ECA Update: October 22, 2014
Published: Wed, 10/22/14
Head of EM Visits Waste Isolation Pilot Plant for First Underground Tour Since February Incidents
DOE EM
October 16, 2014
CARLBAD, N.M. - EM Acting Assistant Secretary Mark Whitney today visited the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M., where he became the first non-WIPP employee to tour the underground facility since a truck fire and unrelated radiological release temporarily closed the facility in February.
"EM and the greater DOE is committed to reopening WIPP to support the important mission of cleaning up the nation's legacy of nuclear waste," Whitney said. "DOE's highest priority is the safety, health and protection of the public, the workers, the community, and the environment."
EM's Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) Manager Joe Franco appreciated Whitney's visit to WIPP.
"We believe today's tour of the underground facility represents a significant benchmark for progress toward resumption of normal activities at the facility," Franco said. CBFO has responsibility for WIPP and the National Transuranic Program.
A recovery plan outlining the necessary steps to resume operations at the transuranic waste disposal site was released in September, and CBFO staff and contractors have been actively engaged in accident investigations and recovery related activities since the early days following the events.
Radiological release surveys are performed on a routine basis. Over half of the mine is now classified as a "radiological buffer area," indicating workers can access the area without donning personal protective clothing or respirators. Workers are cleaning and performing preventive maintenance on equipment in the underground and on the surface impacted by the fire event.
They also are replacing equipment if needed.
For the past 15 years, WIPP has operated as the repository for the nation's defense related transuranic waste, providing safe underground disposal for legacy waste from remediation of 22 different generator sites across the U.S.
The recovery plan identifies the first quarter of 2016 as the target for resumption of waste emplacement at WIPP, starting with waste currently stored on site and gradually ramping up receipt of waste from the other generator sites over the years that follow.
PDGP Ownership Transferred to DOE; Former USEC Workers to be Hired by D&D Contractors
91.3 WKMS
October 21, 2014
The US Department of Energy has resumed possession of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant from the former United States Enrichment Corporation following a ceremony this morning.
This marks the end of the year-long process after USEC announced it would no longer enrich uranium in May of 2013.
"Today is a big day for all of those involved in this transition and a significant step forward in the Department's cleanup mission." said DOE site leader Jennifer Woodard. "For over 60 years this plant has served its purpose of enriching uranium for nuclear defense and energy. Now it is time to begin the process for deactivating the plant and preparing for decontamination and decommissioning."
Yesterday, USEC laid off the remaining 300 of the plant's original 1,100 workers. However, up to 400 workers may be re-hired by Fluor Federal Services for their $420 million contract for deactivation and decommissioning over the next three years.
But Paducah Economic Development Vice President Charlie Martin says that number does not include workforce for clean-up phases.
"That will mainly only accomplish deactivation at the site," said Martin. "We worked really hard as a community to get appropriated dollars to commence some D&D at the site. They might get work for deactivation, but deactivation is not clean-up, it's putting things in a stable state that are problems. It doesn't do anything about tearing buildings down, remedying groundwater, remedying pollutant contaminates like PCB, Tech-99 or TCE. Those are all D&D projects that require expenditures of lots of money to accomplish."
Martin says PED continue advocating the DOE at the state and national levels to clarify local workers' role in the decommission process.
"We were appropriated $325 million for Paducah in 2014, that's the level that we want the government, at least that level, to continue appropriating and expending at Paducah going forward," said Martin. And if they do that, they will create well over a 1,000 jobs each and every year here at Paducah."
FFS expects to increase employment from 400 to 500 employees over the next year. The number does not include subcontractors who will also be hired during the project.
LATA Environmental Services of Kentucky's DOE contract at the site continues until July 2015. After July 2015, the remaining environmental cleanup scope will be performed by FFS.
The Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant is a 3,556-acre federal reservation that was built as part of the nation's nuclear weapons complex, and enriched uranium beginning in 1952. DOE's site missions include deactivation and stabilization, environmental cleanup, waste disposition, depleted uranium conversion, and eventual decontamination and demolition of the plant.
The Department of Energy is responsible for cleaning up the nation's gaseous diffusion buildings in accordance with the U.S. Energy Policy Act of 1992. Besides the decontamination of soil and groundwater at these sites, thousands of buildings and structures must be decontaminated and demolished.
Allison M. Macfarlane, head of Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to step down
Washington Post
October 21, 2014
Allison M. Macfarlane, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, announced Tuesday that she will resign to take a teaching job at George Washington University.
Macfarlane, who still has more than three years left in her term, said she would leave Jan. 1 and become director of the university's Center for International Science and Technology Policy. In an interview, she called it "a great offer," but people close to her said she also stepped down to spend time with her ailing mother.
"I accomplished what I wanted to do at the NRC," Macfarlane said, "and I really miss academia."
