Waste Management


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.

Finland begins trial run of Onkalo repository

September 3, 2024, 7:06AMRadwaste Solutions
The site of the Onkalo deep geological repository near Eurajoki, Finland, with the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant in the background. (Photo: Posiva)

Finland’s waste management organization Posiva announced that it has begun a trial run of placing spent fuel canisters in the Onkalo geologic repository, which is located near the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant in southwestern Finland. No spent fuel will be disposed of during the trial run, which is expected to last several months.

INL spent fuel transfers are ahead of schedule

August 30, 2024, 9:30AMRadwaste Solutions
Work crews at the INL Site prepare to move Peach Bottom fuel from a transfer cask to a storage vault. (Photo: DOE)

Crews at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory Site recently completed work to transfer baskets of spent nuclear fuel ahead of a September 30 deadline.

Hanford stabilizes final reactor fuel storage basin

August 23, 2024, 7:00AMRadwaste Solutions
This series of photos shows the grouting of the K West Reactor spent fuel storage basin. Workers removed nearly 1 million gallons of contaminated water before filling the 16-foot-deep basin with about 6,500 cubic yards of grout—enough to fill two Olympic-size swimming pools. (Images: DOE)

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state recently finished filling the last large concrete basin at the K Reactor Area with cement-like grout. The basin stored reactor fuel rods from historic plutonium production in the 1950s.

NRC inspection finds two low-level San Onofre violations

August 20, 2024, 12:00PMRadwaste Solutions
The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. (Photo: SCE)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission noted two low-level regulatory violations during a recent inspection of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which is currently undergoing decommissioning in Southern California. The violations involved the shipment of two reactor pressurizers from San Onofre to EnergySolutions’ disposal facility in Clive, Utah.

SRS partnership’s mission is to dissolve spent fuel

August 19, 2024, 3:03PMRadwaste Solutions
A mock-up model at SRNL was used to demonstrate a full-scale jet cleanout system to remove undissolved material from the H Canyon electrolytic dissolver. (Photo: DOE)

A collaboration between Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) and Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) is making progress toward processing non-aluminum spent nuclear fuel (NASNF) as part of the site’s accelerated basin de-inventory mission. SRNL is the managing and operating contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

WM2025 to focus on impact of advanced technology on waste management

August 16, 2024, 12:02PMRadwaste Solutions
The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s William Magwood addresses the plenary audience of the 2024 Waste Management Conference in Phoenix. (Photo: WM Symposia)

Waste Management Symposia announced that the theme of next year’s Waste Management Conference (WM2025) will be “Empowering A Sustainable Future—Advanced Technologies, AI, and Workforce Development across the Nuclear Landscape.” To be held in Phoenix, Ariz., March 9–13, the conference will showcase how new technologies and the evolving digital world are transforming the global nuclear landscape, supply chains, infrastructure, and work norms.

ORNL crews remove reactor as part of a major deactivation project

August 15, 2024, 12:02PMRadwaste Solutions
Teams use a 20-ton overhead crane to move the lower reactor vessel of the Oak Ridge Research Reactor into a cask for eventual shipment and disposal. (Photo: DOE)

Team members at Oak Ridge National Laboratory achieved a milestone with the removal of a lower reactor vessel, according to a U.S. Department of Energy news release.

Workers with the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) contractor UCOR successfully lifted and removed the lower reactor vessel from the Oak Ridge Research Reactor, also known as Building 3042.

NRC certifies NAC’s OPTIMUS-H transportation cask

August 13, 2024, 12:14PMRadwaste Solutions

The OPTIMUS-H transportation cask from NAC International. (Photo: NAC)

NAC International announced that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has certified a highly shielded version of the company’s OPTIMUS (Optimal Modular Universal Shipping) transportation package for radioactive materials and waste. NAC’s OPTIMUS-H is now approved under 10 CFR Part 71 with Certificate of Compliance (CoC) USA/9392/B(U)F-96, effective Aug. 5, 2024.

The OPTIMUS-H CoC follows licensing approvals of the cask in Canada and Australia. Previously, the lightweight version of the OPTIMUS package, OPTIMUS-L, received certification from the NRC and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

NAC unveiled its first OPTIMUS to the public at the 2020 Waste Management Conference in Phoenix. Since then, NAC has delivered 22 OPTIMUS-L and nine OPTIMUS-H systems to support North American packaging and transportation projects.

Tritium levels of Fukushima’s treated water well below limits, IAEA says

August 12, 2024, 11:55AMRadwaste Solutions

The International Atomic Energy Agency announced on Aug. 7 that its experts have confirmed that the tritium concentration in the latest batch of water to be released from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is far below Japan’s operational limit. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) began discharging the treated and diluted water that day.