Chatanoogan

June 17, 2016

Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) voted in favor of two fiscal year 2017 appropriations bills which he said will fund important Tennessee priorities, block burdensome federal regulations and support the Small Business Administration. Both bills are consistent with the spending limits Congress set in the Budget Control Act and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015.

He said, “The Republican-led Senate is doing what it was elected to do – governing and setting priorities. These appropriations bills support Tennessee’s outdoors by funding the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, the Cherokee National Forest, the Dale Hollow and Erwin National Fish Hatcheries, and conservation programs across the state. They also keep the EPA from regulating mud puddles on farmers’ fields and help provide loans and assistance to Tennesseans who want to start or grow small businesses.”

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the Fiscal Year 2017 Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill and the Fiscal Year 2017 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill.

The Department of the Interior funding bill also includes a provision that will prohibit the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement from implementing the “Stream Protection Rule.” Originally meant to protect our streams from the effects of coal mining, the stream buffer zone rule was used as a tool to reduce mountaintop removal; however, Senator Alexander said, the Obama Administration has expanded the rule and has created the potential for costly, duplicative and burdensome impacts on mining companies throughout the country.

“This bill includes a provision that delays the administration’s proposed Stream Protection Rule for one year. I have supported earlier versions of this rule because it seeks to prevent mountaintop removal, which destroys the environment and hurts our economy. I continue to oppose mountaintop removal; however, the Obama administration has done what it often does and expanded the scope of the proposed rule to be something I cannot support,” Senator Alexander said.

$871 million for the Small Business Administration to assist small businesses and help grow the economy, including $157 million for small business loans. The bill also includes $186 million for providing help to families and small businesses affected by natural disasters and $12.3 million for veterans outreach programs.

The bill provides $347 million to the Treasury Department, including $123 million for the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence and its Office of Foreign Assets Control to help counter terrorism financing and administer economic and trade sanctions.

$11.2 billion for the IRS, including $290 million that must be dedicated to improving customer service, identity theft protection, and enhanced cybersecurity for taxpayer data. The bill also prohibits the IRS from paying bonuses, and using resources to target individuals based on ideology, or those who exercise their First Amendment rights.

The Senate Appropriations Committee today approved the Fiscal Year 2017 Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, which funds the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and other agencies, by a vote of 16 to 14.

The legislation includes the following priorities he said are important to Tennessee:

Funding for Tennessee’s 12 national parks, including the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, seven national wildlife refuges, and the Cherokee National Forest. The bill also continues funding for the new Manhattan Project National Historical Park.

$1.35 million to protect the Karst Forest at Grassy Cove in Cumberland County. This project, which is funded through the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Legacy grant program, will protect another 1,000 acres on Bear Den and Brady Mountain by adding them to the Cumberland Trail State Park.

$53.75 million for the operation of the National Fish Hatchery System, which includes Tennessee’s national fish hatcheries in Erwin, Tenn. and Celina, Tenn.

A provision that prohibits the EPA from implementing the Waters of the United States rule, which redefines what qualifies as a “navigable” waterway subject to the Clean Water Act. Senator Alexander said, “The Obama administration’s penchant for burdensome regulations has gone so far the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are even trying to regulate farmers’ mud puddles.”

A provision that will prohibit the Office of Surface Mining from finalizing the Stream Protection Rule for one year.

The committee also approved the Fiscal Year 2017 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Bill, which funds the Department of Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service, the Small Business Administration and other general government agencies, by a vote of 30 to 0.

Aiken Standard

June 16, 2016

Public comments and suggestions are currently being accepted by the U.S. Department of Energy Savannah River Site, or SRS, for a proposed project aimed at shoring up an old coal ash basin.

The site used coal to provide site electricity in the past, and the basins are full of by-products from those processes. The site now relies heavily on energy generated from the Ameresco biomass facility.

The proposal includes three courses of action with one highlighted as the Energy Department’s preferred course. The bulletin includes a so-called no-action option that lays out consequences of not moving forward with the project.

The preferred course suggests the ash be removed and compiled while protective covers are put into place. The ash would then be returned and would remain contained from the environment. The environmental isolation project aims to keep contaminants from seeping into groundwater or posing a threat to future industrial workers in the area.

The bulletin is a result of the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, or CERCLA. The law requires a 30-day period for open comments from the public, which would include official statements from the Citizens Advisory Board, or CAB.

CAB provides the Environmental Management program with the DOE with advice, information and recommendations on issues affecting environmental management. However, the next CAB meeting isn’t until July 25, after the comment period closes. There are no requirements that the periods of comment be open concurrently with CAB meetings, but extensions can be requested.

