ECA Update: February 16, 2012
Published: Thu, 02/16/12
DOE forms group to devise new nuclear waste plan Steve Tetreault, Stephens Washington Bureau February 15, 2012 WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Steven Chu is moving forward on a new strategy for managing nuclear waste in the wake of a study that recommended changes in how a disposal site might be developed.
Chu announced in Georgia on Wednesday that he has formed an internal DOE group to assess the recommendations of the nuclear waste commission "and develop a strategy that builds on its excellent work."
The Energy Department was directed to provide Congress with a nuclear waste plan within six months after the termination of the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and the release of the commission's report in January.
"I am committed to working with Congress to consider the commission's proposals and develop a long-term strategy for the disposal of nuclear waste," Chu's remarks said.
Chu Visits Site of America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Three Decades Energy.gov February 15, 2012 WASHINGTON, D.C. - Just two days after the Department of Energy requested more than $770 million for nuclear energy in 2013, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu visited the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Georgia and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to highlight the steps the Obama Administration is taking to restart America's nuclear industry as part of an all-of-the-above American energy strategy.
During remarks to more than 500 workers at the Vogtle nuclear power plant, Secretary Chu highlighted the wide variety of steps the Obama Administration has taken to help restart America's nuclear energy industry. He also announced up to $10 million in new funding for innovative research and development in advanced nuclear reactor and fuel cycle technologies and highlighted some of the steps that the Department is taking to implement the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.
After visiting Vogtle, the site of the first of the next generation of passively safe nuclear reactors to be built in the United States, Secretary Chu also toured the Nuclear Modeling and Simulation Energy Innovation Hub at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Established in 2010, the hub harnesses the skills of the nation's brightest scientists and engineers and the National Laboratories' supercomputing capabilities to improve nuclear reactor design, engineering and efficiency.
The country has repeatedly tried and failed to find a burial spot for spent nuclear fuel rods that will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. The rods are currently stored in cooling pools or dry casks at nuclear power plants across the country. But that is becoming politically untenable. Nine states have already banned the construction of new reactors until the waste problem is solved or substantial progress made.
Now a blue ribbon commission appointed by President Obama has come up with some sensible recommendations for what is primarily a political problem. Instead of trying to dictate a final storage site from Washington, it recommends a "consent-based approach" in which federal officials would identify areas with suitable geology and, if necessary, offer financial incentives to encourage states and localities to volunteer to accept the waste.
In 1987, Congress designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the sole site for a repository. Nevada wasn't the only state with potentially suitable geology, but it had less clout in Congress. For two decades, the state government managed to slow the project with legal and technical objections, and once Senator Harry Reid of Nevada became the majority leader, he found ways to stop it indefinitely. During the 2008 campaign, President Obama sought to curry favor with Nevada voters by pledging to shut down the Yucca project altogether.
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DOE clarifies local control of vit plant at Hanford Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald February 16, 2012 The Department of Energy has moved to clarify who is in charge of the Hanford vitrification plant nearly two years after more oversight of the $12.2 billion project was moved from Hanford to Washington, D.C.
The federal project director for the vit plant reports to Scott Samuelson, manager of the DOE Hanford Office of River Protection, despite frequent communication with Washington, D.C., officials, according to a staff memo from Samuelson.
Samuelson will be accountable for all aspects of Office of River Protection work, the memo said. The office, based in Richland, oversees the tank farms, where 56 million gallons of radioactive waste are stored, and the vitrification plant being built to treat much of the waste.
"It's encouraging," said Jessica Gleason of the staff of Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.
Japanese delegation in Tri-Cities this week to talk radioactive contamination cleanup Tri-City Herald February 16, 2012 A delegation from Japan is in the Tri-Cities this week to meet with experts in the cleanup of radioactive contamination.
This is the second workshop to share information between Department of Energy experts and Japanese experts after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which spread radioactive contamination that could require decades to clean up. The first workshop was held in October in Tokyo. "The Energy Department's environmental cleanup mission is one of the world's largest programs of its type and a key element of the program's success to date has been a sharing of practices and cooperation with our international partners," said Lindsey Geisler, a DOE spokeswoman in Washington, D.C.
Committee suggests simplifying jargon-filled Savannah River Site documents Rob Pavey, The Augusta Chronicle February 14, 2012 Politicians might not always speak in plain language, but the federal government is supposed to, according to a committee that wants Savannah River Site to do a better job.
There's even a law that requires public documents be simple enough for the masses, wrote members of the SRS Citizens Advisory Board, in a request to Energy Department site manager David Moody.
Citing the Plain Writing Act of 2010, the board said many of the site's complex and acronym-studded public documents fall short of the Federal Plain Language Guidelines.
Those guidelines require that agencies prepare documents so that "users can find what they need, understand what they find; and use what they find to meet their needs."
The advisory board also suggested that SRS take steps to improve its online presence by updating its Web sites.
Manager of Japan nuclear plant struck by earthquake to speak at Carlsbad summit Associated Press February 13, 2012 CARLABAD, N.M. -- A nuclear fuel manager with the Japanese nuclear plant struck by an earthquake sparking one of the world's worst nuclear disasters is scheduled to speak in Carlsbad.
The Carlsbad Current-Argus reports that Takeshi Ota (tah-KEE'-she OH'-tah) of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station will make a presentation at the National Nuclear Fuel Cycle Summit slated for April.
Ota was assigned to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station when a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan last March. The natural disaster triggered a nuclear meltdown at the power station.
Ota will present an overview of the accident at Fukushima, the process for achieving stabilization, and the mid- and long-term roadmap toward decommissioning.
The Carlsbad Department of Development is hosting the summit.
IITATE, Japan -- As 500 workers in hazmat suits and respirator masks fanned out to decontaminate this village 20 miles from the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, their confusion was apparent.
"Dig five centimeters or 10 centimeters deep here?" a site supervisor asked his colleagues, pointing to a patch of radioactive topsoil to be removed. He then gestured across the village square toward the community center. "Isn't that going to be demolished? Shall we decontaminate it or not?"
A day laborer wiping down windows at an abandoned school nearby shrugged at the work crew's haphazard approach. "We are all amateurs," he said. "Nobody really knows how to clean up radiation."
Nobody may really know how. But that has not deterred the Japanese government from starting to hand out an initial $13 billion in contracts meant to rehabilitate the more than 8,000-square-mile region most exposed to radioactive fallout -- an area nearly as big as New Jersey. The main goal is to enable the return of many of the 80,000 or more displaced people nearest the site of last March's nuclear disaster, including the 6,500 villagers of Iitate.
From LOC ashes, Oak Ridge group seeks to assume role as both friend, foe Leean Tupper, The Oak Ridger February 16, 2012 OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- Members of the now defunct Local Oversight Committee's Citizens Advisory Panel will meet Thursday to discuss organizing a new citizens' group to focus on environmental issues related to the Department of Energy.
"The purpose is going to run along the same lines as the former LOC and the CAP did. We're very broad-based in our thinking and our application of our ideas," said former CAP chairman Norman Mulvenon, who will lead Thursday's meeting.
The reorganization meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the A/B Room at the Oak Ridge Civic Center.
"We're going to be both friends and adversaries," Mulvenon told The Oak Ridger, referring to how he thinks the new citizens' group will likely work with the newly formed Board of Mayors/Executive since the LOC board of directors voted last month to disband the organization.
"We'll support things we think they're doing right. We won't support things we don't think they're doing right," Mulvenon said.
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