Trained as a geologist and a former professor at George Mason University, Macfarlane has served as NRC chair since July 9, 2012, and has restored a more collegial atmosphere in an agency that had been roiled by controversy over the management style of her predecessor, Gregory B. Jaczko.
Macfarlane has also overseen the implementation of new safety measures prompted by the tsunami that severely damaged Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex in 2011. Those included additional protective equipment at reactor sites, sturdier seismic and flood protection at power plants, and progress on hardening venting systems at plants that had a design similar to Fukushima's.
But Macfarlane has also lost several votes at the five-member commission, some of them of particular importance. She sided with the NRC staff's recommendation that reactors add filtered vents that can capture radioactive materials while allowing steam and hydrogen to escape in an emergency. This was one of the failures at Fukushima. She lost that vote, 3 to 2.
She also voted to expedite the transfer of spent fuel rods from cooling pools to dry casks better able to withstand a disaster at nuclear power plants. She lost that vote, 4 to 1.
Macfarlane differed with the NRC staff over long-term waste storage, and she dissented from a commission statement because she felt that nuclear waste should be moved to a centralized repository and not be stored indefinitely at reactor sites. Under Macfarlane, a new rule on long-term storage was adopted to replace a rule thrown out by an appeals court in the District.
Macfarlane also faced demands from Congress, including both parties. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-
Calif.) wanted the NRC to release internal documents about the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, where leaks in steam turbines led to the eventual closure of the reactors there.
Macfarlane's announcement comes one month after the Senate confirmed two new commissioners, Jeff Baran, an aide to departing Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-
Calif.), and Stephen Burns, a former NRC general counsel.
"We would certainly agree that she did an effective job of restoring collaboration and collegiality among the commissioners, which is important for the agency's credibility," said Steven Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute.
In a statement, Macfarlane said: "I came to the Commission with the mission of righting the ship after a tumultuous period and ensuring that the agency implemented lessons learned from the tragic accident at Fukushima Daiichi, so that the American people can be confident that such an accident will never take place here." Opinion: Partial NRC Report On Yucca Mt A Win For Science
Forbes
October 21, 2014
Last week, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) essentially said that the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada would probably be OK for storing our Nation's high-level nuclear waste for a million years.
This is a big win for Science, a big win for The Process, and a big win for the Rule of Law. Along with the recent NRC Waste Confidence ruling that long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel is safe for over a hundred years, this gives us two options for our waste. And there are more, better options out there as well. No one can say we don't know what to do with this waste or that we don't have viable plans.
But this report wasn't a surprise and doesn't really change anything.
In 1987, when DOE said to the scientists and engineers working on nuclear waste, "Congress chose Yucca Mountain out of the candidate sites, so make it work", we all knew it could work. I mean, that's what we do.
Even rocks like the volcanic tuffs at Yucca Mountain can be made to work. It takes some special costly design features and engineered barriers, but geologists know rocks and America's the richest nation in Earth's history.
So when we submitted the Yucca Mountain License Application in 2008, we knew it would be technically adequate. Thousands of us had spent 20 years and $12 billion working on it, so we better have come up with a decent technical design.
But the science and engineering have never been the problem. It's been politics and money.
We did know Yucca Mountain would cost a lot but, hey, it was before the Great Recession, cost was no object.
And thanks to the public's irrational fear of radiation, it will cost ten times what its needs to cost anyway. There are ways to use science and engineering to reduce the cost, but they never seem to get seriously considered. Only the grandiose, most complicated, most costly ideas resonate with non-scientists when it comes to nuclear. Shooting it into the Sun still sounds good to some people.
On October 14, the NRC published just Volume 3, out of 5 required, of its Safety Evaluation Report (SER) on the proposed underground geologic nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. They found that the design met the requirements for the million-year time period after the repository would be filled and permanently closed.
The SER is a five-volume document prepared by NRC staff as part of the NRC licensing process that is only the beginning of the discussion period. According to NRC's own rules, the NRC shouldn't release any volume until the whole thing is finished, since Volume 3 kind of depends on Volume 2, and so on. Volume 1, an introduction and history of the whole project, was completed and released in 2010 as the final act before DOE shut the project down.
However, last year a federal court ordered the NRC to complete the SER, as much as they could, with what funding they had. The NRC was supposed to release reports on November 6 of this year, and offered no formal explanation for why they released Volume 3 before the November elections.
"For the NRC staff to publically release just this one volume of the SER outside the proper context of an ongoing licensing proceeding and in the absence of a complete SER is unprecedented," said Bob Halstead, Executive Director of the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. "It creates a false impression that the safety review has been completed. It is difficult to see what reason there could be for such a release except to provide political support and encouragement for Yucca Mountain supporters in Congress".
