Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. Your rad waste reporter is slowly recovering from a COVID-19 infection. Before we head off into the weekend, here are some other stories RadWaste Monitor was tracking from across the civilian nuclear power space this week.
Holtec International this week claimed that it became the nation’s largest owner of nuclear decommissioning sites in 2022, among other accomplishments, according to a press release.
The Camden, N.J., nuclear services company’s June acquisition of Palisades Nuclear Generating Station and Big Rock Point Nuclear Power Plant from Entergy made it “the largest owner of decommissioning nuclear power plants in the U.S.,” Holtec said in a yearly wrap-up published Wednesday. The company owns three other decommissioning sites: Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, Indian Point Energy Center in New York and New Jersey’s Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station.
Holtec also touted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s June recommendation that its proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in New Mexico receive a federal license. “Holtec believes that realization of a functioning CIS will remove the largest obstacle to the renaissance of nuclear power in the U.S. leading to the rise of small modular reactors,” the company said.
Off-site power issues continue to plague Ukraine’s nuclear fleet into the new year, as a backup power line damaged last week at Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant remains offline, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said in a statement.
The 330 kilovolt backup line, which was the last of six such supplementary grid connections for the Zaporizhzhya plant, was damaged by shelling Dec. 29 and has still not been repaired, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a press release Friday. Fighting between Ukrainian troops and invading Russian forces has repeatedly severed Zaporizhzhya’s connection to the external grid — a link necessary for vital plant operations such as reactor cooling.
Meanwhile, the IAEA delegation stationed at the plant, located in eastern Ukraine along the Dnipro river, reported this week that Ukrainian staff operating the facility were experiencing “exhaustion and stress” stemming from increased working hours, additional shifts, and proximity to ongoing hostilities. Despite that, the plant “still has adequate operational staff to maintain the safe operation of all units at the plant’s current level of functioning,” IAEA said.
The state of Michigan this week began its search for an outside contractor to conduct a study on the feasibility of building new nuclear power plants in the Great Lake state, according to Lansing’s public service commission.
The recipient of the roughly $250,000 award, provided by a July state spending bill, will conduct a study that considers “the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy generation in Michigan and the economic and environmental impact,” the Michigan Public Service Commission said in a funding announcement Thursday. Initial inquiries are due Jan. 13, and proposals are due Feb. 3, the commission said. The award period would last roughly one year beginning March 3.
A survey of nuclear power in Michigan comes as the state fights to bring one of its recently-shuttered nuclear facilities back online. Lansing is working alongside decommissioning company Holtec International to secure a federal bailout for the Covert, Mich., Palisades Nuclear Generating Station, which went offline in May.
