‘It’s never been off the table’: Key congressman reiterates interest in shipping nuke waste to Yucca
Mountain The Las Vegas Sun February 14, 2017 “I’m the nuclear waste guy, that’s what I do in Washington,” said Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., after taking a tour last week of the decommissioning process at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station near San
Diego.
Accompanied by his colleague, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., Shimkus said he was optimistic that progress could be made on
Capitol Hill to deal with stockpiles such as the 3.6 million pounds of spent fuel sitting next to the Pacific Ocean at San Onofre.
But getting it off the beach will take time and, literally, acts of
Congress.
“This is a multiple legislative process,” said Shimkus, who is the chairman of the House Energy
and Commerce Subcommittee for the Environment, which reviews nuclear sites as part of its responsibilities. >>Continue reading PNNL helps Hanford cleanup Tri-City Herald February 18, 2017 Cleaning up Hanford is no
easy task: it is one of the world’s largest and most complex environmental remediation projects. The nation’s top engineering firms are on the job and the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is helping.
Over the course of five decades, PNNL has developed
a deep understanding of the site and its many challenges — and we have consistently delivered innovative solutions that support the cleanup mission, while protecting workers and our beautiful Columbia River.
One of the biggest challenges involves treating and disposing of 56 million gallons of
radioactive waste remaining from the nation’s nuclear weapons production mission, stored in underground tanks. >>Continue reading Savannah River National Lab opens Richland office
Tri-City Herald February 16, 2017 The Savannah River National Laboratory has opened an office in Richland as a base for its Hanford work.
The office for the South Carolina lab will complement work done at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Department of Energy’s lab based in Richland,
officials said.
PNNL is operated by Battelle, and the Savannah River lab is operated by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, a team of Fluor Corp., Stoller Newport News Nuclear and Honeywell International. >>Continue readingPiketon DOE comment period
extended Chillicothe Gazette February 15, 2017 PIKETON - The U.S. Department of Energy has extended the public comment period on a draft environmental assessment related to potential environmental impacts of proposed property transfers at its site in Piketon through April
19.
DOE is proposing the release of multiple parcels of land for future use from the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant site. Land suitable for economic development could be transferred to other entities for various uses as DOE continues its cleanup mission at the site. DOE has
prepared a Draft Environmental Assessment to analyze the potential environmental consequences associated with such transfers of land and to obtain public input on the proposal. >>Continue readingProjected Costs of U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2017 to 2026 Congressional Budget Office February 14, 2017 CBO estimates that existing plans for U.S. nuclear forces would cost $400 billion over the 2017–2026 period—$52 billion more than CBO’s 2015 estimate for the 2015–2024 period, largely because modernization programs will be ramping up. >>Continue reading NuScale Reactor Nears One Milestone, With More to Follow IEEE Spectrum February 10, 2017 The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is expected to decide by mid-March whether to accept an application with no fewer than 12,000 pages of technical details that support a design for a small modular nuclear
reactor design from NuScale Power.
As Winston Churchill might say, the milestone may not mark the beginning of the end but, just maybe, the end of the beginning.
That’s because the NRC’s act of accepting the application does nothing more than trigger a license certification review for the reactor. (The modular reactor might one day generate electric power for small cities, large hospitals, industrial facilities, and even remote water desalination plants.)
>>Continue reading Oak Ridge National Lab Neutronic and Fuel Cycle Analysis of the Transatomic Power Molten Salt Reactor Next Big
Future February 15, 2017 Transatomic Power Corporation (TAP) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have presented the results from the first phase of collaboration to provide neutronic and fuel
cycle analysis of the TAP core design through the Department of Energy Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear, Nuclear Energy Voucher program.
The TAP design is a molten salt reactor using movable moderator rods to shift the neutron spectrum in the core from mostly epithermal at beginning of life to thermal at end of life. >>Continue reading |
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| February 2017 | | 21 | Third Way's 2017 Advanced Nuclear Summit and Showcase Washington, DC |
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| February 2017 | | 23 | Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Idaho National
Laboratory Idaho Falls, ID |
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| February 2017 | | 23-24 | ECA
Event: The New Administration: Securing
Progress Washington, DC |
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| February/March
2017 | | 28-2 | Nuclear Deterrence Summit Washington, DC |
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| March 2017 | | 1-2 | Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board,
Hanford Richland, WA
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| March 2017 | | 2 | Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Portsmouth Pikeon, OH |
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| March 2017 | | 5-9 | Waste Management Conference Phoenix, AZ |
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| March 2017 | | 7 | Environmental Management Business Opportunities Forum Phoenix, AZ |
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| September 2017 | | 12-14 | 2017 National Cleanup Workshop Alexandria, VA |
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Find the most recent ECA Bulletin here |
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