Indeed, it's strange that there is any support in Congress for Yucca Mountain since we're broke. Congress used up all the remaining money in the Nuclear Waste Fund for deficit reduction and the courts ruled utilities don't have to keep paying the nuclear tax until we fix this mess.
Just to complete the licensing process to authorize Yucca Mountain, NRC needs at least $100 million. But they have less than $15 million in carry-over funds.
DOE stated that over $1.6 billion would be needed to complete just the licensing and administrative activities before any actual work could begin on the repository itself. But DOE has only $30 million in carry-over funds.
$100 billion will be needed to build the repository and operate it over 60 years, although with even marginal inflation and material cost uncertainties, that price will rise to $200 billion. $2.5 billion alone is needed to build a rail spur into the site. An additional $100 billion is needed just to get the high-level waste ready at the various sites for disposal at Yucca Mountain.
We can't even get medical care for our veterans or fix our crumbling bridges. Does anyone think Congress will allocate billions for a project like this in our lifetimes?
It won't. It doesn't need to. The recent NRC waste confidence ruling on long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors said spent fuel is fine in dry casks for over 100 years, when it will be easier to handle and re-use, and won't even be high-level anymore. We already knew this since we've been storing spent fuel this way for decades with no problems.
The defense high-level waste left over from the Cold War has its own path. It doesn't need to be co-mingled with commercial waste and certainly doesn't require Yucca Mountain just for itself (Where has all the Nukewaste Gone?).
Besides, we need to rethink the whole nuclear waste plan anyway since it's a leftover from the 1970's when we didn't know very much and Congress thought they could just dictate something this important to the States and they'd have to accept it (The Screw Nevada Bill).
When Yucca Mountain was halted in 2009, President Obama formed the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC) to rethink the plan and get the nuclear program back on track. If followed, their recommendations would do just that (BRC).
I do strongly urge that the license application review process be completed. Regardless of what we finally do in the future, we should follow through on such an important scientific effort. We should have vigorous debate over what scientific studies we do perform. We want to know how good Yucca Mountain would be, if we ever decide to use it. And we must see how this whole process works so we can fix it if necessary.
Besides, most of the scientific results and discoveries that came out of the Yucca Mountain Project are useful for any site we end up choosing. We did not actually waste much of that money and effort.
The fact that our nuclear waste program has become tied up in courts and politics is not good. I like lawyers as much as the next guy, but we need to back up and let science and public consent lead us down the right path for our nuclear future. Senator Tim Scott Statement: Yucca Mountain
Press Release
October 16, 2014
Charleston, SC --U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-SC), a member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, released the following statement regarding the report issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today stating that Yucca Mountain is a repository for nuclear waste that will be safe for up to one million years. The Obama Administration has delayed the NRC's report for four years, and Congress has supported the Yucca Mountain project on a bipartisan basis.
"Despite politically motivated delays to the Yucca Mountain project, it is clearer than ever that this is the safest, most viable location for storing our nation's nuclear waste. We must have a long-term strategy, as this is not an issue that can be wished away. South Carolina has agreed to temporarily hold some of this material with the understanding that a permanent solution would be found, and our state alone has contributed more than a billion dollars towards the Yucca Mountain project.
Yucca Mountain is the law of the land and the U.S. needs a permanent repository that will be safe for up to a million years--the Obama Administration cannot continue to ignore existing law. It is well beyond time to move forward and construct Yucca." SRS facility reaches liquid waste milestone
The Aiken Standard
October 19, 2014
The Savannah River Site's Defense Waste Processing Facility poured its 15 millionth pound of vitrified hazardous waste, marking a milestone for the liquid-waste contractor.
As of Sept. 30, the facility has produced a total of 3,877 canisters since startup in 1996. It is estimated that 8,582 total canisters will be required to complete the liquid waste operations mission at SRS.
This milestone has been made possible by the work of two melters: the facility's 64-ton tea-pot-shape melter, where hazardous waste mixed with another material forms a molten glass that is poured into the stainless-steel canisters for temporary storage at SRS. Melter One poured 1,339 canisters containing 5.2 million pounds of vitrified radioactive waste before it was retired in 2002. Melter Two is in operation and has poured 9.8 million pounds of vitrified waste into 2,538 canisters so far.
Stuart MacVean, Savannah River Remediation's president and project manager, congratulated all of the employees and said he is pleased to reach the milestone.
"I am proud of the entire SRR workforce and DWPF employees," MacVean said. "Every pound of vitrified waste poured contributes to SRR's environmental mission to clean and operationally close the Site's waste tanks."
The facility is the only operational radioactive waste vitrification plant in the nation and converts the sludge and liquid nuclear salt waste currently stored at SRS into a solid glass form suitable for long-term storage and disposal.
