Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. For those of us who don’t mind getting up early on a chilly December Saturday, the U.S. plays the Netherlands in the knockout stage of the World Cup starting at 10 a.m. Eastern. Before that, though, here are some other stories RadWaste Monitor was tracking from across the civilian nuclear power space this week.
Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff said during a webinar this week that a successful effort to find a nuclear waste disposal solution involves rebuilding public trust in nuclear energy.
“This is about trust,” Huff said during the Tuesday webinar held by climate-focused think tank the Breakthrough Institute. “Our history comes along with us at the Department of Energy, and it’s critically important that we regain the public’s trust that we can meet our obligations — and [spent fuel storage] is an obligation that the DOE has.”
There is currently no operating facility legally authorized to store spent nuclear fuel generated at civilian power plants. DOE is now making another effort to find a willing host for a federal interim storage site for such waste. The agency in September unveiled roughly $16 million in funding for interested communities to educate themselves about nuclear waste storage.
Offsite power has been restored at four Ukrainian nuclear power plants that lost connection to the national power grid as the result of fighting between Kyiv’s forces and invading Russian troops, the United Nations’ nuclear authority said last week.
The Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in eastern Ukraine, which Russian forces seized in the weeks following Moscow’s Feb. 24 invasion, was reconnected to the national power grid Nov. 24 after its connection was severed for a day or so, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement dated Nov. 25. Three other nuclear facilities across the country also had offsite power restored, IAEA said.
Although they generate electricity, nuclear power plants need offsite power for some critical operations such as reactor cooling. Most facilities have backup diesel generators in the event of external power loss.
Walter Haass, a 30-year veteran of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, died Nov. 23, the Washington Post reported this week.
Haass, 91, started at NRC when it was still the Atomic Energy Commission and worked there until his retirement in 1999, according to his obituary. During his time at the agency, he was responsible for ensuring “the safe design and operation of commercial nuclear power plants.”
Haass began his career in the 1950s as an engineer for Westinghouse Electric Company, and later worked at the Martin Company in Baltimore, developing concepts for portable nuclear reactors for military use. Haas held a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology and “an equivalent of a Master’s degree in nuclear engineering through a program” sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
