U.S.
The Nuclear Energy Institute on Tuesday announced the selection of Chief Operating Officer Maria Korsnick as the industry lobbyist’s next president and chief executive officer.
Korsnick will take over for Marvin Fertel upon his retirement on Dec. 31 of this year. Fertel has led NEI for nine years.
“Maria is well known throughout the nuclear industry industry for her vision, strong leadership skills, and exceptional technical expertise,” NEI Chairman of the Board Don Brandt said in a video announcing Korsnick’s election. “She will drive the organization’s effectiveness at a challenging and exciting time.”
Korsnick joined NEI in May 2015 as a loaned executive from Exelon Generation and Constellation Energy Nuclear Group. As COO her duties involved overseeing NEI’s daily operations and serving as an industry representative before stakeholders such as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Obama administration, state and federal lawmakers, and others, according to a press release.
Her three-decade career has included postings as senior vice president for Northeast operations at Exelon Generation and chief nuclear officer for Constellation Energy Nuclear Group, along with site vice president at the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Power Plant in upstate New York.
“I couldn’t be more proud to have the opportunity to lead NEI and advance nuclear energy,” Korsnick said in the release. “I am passionate about the key role nuclear energy can play for our nation. The nuclear industry is facing challenges, and I’m looking forward to help strengthen the policies, regulations and public support that will ensure it has a robust future.”
Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff released draft language Monday for its Part 61 update, and the commission will now decide whether to approve the final rule, which addresses disposal of large quantities of depleted uranium.
The Part 61 update is included in NRC’s Site Specific Assessment rulemaking, which began in 2009. The proposed Part 61 rulemaking takes a three-tiered approach, which includes a time of compliance of 1,000 years, a protective assurance analysis from the end of the compliance period through 10,000 years, and a qualitative analysis stretching beyond 10,000 years to evaluate long-term risks.
According to the newly released NRC documents, the rulemaking would implement the following:
1) “Revise the existing technical analysis for protection of the general public to include either a 1,000-year compliance period or a 10,000-year compliance period depending on the quantities of long-lived radionuclides that have been or plan to be disposed at the site.”
2) “Add a new technical analysis for the protection of inadvertent intruders that would include a compliance period and a dose limit.”
3) “Add a new post-10,000-year performance period analysis for disposal sites that have low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) containing significant quantities of long-lived radionuclides.”
4) “Add a new requirement to update the technical analyses at site closure.”
5) “Add a new requirement to develop site-specific criteria for the future acceptance of LLRW for disposal based on the results of the technical analyses, the existing LLRW classification requirements, or a combination of both.”
6) “Add a new description of safety case and a new requirement to identify defense-in depth protections and describe their capabilities.”
7) “Facilitate implementation and better align the requirements with current safety standards. These amendments ensure that the LLRW streams that are significantly different from those considered during the development of the existing 10 CFR Part 61 regulations will be disposed of safely and meet the performance objectives for land disposal of LLRW.”
INTERNATIONAL
AREVA has won two waste management contracts from French utility EDF for work at the Fessenheim Nuclear Power Plant and the Cattenom site.
The seven-year contracts are worth several tens of millions of euros, according to an AREVA announcement Thursday. AREVA’s dismantling and services unit will provide work in the following areas at both sites?: field logistics, waste management (including low-level radioactive waste), casks handling, and radiation protection on site. In Cattenom, AREVA also will perform scaffolding and industrial thermal insulation activities in partnership with another company, according to AREVA spokeswoman Aurelie Grange.
The low-level waste originates from day-to-day technical activities in operating the nuclear power plant — including disposal coveralls and gloves — and minor repair work performed on site, which can generate waste such as vynil airlocks. Should that be “vinyl”?
“This commercial success has been achieved in the context of a highly competitive tender. It reinforces our status as a leading player in the sector,” AREVA Dismantling and Services Director Alain Vandercruyssen said in a statement. “The service contracts we have won with EDF are testimony to the quality and commitment that our teams display on a day by day basis in their work in the French fleet of nuclear power plants.”
The U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority released a report on Sept. 30 laying out 17 options for improving management of the United Kingdom’s so-called problematic radioactive waste.
Problematic wastes are defined as those that are unsuitable for existing processing facilities. The materials include: intermediate-level waste; radium/thorium-contaminated waste; bulk fines/particulates; reactive metals; and some 30 other materials. Some of these wastes have very small volumes, such as waste produced from batteries, solvents, and pyrochemical material.
Presently, NDA licensees and non-NDA estate radioactive waste generating organizations manage their own problematic wastes to fit their own needs, according to Friday’s report.
“If an estate wide strategy for problematic radioactive waste is developed in the near-term, there is a potential to not only save time and money on the treatment of these wastes, there is also a potential to remove these activities from the site critical path, bringing further significant savings and earlier solutions,” the report states.
The 17 options include not changing the current strategy; avoiding the creation of problematic radioactive wastes; promotion of timely characterization of waste; information exchange between waste producers; early collaboration; sorting problematic waste from bulk waste; transferring waste to an existing waste processing facility; use of a mobile characterization plant; use of a mobile treatment plant; better use of the supply chain to treat waste; a problematic waste treatment service; one or more new treatment facilities; use of robust containers; flexible treatment and packaging; international coordination; segregating and storage until treatment technology is available; and designing a standard treatment facility that can be built on multiple sites.
NDA plans to release a near-term opportunities paper in 2017 to more fully develop a plan.
