U.S.
Crews at the Zion Nuclear Power Station last year completed the largest commercial dry cask storage campaign in the U.S. history, loading 61 vertical, concrete casks in 366 days.
That’s according to Tony Orawiec, decommissioning plant manager at the Illinois facility that closed in 1998, who spoke at the EnergySolutions Customer Conference on Jan. 14 in Salt Lake City, Utah. EnergySolutions CEO David Lockwood opened the day by stating that the decommissioning project is profitable and on schedule for completion in 2018, which is two years earlier than previously expected. Lockwood also touched on three major transactions for the waste management company in 2015: the acquisitions of waste managers MHF Services and Waste Control Specialists and the sale of a division that included its Hanford Site tank farm operation.
“The EnergySolutions strategy is to focus on U.S. commercial business and serve the existing nuclear power plants in the U.S. EnergySolutions will continue to look for additional acquisitions moving forward to serve this purpose and grow their leadership in decommissioning,” Lockwood said.
In 2015, the Zion decommissioning project shipped 152,000 cubic feet of Class A waste to EnergySolutions’ Clive disposal facility 75 miles west of Salt Lake City and more than 1,000 cubic feet of Class B and C waste to WCS facilities in Texas. The year also featured the first steam generator removal from Zion and the completion of reactor vessel segmentation in the lower half of the reactor. Finally, the company reported zero safety incidents in 2015.
“Zion embodies an architecture that aggressively reduces risks day to day and sets the mindset for making decisions applied in a revised framework and new decommissioning model,” Orawiec said.
Following a holiday break, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has delayed decommissioning work on the STURGIS barge in the Port of Galveston, Texas.
In an email sent to stakeholders on Thursday, a manager for the USACE Baltimore District, Brenda Barber, cited operational issues related to a crane needed for lifting and removing large components from the STURGIS, which was the world’s first floating atomic energy facility.
Though crews were expected to return to work in February, Barber said they are now looking to resume work in March on the STURGIS, which contains low-level radioactive waste.
“Once this issue is worked through, we will provide an updated schedule for completion based on this temporary delay,” she wrote. “Environmental monitoring has continued since her arrival in Port, and no evidence of radioactive material or increased radiation exposure from the STURGIS has been documented outside of the reactor containment area.”
The one-time World War II Liberty Ship last year was towed 1,750 miles from the James River Reserve Fleet in Virginia to the Port of Galveston, arriving in late April. Officials say the barge’s cargo likely includes asbestos, lead-based paints, and elemental lead used in shielding, in addition to radioactive waste.
INTERNATIONAL
A tunnel collapsed Tuesday at a nuclear waste storage site being built in France, killing one worker and injuring another, according to local authorities.
Reuters reported the incident occurred while crews were taking measurements at the front of a 500-meter-deep tunnel at the site in Bure, a commune in northeastern France. French nuclear waste agency Andra is leading the €25 billion effort to build a deep geological storage facility, which would house the country’s most dangerous radioactive waste for thousands of years.
More than 23 percent of decommissioning-related equipment and structures have been dismantled at Lithuania’s shuttered Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, according to the state enterprise managing the decommissioning project.
Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant reported on Jan. 15 that 30,358 tons of equipment and related structures have been dismantled at the facility, where decommissioning is expected to wrap up in 2038. Final plans call for the dismantling of nearly 130,000 tons of equipment and related structures.
The larger dismantled equipment is being auctioned off as scrap metal, while the remaining material will be stored in buffer storage and then moved to landfills for long-term storage. According to World Nuclear News, cold testing, one of the early stages in the decommissioning process, has begun at the Interim Spent Fuel Storage Facility for units 1 and 2 of the power plant. Cold testing is a process for testing equipment and operational systems without the use of radioactive waste.
As part of its accession agreement to the European Union in the 2000s, Lithuania shut shut down units 1 and 2 at Ignalia. Unit 1 operated from 1983-2004, while unit 2 operated from 1987-2009.
