Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. As your rad waste reporter heads back to Washington after a successful Idaho trip, here are some other stories RadWaste Monitor was tracking from across the civilian nuclear power space this week.
IAEA to visit Chernobyl, investigate alleged Russian trenches
The U.N.’s nuclear authority plans to soon visit the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in eastern Ukraine to investigate reports that occupying forces dug trenches around the site’s highly radioactive exclusion zone.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “is aware of recent drone footage said to be showing trenches made by Russian troops” in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, the agency said in a press release Thursday. IAEA is ready to visit the site “as soon as possible” to assess the situation, the statement said.
Russian forces withdrew from Chernobyl last week after seizing the site Feb. 24, in the early hours of Moscow’s invasion.
Meanwhile, eight of Ukraine’s 15 operational nuclear reactors, spread across four sites, were active as of Thursday, IAEA said. That includes two reactors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, which Russian forces captured March 3 after fighting caused a fire at a training building near one of the site’s six reactors.
Holtec to present decommissioning deets to Palisades reactor community next week
Holtec International is scheduled to give a community advisory committee an update on license transfer proceedings for a Michigan nuclear plant next week, according to a notice from the committee.
Holtec, which is in the process of finalizing the purchase of Palisades Nuclear Generating Station from Entergy, should during a scheduled April 13 meeting lay out its plan for decommissioning the site, according to a meeting notice. The meeting will be held both in person at the South Haven campus of Lake Michigan College as well as virtually, the notice said.
Presentation slides included alongside the notice show that Holtec aims to finalize Palisades’ sale after the plant shuts down for good in May. The company has said that could take place as early as June. Holtec also projected in its slides that spent fuel transfer at the site will be complete by 2025 or so, and that decommissioning will wrap up around 2041.
Next week’s meeting would happen with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which approved the Covert, Mich., plant’s sale in December, still reviewing several requests for a public hearing on the transaction. Both Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) and anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear have requested a hearing.
A spokesperson for Nessel’s office told RadWaste Monitor April 1 that the attorney general “remain[s] hopeful” that the request will be approved.
