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Important Dates
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2015
August 5:
Information & Communications AHWG conference call, 11:00 am CDT
August 5:
Transportation Planning AHWG conference call, 2:00 pm CDT
August 11-12:
DOE-NE Core Group Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts
August 12:
Section 180c Exercise Volunteers Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts
August 20: NTSF Planning Committee conference call, 2:00 pm CDT
August 25-28: NEMA Risk Communications Workshop, Lincoln, Nebraska:
Register Here
More Information
September 17:
NNPP
M-290 Spent Fuel Shipping Container Accident Exercise, Rock Springs, Wyoming:
Request more information
October 12-16: WGA WIPP Transportation Technical Advisory Group Meeting, San Diego, California:
Request more information
November 3-4: Western Interstate Energy Board High-Level Waste Committee Meeting, Spokane, Washington:
Request more information
November 4-5:
CSG Northeast High-Level Radioactive Waste Transportation Task Force Meeting, Portsmouth, New Hampshire:
Request more information
November 17-18: CSG Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee Meeting, Des Moines, Iowa:
Request more information
2016
March 6-10:
Annual Waste Management Symposia, Phoenix, Arizona:
Register Here
June 7-9:
NTSF Annual Meeting 2016, Orlando, Florida
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Join Our List
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COMMITTEE HAPPENINGS
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Welcome New Members!
We are pleased to announce three new appointments to the Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee! Please welcome Iowa State Senator Tom Courtney, Michigan State Representative Aric Nesbitt, and Mr. Dale Patrick from the North Dakota State Department of Public Health. An up-to-date MRMTC roster is
available online.
We hope to meet the committee's newest members at the
fall meeting on November 17-18 in Des Moines, Iowa. These dates are now confirmed and registration will open on September 1.
In other committee news, CSG Midwest has renewed its state agreements with Illinois and Iowa for transportation safety programs related to transuranic waste shipments to DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. While training will continue in FY16, the states are anticipating a slightly lower level of activity because of the ongoing shutdown of the WIPP site. On July 31, DOE issued an update saying the original March 2016 target date for resuming site operations would no longer be viable due to "a variety of unanticipated issues."
The next WIPP Town Hall meeting, featuring updates on recovery activities, will be live streamed on August 6 at 6:30 pm CDT. The committee will hear more about the status of the WIPP recovery at its meeting in Des Moines.
Next week, committee co-chairs and staff will be attending the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) Core Group Meeting in Boston. Next month's newsletter will have a recap of the meeting. In the meantime, August 14 is the deadline for committee members to complete two requests related to the DOE-NE program: 1) the heavy-haul permit information request (Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin); and 2) the lessons-learned survey for states that participated in the Section 180c policy implementation exercise. Please contact Lisa Janairo if you have questions about either of these tasks
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NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION STAKEHOLDERS FORUM
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Ad Hoc Working Group Activities
Updates on the new page will be shared during the Information & Communication AHWG conference call on August 5 at 11:00 am CDT. During the call, group members will also discuss next steps for creating an NTSF newsletter requested by attendees at the May meeting.
The Spent Nuclear Fuel Rail/Routing AHWG also held a conference call in July. Representing the Midwest region are: David Whitfill (Kansas), Kelly Horn (Illinois) and Mike Stead (Illinois), with a fourth member to be decided. During the July call, the Midwest volunteered to write an issue paper for the group on the topic of route identification. The target deadline for the draft paper is late November.
The NTSF Planning Committee is continuing to plan its FY16 webinar series. As part of improving the webinars, we will be tapping Planning Committee members and the leads of ad hoc working groups to help develop this series. A proposed list of webinar ideas and a tentative schedule can be found here. Watch your inbox for webinar registration announcements in the coming months.
Don't forget to mark your calendars with the dates for the 2016 Annual Meeting of the NTSF, June 7-9 in sunny Orlando, Florida! The Southern States Energy Board is hosting the meeting. As in past years, the Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee will hold its spring meeting in conjunction with the NTSF annual meeting.
For up-to-date information about NTSF events and ad hoc working groups, visit the NTSF wiki site. Note that to view links in this newsletter, you must be a member of the site. If you aren't a member, visit the link and click on the button to apply to join. There is no cost to join, but you do have to sign up for a Wikidot account. Note that, if your office email has an aggressive spam filter, you might want to follow the lead of other members who have used their personal email addresses when they sign up for their free Wikidot account.
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FOCUS THIS MONTH
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Search for a Solution
While progress on developing a
permanent repository for the nation's spent nuclear fuel remains at a standstill, private entities are moving forward with their plans for nuclear waste storage. During a webinar on July 29, Holtec International revealed a proposed schedule for building a consolidated interim storage facility in southeastern New Mexico, assuming it receives license approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Holtec International has partnered with the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, a consortium of the region's city and county governments, on this initiative.
