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Important Dates
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2016
May 16-18:
MERRTT Train-the-Trainer, Carlsbad, NM:
More information
May 17 at 1:00 pm CDT:
NTSF Planning Committee Conference Call
May 18 at 1:00 pm CDT:
NTSF Webinar on Rail Transport Safety (Part 4):
Register here
May 19 at 1:00 pm CDT:
CSG Webinar on Nuclear Waste Disposal (Part 1)
June 7-9:
NTSF Annual Meeting 2016, Orlando, FL:
Register here
Preliminary agenda
June 8:
MRMTC Spring Meeting, Orlando, FL:
Register here
Preliminary agenda
July 26 at 1:00 pm CDT:
CSG Webinar on Nuclear Waste Disposal (Part 2)
August 1-5:
DOE-TEPP Radiation Specialist Course, Boulder, CO:
More information
Register here
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Join Our List
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COMMITTEE HAPPENINGS
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Following up on a suggestion made during the MRMTC fall meeting, CSG Midwest will co-host two webinars to help state government officials learn more about the Department of Energy's (DOE) consent-based effort to site an integrated waste management system. The first webinar will tentatively be held the afternoon of May 17. For more information, see the newsletter's
third article.
A reminder to committee members: you can now register and reserve hotel rooms for the committee's
June 8 meeting in Orlando, Florida, which is being held in conjunction with the National Transportation Stakeholders Forum (NTSF) annual meeting on
June 7-9 in Orlando, Florida. Registration for both the committee meeting and the NTSF meeting are being handled through a single
online registration system. Information about hotel reservations is
available here. The cut-off to receive the group rate on hotel room reservations is
May 13. Committee members and other state personnel who attend the meeting will be reimbursed for their travel to Orlando.
In more meeting news, a preliminary agenda and other information for the June 8 committee meeting is now posted on the
MRMTC webpage. The committee meeting will be mostly business-focused because of the large amount of substantive programming being held throughout the NTSF meeting. Members are encouraged to attend as much of the NTSF meeting as their schedules will allow. Please contact
Lisa Janairo with questions on the committee meeting, the NTSF meeting, or travel reimbursement.
Prior to the June 8 meeting, committee members will receive a survey to help determine the
date and location of the MRMTC Fall 2016 meeting, which is being held in Missouri. The survey will be emailed to members and results will be announced during the committee's meeting in Orlando. Tiffany Drake, Missouri's gubernatorial appointee to the committee, and Kaci Studer from Indiana will assist in making plans for the meeting.
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NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION STAKEHOLDERS FORUM
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NTSF News and Events
The NTSF's Information and Communications Ad Hoc Working Group (AHWG) is requesting submissions for written content that will be featured in the first edition of the NTSF Newsletter. The idea for the newsletter came from a survey administered during last year's NTSF annual meeting in Albuquerque. When attendees were asked how they would like to receive NTSF-related updates, the overwhelming majority indicated their preference for an e-newsletter. The newsletter is scheduled for distribution in mid-May and all submissions must be sent to Joe Martinez with DOE's Office of Environmental Management by May 6.
In other AHWG news, the Rail/Routing AHWG has added a fourth webinar in the series on rail transportation to give rail industry representatives the opportunity to provide their views on rail transport safety. The webinar will be held on May 18 at 1:00 pm CDT and you can register here. Documents and links to recordings from Parts One through Three of the webinar series are available on the webinars page of the NTSF wiki site.
In NTSF annual meeting news, registration is still open for this year's meeting, which is being held from June 7-9 in Orlando, Florida. Please note that the last date to reserve a hotel room at the government rate is May 13 and the last date to register for the meeting is May 20.
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FOCUS THIS MONTH
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The Search for a Site Continues...
Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) held two more meetings -- in Atlanta, Georgia, and Sacramento, California -- to gather public input on the Department's planning activities for an integrated waste management system and consent-based approach to siting facilities. The format for both meetings were essentially the same as the one held in Chicago, but diversity among audience members and expert panelists made each one unique.
At the Atlanta meeting on April 11, Rick McLeod, Executive Director of the nonprofit Savannah River Site Community Reuse Organization, discussed the remaining research and development (R&D) efforts that need to be done related to storage, transportation, and disposal of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). Mr. McLeod indicated interest in hosting R&D initiatives at the site, but not until DOE has "a function disposition plan" for the waste. He added that the proposed DOE funds associated with the consent-based siting process "should also be available to other communities that want to be involved in some aspect of interim storage, but not necessarily be the host site."
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A musical public comment at the consent-based siting meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 11.
(Credit: U.S. Department of Energy YouTube video)
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During the meeting's public comment period, participants shared their opinions, concerns, and even their musical talents. One particularly tough act to follow was Louis Z., who performed a song written by a friend in 1986 to protest the Crystalline Repository Project of the former DOE Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. One verse went:
Well, they started pasting up posters
Til' they run out of paste
This slick talk and pictures in color
The wonders of nuclear waste
Well, some of us folks have been wondering
How dumb do they think we can be?
If they don't want waste in their back yard
Should I let them dump it on me?
Unlike at the Chicago meeting, not all public comments were opposed to nuclear energy and siting activities. Rod McCullum from the Nuclear Energy Institute commented on the notion of "earned consent," saying consent is "not something that can just be simply given. It's not a piece of paper signed by people who may or may not be reelected. Consent is something you have to earn." He urged DOE "to get that notion of earned consent into everything you do."
