RW Monitor
9/25/2015
IN NRC
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has officially extended the public comment period for the draft supplemental environmental impact statement on groundwater effects from the Yucca Mountain project, according to a notice in the Federal Register late last week. Stakeholders now have until Nov. 20 to submit comments on the report, and the NRC has scheduled an additional teleconference on Nov. 12 to take comments. Nevada, among other stakeholders, had requested an additional 60 days to submit comments, so as to allow “that its experts will have an adequate time for review,” according to Martin Malsch, an attorney representing the state. The NRC, however, determined that to adhere to its timeline of issuing a final supplemental EIS in the front half of 2016, it could only grant a one-month extension. The NRC staff found that the proposed repository would have a minimal radiological impact on groundwater surrounding the site. The staff’s draft analysis bolsters the safety case for the shuttered project, which the NRC earlier this year found to meet most regulatory standards for public health and safety in its safety evaluation report.
IN THE INDUSTRY
Fortum, a Finnish energy company, announced this week that it has received a “significant” additional order from EnergySolutions for ion exchange materials used in the treatment of contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi cleanup site in Japan. EnergySolutions has for the past three years operated its Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS) at the site to treat water for cesium, strontium, and cobalt. “Fortum’s ion exchange materials effectively remove cesium and strontium from radioactive water,” Fortum Vice President of Power Solutions Heikki Andersson said in a statement. “In addition to purification effectiveness, another advantage of the Fortum products is their cost efficiency: the amount of the product needed is very small compared to the volume of liquids to be purified.”