DOE gives reasons for missing Hanford vit plant deadlines
Tri-City Herald
October 17, 2014
The state of Washington and Department of Energy will argue their cases on amending the Hanford consent decree in February.
U.S. Judge Rosanna Malouf Peterson set a schedule for the case Friday, with arguments set for Feb. 19 in the courtroom of the Richland Federal Building.
In the meantime, the state of Oregon has until Nov. 5 to file a motion in federal court if it also wants to have a say in proceedings.
Washington and DOE each have submitted proposals to modify the 2010 consent decree, which is enforced by the federal court. The state and federal governments have been unable to agree on a path forward after DOE said most of the remaining deadlines in the consent decree are at serious risk.
DOE said the deadlines set in the consent decree, particularly for the Hanford vitrification plant, were overly optimistic. And the state has reluctantly agreed that there is no way DOE can catch up to the consent decree schedule.
The consent decree resolved a 2008 lawsuit filed by the state as it became clear that DOE could not meet deadlines in the Tri-Party Agreement. The consent decree set later deadlines and, with those deadlines now at risk, a federal judge is on course to set yet later deadlines.
DOE argues that it is behind schedule on the vitrification plant and emptying radioactive waste from some leak-prone single shell tanks because of unforeseen technical and budget issues.
DOE explains delays
DOE thought it had issues identified in 2010 and a clear path forward, including a detailed budget and schedule for completing work, it said in court documents.
That included closing out 28 technical issues identified in a March 2006 review by an expert panel with a DOE plan for more testing and analysis to resolve those issues.
But two months after the consent decree was entered into federal court in 2010, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board identified a number of technical concerns and recommended that DOE conduct more testing than DOE had planned.
DOE and contractor Bechtel National have worked on some of the vit plant's technical issues for years, including keeping waste in the plant well mixed to avoid an unplanned nuclear reaction and preventing a build-up of flammable gas.
In 2012, it began to address another issue raised by a DOE employee, who successfully filed a "difference of professional opinion" about the risk of erosion and corrosion to vessels and piping during the life of the vitrification plant. DOE had considered that issue, one of the 28 identified by the expert panel in 2006, closed.
In 2013, another issue was identified. The design of the plant would allow a potentially improper ventilation flow that would create a risk of contaminated air seeping into areas with workers.
"Resolution might require significant and potentially costly changes to embedded piping systems and other equipment," DOE said in court documents.
To resolve mixing issues, it is conducting full-scale tests. DOE started this summer at a new lab built for that purpose on the Washington State University Tri-Cities campus, and it expects to take about three years and cost an estimated $180 million. Additional time then might be needed for redesign of the plant's Pretreatment Facility.
Sequestration, or forced federal budget cuts, delayed some of the work, along with Congress' failure to pass a budget for fiscal 2013. That led to layoffs, plus delays and halts in purchasing equipment. Some vendors accepted other orders and couldn't supply DOE after budget issues were resolved. One vendor supplying a critical and unique component for an air emissions treatment system went out of business.
DOE is arguing to the court that it does not want to set firm deadlines as it agreed to in the 2010 consent decree until it has issues resolved and again has a complete set of cost estimates and schedule.
DOE's proposed amendment "reflects the fact, learned from DOE's experience to date, that a nuclear construction project of the scale, novelty and complexity of the (vitrification plant) is difficult to fit into the mold of traditional, fixed consent decree deadlines," it said in a court document.
"Despite the application of extraordinary levels of effort and expertise, the project has proved to be far more difficult, and the technical solutions for more elusive, than DOE anticipated," it said.
Ignoring the lessons of the last four years to establish a comprehensive set of construction deadlines for the plant now would be "irresponsible and counterproductive," it said.
But the state is asking for a detailed list of deadlines, arguing that DOE has shown by its actions since 2010 that more specificity, accountability and enforceability are needed to avoid a repeat of the situation.
State wants more info
In 2010, DOE prevailed on the state to accept fewer, more general deadlines to allow DOE more flexibility in delivering its final result, including having the vitrification plant fully operating in 2022.
As a result, the state agreed to just 19 deadlines for the entire vitrification plant project to get to that goal.
The state said that in retrospect, those deadlines were too general, too few and spaced too widely apart to ensure that DOE's progress was measured and monitored before the project fell too far behind to recover by consent decree deadlines.
Not only is the state proposing more than 100 deadlines for the vitrification plant and for emptying waste from some underground tanks, but it wants more reporting from DOE to the state and the court. The 2010 consent decree had no requirements for reporting to the court.
As early as February 2012, DOE planned not to meet certain consent decree requirements, without seeking concurrence from the state or approval from the court, the state said in court documents. It based that statement on DOE's direction to Bechtel to develop a new budget and schedule for the vitrification plant based on annual funding caps and an assumption that technical issues could only be resolved if deadlines were extended.
