Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. Before we head off into the weekend, here are some other stories that RadWaste Monitor was tracking this week.
Oral arguments set in Texas interim storage suit
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals this week officially scheduled oral arguments in the state of Texas’s lawsuit over an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel proposed for the Lone Star State, the court docket shows.
Lawyers representing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were set to convene in a New Orleans court Aug. 29, the Fifth Circuit said in a notice dated Friday.
The oral session could be the first legal test for arguments made by opponents of NRC’s September decision to license Interim Storage Partners’ (ISP) proposed site in Andrews, Texas.
Paxton and others have argued that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the federal government’s prevailing spent fuel storage law, prohibits the commission from licensing an interim storage facility before a permanent spent fuel repository exists. The Texas attorney general in recent weeks has also said that the Supreme Court’s June 30 decision in West Virginia v. EPA invalidates NRC’s license unless the agency can get congressional approval for such an action.
NRC has said it will file a brief with the Fifth Circuit in early August responding to Paxton’s most recent charge.
The ISP site, if it gets built, would be able to store around 40,000 tons of spent fuel — or about half of the country’s total spent fuel inventory of close to 90,000 tons. NRC licensed the site to operate for 40 years.
Westinghouse secures contract for Norwegian decom planning
Westinghouse will assist Norway’s nuclear decommissioning authority in developing plans for dismantling two of the country’s nuclear facilities, the company announced this week.
The Cranberry, Pa.-based Westinghouse said in a press release Monday that it had signed a contract with Norsk Nukleær Dekommisjonering (NND) to assist in the decommissioning of two nuclear sites located near Oslo — the Halden test reactor, shut down in 2018, and the JEEP-II neutron scattering facility, which went offline in 2019.
The three-year contract, which includes options up to six years, was valued at around $100 million, Westinghouse said.
“We are pleased to bring our global expertise and technical innovation in decommissioning and waste management to this important work for NDD to remove and dispose of the Halden and Kjeller research reactors,” Westinghouse Environmental Services president Sam Shakir said in a statement. “We will reimagine the sites as safe, thriving, and sustainable and ensure the decommissioning projects are completed efficiently and in a manner that returns them to green fields.”
Westinghouse’s announcement comes just weeks after NND entered into a framework agreement for the same project with a joint venture between Jacobs and Norwegian engineering company Multiconsult Norge AS. Jacobs predicted at the time that decommissioning the Halden and JEEP-II sites should take around 20 to 25 years and cost around $1.96 billion.
NRC ‘not involved’ with Palisades restart efforts, agency tells enviros
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is standing back from ongoing discussions about bringing the recently-shuttered Palisades Nuclear Generating Station back online, the agency told an anti-nuclear group last week.
NRC is “not involved with any effort to return Palisades to power operations,” the agency told Beyond Nuclear in a letter dated July 14 and made public Friday. The plant’s license also “no longer authorizes operation of the reactor or emplacement or retention of fuel in the reactor vessel,” the letter said.
Beyond Nuclear radioactive waste specialist Kevin Kamps penned a letter to NRC in June expressing concerns about the agency’s role in potentially restarting the plant. Palisades, located in Covert, Mich., shuttered for good May 20, just over a week earlier than its scheduled shutdown date of May 31.
Some nuclear power advocates and government officials, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), have expressed interest in bringing Palisades back online. A spokesperson for Whitmer’s office told RadWaste Monitor in June that Lansing is “working with potential buyers, operators, and stakeholders” to keep the plant running.
Meanwhile, nuclear services company Holtec International is set to decommission Palisades, which it purchased from operator Entergy in June. The utility first announced plans to shutter the plant in 2016.
Entergy exec with decom experience to replace retiring COO Hinnenkamp
Entergy’s chief operating officer is set to retire by the end of summer, the utility announced recently.
Paul Hinnenkamp is retiring from Entergy, New Orleans, effective Aug. 12 after a seven-year stint as the company’s operations chief, the company said in a press release dated July 13. Hinnenkamp joined Entergy in 2001 as vice president of operations support for the company’s utility-owned nuclear plants.
Peter Norgeot, currently senior vice president of operations and development at Entergy, will replace Hinnenkamp, the release said.
Norgeot joined the utility in 2014. Prior to his current role, he held various positions at the utility including as senior vice president of transformation, where he “helped stand up the company’s innovation lab and led external affairs, decommissioning activities and plant operations for the company’s merchant nuclear business,” the press release said.
Prior to joining Entergy, Norgeot held several roles at Virginia-based electricity distribution company AES Corp.
Norgeot has a bachelor’s degree in marine engineering from the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and completed a Senior Executive Program at the University of Virginia’s Darden Business School.
