Plans for the committee's fall meeting on November 30-December 1 in St. Louis, Missouri, are nearly finalized. Within the next few weeks, staff will be finalizing a hotel contract and confirming a rail-related site visit. Meeting registration will open on Friday, September 30.

The second day of the meeting will feature a Midwestern version of the interactive panel session, "What to Expect When You're Expecting--a Spent Nuclear Fuel Shipment," made popular during this year's National Transportation Stakeholders Forum (NTSF) meeting in Orlando. Former MRMTC committee member Tim Runyon of North Wind Services will facilitate the session, in which a group of state representatives will walk through the operational activities that occur before and after a spent fuel shipment. If you might be interested in being one of those representatives, email Lisa Janairo.

Other committee business that will be covered at the meeting includes electing a new committee co-chair, updating the information in the Planning Guide for Shipments of Radioactive Material through the Midwestern States, and identifying recommended dates and a potential Midwestern host location for the 2018 Annual Meeting of the NTSF.

In other committee news, on August 17-18, Kelly Horn (Illinois), Teri Engelhart (Wisconsin), and CSG Midwest staff represented the committee at the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) Transportation Core Group meeting in Chicago. The meeting is discussed in further detail in the newsletter's third article.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced last month that 3.7 million documents related to the adjudicatory hearing on the proposed Yucca Mountain repository are now available to the public in a new online library created by the commission.

The Licensing Support Network library, part of NRC's online documents database, makes the documents available to the public for the first time in five years, with enhanced search capabilities, according to the announcement. The commission says the library is significant because it meets federal records requirements, provides public access to the materials should the Yucca Mountain hearing resume, and should the hearing not resume, serves as an important source of information for any future efforts to license a high-level waste repository.

Thanks to MRMTC co-chair Kelly Horn and Steve Maheras (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) for sharing this news.

WIPP Status Update
DOE officials are now 80 percent confident the Department will meet a December 2016 deadline to resume operations at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) on a limited basis, reports the Sante Fe New Mexican.

Following the 2014 release of radioactive waste in the underground storage facility, DOE had originally set an ambitious goal of resuming limited operations by March of this year.

According to the paper, the Government Accountability Office determined that missteps in the process of reopening WIPP resulted in a nine-month delay and $64 million increase in estimated cleanup costs.

A recent analysis by the Los Angeles Times found the long-term cost of the release could top $2 billion, making it one of the costliest nuclear accidents in U.S. history.

Thanks to MRMTC co-chair Kelly Horn for sharing this news.

The Cost of Closure
The small town of Carlton, Wisconsin, continues to struggle with the lost revenue associated with the shutdown of the Kewaunee Power Plant in 2013, reports the San Luis Obispo Tribune. The article is the latest in a four-part series on communities dealing with the financial consequences of shutdown sites that the California began following the announcement that the Diablo Canyon power plant would be closed by 2025.

Prior to the closure, Carlton had relied heavily on the taxes paid by the plant's operator, Dominion Resources, in addition to the employment opportunities the utility provided. Now faced with lower property values and a sluggish economy, Kewaunee County is having to consider a half-percent sales tax and a variety of fee increases, in addition to cost-cutting measures, according to the Tribune.

Another major challenge for communities with shutdown sites is the lack of a repository for high-level radioactive waste (HLRW). Since the waste has nowhere to go, the utilities continue to store it on site, rendering the property off-limits for any type of reuse.

The goal of DOE's ongoing consent-based siting initiative is to identify communities that are interested in learning more about what it would mean to become a willing and informed host site for an interim or permanent waste storage facility. Last month, lawmakers and regulatory officials in Wyoming showed their interest in learning more about the federal effort during a legislative committee hearing, according to WyoFile.