Any member of the public can request an extension, not just CAB members or officials. In order to have an extension approved, though, substantial need would need to be established. The bulletin can be found in either the Gregg-Graniteville Library at USC Aiken, the Thomas Cooper Library at USC in Columbia or online. The comment period will be open from June 24 to July 24.

Thomas Gardiner is the SRS beat reporter for the Aiken Standard.

Las Cruces Sun –News

June 17, 2016

SANTA FE — The federal government has cited the Los Alamos National Laboratory for several electrical safety violations, including a 2015 incident that left one person with serious injuries.

In a preliminary violation notice sent to managers of the New Mexico lab, the National Nuclear Security Administration addressed issues with LANL's electrical safety program, including an explosion that severely burned a worker in May 2015.

The private contractor that runs the lab, Los Alamos National Security LLC, was docked $7.2 million for that accident through a reduction in the group's annual performance-based "award fee."

The 2015 award fee for LANS could have been as much as $61.7 million, but the actual award was $45 million. The amount was also reduced for a radioactive leak at a Nevada site run by the Los Alamos lab.

Undersecretary of Nuclear Security Frank Klotz told Lab Director Charles McMillan in a June 8 letter that DOE would not impose civil penalties for the electrical accident since the lab's award has already been reduced.

Klotz noted in his letter that the government pointed out safety issues last December, the same time it told LANS that it would not renew its contract to operate the lab.

The lab's violations were in areas like hazard assessment, protective gear and training. Klotz acknowledged that the lab has taken corrective measures, but said management attention will still be necessary to prevent the violations from recurring.

Lab spokesman Kevin Roark said safety is a key concern for lab operators, who are taking steps to correct 47 issues that came to light after last year's explosion.

"The laboratory has a deep interest in ensuring that all work is accomplished safely, regardless of location, program or organization," he said. "Nothing is more important than the safety of the laboratory's workforce."

MagicValley.com

June 19, 2016

When U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz visited Idaho National Laboratory earlier this week, he expressed frustration over his department’s inability to send nuclear fuel to the lab for research.

He said preventing entry of the fuel could impact the lab’s future research capabilities, and affect the country’s ability to meet international research agreements. “We simply will not be able to accomplish our goals, to put it bluntly,” he said.

Moniz did not directly address the 1995 Settlement Agreement in his remarks. The document regulates federal nuclear fuel and radioactive waste cleanup operations in Idaho. It is the reason Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden has been able to prevent entry of the spent fuel shipments, as a consequence for the U.S. Department of Energy not meeting a major waste cleanup requirement.

But the secretary’s comments nevertheless brought renewed attention to a long-simmering debate in Idaho: After more than 20 years, does the landmark agreement between the state and federal government need to be renegotiated? Should it better reflect today’s nuclear research and cleanup realities, while still holding DOE accountable for past actions?

Many officials and experts say yes. Updating the agreement would allow INL to carry out its nuclear energy research mission independently of DOE cleanup operations on the desert site. It might move certain radioactive waste cleanup deadlines, to make them more realistic. And it could help to ensure a new type of modular nuclear reactor is built in eastern Idaho.

But others argue that the document — signed by Idaho, DOE and the U.S. Navy, and settling a lawsuit filed by the state — should remain as it is. Renegotiation could only weaken Idaho’s power to regulate DOE, a notoriously untrustworthy agency, they argue. Other states with federal nuclear research and cleanup operations can only wish they had similar sway over the feds’ actions, they say.

The Post Register this week gathered a wide range of opinions on the future of the 1995 Settlement Agreement, and whether there might soon be a serious effort to renegotiate it. Here is what they had to say:

Lawrence Wasden, attorney general

In an emailed response to questions via a spokesman, Wasden said he “recognizes that there may be certain aspects of the 1995 Settlement Agreement that may be ripe for renegotiating, or tweaking.”

He said he has shown a willingness to make adjustments to the agreement in the past, including a memorandum of understanding with DOE in 2011 and an addendum with the Navy in 2008.

But Wasden said disconnecting the DOE’s cleanup and lab functions — a major undertaking that several state and federal officials have called for — would “undermine the purpose of the agreement,” and “is not an option.”

The agreement, as it stands currently, “provides the only leverage — language allowing the state to preclude shipments of spent fuel — to keep the DOE on track,” Wasden said.

He added there have yet to be any “formal overtures” from the DOE to his office to begin a renegotiation of the agreement.

