IN THE U.S.
Two contractor teams have submitted bids for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station’s estimated $4.4 billion decommissioning general contract.
AECOM and EnergySolutions have submitted a bid together, and a Bechtel-led team has been confirmed as the second bidder in the process. San Onofre owner Southern California Edison has also said previously that it also expects a bid from Team Holtec, a subsidiary of Holtec International, but representatives from that group could not be reached for comment.
"We have submitted a bid for the SONGS Decommissioning project,” EnergySolutions spokesman Mark Walker said by email. “We submitted the bid as an AECOM/ES team. No further details of our bid are available at this time."
A source familiar with negotiations confirmed the Bechtel team’s bid. The deadline for bidding was Jan. 4.
SONGS began operations in 1968, retiring Unit 1 in 1992 and placing it into SAFSTOR. Southern California Edison retired Units 2 and 3 in 2013, when replacement steam generator issues proved too expensive to fix.
Vermont’s Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel has scheduled a meeting for 6 p.m. Jan. 28 in Brattleboro, where Entergy representatives and state officials will brief attendees on decommissioning activities at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.
Entergy Government Affairs Manager Joe Lynch and Vermont Nuclear Engineer and Decommissioning Coordinator Tony Leshinskie are scheduled to give updates about the plant that closed in December 2014.
The meeting also will include a panel discussion and action on a third draft for an advisory opinion on the certificate of public good for a second dry-cask storage pad at the plant, as well as a presentation on groundwater monitoring. The groundwater monitoring presentation is scheduled to include comments from state geologist Marjorie Gale; state Rep. David Deen; George Desch, with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation; and Bill Irwin, with the state Department of Health. A discussion on the groundwater monitoring advisory opinion is scheduled for the panel’s Feb. 25 meeting.
Areva NP said Thursday it completed 43 planned outages at nuclear energy sites across the U.S. in 2015.
The French multinational energy group said the work on boiling- and pressurized-water reactors included component repair and replacement, fuel loading and unloading, and reactor maintenance and inspection. The work was conducted at sites both with operating and shuttered reactors.
“Our successful outage work over the last year is an important requirement for our customers to continue operating their nuclear energy facilities safely while ensuring operational excellence,” George Beam, senior vice president of Installed Base Services at AREVA Inc., said in a statement. “Through innovative solutions and advanced technologies, our skilled teams met the unique needs of each facility while maintaining the highest standards in outage execution.”
The company added that planned outage operations involved the deployment of 3,200 workers, who performed 1.6 million “safe work” hours without an “outage lost-time injury.”
INTERNATIONAL
A petition against Canada’s plan to build a deep geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel near Lake Huron has garnered more than 92,000 signatures.
Ontario Power Generation (OPG) is seeking approval to build the nuclear waste dump a kilometer away from the shores of Lake Huron. About 680 meters below the surface, the repository would house more than 200,000 cubic meters of low- and intermediate-level waste from OPG’s Bruce, Pickering, and Darlington power stations.
The petition, launched by environmental group Stop the Great Lakes Nuclear Dump, was sent to Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna, Canada’s top environmental official. McKenna is expected to make a decision on the application on March 1, following two deadline extensions made by her office. The original deadline for a decision was in September.
“This dump puts at risk the fresh water of the GREAT LAKES, relied upon by 40 million people in two countries,” the GoPetition.com petition states. “Any risk of buried nuclear waste entering the largest body of fresh water in the world is too great a risk to take, and need not be taken.”
In May, Canada’s Joint Review Panel backed an environmental assessment of the controversial project in the face of criticism from Canadian and American lawmakers and citizens concerned about impact to the Great Lakes.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said it is making progress on a new, affordable method for the disposal of small volumes of low-level radioactive waste around the world.
Janos Balla, a waste technology engineer at the IAEA, said the method was developed for countries that have “low levels of waste, modest infrastructure and limited human and financial resources.”
The IAEA tested the borehole method in Croatia late last year without radioactive material, claiming the results show that the “promising technology” would allow countries all over the world to “safely and securely take charge of their own disused radioactive sources.”
“It’s simple, affordable and can be deployed worldwide,” Ball said in a press release.
The U.N. agency said the method involves placing and covering sealed sources in a narrow hole a few hundred meters deep. The system employs a metal platform and a transfer cask, which allows the material to be placed in the borehole.
