Waste Management


South Bruce votes yes on hosting Canadian repository

October 30, 2024, 9:47AMRadwaste Solutions
The municipality of South Bruce announces the unofficial results of the referendum to determine if South Bruce would be a willing host for a proposed deep geological repository. (Photo: NWMO)

The municipality of South Bruce, located near the Bruce nuclear power plant in southwestern Ontario, voted narrowly in favor of being a willing host to a potential deep geologic repository for Canada’s spent nuclear fuel. The official declaration of results from the municipality showed that 51 percent of South Bruce residents voted in favor of the referendum, with 1,604 voting "yes" and 1,526 voting "no." Voter participation was 69 percent, surpassing the 50 percent voter turnout required to make the vote binding by law.

TEPCO restarts trial retrieval of Fukushima fuel debris

October 29, 2024, 12:03PMRadwaste Solutions
Photo: TEPCO

Tokyo Electric Power Company announced yesterday that is has recommenced a trial exercise to retrieve nuclear fuel debris from Unit 2 of Japan’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. TEPCO is attempting to retrieve a small amount of fuel debris from Unit 2’s pressure vessel for analysis before beginning a large-scale removal of the debris.

Sweden’s SKB approved to begin construction of spent fuel repository

October 29, 2024, 9:30AMRadwaste Solutions
Rendering of the Forsmark geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel in Sweden. (Image: SKB)

Sweden’s Land and Environmental Court has granted the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB, or SKB) an environmental permit to build and operate a geologic repository for the country’s spent nuclear fuel near the Forsmark nuclear power plant, about 86 miles north of Stockholm. The permit also includes the building of a spent fuel encapsulation plant at the central interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel at Oskarshamn, about 200 miles south of Stockholm.

Workshop highlights commercial fabrication of universal waste canister

October 28, 2024, 9:30AMRadwaste Solutions
Members of the UPWARDS technical advisory committee stand in front of a prototype universal canister system. (Photo: Deep Isolation)

Deep Isolation announced that it hosted its third technical workshop for the UPWARDS project, a Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) initiative aimed at developing a universal canister system (UCS) for the disposal of radioactive waste streams from advanced reactors. The workshop, held at R-V Industries in Honey Brook, Pa., focused on the large-scale manufacturing and commercialization of the UCS.

BWXT approved to begin work under Hanford tank waste contract

October 21, 2024, 9:30AMRadwaste Solutions
Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, also known as the Vit Plant. (Photo: Bechtel National)

BWX Technologies announced that the Department of Energy has approved Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure (H2C) to begin work under a contract valued at up to $45 billion to clean up tank waste at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. H2C is a limited liability company made up of BWXT Technical Services Group, Amentum Environment and Energy, and Fluor Federal Services.

Japanese fuel disposition mission starts at Savannah River Site

October 15, 2024, 3:00PMRadwaste Solutions

Employees at the H Canyon Chemical Separations Facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina recently began the dissolution of nuclear material from a Japanese research reactor, leading to its safe disposal.

American Nuclear Society welcomes Supreme Court review of NRC ruling

October 10, 2024, 2:35PMPress Releases

Washington, D.C. — The American Nuclear Society (ANS), a nonprofit representing over 10,000 professionals in the fields of nuclear science and technology, issued the following statement regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to grant certiorari to Nuclear Regulatory Commission v. Texas:

GAO: DOE should pause work on Hanford’s HLW Facility

October 3, 2024, 9:30AMRadwaste Solutions
Hanford’s HLW Facility under construction in early 2024. (Photo: Bechtel National)

The Government Accountability Office has recommended that the Department of Energy put a hold on construction of its High-Level Waste Facility at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. The GAO said design and construction of the facility, part of Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, also known as the Vit Plant, should be paused until several actions are taken, including considering other alternatives for managing the site’s high-level radioactive liquid waste.

Biden appoints six new NWTRB members

October 2, 2024, 3:01PMRadwaste Solutions

President Biden has announced the appointment of six new members to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent federal agency that evaluates the technical and scientific validity of the Department of Energy’s activities related to managing and disposing of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.

Oak Ridge’s Mercury Treatment Facility receives new tanks

September 25, 2024, 9:29AMRadwaste Solutions
Workers prepare to remove from a specialized transportation trailer the first of three sludge-settling tanks for Oak Ridge’s Mercury Treatment Facility. (Photo: DOE)

Workers with the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) and its contractor UCOR have finished installing the first of three large sludge-settling tanks for the Mercury Treatment Facility at the site’s Y-12 National Security Complex. The tanks, each of which will be 38 feet tall and 15 feet wide with a capacity of 36,000 gallons, provide a visible sign of ongoing progress on the facility where much of the construction has so far been below ground.

