Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. Here are some other stories from around the civilian nuclear power space that RadWaste Monitor was tracking this week.
NRC Conference to go All-Virtual Amid Omicron Surge
After the COVID-19 Omicron variant spread rapidly across the country this winter, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided to host an annual spring conference virtually, the agency announced Tuesday.
Although NRC’s Regulatory Information Conference (RIC), scheduled for March 8-10, was supposed to be held as a hybrid event with some in-person attendance, the commission will now host the RIC online “to protect the health of attendees during the global health pandemic,” NRC said in a statement Tuesday evening.
Interested attendees can still register for the conference via the agency’s online platform, NRC said.
The RIC, which provides NRC an opportunity to update the public on its regulatory efforts in the nuclear power space, was also held virtually last year due to virus concerns.
Final DOE Spent Fuel Railcar Off to Colorado for Testing
The last railcar in a proposed spent nuclear fuel rail transport system is en route to Colorado this week for testing, the Department of Energy said in a press release.
The Rail Escort Vehicle (REV) will undergo multiple-car testing at a site near Pueblo, Colo., DOE said in its Monday statement. The railcar is set to arrive at the test site in late February, the statement said.
If the system is put to use, the REV would house security personnel guarding spent fuel and low-level radioactive waste as it’s transported cross-country by the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program (NNPP), also known as Naval Reactors.
The REV is the last part of NNPP’s efforts to replace its existing fleet of spent fuel escort vehicles, DOE said. The security car was designed by Oregon-based manufacturer Vigor Works, LLC. DOE contributed around $10 million in federal funding to the project, the agency said.
Once the railcar arrives in Colorado, it will be connected to DOE’s experimental Atlas railcar designed to house spent nuclear fuel, the statement said. The agency predicted that the rail system will be operational by 2024 after two years of testing.
NNPP primarily transports defense-related nuclear waste by rail. Civilian spent fuel, with nowhere to go, is mostly stored onsite at nuclear plants.
NRC Denial of Oklo Advanced Reactor Skewered on Social Media
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission felt the wrath of the Twitterverse over the last week after it published the denial of advanced nuclear company Oklo’s application to build one of its modular reactors.
In a Thursday Tweet, NRC implored the hundreds of Twitter users chiming in on its Jan. 10 post announcing the rejection of Oklo’s application to contact the commission’s public affairs office with their comments.
Thank you for your questions. Per our usual social media practice, we ask that you email your questions to [email protected] so we can appropriately respond directly.
— NRC (@NRCgov) January 13, 2022
As far as Tweets from federal regulatory agencies are concerned, this one blew up. As of Thursday evening, the Jan. 10 post had over 200 replies from Twitter users — for reference, NRC’s last five posts netted less than ten responses combined.
#NRCNews: We’ve denied, without prejudice, Oklo’s application to build and operate the company’s #AdvancedReactor. The company can resubmit an application in the future. https://t.co/ViS2XnkivF
— NRC (@NRCgov) January 6, 2022
Users expressed their dissatisfaction with NRC’s decision throughout the week. “Devastating. One day we will wake up and not let risk-averse bureaucrats jeopardize our future,” said one commenter. “[H]ow do we deny, without prejudice, the continued operation of the NRC,” said another.
Even the Texas Libertarian Party joined in on the dogpile. “Are you not aware that we have a climate crisis going on?” the party’s official account said Tuesday.
NRC last week canned Oklo’s application for its proposed Aurora fast reactor after the agency’s review uncovered “significant information gaps” regarding the project’s safety systems. The Sunnyvale, Calif., company, which initially submitted its application to NRC in March 2020, told RadWaste Monitor last week that it was “eager to continue moving forward” with the agency on its fast reactor project.
