U.S.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commision has scheduled a meeting for next week as part of its efforts to collect comments on the license termination program and partial site release for the shuttered La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor power plant in Wisconsin.
“The license termination plan provides site radiological information, the planned demolition and decommissioning tasks, and the planned final radiological surveys and data needed to allow termination of the plant’s NRC license,” the agency said in a press release Wednesday. “The partial site release request asks that areas of the La Crosse site that have been demonstrated to not be impacted by the operation of the nuclear plant be released for unrestricted use and removed from the plant’s licensed area.”
The La Crosse facilty closed in 1987 and has been in SAFSTOR status since 1991, except for a period of active decommissioning from 2012 to 2014. Facility operator Dairyland Power Cooperative in June transferred the reactor license to LaCrosseSolutions, a subsidiary of waste management specialist EnergySolutions, to complete decommissioning
Dairyland remains responsible for the site’s spent fuel storage facility, where all fuel has been transferred to dry storage.
The NRC said it anticipates decommissioning wrapping up in 2018, though LaCrosseSolutions in a revised plan submitted earlier this year put the end date in the first quarter of 2020. A current projected cost for the work has not been made public. A cost estimate from March 2013 put the price tag to complete decommissioning at $90.7 million in 2013 dollars.
The NRC meeting is scheduled from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the Courtyard La Crosse Downtown/Mississippi Riverfront, 500 Front St. South. The agency also expects to post a Federal Register notice shortly with specifics on submitting written comments, which are being accepted until Oct. 28.
Technical questions may be addressed to project manager Marlayna Vaaler at 301-415- 3178, or via e-mail, at [email protected].
Nuclear waste technology disposal technology provider Kurion said this week it has hired an executive with decades of experience working in the Department of Energy nuclear complex.
Billy Morrison will take the position of president of Kurion’s federal services business, managing the Irvine, Calif.-based company’s DOE, Defense Department, and commercial nuclear businesses. He comes from U.K.-based Atkins, where he was executive vice president of Atkins Nuclear North American Group, according to Morrison’s bio on the Energy Facility Contractors Group website. Prior to that, Morrison led the government group of waste management company EnergySolutions, and in 2015-16 helped manage the sale of the group to Atkins.
Morrison is chairman of the EFCOG board of directors and has put in more than 30 years in the industry, much of it at DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. His positions there included manager of the Site Utilities Department and plant manager of the Solid Waste Management Facility.
Kurion earlier this year was acquired by French environmental solutions company Veolia in a $350 million deal. The U.S. company’s products include robots for working in hazardous environments, a tritium removal system, and vitrification technologies for converting nuclear waste into glass.
