Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. As the nation’s capital braces for what could be another snowy weekend, here’s a look at some other stories RadWaste Monitor was tracking across the civilian nuclear power space this week.
Sweden Approves Geologic Repository, Pending Safety Review
The Swedish government this week approved a proposed geologic repository for the nordic nation’s nuclear waste, according to a press release published Thursday.
The proposed facility would be built near Forsmark, a village in the country’s southeast along the Gulf of Bothnia, the government said in the press release. The facility would be run by the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB), which initially applied for a license in 2011, the release said.
The proposed site would use a triple barrier of copper canisters, bentonite clay and bedrock to store spent nuclear fuel, the press release said. The government concluded that this method was “the best possible technology for final disposal.”
Although Stockholm has greenlit the project, the decision is “conditional” on the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority’s “step-by-step review” of the proposed site.
“It is irresponsible to leave nuclear waste in water tanks year after year without taking a decision,” said Swedish climate minister Annika Strandhäll in the release. “We must not pass on this responsibility to our children and grandchildren. Our generation must take responsibility for our waste.”
Clean Energy Agenda Needs ‘Silver Buckshot’ That Includes Nuclear Energy, Granholm Says
The Joe Biden administration’s plan for achieving a 100% clean energy grid needs to be of a different caliber — one that includes nuclear power, energy secretary Jennifer Granholm said this week.
“I like to say that getting to 100% clean electricity does not involve a silver bullet, it involves silver buckshot,” Granholm said in a video posted to Twitter by the Department of Energy Tuesday. “That means solar, it means wind, it means geothermal, it also means clean electricity for vehicles and it means nuclear as well.”
Granholm was speaking at the University of Illinois’s Urabana-Champaign campus, which is conducting research on advanced nuclear reactors and fuel cycles — a project at one time led by DOE’s recently-nominated Office of Nuclear Energy chief Kathryn Huff.
“Small modular reactors … that next-generation nuclear, whether it’s fission or fusion, is a huge part of the nation’s future as well,” Granholm said.
NRC Considering Ownership Transfer for EnergySolutions Decom Sites After Parent Co. Buyout
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is processing an application from EnergySolutions that would transfer ownership of several shuttered nuclear plants to the new majority shareholders of the decommissioning company’s parent organization, according to a notice published last week.
If approved, the licenses for the former Zion Nuclear Power Station in Illinois and La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor in Wisconsin would be transferred to New York-based capital market company TriArtisan from Energy Capital Partners (ECP), NRC said in a Federal Register notice dated Jan. 22. Licenses for the plants’ independent spent fuel storage installations would also go to TriArtisan, the commission said.
Until recently, ECP was the majority shareholder of Rockwell, the parent company of Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions. TriArtisan acquired the company in November, according to a Nov. 18 press release from EnergySolutions. The financial terms of the deal were not publicly disclosed.
In addition to Zion and La Crosse, EnergySolutions has three active decommissioning projects: at Three Mile Island Unit 2 in Pennsylvania; San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in California; and Nebraska’s Fort Calhoun plant. The company also operates a low-level radioactive waste disposal facility in Clive, Utah.
Amid Omicron Surge, NRC Issues Another Round of Staffing Regs Exemptions at Nuke Plants
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently allowed two nuclear power plant operators to ignore certain federal regulations as a result of pandemic-related staffing shortages at the sites, the agency said in a notice this week.
NRC in December granted work-hour exemptions for Michigan’s Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station and Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station in Florida, according to a Federal Register notice published Tuesday. The agency allowed the plants to ignore the regulations, which limit how long individual plant employees can work, because both sites had said their staffing levels “are affected or are expected to be affected” by COVID-19, the notice said.
