Work begins to empty another Hanford tank
Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald
January 3, 2012

 

Hanford workers have begun emptying another underground tank of radioactive waste at Hanford, making this the first time in more than a decade that two tanks are being emptied simultaneously, according to Hanford officials.

 

Pumping on Tank C-112 began last week, helping end the year on a positive note, despite Hanford workers not completing waste retrieval for any tank in 2011. A tank has not been emptied to regulatory standards since spring 2007.

 

However, significant progress has been made to remove waste, said Chris Kemp, deputy project director for the Department of Energy. While getting the last of the waste out that is required to declare a tank empty to regulatory standards has been difficult, almost 2 million gallons of radioactive waste have been retrieved from single-shell tanks and transferred to newer, double-shell tanks to await treatment since 2002.

 

 

DOE plan commits to safety at vit plant
Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald
December 30, 2011

 

The Department of Energy will look at better managing its Hanford vitrification plant contract to balance the demands of cost and schedule with a strong safety culture, according to a plan released this week.

 

In addition, Energy Secretary Steven Chu could visit Hanford to make clear his safety culture expectations, the plan said.

DOE laid out the plan, which goes beyond Hanford to include other DOE sites, to implement Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board's June recommendations on improving safety culture at the vitrification plant. The plan also looked at underlying causes that led to the defense board's concern.

 

 

Tritium program reaches goal ahead of schedule
The Times and Democrat
January 2, 2012

 

AIKEN - A four-month project to accelerate production commitments has been successfully completed at the Savannah River Site.

 

The National Nuclear Security Administration Savannah River Site Office and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions Tritium Programs were recently recognized for the effort that quadrupled the facility's standard production output.

 

The Reservoir Acceleration Project called for all tritium production and shipping commitments through February 2012 to be completed by the end of November 2011.

 

 

Nuclear fuel storage to be commissioned in East Siberia
Vladimir Koretsky and Oleg Nekhai, The Voice of Russia
December 26, 2011

 

A newly constructed storage near Krasnoyarsk, East Siberia, is ready to take the first consignment of spent nuclear fuel in January. Russia spent 16 billion rubles or 500 million U.S. dollars to construct the facility, which has been commissioned recently.

 

The dry storage complex is at the Chemical Mining Plant in Zheleznogorsk. At present, it is developing a full technological complex for the closure of the entire nuclear fuel cycle on the basis of innovative technology, says a spokesman for the facility, Boris Ryzhenkov.

 

 

 

UK taxpayers face extra £250m bill for nuclear waste clean-up
Terry Macalister, The Guardian
December 25, 2011

 

The taxpayer will have to stump up almost £250m more to bail out the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in the next financial year after falling asset sales and rising expenditure cut its income by 17.5%.

 

The shortfall is revealed in the NDA's just-published draft business plan for 2012-15, which shows the impact of being unable to offload land to the private sector for new nuclear plants and the end of the contracts to supply Japan with mixed-oxide fuel.

 

The setback will give more ammunition to environmentalists and other critics who argue that the wider nuclear industry is infamous for cost overruns and calls on public funds.

 

 

Feds on the hunt for possible Yucca Mountain replacement
Associated Press
December 18, 2011

 

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - The likely death of a planned nuclear waste site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain has left federal agencies looking for a possible replacement. A national lab working for the U.S. Department of Energy is now eying granite deposits stretching from Georgia to Maine as potential sites, along with big sections of Minnesota and Wisconsin where that rock is prevalent.

 

Three decades after the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act said the federal government would handle disposal of high-level radioactive waste, the United States still has no agreed-upon solution for where and how to dispose of about 70,000 metric tons of it. About 10 percent is from the military's nuclear weapons programs; most of the rest is piling up at commercial reactor sites around the country.

 

Amendments to the law in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain as the only potential site to be studied. But with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., vehemently opposed, Barack Obama's administration last year directed the Energy Department to withdraw its license application for the site, which was filed with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

 

 

EM Gains Insight from Germany on Salt-Based Repositories
EM Program Update
December 14, 2011

 

KARLSRUHE and PEINE, Germany - EM officials recently took part in workshops in Germany to benefit from the exchange of research and experience operating salt-based repositories for radioactive waste.

 

The workshops came after a memorandum of understanding EM's Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) and other officials in the U.S. signed with Germany's Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) to share experience and knowledge on radioactive waste disposal matters. The parties signed the memorandum in September 2011.

 

The repository in the U.S., known as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), is near Carlsbad, N.M. WIPP is a DOE facility designed to safely isolate defense-related transuranic waste in rooms mined out of an ancient salt formation 2,150 feet below the surface. Germany operated two salt-based repositories for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste disposal.