ECA Update: August 23, 2011
Published: Tue, 08/23/11
All Deliberate Speed for Nuclear Reforms?
Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times Green Blog August 19, 2011 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is moving forward on recommendations made by an internal task force studying the Fukushima Daiichi triple meltdown. But it is not moving quite the way its chairman wanted.
The task force prepared its report in 90 days and presented it on July 12. The chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, said his five-member commission should decide within the 90 days following that date how to handle the recommendations. But three of his fellow commissioners disagreed.
On Friday, the commission announced a revised plan. The most sweeping recommendation of the task force, to rewrite the commission's rules to integrate various categories of requirements and recommendations into a single coherent structure, will have to wait. The commission's staff will study that recommendation and produce a report within 18 months that provides options on how to achieve that, under an agreement of the five commissioners.
Oak Ridge DOE operations reorganization gets green light Darrell Richardson, The Oak Ridger August 18, 2011 OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- A proposed reorganization of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Office has been approved by the U.S. energy secretary, according to DOE-ORO's acting office manager Paul Golan.
The next step is union negotations.
Noting that U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu green-lighted the reorganization proposal Aug. 15, Golan says the union has been notified that "the package is approved and we will sit down with them when they come up with their proposal ... and we will follow the contract we have with them."
Department Of Energy Completes Five Recovery Act Projects at Oak Ridge Site DOE Press Release August 18, 2011 OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Environmental Management (EM) program recently completed five projects at the Oak Ridge site funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The projects included the expansion of two landfills at the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR). The Sanitary Landfill, a designated area for non-hazardous waste, was expanded by 385,000 cubic yards (25,600 dump truck loads). The Environmental Management Waste Management Facility (EMWMF), ORR's mixed waste disposal facility, added another disposal cell with a capacity of 465,000 cubic yards (31,000 dump truck loads). The expansions allow the EM program to locally dispose of waste generated by environmental cleanup initiatives, eliminating costly shipping expenses.
Independent review of vit plant safety culture under way Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald August 23, 2011 An independent review of the nuclear safety culture at the Hanford vitrification plant is under way, as promised by the Department of Energy in late June.
DOE said then that it would join its contractor Bechtel National to sponsor an independent, executive-level assessment by a group of experts in the nuclear industry with experience in Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspections or evaluations by the industry group the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations.
It was one of the actions DOE announced it would take after a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board investigation concluded in June that the technical safety culture at the plant was in need of "prompt, major improvement."
The plant is being built to turn up to 56 million gallons of radioactive waste from the past production of plutonium at Hanford into a stable glass form for disposal. Questions have been raised about whether scientists and engineers feel free to raise concerns about how safely and efficiently the plant will operate and how DOE and Bechtel address those concerns.
More Hanford Layoffs Could Lead to Big Impact on the Tri-Cities John Collett, KEPRTV.com August 19, 2011 KEPR is digging deeper into the news that 2,500 workers could be laid off at Hanford by mid-fall. A second round of layoffs was first reported by the Tri-City Herald on Thursday, and that's coming on top of the layoffs already expected.
With news of layoffs, hundreds are scrambling to find jobs. That's why workers like Roy Plunkett came to the Hanford job fair on Friday out at Pasco. He's work at the site since 1987.
"You know it's coming with the stimulus money, you knew it was going away everybody knew the cuts were going to happen," said Plunkett. "So yeah we kind of expected it, hopefully it doesn't affect you, or it doesn't get quite as tough, but this time it has."
A 13.8-pound shipment of highly enriched uranium spent fuel from South Africa was brought into the U.S. by the National Nuclear Security Administration and sent to Savannah River Site for safe storage.
The material, which arrived in Charleston, S.C., on Tuesday, will be added to about 15,000 spent fuel assemblies now stored at the site's heavily fortified L Area.
The material is from both foreign and domestic research reactors and contains highly enriched uranium - a critical ingredient of nuclear weapons.
The government program to recover and guard U.S.-origin nuclear materials is part of an effort to prevent its exploitation by terrorists.
So far, the NNSA has worked with international partners to remove 1,249 kilograms of U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium from sites around the world.
Matheson fears high-level N-waste could head to Utah Thomas Burr, The Salt Lake Tribune August 17, 2011 The plan to store thousands of tons of nuclear waste in Utah's west desert could again surface after a federal panel suggested finding a temporary home for the spent fuel now piling up at reactors across the country.
The Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future says in a draft report that a near-term solution for disposing of the waste would be to ship it to one or more temporary holding sites in the United States while Congress wrestles with finding a final burial site.
The only site currently licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for such use lies 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Since Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, the U.S. has held seven presidential elections, launched about 130 space shuttle missions, and successfully landed robotic rovers on Mars. But Washington still lacks a viable long-term plan for the radioactive waste produced by its commercial nuclear reactors. That inaction is costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
The federal government's paralysis on nuclear waste is particularly disturbing given the March 11 disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan, which has been made far more complicated by the large amount of spent fuel stored inside the reactor buildings.
Last month, a presidential panel, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, concluded that existing policy toward nuclear waste is "all but completely broken down."
Fortunately, the U.S. has an easy - and obvious - option for interim waste storage: Put it on land already owned by the federal government.
Panel: Nuclear waste site needs local support - but where? Battle Creek Enquirer Editorial Board August 18, 2011 With Yucca Mountain now politically radioactive, what should the nation do with its nuclear waste?
A 15-member federal commission recently issued its interim report on creating a permanent dump site. It's primary suggestion: Generate local support for such a facility.
Where? What community is going to open its arms to spent reactor fuel that will take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to decay? It is the ultimate NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) issue.
Utilize Yucca Mountain and save money August 17, 2011 The Washington Times, Pat Hickey and Tyrus. W. Cobb Through numerous Democratic and Republican administrations, the preparation of Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the nation's designated nuclear repository moved forward toward completion, culminating in the final Department of Energy (DOE) submission of a license application in 2008 to open the site. The state of Nevada, which had consistently opposed the selection of Yucca, vowed to continue its opposition to the site.
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