DOE began a series of notifications to the state in late 2011 that some deadlines in the consent decree were at risk, even though there had been no indication in the quarterly reports it made to the state up until then that long-term schedule issues loomed, according to the state.
The state waited for two and a half years for DOE to engage it and the court on how it planned to rectify noncompliance, the state said in a court document.
But there was no requirement in the consent decree for that, and DOE defined a new direction without state and court approval, the state said. That included steps such as building a new facility outside the vitrification plant to prepare some waste to bypass the plant's troubled Pretreatment Facility and solving some technical issues with another new facility outside the plant to mix and blend waste before it is sent to the plant.
The state has accused DOE of having "a persistent lack of institutional awareness" of project management issues, technical details and safety design concerns.
The state is asking for what it calls "aggressive, but technically possible" deadlines. DOE would have up to nine additional years for some work, including a requirement that all currently planned facilities at the plant be operating in 2031.
To improve communication, the state wants the court to require quarterly status reports to the state and the court that include any emerging technical or procurement issues. Second, the state wants a requirement for timely notification to the state and court both of deadlines at risk and proposed schedules to get back on track.
The state also is concerned that DOE has not submitted the clear and specific budget information the state has requested, leaving the state unable to determine whether the funding situation is beyond DOE's control, according to a court document
The state is asking the judge to require DOE to submit an annual report describing how much money it will need to meet all requirements in the consent decree. Hanford contractors failing to cooperate in probe into worker's firing
Associated Press
October 20, 2014
SPOKANE, Wash. -- The U.S. Department of Energy's inspector general on Monday said it could not determine if a whistleblower on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation was fired for raising safety concerns because two contractors failed to provide all the documents needed in the investigation.
Donna Busche was fired in February after raising questions about the safety of the unfinished Waste Treatment Plant on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
Busche was a manager for URS Energy and Construction, Inc., which is a subcontractor of Bechtel National, Inc. in building the $13 billion plant.
The inspector general said URS and Bechtel would not provide several thousand emails and other documents necessary to determine if Busche was unfairly fired.
"We did not have access to the full inventory of documents which we felt were necessary to conduct our review," the report said.
There was a fundamental conflict between the need of the Office of the Inspector General to have unfettered access to information and the desire of the two contractors to protect their legal interests in an upcoming lawsuit, the report said.
Hanford, located near Richland, for decades made plutonium for nuclear weapons. The federal government is now paying more than $2 billion per year to maintain and clean-up the resulting nuclear waste.
The inspector general's report said that Bechtel and URS both took the advice of lawyers to withhold some documents, either because of attorney-client or attorney work product privilege.
"Specifically, Bechtel withheld 235 documents and URS withheld 4,305 documents," the report said.
URS eventually allowed access to 2,754 of those documents, the report said.
Bechtel issued a press release saying it was disappointed in the report.
"Bechtel went above and beyond in cooperating with the Inspector General's investigation," the company said. "Bechtel is committed to providing a work environment in which all employees are treated fairly and are able to raise concerns without fear of retaliation, and Bechtel expects its subcontractors to do the same."
Tom Carpenter of the watchdog group Hanford Challenge said the inspector general should have ruled in favor of Busche.
"The Inspector General is rewarding contractors for refusing to cooperate," Carpenter said.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a frequent Hanford critic, said it was unacceptable that the Energy Department's inspector general could not obtain documents from the agency's own contractors.
Busche, who was not immediately available for comment, has filed a federal lawsuit over her firing.
Bechtel and URS have denied that they retaliated against Busche. URS has said Busche was fired for reasons unrelated to the safety concerns. Viewpoint: Turning old bombs into carbon-free electricity
Atlanta Business Chronicle
October 21, 2014
Just across the Savannah River in South Carolina on a 310 square-mile track of land sits a federal project 64 percent complete. Yet the project's future is uncertain because of the age-old problem of big government. Here's five good reasons why we should finish what is called the "MOX" facility at the Savannah River Site.
This plant, essentially a nuclear kitchen, will employee high-tech engineer types and turn old, surplus nuclear war-heads into commercial nuclear reactor fuel. Plutonium from old bombs go in, and fuel for plants like Vogtle comes out. We have so much surplus bomb material that this plant will be busy for at least 20 years.
Second, the plant itself is a construction marvel. It will contain 35,000 tons of steel, which is five times as much as the Eiffel Tower. There will be 85 miles of process piping--enough to stretch across the English Channel. Over 170,000 cubic yards of concrete will be used, which is enough to make four Washington monuments. The warehouse space at the facility is four times the square footage of a Walmart. Obviously, all the pipefitters, electricians, instrument fitters, structural steel workers, machinists, millwrights, welders, sheet metal workers, carpenters, truck drivers, laborers, engineers, and supervisors--1,600 good paying construction jobs--spend their wages in the region and have a direct impact on the economies of Augusta and Aiken.