The third consent-based siting meeting was held in Sacramento, California, on April 26. Like the meetings in Atlanta and Chicago, a variety of perspectives were shared by audience members and panelists. During the panel discussion, Rochelle Becker with the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility noted the need for a nuclear waste storage facility, but suggested that the effort should be managed by a new agency independent from DOE. "We need an agency that doesn't promote nuclear energy while trying to solve the nuclear waste problem," she said in her remarks.
Another panelist, Gabriel Bohnee with the Nez Perce Tribe, asked that DOE consider that the tribes have interest and associations far beyond their current boundaries and asked that sacred areas be taken under consideration during waste transportation. He noted that there are over 500 tribes and nations, each with an individual governing body, and that consultation should not occur on a group basis, but tribe-by-tribe. Mr. Bohnee also stated that if tribes want to accept a SNF facility, states should not object.
The next public meeting will be held on May 24 in Denver, Colorado, and will be live webcast for those who cannot attend in person. To sign up for events or to view meeting materials and webcasts, visit DOE's
consent-based siting website.
In related news, two private entities are moving forward with siting activities of their own. On April 28, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
announced it had received an application for a centralized storage facility for SNF from Texas-based Waste Control Specialists (WCS). According to the announcement, WCS plans to store SNF from commercial reactors, starting with those that are shutdown, in a dry cask storage facility in Andrews County, Texas. The NRC will now begin a review process that it expects to take about three years.
NRC added that, by Nov. 30, it expects to receive an application from Holtec International (in partnership with Eddy and Lea counties) for a second centralized interim storage facility site in New Mexico.
The MRMTC is monitoring all developments related to consent-based siting and CSG Midwest will be co-hosting two webinars to help state government officials learn more about nuclear waste disposal. The webinars will be held on
May 19 and July 26, both at 1:00 pm CDT. A formal announcement with registration information will be sent out in the near future, so watch your inboxes.
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NUCLEAR NEWS
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 DOE Deep Borehole Study: Round Two
After a failed attempt to gain public consent for a deep borehole test in North Dakota, DOE officials are trying a different approach in Spink County, South Dakota.
As previously covered in the MRMTC newsletter, residents of Rugby, North Dakota, were unpleasantly surprised to learn that Battelle Memorial Institute had been awarded a contract by DOE to drill a test borehole in their community, and responded by placing a permanent ban on deep borehole drilling in the area. Despite assurances by DOE Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fuel Cycle Technologies Andy Griffith that no waste would be involved in the test, residents were concerned that the Department did not issue any guarantees that the test boreholes would not be used for disposal of waste in the future.
Hoping for a different outcome in South Dakota, DOE and Battelle officials are planning at least two public meetings in Spink County to answer questions from the community about the proposed research, reports the Associated Press.
Keloland Television coverage of one of these public meetings showed Spink County residents share the same concerns as their neighbors to the north.
"Once we let them come in and do their testing and they decide it is viable, how are we going to stop them from coming in and putting in nuclear waste?" asked one resident.
Despite the lack of community support, the borehole project has the backing of South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard who said it "furthers our state's leadership in underground research with no potential for that location to be used to store nuclear waste," according to the Associated Press.
More Studies Needed for Ontario DGR
At the request of Canada's Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna, Ontario Power Generation (OPG) has announced plans to complete some further studies on its proposed deep geologic repository (DGR) for low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste, reports the Owen Sound Sun Times.
Minister McKenna requested three additional studies before making a decision on the DGR, including:
- An assessment of the environmental effects of two "technically and economically feasible" locations in Ontario for a DGR - one in a sedimentary rock formation located in southern Ontario and a second in a granite rock formation located in central to northern Ontario.
- An updated analysis of the cumulative environmental effects of the project considering the results from preliminary assessments for spent fuel undertaken by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization.
- An internal review of OPG's mitigation commitments and all mitigating actions.
According to the
Owen Sound Sun Times, OPG has confirmed those studies will be completed by the end of the year. If the plan is approved, construction on the DGR could begin as early as 2018.
Two Midwestern Universities Expand On-Campus Research Using Nuclear Reactors In mid-April, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced it had started up its new fusion device called the Hybrid Illinois Device for Research and Applications, or HIDRA, which combines two hydrogen atoms to form helium.
According to the Daily Illini, the launch of HIDRA will allow students to conduct tests with the plasma created by nuclear fusion within the reactor. The HIDRA reactor makes the University of Illinois one of only four schools in the country where undergraduates can work on a fusion device. HIDRA was first used on the same day the University's retired TRIGA (Teaching, Research, Isotopes, General Atomic) reactor, which split uranium particles, was dedicated as a National Nuclear Historic Landmark.
Meanwhile, the University of Missouri received $2 million to begin construction on a new 28,000-square-foot classroom and training lab building at the University's research reactor, reports the Columbia Tribune. The additions to the facility are intended to train workers to handle radioactive materials used in medicine to establish an industry cluster at Discovery Ridge Research Park in Columbia.
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Thank you for reading. Watch for the next edition to
come out on June 7, 2016.
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Please do not reproduce or create new content from this material without the prior express written permission of CSG Midwest.
This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy under Award Numbers DE-NE0000555, DE-EM0002121, and DE-EM00002327.
This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.
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