NRC recommends issuing early site permit for Clinch River Nuclear Site
Oak Ridge Today | 4/8/2019
[ECA Note: In July 2018, ECA submitted comments to the NRC in support of issuing a final environmental impact statement for the Clinch River Nuclear Site. Read our comments here.]
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a final environmental impact statement, and the staff has recommended, based upon the environmental review, issuing an early site permit for the Clinch River Nuclear Site in west Oak Ridge, where two or more small modular nuclear reactors could be built.
The final environmental impact statement, or EIS, was issued by the NRC on April 3. A notice of the EIS and the staff’s recommendation were published in the Federal Register on Monday, April 8.
The 935-acre Clinch River Nuclear Site is located in Roane County along the Clinch River.
An application for the early site permit was submitted by the Tennessee Valley Authority in May 2016. A draft EIS was published last year, and in June, the NRC had public meetings in Kingston to discuss its draft conclusion that environmental impacts would be small enough to allow the early site permit to be issued.
BUDGET & APPROPRIATIONS
McConnell says he and Pelosi will launch talks on two-year budget caps deal
POLITICO | 4/9/2019
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said this afternoon that he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed today to begin negotiating a two-year deal to raise budget caps for fiscal years 2020 and 2021.
"We've agreed to put together, at the staff level, a group to begin discussing the possibility of reaching a two-year caps deal so we can move ahead hopefully with some kind of regular appropriations process," McConnell told reporters, noting that President Donald Trump also supported the idea in a meeting last week.
The majority leader said there is a "bipartisan desire" to avoid another stopgap spending bill and the $126 billion in automatic cuts set to go into effect on Oct. 1 if Congress fails to raise the budget caps.
"So I'm hoping this will be the beginning of a bipartisan agreement, which will be necessary in order to have an orderly appropriations process, not only this year, but next year as well," McConnell said.
House Democratic leaders are trying this week to pass a bill that would increase those spending limits. But they might forgo a passage vote amid pushback from progressive Democrats. Still, the rule setting up debate on that measure will help the House Appropriations Committee proceed in crafting fiscal 2020 spending bills with an overall limit of $1.3 trillion for defense and non-defense funding.
House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) reiterated this week that her spending panels expect to start marking up their fiscal 2020 bills when Congress returns from recess on April 29.
ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANUP
Demolition work to resume at Hanford facility following worker contamination
Tri-City Herald | 4/8/2019
Demolition of the Plutonium Finishing Plant at Hanford could restart Tuesday, more than 15 months after the tear down was halted because of an airborne spread of radioactive contamination.
Many changes have been made since December 2017 to make sure that work at the radioactively contaminated plant will be done safely as demolition resumes.
“There can be no repeats of releases of contamination outside posted radiological boundaries,” said Tom Teynor, Department of Energy project director for the plant.
In 2017, 42 workers inhaled or ingested small amounts of radioactive contamination from demolition of the plant. Several workers’ cars were contaminated with radioactive particles, including two that were driven home before the contamination was discovered.
Very small amounts of radioactive plutonium or americium were found to have spread from the plant for miles, with contamination found near the Columbia River and not far from public Highway 240.
ENVIRONMENTAL CLEANUP
NUCLEAR SAFETY
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