Third, this option treats surplus plutonium as a resource instead of a waste product. Rather than burying the old bombs or keeping them in a warehouse, the plant will convert them to fuel that will be used to generate carbon-free energy at commercial nuclear facilities. This will become even more important if the federal government has its way with the new EPA 111(d) rule. The pending rule requires states like Georgia and South Carolina to reduce their carbon emissions drastically without regard to economic impact. The MOX plant under construction helps us reach our goal.
Fourth, this recycled plutonium will be available at a discounted price compared to natural uranium fuel. Ratepayers and shareholders will benefit from cheaper reactor fuel--especially in these times when low natural gas prices are causing nuclear plants to be at a financial disadvantage. If and when this new plant goes on line in 2019, companies like Georgia Power, Duke, Scana, Dominion Services and TVA could begin using the fuel as early as 2020. Any plant modifications needed to burn the fuel will be covered by the Department of Energy--not by the utility and its ratepayers.
Fifth, this plant is about promises made and promises kept. In 2000, the United States signed an agreement with Russia to eliminate 34 metric tons of plutonium. That is enough fissile material to power 17,000 nuclear weapons. Russia will be burning their material in fast reactors now in development. With the political climate in Russia as it is right now, renegotiating would let Russia off the hook. Too often our government negotiates in good faith only to change policies with the next set of political leaders who get to Washington.
This MOX plant should be receiving wide-spread support, but because it is the middle of one of the most secure federal sites in America, no one knows about it. Yes, the project is facing scheduling and cost challenges. Not surprising when you think that this was a first-of-a-kind nuclear technology facility in the US, and the first nuclear new build in decades. Additionally, the plant has to balance dual regulatory requirements from the DOE and Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Finally, we are talking about plutonium here. It is material that has the capability to destroy life as we know it on the planet. I, for one, don't want to drive by an-almost finished $4 billion complex knowing I did nothing to finish this important job. Power Plants Seek to Extend Life of Nuclear Reactors for Decades
The New York Times
October 19, 2014
The prospects for building new nuclear reactors may be sharply limited, but the owners of seven old ones, in Pennsylvania, Virginia and South Carolina, are preparing to ask for permission to run them until they are 80 years old.
Nuclear proponents say that extending plants' lifetimes is more economical -- and a better way to hold down carbon dioxide emissions -- than building new plants, although it will require extensive monitoring of steel, concrete, cable insulation and other components. But the idea is striking even to some members of the nuclear establishment.
At a meeting of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in May, George Apostolakis, a risk expert who was then one of the five commissioners, pointed out that if operation were allowed until age 80, some reactors would be using designs substantially older than that.
"I don't know how we would explain to the public that these designs, 90-year-old designs, 100-year-old designs, are still safe to operate," he said. "Don't we need more convincing arguments than just 'We're managing aging effects'?"
"I mean, will you buy a car that was designed in '64?" he asked.
But the consensus of the commission staff and the industry is that with appropriate analysis and monitoring, the reactors can generate huge amounts of carbon-free electricity for additional decades. The commission itself has not yet approved a system.
"If you've effectively paid off the plant, this is very cheap power," said Neil Wilmshurst, a nuclear engineer at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility consortium that has been researching how to keep old plants running. "The whole basis of license renewal is that the plants are being well maintained -- that at the component level, things are being replaced when needed and maintained when needed."
The leading candidates are Exelon's two operating reactors at the Peach Bottom plant in Pennsylvania, 50 miles southeast of Harrisburg; Dominion's twin Surry reactors, near Jamestown, Va.; and Duke's three Oconee reactors, near Seneca, S.C., all dating from the early 1970s.
"The preliminary analysis we've done is favorable," said David A. Heacock, the chief nuclear officer of Dominion. Obtaining the extension would cost several million dollars, he said, and while Dominion is investigating just what would be needed, it has not decided yet to apply. But "it's relatively inexpensive to relicense, compared to any new technology," Mr. Heacock said. If the Environmental Protection Agency succeeds in setting a carbon dioxide emissions cap, he said, extending Surry's life could save local consumers a lot of money.
Surry's steel and concrete are in good shape, he said, and the company is already replacing much of the high-voltage cabling anyway.
The 100 operating power reactors, most of them completed by the late 1980s, were licensed for 40 years. In that era, new generating stations were expected to replace old ones within a few decades, but that turned out to be wrong for nuclear plants and coal-fired power stations as well. The nuclear industry now describes that 40-year period as an early estimate of the plants' economic life, not physical viability.