ECA: Harris or Trump, DOE-EM needs “comprehensive review”

September 23, 2024, 3:00PMRadwaste Solutions

Regardless of who is sitting in the Oval Office next year, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management needs to take a close look at itself and “launch a comprehensive review of all aspects of the EM program,” according to a new report from the Energy Communities Alliance, which represents communities adjacent to or near DOE nuclear cleanup sites.

The 18-page ECA transition paper, Ensuring Long-Term Success: Recommendations for the Next Administration on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Environmental Management Mission, calls on the next administration to “take a fundamental look” at DOE-EM’s entire cleanup effort, including both sites that are active and those where work has been completed. How DOE-EM integrates with other DOE programs, including the National Nuclear Security Administration and the offices of Nuclear Energy, Science, and Legacy Management, should also be examined, according to the paper.

Report touts lessons from era of nuclear waste negotiator

September 20, 2024, 7:00AMRadwaste Solutions

As the Department of Energy embarks on its consent-based process for siting a geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, a new report from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA highlights relevant lessons from the federal government’s now defunct Office of the Nuclear Waste Negotiator.

Established under Title IV of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the office, an independent agency within the executive branch, was primarily active from 1990 to 1995. Its role was to engage with state and tribal governments to find an acceptable and suitable host site for a repository.

The full report, Lessons from the Nuclear Waste Negotiator Era of the 1990s for Today’s Consent-Based Siting Efforts, is now available online. Its executive summary is available here.

Tank waste operations resume at Idaho’s IWTU

September 18, 2024, 3:00PMRadwaste Solutions
Crews with the Idaho National Laboratory Site’s IWTU replace filter bundles inside the unit’s process gas filter. (Photo: DOE)

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced yesterday that waste processing operations have resumed at the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) at the Idaho National Laboratory Site. The resumption of operations follows the completion of two maintenance campaigns at the radioactive liquid waste treatment facility.

Pennsylvania DEP pleased with TMI-2 D&D progress

September 17, 2024, 12:01PMRadwaste Solutions
TMI-2 Community Advisory Panel board chair Dave Allard at the panel’s September meeting.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) expressed its confidence in the decommissioning work taking place at the damaged Three Mile Island Unit 2 during a recent meeting of the TMI-2 Community Advisory Panel (CAP). “We cannot be more pleased with the progress being made,” said Dwight Shearer, director of the DEP, during the meeting, held on September 13 in Middleton, Pa.

Hanford completes glass transfer test

September 12, 2024, 7:01AMRadwaste Solutions
Hanford workers recently transferred three containers of nonradioactive test glass from the site’s WTP to the nearby Integrated Disposal Facility. (Photos: DOE)

According to the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, two contractors at its Hanford Site in Washington state have finished a first-time relay of test glass as the site prepares to vitrify—or immobilize in glass—millions of gallons of radioactive and chemical waste from its large underground tanks.

Video: Watch an “instant replay” of the test glass relay here.

IAEA: Fukushima soil and waste plans meet standards

September 11, 2024, 9:30AMRadwaste Solutions
Radioactive decontamination waste is held in temporary storage in Iitate Village, Fukushima Prefecture, in 2019. (Photo: O. Evrard, J. P. Laceby, A. Nakao/Wikimedia Commons)

The International Atomic Energy Agency has found that Japan’s planned approach for recycling and disposing of soil and radioactive waste from decontamination activities after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident is consistent with the agency’s safety standards.

ECA warns of delay to DOE’s interpretation of HLW

September 10, 2024, 7:06AMRadwaste Solutions
Work begins on the TBI demonstration at the Hanford Site, during which 2,000 gallons of low-activity waste will be treated and shipped off-site for disposal. (Photo: DOE)

The Energy Communities Alliance (ECA), which advocates for communities adjacent to or impacted by Department of Energy sites, is asking the department to conduct an independent analysis evaluating the impacts of delaying the implementation of its statutory interpretation of high-level radioactive waste, which holds that some waste from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel may be classified as non-HLW.

TEPCO launches English-language fuel debris portal website

September 9, 2024, 9:38AMRadwaste Solutions

Tokyo Electric Power Company has added an English-language version of its Fuel Debris Portal Site to its website. According to the company, the portal is intended to deliver information pertaining to melted nuclear fuel debris at the Fukushima Daiichi site to the public in an easy-to-understand manner.

Savannah River turns to drones for inspecting waste tanks

September 4, 2024, 9:31AMRadwaste Solutions
SRS liquid waste contractor Savannah River Mission Completion will use drones equipped with cameras to inspect the cleaning status of waste tanks at the site. (Photo: DOE)

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will begin using drones for the first time to internally inspect radioactive liquid waste tanks at the department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Inspections were previously done using magnetic wall-crawling robots.