Waste Management

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management reports that workers at the Hanford Site, near Richland, Wash., have performed a technically complex operation to remove a large legacy mixer pump from Tank SY-101 in the 200 West Area. The removal allows for the future installation of tank waste retrieval equipment as part of the next phase of waste cleanup at the site.

A short video on the Hanford Site’s YouTube channel shows aspects of the operation, including the pump being lifted out of the tank with a specially designed hydraulic lift system named Hercules.

Results of a two-year study of groundwater levels at the site of the planned Environmental Management Disposal Facility (EMDF) in Oak Ridge, Tenn., have been released, revealing that the levels fell at a slower-than-expected rate. The collection of data on groundwater levels during two wet seasons, conducted by the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management and the contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge, formed the core of a groundwater field demonstration study which will help inform the final design of the EMDF landfill.

The Department of Energy has reported that its Hanford Field Office has submitted two permit modification requests to the Washington State Department of Ecology that could speed up the cleanup of the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. The requests “represent the latest step in a science-backed dual glass-plus-grout strategy to eliminate risks posed by aging tanks and meet cleanup commitments to the people of Washington more quickly, safely and efficiently,” the DOE said.

The “world’s first industrial-scale final disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel,” planned for the Finnish island of Olkiluoto, has received a favorable safety assessment from the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland (STUK). Ilkka Poikolainen, the president and CEO of Posiva, the waste management company that has been developing the Onkalo facility for decades, characterized the assessment as “a highly significant and positive milestone in the operating license process.”

In January, the Department of Energy announced a new Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus (NLIC) program, inviting states via a request for information to express their interest in hosting a facility supporting work from the front to the back end of the fuel life cycle.

By April, 26 states had expressed their interest in hosting such a facility. At the end of July, the DOE signed memorandums of understanding with five states (Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah) to more closely explore the possibilities of state-federal partnerships. These MOUs are not firm commitments from either the federal or state governments. Time will tell which—if any—of the five states develop projects through the program. In the meantime, today, we are taking a close look at what Oklahoma and Louisiana can offer in terms of a preexisting nuclear sector that could support new fuel cycle developments.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has issued a request for information for industry input about the best ways to reuse and repurpose as much as 530,000 gallons of heavy water that is currently being stored at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The deadline to submit responses to the RFI is September 21.

Detailed information about the RFI, including contact information and instructions for submissions, was published in the Federal Register. Responses can be emailed to heavywaterrfi@doe.gov with the subject line “EM Heavy Water RFI Collaboration Response.”

Several countries, including Canada, France, and the United Kingdom, recently have taken steps to accelerate the cleanup of nuclear waste. In a new report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office said that these actions should serve as lessons for the United States.

According to the GAO, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management should “strategically engage with other countries to identify and evaluate alternatives that could help reduce risks and costs or accelerate its cleanup activities.” The report noted that DOE-EM agreed with the recommendation.

Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah are the finalists to potentially host Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses, the Department of Energy announced today.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has signed memorandums of understanding with the five states to continue exploring opportunities to host these campuses, envisioned as federal–state partnerships to support work across the nuclear fuel life cycle, with a primary focus on fuel fabrication, enrichment, spent fuel reprocessing or recycling, separations, and radioactive waste management.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced the selection of five finalist states to host a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus (NLIC), to be formalized through a memorandum of understanding between DOE and the state.

ANS President Mark Peters congratulated each of the NLIC finalist states: Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah.

"Hosting a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus will mean multigenerational job creation, sustained economic growth, and new investment in education and workforce development, all while capturing the full value of nuclear energy," said Peters.

"This is an important step in evaluating how the United States can strengthen its nuclear fuel cycle and expand domestic nuclear capabilities," continued Peters. "ANS and its members stand ready to help state leaders and local communities address the technical questions ahead."

A new report released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office states that the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) has disposed of more than 16 million tons of radioactive and hazardous waste from the Moab Mill Site. While cleanup continues at the Cold War–era uranium ore processing site in southeastern Utah, a plan for the next phase of groundwater remediation is still needed, according to the GAO.

The Savannah River Site has completed all concrete construction on its “mega-size” Saltstone Disposal Unit (SDU) 11 at the Saltstone Disposal Facility in Aiken, S.C. The several SDUs at the site are designed to provide safe, permanent storage for decontaminated salt solution from the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) as production is ramped up. The SDUs are crucial components of SRS’s liquid waste program, allowing the site to meet the cleanup responsibilities of the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management.

Researchers from the University of Manchester, the U.K. National Nuclear Laboratory, and Clemson University have studied using crushed concrete at legacy nuclear facilities as a long-term sink for strontium-90, a radioactive contaminant found at many such sites. Their research has been published in the American Chemical Society journal ACS ES&T Water.

Completing an international commitment between the two countries, the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Transport Solutions (NTS) delivered the third and final shipment of vitrified high-level radioactive waste to Germany, the U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) announced last week.

Continuing its breakneck pace of introducing new rules and proposals, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week announced that it was proposing to amend its regulations under 10 CFR Part 61 governing the land disposal of low-level radioactive waste.

The proposed rule, which introduces a new risk-informed framework for LLW disposal in which sites can develop waste acceptance criteria based on site-specific characteristics, is one of several rules the NRC is seeking to finalize and issue in response to Executive Order 14300, “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management issued a draft request for proposals on June 25 for the Hanford Site’s 222-S Laboratory contract. The 222-S Laboratory is the primary on-site laboratory for analysis of highly radioactive samples in support of all projects at the DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state.

Having completed deactivation work, the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) is set to begin demolition in July of a cluster of highly contaminated buildings at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced this week.

“But what about the waste?” Whether pronuclear, on the fence, or opposed, this common refrain still applies: Spent nuclear fuel is a challenge that needs action on clear solutions. Now, the International Atomic Energy Agency has a new tool to help people visualize the issue.

With its new online “Spent Fuel Management: The Inventory Status” tool, the IAEA has provided an important resource for investigating the amount of SNF produced by reactors around the world and how it is currently stored.

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management and cleanup contractor United Cleanup Oak Ridge have surpassed their first-year target for processing legacy oxide waste at the site’s Transuranic Waste Processing Center (TWPC), reaching the milestone four months ahead of schedule.

Officials with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management discussed spent nuclear fuel recycling and conditioning with counterparts from Japan during the 13th U.S.-Japan Technical Meeting of the Civil Nuclear Energy Research and Development Working Group, held recently in Santa Fe, N.M.

Two companies specializing in ultrasonic nondestructive testing and structural health monitoring are to advance to the final phase of a selection process to demonstrate acoustic emission technologies for the automated monitoring of spent nuclear fuel dry storage canisters.