As construction of new reactors tailed off to nearly nothing in the late 1980s, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission established a procedure in 1991 for 20-year license extensions, and it has now granted more than 70. Thus far it has not rejected any applications, although many are still under review.
The 1991 procedure allows for plants to receive additional 20-year extensions, but the commission is currently engaged in a major effort to determine the criteria it should set for years 61 to 80. It expects utilities to start seeking a second round of 20-year extensions by about 2018. The effort on reactors is part of a trend; airlines, highway departments, water system managers and others are all using major assets for longer than the builders imagined.
Exposed to decades of radiation, some metal parts grow brittle and more likely to crack under stress. One potential source of stress is the emergency core cooling system; if the system sensed a leak in the piping, it could start up and dump huge volumes of cold water into a reactor, keeping it at operating pressure but at a far lower temperature. Engineers say that could lead to a condition called "pressurized thermal shock," in which a reactor vessel would crack open.
To measure embrittlement, the plants use extra samples of the metal from which their reactor vessels were made, called coupons, stored for years in irradiated areas inside the reactors. These have been removed at various intervals and analyzed for brittleness, in a test that usually destroys the coupon.
A few of the reactors have run out of these coupons, and engineers are trying to draw conclusions about their conditions by extrapolating from coupons in other reactors. In others, they have moved the coupons closer to the center of the reactor, to age them faster, so they have an idea of what the vessel's metal will look like in a few years, not just its current condition.
Jim Riccio, a nuclear policy analyst at Greenpeace, said: "This isn't about running reactors until they are 80. It's amortizing the large capital additions that the industry can't afford right now." The reactors, he noted, have been required to buy new hardware after the Fukushima Daiichi accident in 2011.
"The track record of this industry is a meltdown once a decade," he said. "We have a concern that running reactors well beyond their economic lifetime and well into embrittlement is not sound."
But Richard A. Reister, manager of an Energy Department program for "reactor sustainability," told the commission in May, "Our research has not yet determined any technical showstoppers to long-term operation."
Utilities say they need advance notice of licensing rules to keep their plants running, because they must plan maintenance work, replacement of major components and even fuel supplies years in advance.
To win a license extension, the plants do not have to show that they will be safe for 80 years, only that they have monitoring programs in place to promptly detect problems as they emerge.
Michael P. Gallagher, a license renewal specialist at Exelon, said the old plants were "important national assets."
"Aging management is a continuum," he said at the hearing. "We don't see any cliffs in aging management." Exelon acknowledged that it was looking into an extension for some of its reactors.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the commission that nothing was inherently unsafe about running a reactor until it was 80, but that even now, when almost all the plants running are decades old, evidence of design errors continues to surface, sometimes causing plants to shut down.
"The bottom line is that compliance with current licensing basis requirements has never been shown to be valid at any nuclear plant in the country, not any plant at any time," he said.
Yankee cleanup cost jumps to $1.24 billion
Barre Montpelier Times Argus
October 18, 2014
BRATTLEBORO -- The number has risen to $1.24 billion. That's what it will cost to decommission the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant and handle its radioactive fuel.
Entergy Nuclear on Friday released an updated estimate of the price of cleaning up the 42-year-old reactor and storing its radioactive fuel. Its 2012 estimate was $1.1 billion. The reactor's decommissioning trust fund is at $640 million, about half of what is needed.
The $1.24 billion breaks down this way: $817 million for dismantling Vermont Yankee, $368 million for spent fuel management, and $57 million to return the Vernon site to "green field" status.
In comparison, the original cost of building Vermont Yankee in the late 1960s and early 1970s was $183 million, according to Entergy spokesman Martin Cohn.
Entergy issued what it said was unique in the nuclear industry -- a "site assessment report," a requirement of its agreement with the state in December.
Entergy Vice President Michael Twomey said the assessment had not uncovered any surprises in evaluating the Vernon site.
He said Friday the cost of decommissioning Vermont Yankee immediately, as some have demanded, would be as much as $1.9 billion.
That was one of the reasons Entergy has reaffirmed its earlier decision to wait up to 60 years to dismantle and clean up the plant, Twomey said.
The company said the new estimate, which was given in 2014 dollars, is bound to increase.
But Twomey said several key factors could change, and that could speed up the decommissioning process.
Under the scenario Twomey outlined Friday, decommissioning won't start for about 25 years; the Shumlin administration is hoping for work to start in 10 to 15 years.
Christopher Recchia, commissioner of the Department of Public Service, said he still believes that decommissioning can start in the late 2020s or early 2030s, rather than the 2040s.
Recchia said the new cost estimate is not a surprise.
"We appreciate the detail provided and commitment of Entergy in making this report available," he said. "The site assessment has been sent to the full Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel, and will be on the agenda for discussion at the Oct. 30 meeting."