C.L. “Butch” Otter, governor

The governor disagrees with Wasden on whether to let spent fuel shipments into INL, though he has been publicly quiet about it. A waiver to allow spent fuel in regardless of DOE missing cleanup deadlines requires approval from both Otter and Wasden — and Wasden has thus far refused to sign.

But Otter is not in favor of renegotiating the Settlement Agreement, his spokesman Jon Hanian said.

In an emailed statement, Hanian said the governor “remains committed to the ongoing mission at the INL which includes the need to have access to limited amounts of spent fuel for research.”

He noted that the 2011 memorandum of understanding between the state and DOE already allows for the limited research quantities of commercial spent nuclear fuel to be sent to the lab, assuming the waiver is signed.

“Therefore we do not believe there is a need to renegotiate the landmark agreement,” Hanian said. “Governor Otter views the ability of the lab to access those limited quantities of spent fuel as not only important for our national security but also the future of the lab itself.”

Cecil Andrus, former governor

Andrus, who hammered out the agreement with another former Idaho governor, Phil Batt, has made it clear for years that he thinks the Settlement Agreement should stay as is.

Changing it would only weaken the state’s power, he said.

“The ‘95 Agreement is the only vehicle in existence to force (DOE) to put some of their money and effort into the cleanup,” he said in an interview this week. Andrus said the department’s top priority should be ensuring 900,000 gallons of liquid radioactive waste is cleaned up as quickly as possible.

The agreement, he said, “is all we have to protect the people, and to give that away is ludicrous.” He said the reason some at the lab and elsewhere would like to see the research mission separated from cleanup is simply to bring more spent fuel, or “waste,” into Idaho.

“Doggonit, I don’t have an axe to grind at my age,” the 85-year-old said. “I just want a place that’s safe, secure and economically stable for my grandkids. We owe it to them.”

 “I do think that we need to take a fresh look at the 1995 Settlement Agreement,” Simpson said in an email via a spokeswoman. “I have been disappointed that the INL continues to risk losing millions of dollars worth of research because of DOE’s inability to negotiate with the State of Idaho on bringing small quantities of spent fuel into the state.”

Simpson noted that DOE has changed its ways since the 1990s. It has been “working diligently” on figuring out how to get the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit operational, he said, and has improved communications with state officials on cleanup progress.

“I think a review of the Settlement Agreement would actually reveal that the DOE has been very successful in achieving the majority of their commitments to the state of Idaho, and updating the agreement would also allow for some flexibility to prevent the INL from losing out on opportunities due to challenges outside their control,” Simpson said.

Bart Davis, Idaho Senate majority leader

Davis said he is “supportive of a conversation” that leads toward renegotiating the agreement. He said the conversation has already begun, to a limited extent.

“This is a document that is now more than 20 years of age,” he said in an interview. “Even the best minds at the time, which were great minds, could not foresee everything that has happened in the last 20-plus years.”

John Grossenbacher, former INL Director Grossenbacher left the lab last year, and is now co-chairman of Otter’s Leadership in Nuclear Energy Commission. Before leaving INL, as the two spent fuel shipments continued to be banned, he advocated for de-linking the lab’s research work from its cleanup operations under the Settlement Agreement.

In an interview Friday, he said the Settlement Agreement was “extraordinarily important,” and has been effective in giving the state leverage over the federal government regarding cleanup.

But Grossenbacher said the agreement wasn’t designed to deal with the evolving nature of a national laboratory, such as its need to accept spent fuel shipments to conduct research. He said there is “fierce competition” among labs for a limited amount of federal nuclear research funding. When INL can’t accept nuclear fuel to conduct research, he said, “all it does is incentivize our competitors.”

A full renegotiation of the agreement isn’t “urgent,” Grossenbacher said. But he thinks an ongoing discussion evaluating possible changes to the document’s provisions and priorities is warranted.

Beatrice Brailsford, Snake River Alliance

Brailsford, the nuclear program director for the watchdog group, said her organization opposed the Settlement Agreement when it was first signed, because it was seen as too weak. “But over the years it has proven to be a fairly useful tool for Idaho,” she said.

“If we renegotiate the Settlement Agreement now, I think we would not be in a position to get near as good of a deal,” Brailsford said.

“The DOE is always looking for places to put nuclear waste,” she added. “So if we don’t have the agreement, we would be very vulnerable.”

Herb Bohrer, INL Citizens Advisory Board chairman

Bohrer said renegotiation of the Settlement Agreement isn’t needed. It would be unlikely to push DOE to conduct its cleanup operations any faster or differently, he said.

