Court Issues NRC Another Rebuke on Spent Fuel Policies
Nuclear Street
June 11, 2012

A court ruling Friday will force the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reevaluate the environmental impact of storing spent fuel at nuclear plants around the country in the absence of a waste repository at Yucca Mountain or one like it.

 

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals challenged 2010 agency rule changes on spent fuel, including one that upped allowable storage time at plants from 30 years to 60 years after their licenses expire. The unanimous decision ruled that the NRC's environmental analysis of the rule change was insufficient and ordered the agency to conduct another one.

 

"This is a game changer," said Geoff Fettus, who argued before the court in March. He is a senior project attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is among the environmental groups that joined four Northeastern states and the Prairie Island Indian tribe in bringing the suit. "This forces the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to take a hard look at the environmental consequences of producing highly radioactive nuclear waste without a long-term disposal solution. The court found: 'The Commission apparently has no long-term plan other than hoping for a geologic repository,'" he said in an NRDC release Friday.

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N.R.C. Nomination Shines Spotlight on Waste-Disposal Issue
Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times
June 10, 2012

WASHINGTON -- When the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee meets on Wednesday to consider President Obama's choice to head the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, three themes are likely to dominate the questioning: waste, waste and earthquakes.

 

Collegiality and diplomacy may also be mentioned, given that the commission's current chairman, Gregory B. Jaczko, has drawn criticism for his aggressive management style.

 

The nuclear industry would, no doubt, prefer more uplifting confirmation hearing topics, like new reactor construction or progress on radical new designs that would make nuclear plants more useful or economical.

 

But for the first time, the president has chosen a geologist for the post, Allison M. Macfarlane of George Mason University, and her expertise aligns with the pressing concerns facing Congress and the nuclear industry. She is a longtime critic of the idea of burying waste at Yucca Mountain, a volcanic structure about 100 miles from Las Vegas chosen by Congress in the late 1980s, considering its geology too unpredictable. With little new plant construction, the commission's main responsibility these days is assuring the safety of the 104 plants now operating, and what to do with the decades-old problem of waste.

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Hearing on the nomination of Allison Macfarlane and re-nomination of Kristine L. Svinicki to be Members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
June 13, 2012 (10:00 AM)

Witnesses

 
Dr. Allison MacFarlane
Associate Professor
George Mason University 
 
The Honorable Kristine L. Svinicki
Commissioner
Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

 

 

SRS Historic Achievement in Transporting Nuclear Waste to New Mexico
The Aiken Leader
June 9, 2012

 

AIKEN, S.C. - (June 8, 2012) Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, LLC (SRNS) personnel recently achieved a historic, first-time achievement within the Department of Energy (DOE) Complex and at the 61 year-old nuclear reservation. On Wednesday, June 6, three transuranic (TRU) waste shipments were made on the same day using three different shipping containers.

 

TRU waste is solid waste, consisting of clothing, tools, rags, residues, debris and other items contaminated with trace amounts of plutonium.

 

SRS is the only DOE Site in which a combination of these three shipping containers is used. According to SRNS Solid Waste Director John Gilmour, all three containers are licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and have undergone extensive testing. The Transuranic Package Transporter Model 2 (TRUPACT II) container is designed to transport up to fourteen 55-gallon drums, two Standard Waste Boxes (1.8 cubic meters of waste each) or one Ten-Drum Overpack unit. The shipping trailers normally carry three TRUPACT II containers at one time.

 

 

Keep MOX project's cost in perspective

Clint Wolfe, Ph.D., Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, Guest Columnist, The Augusta Chronicle

June 10, 2012

 

Recent press articles about House and Senate concerns over potential cost and schedule overruns on the mixed-oxide fuel fabrication project at Savannah River Site raise the specter of the project's supporters having to justify the effort all over again.

 

Costs can be estimated reasonably well for facilities that have been built many times over, such as an office building or a warehouse, but MOX is a one-of-a-kind facility in this country.

 

It is not unusual for large multiyear projects to have difficulty meeting cost and schedule objectives for a variety of reasons. For example, projects whose timelines span multiple election years and multiple budget cycles are more susceptible to scope creep and price changes for materials.