According to the timeline presented by Pierre Oneid, Holtec International senior vice president and chief nuclear officer, the company will submit its letter of intent to the NRC in August and hopes to have a pre-application meeting with the commission in December. Next steps and estimated dates would be application submission to the NRC (June 2016), completion of the NRC safety evaluation report (October 2018) and issuance of an NRC license (January 2019). In this scenario, the first phase of construction would begin in April 2019 and the facility would begin operations in April 2020. World Nuclear News offers this recap of Oneid's statements during the webinar if you weren't able to watch live.
In Capitol news, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid is continuing his fight against Yucca Mountain during his final months in office. In July, he and U.S. Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada introduced S. 1825, the "Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act." The bill would prohibit DOE from making any expenditures from the Nuclear Waste Fund for "transportation, treating, or packaging of spent fuel or high-level waste," or for "acquisition, design, modification, replacement, operation, and construction of facilities" at storage or disposal sites without receiving the consent of the governor, local officials and tribal leaders. The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which recently cancelled a scheduled meeting to discuss the "Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2015."
Another July announcement, this one from President Obama, further complicates the future of Yucca Mountain by creating the Basin and Range National Monument in Nevada. The 700,000-acre expanse of land blocks a potential rail corridor to Yucca Mountain, which some say will have a big impact on any plans to resurrect the idea of using Yucca Mountain as a national nuclear waste repository.
In other storage-related developments, last month, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) issued the first two issue briefs in its "Nuclear Waste Primer Series" as part of its nuclear waste initiative. The briefs address options for the consolidated storage of spent nuclear fuel and state regulatory authority over nuclear waste facilities. Future installments in the series will focus on Yucca Mountain, options and limits for presidential executive action, and transportation of nuclear waste. In 2014, members of the Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee attended a BPC forum in Chicago to speak about transporting nuclear waste. Timothy Frazier, director of BPC's nuclear waste initiative, previously served as the designated federal official of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.
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NUCLEAR NEWS
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Exelon Warns of Possible Quad Cities Shutdown
The Midwest has four plants on the list of
shutdown nuclear sites
that are "first in line" to ship spent fuel. Depending on state legislative action, a fifth site could soon be added to the list. On a July 29 conference call, Exelon CEO Chris Crane told analysts that Illinois' Quad Cities plant will likely be closed unless state lawmakers approve an electricity rate increase, according to
Crain's.
Exelon leadership says the company will make a decision in September
on whether or not to close the plant. However, the article notes that company executives have stated in the past that they could reverse such a decision as late as six months or so after making it. As
Rich Miller of Capitol Fax concludes,
this means the Illinois General Assembly effectively has until March 2016 to take legislative action.
NRC Issues Reports on Byron and Braidwood Nuclear Plants' License Renewal
On July 10, the NRC issued its
final safety evaluation report (SER) on the renewal of operating licenses for Exelon's Byron and Braidwood plants, both located in Illinois. Later in the month, the NRC issued a
final environmental report for the Byron Station. The reports concluded there were no technical issues or environmental impacts that would preclude renewing the plants' licenses for an additional 20 years. The Byron and Braidwood plants each house two nuclear reactors.
Of the Midwest's 19
operating nuclear power plants, five have license applications under review (Byron, Braidwood, Fermi, LaSalle, and Davis-Besse). Perry Nuclear Power Plant will submit its renewal application next month and Clinton Power Station in Illinois will submit its application in 2021. The remaining Midwestern plants have all completed their renewals. More information on license renewals
is available on the NRC website.
According to
applications to the NRC, energy companies are considering building new reactors, but some are running into roadblocks. Ameren recently
withdrew its application to build a second reactor at Missouri's Callaway County Plant citing state regulatory issues.
DTE, which received NRC approval last month to build a Fermi 3 reactor in Michigan, is still weighing the financial implications of expanding operations and has not yet committed to the project.
NRC Report: Contractors Violated Procedures at Monticello Plant
At the end of July, NRC investigators issued allegations that two former Xcel Energy Inc. contractors willfully violated safety procedures and falsified records at Minnesota's Monticello plant in 2013. The findings allege
the employees fabricated reports after performing insufficient tests on spent fuel storage cask welds. The violations were discovered by an NRC inspector who watched video footage of the tests.
According to the
Minneapolis Star Tribune, the NRC findings "are not criminal charges, but they put Xcel on notice that the NRC is considering 'escalated enforcement action.'" Information about the NRC's enforcement policies are
available online.
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| MIDWEST FUN FACT OF THE MONTH |
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Did you know...
Wisconsin is home to the first rails-to-trails project in America?
According to
Travel Wisconsin, the Elroy-Sparta Trail became the first rail line converted to a recreational trail when it opened in 1965. Now there are nearly 2,000 rails-to-trails projects around the country, covering more than 22,000 miles.
The 32-mile long Elroy-Sparta Trail celebrated its 50th anniversary in June.
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Thanks for reading! Watch for the next edition to
come out on September 1, 2015.
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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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