The U.K. government’s Office for Nuclear Regulation has granted EDF Energy formal consent to decommission the Hinkley Point B nuclear power plant in Somerset, England. The two-unit advanced gas-cooled reactor was permanently shut down in August 2022, and site owner EDF applied to ONR for decommissioning consent in August 2024.

Sellafield Ltd., the site license company overseeing the decommissioning of the United Kingdom’s Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, England, has awarded a 15-year framework contract worth up to £4.6 billion ($6 billion) to support “high hazard risk reduction programs” at the site.

The Savannah River Site in South Carolina will begin a leak-tightness test to qualify the megavolume Saltstone Disposal Unit (SDU) 10 to store up to 33 million gallons of solidified, decontaminated salt solution produced at the site.

The International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA), a nongovernmental organization made up of 81 member states working to advance the safe, beneficial use of subsurface spaces, is working with the International Atomic Energy Agency to support the advancement of geologic disposal facilities for high-level radioactive waste.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management and its contractor Bechtel announced on October 15 the start of nuclear vitrification operations at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), also known as the Vit Plant, at the Hanford Site in Washington state.

Nuclear waste disposal technology company Deep Isolation is asking that the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) consider how spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste will be managed under its strategy for developing advanced nuclear power projects in participating states.

The American Nuclear Society has sent a letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright with a set of recommendations for the Department of Energy to take to establish an effective national program to manage the storage, reprocessing, and final disposal of U.S. commercial used nuclear fuel.

Holtec International has confirmed it is canceling plans to build a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in southeastern New Mexico. Named the HI-STORE CISF, the facility would have stored up to 10,000 canisters of commercial SNF on land owned by the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance (ELEA) near the towns of Carlsbad and Hobbs.

When the Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management recently faced an operational challenge at the Rifle Disposal Site in Colorado, it took subject matter experts across a wide array of disciplines to tackle it.

When it comes to decision-making, public participation and community engagement are not the same thing. The structure and content of meetings to enable public participation in project decision-making can be staid, stale, and staged. The approach can be formulaic and reactionary: “We have a decision to make; we’ve narrowed down the alternatives … let’s prepare the scripts, posters, and presentations, gather our materials, book a room, coach the presenters on how to be succinct, identify people to staff the kiosks, contact the community members and regulatory staff we usually contact, and let’s have a public meeting! Once we get this over with, we can finally build our project, demolish that building, clean up this site, etc.” Not so fast.