Recchia and Twomey both said that if the handling and storage of the spent nuclear fuel is reimbursed by the federal Department of Energy, and the stock market continues its growth, the Yankee site will be returned to "green field" status and become available for potential future use.
Twomey noted that the NRC allows nuclear operators to base their financial estimates on only a 2 percent growth rate in the trust fund; in the past five years it has experienced a 5 percent growth.
"We expect that these cost estimates will enable us to move forward with full decommissioning in the 2030s or perhaps late 2020s timeframe, depending on growth in the decommissioning trust fund," he said.
Twomey said Entergy hopes to have all fuel moved out of the spent fuel pool in the reactor building by 2020. He said the fuel would be moved in two "campaigns," the first in the summer of 2019 and the second in the summer of 2020.
After that point, employment at Yankee will drop to about 83 people, with a staff for around-the-clock security and some maintenance.
Yankee, which is expected to shut down at the end of December, will cut its workforce in half to 316 employees by the end of January, he said, and that will be maintained until all the fuel is moved from the reactor to the spent fuel pool.
After April 2016, he said, employment will drop to 127 people.
Recchia said he is convinced that Vermont Yankee can be cleaned up sooner than Entergy thinks.
"I think we can do better. They did a conservative analysis," he said.
Students getting active for Nuclear Science Week
The Aiken Standard
October 19, 2014
Today marks the beginning of National Nuclear Science Week, and local schools and pro-nuclear organizations, as well as the Savannah River Site, are all taking part in educating students through various lectures, tours and other events.
Nuclear Science Week began in 2010, and will run through Saturday this year.
Beginning today, a series of informative sessions known as Education Days will be held at the Ruth Patrick Science Education Center and will cater to middle school and high school students. Assisting in the effort is the SRS Community Reuse Organization.
Mindy Mets, a program manager for the organization, said students will have engaging, hands-on, interactive experiences related to chemistry and nuclear science including opportunities to explore atoms and their nuclei.
"... They will gain a better understanding of nuclear science and its benefits to our society," she said. " ... Students will have the opportunity to work with nuclear engineers and be introduced to career opportunities in the nuclear industry."
Though the nuclear groups play a huge part in the week, nearby sites will also engage local students. The V.C. Summer Plant in Jenkinsville, Plant Vogtle, and of course, SRS, are all scheduled to give tours throughout the week to various classes.
Kim Mitchell, a Savannah River Nuclear Solutions official in the contractor's Education Outreach Programs, said SRS has 38 educators representing 33 schools. That includes 25 high schools and nine middle schools.
Visitors will tour the Savannah River National Laboratory, Environmental Bioassay Laboratory, Defense Waste Process Facility and the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility.
"Today's teachers are tasked with providing experiential learning opportunities for students, but they are in need of information to provide such," Mitchell said. "The SRS tour is an excellent opportunity for teachers to learn how science is put to work in our community for our nation."
On Thursday, the Reuse Organization will bring STEM Career Connections Day to the CSRA. Held at the Kroc Center in Augusta, high school juniors and seniors from 18 high schools in a six-county region will gather for an interactive forum focused on career pathways built on STEM skills.
Mets said the demand for professionals in these fields - science, technology, engineering, and mathematics - is projected to outpace the supply of trained workers and professionals, both in the region and nationally
For more information on National Nuclear Science Week and a full schedule of events, visit www.srscro.org/national-nuclear-science-week/. Notice of Open Meeting: Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories
Federal Register
October 20, 2014
Summary: This notice announces an open meeting of the Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories (Commission). The Commission was created pursuant section 319 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014, Public Law No. 113-76, and in accordance with the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), as amended, 5 U.S.C. App. 2. This notice is provided in accordance with the Act.
Dates: Tuesday, November 4, 2014, 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
Background: The Commission was established to provide advice to the Secretary on the Department's national laboratories. The Commission will review the DOE national laboratories for alignment with the Department's strategic priorities, clear and balanced missions, unique capabilities to meet current energy and national security challenges, appropriate size to meet the Department's energy and national security missions, and support of other Federal agencies. The Commission will also look for opportunities to more effectively and efficiently use the capabilities of the national laboratories and review the use of laboratory directed research and development (LDRD) to meet the Department's science, energy, and national security goals.
Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Portsmouth
Federal Register
October 21, 2014
Summary: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Portsmouth. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. No. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register.
Dates: Thursday, November 6, 2014; 6:00 p.m.
Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Paducah
Federal Register
October 22, 2014
Summary: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Paducah. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. No. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register.
Dates: Thursday, November 20, 2014, 6 p.m.
Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Northern New Mexico
Federal Register
October 22, 2014
Summary: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Northern New Mexico. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (92, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register.
Dates: Wednesday, November 19, 2014, 1 p.m.-5:15 p.m. |
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