In an amendment to a 1998 record of decision, the Department of Energy is expanding the available space at its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant deep geological repository for defense-related radioactive waste, and is also now planning to accept waste at the facility for 50 more years than previously planned. The amended decision, which was signed on August 18 by Tim Walsh, assistant secretary for Environmental Management, commits the DOE to a WIPP operating horizon extending to about 2083.

Today, a bipartisan group of experts including energy consultant Lake Barrett and former NRC chair Allison Macfarlane have published a report titled The Path Forward for Nuclear Waste in the U.S.

The report recommends a new solution for managing domestic nuclear waste—one that centers around the foundation of an independent corporation led by reactor owners. Responsibility for waste management transport, storage, and disposal would be managed by this corporation rather than the Department of Energy.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

While most big journeys begin with a clear objective, they rarely start with an exact knowledge of the route. When commissioning the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson didn’t provide specific “turn right at the big mountain” directions to the Corps of Discovery. He gave goal-oriented instructions: explore the Missouri River, find its source, search for a transcontinental water route to the Pacific, and build scientific and cultural knowledge along the way.

Jefferson left it up to Lewis and Clark to turn his broad, geopolitically motivated guidance into gritty reality.

Similarly, U.S. nuclear policy has begun a journey toward closing the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. There is a clear signal of support for recycling from the Trump administration, along with growing bipartisan excitement in Congress. Yet the precise path remains unclear.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The American Nuclear Society (ANS) sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in response to Executive Order 14302, “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base.” The letter outlines expert-backed recommendations for establishing an effective national program within the United States to manage the storage, reprocessing, and final disposal of commercial used nuclear fuel once it has been in a reactor from a nuclear power plant. This stage is commonly referred to as the “back end” of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Nuclear Waste Services (NWS), which manages the disposal of the United Kingdom’s low-level radioactive waste, announced this week that a major milestone has been reached at its Low Level Waste Repository in West Cumbria, England, as work begins on the final capping of legacy disposal trenches and vaults at the site.

Dear Nevada,

I hope you are doing well. We haven’t talked in a long time. I know you’ve moved on. But you know it’s been harder for me to do that.

Look, I’m sorry. I was forceful at times, and I know that made you feel trapped and caused you to question our relationship—pretty much from the beginning. But you also said some mean and untrue things about me. Your family still HATES me, which stinks, because we have a lot of history together.

Anyhow, just wanted to let you know that, while I might always hold out hope for a chance encounter with you that rekindles that old spark—and I will never part with our memory box—I am finally ready to move on to the next chapter of my life, and I understand that means letting go of you.

Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is shifting the timing for selecting a preferred site for a spent nuclear fuel repository to the fall of 2024, a full year later than previously planned. The NWMO, a nonprofit organization tasked with the safe, long-term management of Canada’s spent fuel in a deep geological repository, said the delay is the result of several provincial lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has announced that it has successfully completed a full-scale demonstration of the engineered barriers that are designed to contain and isolate Canada’s spent nuclear fuel in a deep geological repository.

The deadline for submitting comments on the Department of Energy’s request for information on using a consent-based approach to siting federal facilities for the interim storage of spent nuclear fuel is Friday, March 4.