 

 

 

It's Alive! It's Alive!
Billy House, National Journal
June 9, 2012

 

In B-movies, radioactive creatures like Godzilla are almost impossible to destroy, always emerging from the rubble after seemingly being buried for good. Perhaps those films are low-budget inspiration for House members who continue to push big-budget funding for a nuclear-waste dump 90 miles northeast of Las Vegas-even though President Obama slayed the plan in 2009 and Senate cooperation in reviving it is not soon forthcoming. Could this hole in the desert, a would-be nuclear repository at Yucca Mountain, be yet another creature that won't die? Republicans who control the House hope so.

 

This week, they again included at least $35 million in their fiscal 2013 appropriations bill for the Energy Department that would pay for resuming the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing-review process and other work at Yucca. A number of Democrats are supportive. But others dismiss these efforts as meaningless, and say that GOP House members tucked similar funding into last year's version of the same bill, and the Senate failed to go along.

 

"As long as Harry Reid [of Nevada] remains Senate majority leader, this is just not going to happen. It's all an exercise in futility-Kabuki theater," says Jim Manley, formerly Reid's spokesman, choosing to shift the metaphorical discussion from Japan's monstrous post-WWII pop-culture icon to its classical dance-drama. Reid's communications director, Adam Jentleson, also underscores that his boss's opposition to locating a nuclear-waste dump in his home state remains steadfast.

 

During Obama's run for the presidency in 2008, he promised to scuttle the Yucca project that Reid has so vehemently opposed for nearly 25 years in Congress. And in 2009, the new president and Energy Secretary Steven Chu moved to cut funding that would have been used to complete the three-year licensing process. Eventually, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko-a former Reid aide placed on the commission with the senator's backing and later elevated to the chairmanship by Obama-directed NRC staff to halt formal review of the Yucca site's license application, arguing that there would not be enough money to finish the job.

 

But this week on the House floor, Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., andranking member Norm Dicks, D-Wash., insisted that current law requires a scientific review to determine whether Yucca is a suitable location for storing nuclear waste.

 

That will remain the case, they say, until or unless Congress changes the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act that led in 1987 to the elimination of all other sites but Yucca from consideration.

 

In 2002, President Bush signed a joint resolution into law officially designating Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste repository.

 

"Allowing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission such power to effectively cancel Yucca Mountain after Congress has enacted a law directing that it be accomplished would be an affront to the Constitution and it [would] shift the balance of power to executive agencies to evade congressionally mandated legal obligations," Dicks warned, offering one rhetorical, if not scientific, argument in favor of Yucca.

 

As Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., sees it, "Having [already] spent 30 years and $15 billion in ratepayer money, the American people at least deserve to find out the answer to whether Yucca is safe." Shimkus sponsored an amendment to the spending bill that would move $10 million from the Energy Department's salaries and administrative account to NRC expenses to help ensure that the commission finishes its Yucca review. He is among those arguing that last year's earthquake and tsunami in Japan's Tohoku region that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi power plant should prompt more focus on establishing a central storage facility for U.S. nuclear waste.

 

In fact, no working alternative to Yucca is in sight. The nuclear-power industry continues to store highly radioactive spent fuel rods and other material in 36 states; most of these locations were intended to be and are already reaching capacity. Shimkus, however, is among those who acknowledge that as long as Reid is Senate majority leader, any effort to continue the Yucca licensing review remains along shot.

 

A sudden, significant change of directio nat NRC is also unlikely, despite the announcement last month that Jaczko will resign amid infighting and complaints from fellow commissioners about heavy-handedness, including his recommendation to halt the Yucca project. Obama's pick to succeed Jaczko, Allison Macfarlane, also opposes the Yucca waste site.

 

But Shimkus and others are hopeful that events outside of Congress could apply some pressure.

 

South Carolina and Washington-two states that house large amounts of nuclear waste from active or decommissioned power plants-and several other plaintiffs are suing the federal government, arguing that NRC has a legal responsibility to reach a judgment on whether Yucca is suitable for storing the waste. A decision is due this summer.

 

In a separate proceeding, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has ordered the Energy Department to explain within six months why it should be allowed to continue collecting fees from utilities for its nuclear-waste fund, given that no national repository exists. Those fees, imposed since 1982, total nearly $30 billion. David Wright, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, said that the decision "will force the Energy Department to do its job and prove why it should continue fees for a nuclear-waste program that it says no longer exists. "To date, they have nothing to show for their investment except political delays, bureaucratic red tape, and a hole in the Nevada desert,'' he complains.

 

But to hear some lawmakers describe it this week, the Yucca Mountain project may be buried, but it is far from dead.