“The milestones that were set up were realistic at the time, and changing the agreement to reflect current technical challenges might make some people feel better, but it’s not going to change anything,” he said.

Dan Yurman, nuclear energy and policy expert

Yurman, who worked at INL for years and is now a nuclear blogger and consultant in Cleveland, said a renegotiation of the agreement will be necessary in coming years to account for a major project planned at the desert site — a small modular nuclear reactor.

The first-of-its-kind 600 megawatt NuScale small modular reactor, which won’t be completed until 2024 at the earliest, would generate waste — commercial spent nuclear fuel. Like other fuel from government sources stored at the site, the fuel will have nowhere to go, Yurman said, until an underground repository is sited and built decades from now.

As it is, the agreement doesn’t have any provisions for a commercial reactor that is generating waste. It also states that DOE must remove stored spent nuclear fuel from Idaho by 2035, though the new reactor would be operating, and generating spent fuel, well beyond that time.

If provisions to accommodate the NuScale plant aren’t added to the agreement, the project’s investors could look elsewhere. One destination could be Wisconsin, where state officials have recently been angling to land a small modular reactor project, Yurman said.

“Times change, and if you want the lab to have a future, and you want NuScale to be successful, maybe it’s time to take a second look” at the agreement, Yurman said.

Aiken Standard

June 15, 2016

Results for an environmental assessment filed by the Nuclear Waste Partnership with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2014 have been issued, regarding an exemption request for a shipment headed for New Mexico.

The materials at Savannah River Site, or SRS, are headed for interment at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, in New Mexico.

An environmental assessment is an official request to research potential health, environmental and exposure risks when special circumstances arise when handling nuclear materials. In this case, the request considered possible exemption for a shipment of nuclear equipment that slightly exceeded current regulations for shipping material.

According to the original request, the shipment consists of two “Standard Large Box 2” waste boxes. Each contains about half of a dismantled tank that was previously used in plutonium operations along with miscellaneous material used in the tear-down process.

The exemption request stated that the material could be taken out and reprocessed to fit into additional carriers and made to fit within those regulations. However, that would risk exposing SRS employees to high levels of radiation, which led to the request from the Nuclear Waste Partnership.

The destination in the desert has not yet reopened after a truck fire contributed to a full-site shutdown of the WIPP facility. Cleanup and testing has been ongoing since the incident, and the underground nuclear waste repository is expected to reopen later this year.

The assessment results, added to the federal register at the beginning of this month, found there would be no significant impact on the environment or health hazards associated with the shipment’s exemption. It was not immediately clear when the shipment is planned to leave for long-term storage at WIPP.

Thomas Gardiner is the SRS beat reporter for the Aiken Standard.

Oak Ridge Today

June 16, 2016

The Oak Ridge Amateur Radio Club demonstrated World War II-era military radio communications Friday and Saturday as part of the Secret City Festival. The group also hosted communications as part of the National Parks on the Air Program, celebrating the centennial of the National Park Service and the newly established Manhattan Project National Historical Park. A special event radio call sign, N4M, was issued for this event. The concurrence of these three events represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for local amateur radio operators.

Approximately 200 people visited the exhibit, which, along with live, on-the-air radio operations, also featured replays of historic broadcasts, such as news programs from World War II, including the announcement of the existence of Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project.

“With National Parks on the Air, the National Park Centennial and the recently established Manhattan Project National Historical Park, it seemed like a great opportunity to introduce people to the historical use of radios and to promote amateur radio as a hobby and as an invaluable emergency communications capability with a rich history of service to the community” said Garret Scott of ORARC, which organized the event.

More than 270 contacts were made across the county and the world, with voice or Morse code, as part of the National Parks on the Air program. Contact was made with stations on five continents, from Mexico to Morocco. Stations that made contact with the radio station at the festival will receive a specially designed QSL confirmation card hand-stamped with official National Park Service ink stamps commemorating the new Manhattan Project National Historical Park and National Park Service Centennial.

For a generation raised with cell phones and high-speed internet, radios may seem hopelessly antiquated, but Scott and his fellow operators are quick to point out the advantages of this long-standing form of communications in times of emergency.

“When cell phone networks are down or overwhelmed by emergencies, amateur radio operators will still be able to communicate,” he said.

ORARC meets the second Monday of each month in the Power Squadron Building at 707 Emory Valley Road in Oak Ridge, and visitors are welcome.

