geological disposal facility – it’s a cradle-to-grave solution,” Dorothy Gradden, legacy ponds chief for site operator Sellafield Ltd., said in a statement. “With the start earlier this year of bulk fuel and sludge removal from our other legacy pond, we’re now firing on all cylinders in reducing the hazard and risk in these legacy facilities and making them safer places.”
Tom Smith was selected Thursday as the new chairman of the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, replacing Stephen Henwood, who is leaving his post after a nine-year run. Smith’s term begins March 1 and expires in February 2020. He will oversee operation, decommissioning, and cleanup of the NDA’s 17 legacy nuclear sites.
Smith, who has spent his career in both the private and public sectors, in 2013 was named non-executive director for the NDA and worked under the agency’s Audit and Risk Assurance Committee. Smith in 2014 then moved to a non-executive director role with the Highways Agency and eventually served as a non-executive director of Highways England in 2015.
“I am honoured to have been asked by the government to become the NDA’s Chairman and in doing so oversee the important task of decommissioning the UK’s nuclear legacy,” Smith said in a statement. “It is a privilege to be taking up this post with the NDA, which through a highly-skilled workforce, cutting-edge innovation, and strong utilisation of the UK supply chain, is making good progress on delivering its exceptionally challenging mission.”
