Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. This is it — after Morocco’s luck ran out this week, Sunday’s World Cup final is set between France and Argentina. Before we start the pre-gaming, here are some other stories that RadWaste Monitor has been tracking from across the civilian nuclear power space this week.
Congress this week voted to extend appropriations for federal agencies through Friday, narrowly averting a government shutdown.
Both the House and Senate approved a continuing resolution that keeps funding for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy at the roughly $1.65 billion it was appropriated in the 2022 fiscal year. The stopgap budget also leaves the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s funding at its 2022 level of around $874 million. The Senate on Thursday sent the continuing resolution to President Joe Biden’s desk after approving it on a 71-19 vote.
Meanwhile, Congress is negotiating an omnibus spending plan for the 2023 fiscal year. As of Friday morning, congressional appropriators had not yet released the final bill report or text of an omnibus budget as of Friday. Biden had yet to sign the continuing resolution as of Friday.
The Department of Energy’s nuclear power innovation program this week announced that it was giving another round of free passes to four nuclear power companies to use national laboratory facilities to conduct research on advanced nuclear reactors.
DOE’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear Program (GAIN) awarded the vouchers, which provide no-cost access to federal national labs, to “help support the development of several U.S. advanced reactor designs,” according to a press release Thursday. The GAIN initiative, established in 2015 under the Barack Obama administration, is designed to provide technical, regulatory and financial support to companies looking to roll out innovative nuclear power designs.
Among Thursday’s group of recipients was California-based reactor company Oklo, which will partner with Argonne National Laboratory on coolant flow modeling for its advanced reactor design, DOE said. Dow Chemical Company also received a GAIN voucher, which it will use in cooperation with Idaho National Laboratory to explore the use of small modular reactors at its chemical plants.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week announced that David Pelton will become the agency’s head enforcer of federal nuclear safety regulations.
Pelton will assume his new role as director of NRC’s Office of Enforcement effective Jan. 1, the agency said in a press release dated Monday. He will take over at the enforcement office for the retiring Mark Lombard. In his new role, Pelton will be responsible for “developing and overseeing policies and programs for enforcement and allegations” among NRC’s licensees, the agency said.
NRC also announced this week that David Skeen would become the agency’s new head of international programs office, succeeding Nader Mamish, who left the commission earlier this year.