Oak Ridge Amateur Radio Club is an American Radio Relay League-affiliated club and the oldest affiliated club in the state of Tennessee.

For more information on ORARC, visit http://www.orarc.net/ and follow ORARC on Facebook.

Forbes

June 19, 2016

The Department of Energy quietly released a draft this month of a plan to double America’s nuclear power capacity, not only with the small modular reactors championed by Secretaries Ernest Moniz and Steven Chu, but also with advanced reactors that do not rely on water for cooling.

DOE’s “Draft Vision and Strategy for the Development and Deployment of Advanced Reactors” seems to have escaped media attention until now. It calls for two advanced reactor concepts to be licensed and ready for construction in the early 2030s as the first phase of a strategic deployment.

“Vision: By 2050, advanced reactors will provide a significant and growing component of the nuclear energy mix both domestically and globally,” according to the document, “due to their advantages in terms of improved safety, cost, performance, sustainability, and reduced proliferation risks.”

Not coincidentally, 2030 is when license extensions begin to expire for most of the nation’s current reactors. The U.S. has vowed to reduce its carbon emissions 32 percent by 2030, and it could be more challenging to maintain those cuts without a nuclear fleet, which provides 60 percent of the nation’s emissions-free electricity.

“I don’t think you can come up with a viable, clean electricity scenario without nuclear playing a role in that,” said Tanju Sofu, manager of the Engineering Analysis Department at Argonne National Laboratory’s Nuclear Engineering Division.

Some experts, like Berkeley Professor Daniel Kammen, believe the nation’s needs can be met with a combination of renewable energy and storage. DOE also forsees a massive expansion of renewable energy, Sofu said Friday, as he briefed participants in a “Physics of Renewable Energy” seminar hosted by Argonne, Fermilab, the APS Forum on Physics & Society, and the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago. By 2050, he said, renewable electricity production will grow from 200 TWh to 2,200.

But DOE also wants to maintain the share of electricity now provided by nuclear plants and to double capacity as demand grows.

To do that, DOE envisions another extension of licenses for existing reactors, enough small modular reactors (SMRs) to produce 700 TWh of electricity by 2050, and an array of advanced reactor concepts.

“Advanced reactors, those are beyond SMRs, those are beyond light-water reactors,” Sofu said. “Advanced reactors are not water-cooled reactors, except one, and they try to address issues associated with safety, sustainability, reliability, economics, and non-proliferation. That’s in order of how well they actually achieve those.”

The advanced reactor technologies favored by DOE include:

Sodium-Fast Reactors (SFRs)

High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors (HTGRs)

Lead or Lead-Bismuth Cooled Fast Reactors (LFRs)

Gas-Cooled Fast Reactors (GFRs)

Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs)

Super-Critical Water Cooled Reactors (SCWRs)

Asked if thorium reactors were included in the MSR category, Sofu said, “They could be.”

Most of those technologies will be safer than the light-water reactors in use today, Sofu said, some because of passive cooling designs that prevent a meltdown even without backup power. Some are more sustainable because they produce less noxious waste, and some are more reliable because of simplicity and ease of use.

But “economics is a big open question,” he warned. “The economic argument for advanced reactors in competition with light-water reactor technology cannot be made for advanced reactors at this point.”

Light-water reactors are already struggling to compete with cheap natural gas and renewables. Exelon announced plans earlier this month to close two plants in Illinois.

DOE intends to support the advanced reactor concepts financially, and it made an $82 million downpayment on that support on Thursday. The agency will grant developers increased access to experts at the national laboratories, stage demonstration projects, tackle technical risks, develop fuel pathways, lubricate financing and lower regulatory hurdles.

At a DOE workshop in Bethesda, Ma. in early June, developers of advanced reactors had asked for many of those concessions.

“DOE funding for industry is definitely needed, alongside funding for test facilities,” Rita Baranwal, director of technology development at Westinghouse Electric Co., said at the workshop, according to Bloomberg BNA. An engineer from GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy told DOE the current regulatory framework won’t accommodate advanced reactors.

DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy is expected to finalize the draft within the next year. In it, DOE also promises to develop a workforce to operate advanced reactors, principally by maintaining its Nuclear Energy University Program, but there’s some question whether that will be enough.

“Right now in the United States only about 29, 30 universities have nuclear engineering programs,” said Charles Ferguson, president of the Federation of American Scientists. “Back in the 1970s-1980s, it was a lot more than that.”

Universities develop programs based on student interest, he said, and student interest has been waning.

“Most of the workforce in the nuclear industry, they’re middle aged or older.”