RW Monitor
9/5/2014
IN THE NRC
Now-former Nuclear Regulatory Commission member William Magwood officially took over as Director-General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) in Paris this week. Magwood departs the Commission after casting a controversial vote in the NRC’s Waste Confidence rulemaking following the call for his resignation and retroactive recusal from Commission decisions from a group of 34 environmental activists group who were upset with the timing of his new position. At the NEA, Magwood replaces Luis Echávarri who had served as Director-General since 1997. Magwood plans to promote the cause of advance technology and international cooperation in nuclear matters. “After serving at the NRC for four and a half years, I have gained a deeper understanding of the vital importance of strong nuclear safety regulatory infrastructures and safety cultures in member countries, and my expectation is to widely share, discuss and advance all aspects of this experience in the international arena,” Magwood said in a statement. “I have been closely following the great interest shown by many countries in developing technology for the long-term future. Today, as when I was at the DOE, I believe that the development of advanced technology and multilateral co-operation needs to be part of the international agenda, and I look forward to working with the NEA member and partner countries at that level.”
IN THE INDUSTRY
Hitachi Ltd. announced last week that it has entered into a joint research project with three U.S. universities to study the use of Transuranium Elements (TRU) as fuel in the development of Resource-renewable Boiling Water Reactors (RBWRs). The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, and the University of California-Berkeley will aid in the research of the RBWRs and make plans for the applicability of the systems at each university. According to the company, the three universities previously participated in a joint research project with Hitachi from 2007-2011 to evaluate safety and performance in the burning of TRUs. “If TRUs could be effectively removed from these spent fuels, then the period of decay for the remaining radioactive waste materials could be reduced to just a few hundred years,” the company said in a release. “Hitachi has undertaken the development of RBWRs based on Boiling Water Reactor technologies, which already have an extensive track record of applications in commercial nuclear reactors. RBWRs could potentially use TRUs separated and refined from spent fuel as fuel along with uranium. Although RBWRs use new core fuel concepts to burn TRUs, they use the same non-core components as current Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), including safety systems and turbines. As such, RBWRs are unique in that extensive experience accumulated through the application of BWRs can be leveraged to achieve efficient nuclear fission in TRUs.”
