Crews at the DOE Idaho Site Complete Transuranic Waste Retrieval Standard Journal March 2, 2017 IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — For
more than 20 years, a gigantic building — covering seven acres of land at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho site — has been the temporary storage location for hundreds of thousands of containers filled with radioactively contaminated materials.
About the size of an aircraft carrier, the Transuranic Storage Area-Retrieval Enclosure (TSA-RE) covered an earthen berm that protected more than 50,000 cubic meters of metal drums and boxes containing transuranic waste. In February, the final box was safely retrieved, bringing an end
to retrieval activities at the Department’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project, located 50 miles west of Idaho Falls, Idaho. An additional 15,000 cubic meters of waste had been stored in nearby storage modules and is included in the project.
Retrieval of the above-ground stored transuranic waste was scheduled to be completed by this May. But an experienced workforce, innovated tools, and a safe work mindset enabled the project to finish ahead of schedule.
>>Continue readingHanford project to keep uranium out of Columbia River Tri-City Herald February 28, 2017 Work to keep uranium from leaching into the Columbia River at Hanford just north of Richland is being expanded after a test showed good
results.
Wells are being drilled now to inject a solution into the ground to bind the uranium
contaminating the ground to the soil and prevent it from migrating into the groundwater and then into the river.
Much of the
soil contaminated with uranium at the Hanford 300 Area has been dug up down to 15 feet, removing the majority of the contamination that could reach the groundwater.
Transporters gear up for resumption of WIPP shipments Current-Argus March 1, 2017 A nonstop road trip from the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to Carlsbad should take around 20 hours to complete.
If you're transporting radioactive waste from there to Carlsbad's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, though, expect an extra
16 hours or so.
Truck drivers Glenn Little and Richard Perez are gearing up for the trip, and for trips to and from other waste generator sites around the country, as WIPP prepares to receive its first shipment of waste next month.
The shipment will be the first received at the
nuclear waste repository in more than three years after the facility was closed in 2014 after an underground fire and radiological release. >>Continue
readingEnergy Department issues scathing evaluation of MOX
project The Washington Post February 28, 2017 The Energy Department has delivered a blunt assessment of the work done by one of the world’s biggest companies in the nuclear business:
“Unsatisfactory.”
For a decade, CB&I Areva MOX Services has been under contract with the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration to design, build and operate a facility near the Savannah River in Aiken,
S.C.
Yet the project — designed to convert weapons-grade plutonium and uranium into a mixed oxide fuel for commercial nuclear power plants — has been running far beyond budget and way behind schedule. Estimates now put the price tag at $17
billion.
On Dec. 5, the NNSA completed a scathing evaluation that branded several of the company’s claims about the state of the project “misleading” and “inaccurate.” The agency said CB&I Areva’s claims that the project is 70 percent complete “are patently false.” A separate September
2016 Energy Department report said construction was only 28 percent complete. >>Continue readingUS consortium calls for public-private SMR support World Nuclear News February
20, 2017 A consortium of small modular reactor (SMR)
developers and customers has issued a policy statement setting out the benefits of public-private partnerships to facilitate the commercialization and export of US-designed SMRs.
The SMR Start consortium, which was launched in January 2016, said SMRs were a "strategic option" for the US to meet the need for new generation capacity from the mid-2020s onward.
Commercialization of new nuclear technologies involves large upfront first-of-a-kind costs and a relatively long time frame to complete licensing and design activities, the consortium said. Investment of such amounts, over the time frames required and without contractual commitments, presented a "unique challenge" to companies, the consortium said. >>Continue reading Nuclear Energy Startup Transatomic Backtracks on Key Promises MIT Technology Review February
24, 2017 Nuclear energy startup Transatomic Power has backed away from bold claims for its advanced reactor technology after an informal review by MIT professors highlighted serious errors in the company’s calculations, MIT Technology Review has learned.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company, founded in 2011 by a pair of MIT students in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, asserted that its molten-salt reactor design could run on spent nuclear fuel from conventional reactors and generate energy far more efficiently than they do. In a white paper published in March 2014, the
company proclaimed its reactor “can generate up to 75 times more electricity per ton of mined uranium than a light-water reactor.” >>Continue readingTerrestrial Energy USA Advances Loan Guarantee with the US Department of Energy Yahoo Finance February
28, 2017 NEW YORK, NEW YORK--Terrestrial Energy USA announces that the Department of Energy's (USDOE) Loan Program Office has finished its initial completeness review of Terrestrial Energy USA's Part II application submitted under the Federal Loan Guarantees for Advanced Nuclear Energy Projects Solicitation No. DE-SOL-0007791, and Terrestrial Energy USA is now proceeding to ongoing due
diligence with the Loan Program Office.
Terrestrial Energy USA applied for a loan guarantee under the USDOE program established under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, as amended, to support the
financing of projects located in the United States that employ innovative advanced energy technologies, and create skilled American industrial jobs. Terrestrial Energy USA's application for a loan guarantee of up to $1.2 billion is to support the financing of a project to license, construct and commission the first Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR™) in the United States. The Idaho National Laboratory has been identified as a leading candidate site for the first 400 megawatts-thermal commercial
IMSR™. Several other candidate sites have been identified and are under evaluation. >>Continue reading |
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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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| April
2017 | | 5 | House Nuclear Cleanup Caucus Event |
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| June
2017 | | 7 | House Nuclear Cleanup Caucus Event |
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| August 2017 | | 16-17 | INVITATION ONLY
ECA Peer Exchange: Implementation of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park Richland, WA
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| September 2017 | | 12-14 | 2017 National Cleanup Workshop Alexandria, VA |
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| September 2017 | | 13 | House Nuclear Cleanup Caucus
Event Washington,
DC
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Find the most recent ECA Bulletin here |
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