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Important Dates
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September 3: NRC Public Meeting on Draft Supplement to Yucca Mountain EIS, 2:00 to 4:00 pm CDT:
Request 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
October 19:
NTSF Webinar on NRC Regulation of SNF Shipments, time TBD:
Request more information
October 26-30:
DOE TEPP Radiation Specialist Course, Albany, New York:
More information
Register online
November 3-4:
Western Interstate Energy Board High-Level Waste Committee Meeting, Spokane, Washington:
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 Conference
, 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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New Appointee and Meeting Updates
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Minnesota Rep. Pat Garofalo (left) at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, 2013
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Please welcome the newest legislative appointee to the Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee, Minnesota State Representative Pat Garofalo! In 2013, Rep. Garofalo attended the committee's tour of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico, and we are excited to work with him again! An up-to-date MRMTC roster is
available online.
We hope to welcome Rep. Garofalo and other new committee members at the
fall meeting on November 17-18 in Des Moines, Iowa. Registration will open next week, so keep an eye on your inbox.
Last month, committee co-chairs and staff attended the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) Transportation Core Group meeting in Boston. In addition to business sessions, Core Group members heard a presentation from the 3 Yankees Company, learned about the logistics of transporting spent nuclear fuel by barge, and were given an update on the shutdown San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).
The 180(c) Policy Implementation Exercise state and tribal volunteers also met last month in Boston to share their experiences with the exercise, discuss lessons learned, and plan next steps. The group also had an informative discussion with Chris Machenberg, Director of Hazardous Materials at CSX Transportation, about railroad hazmat training and response procedures.
In other committee news, a
DOE TEPP Radiation Specialist Course will be held in Albany, New York, on
October 26-30. Travel funding is available for committee members who are interested in attending. Please contact
Lisa Janairo with questions about travel funding.
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NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION STAKEHOLDERS FORUM
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Ad Hoc Working Group Activities
The
Transportation Planning and
Information and Communications ad hoc working groups (AHWG) held conference calls last month, and the Section 180(c) AHWG met in person in Boston. There has been discussion about scheduling AHWG meetings in conjunction with the fall committee meetings of the Midwest, West, and South this year, so members of the ad hoc working groups should stay tuned.
The NTSF Planning Committee is continuing to work on the FY 2016 webinar series. The first confirmed webinar, on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) oversight of spent nuclear fuel shipments, will be held on October 19 and a rail webinar is tentatively being planned for September. Watch your inbox for registration announcements. A proposed list of webinar ideas and a tentative schedule can be found here. As part of improving the webinars, we are tapping Planning Committee members and AHWG leads to help develop this series.
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 and will be sending a "save-the-date" message soon. As in past years, the Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee will hold its spring meeting in conjunction with the NTSF annual meeting. A subcommittee of the Planning Committee will be holding a conference call next week to discuss the agenda structure and brainstorm ideas for plenary session speakers. If anyone has ideas for speakers or topics to include on the agenda, please contact Katelyn Tye.
For up-to-date information about NTSF events and ad hoc working groups, visit the NTSF wiki site.
Note that to view NTSF-related links in this article, you must be a member of the site. If you aren't a member, visit the link above and click on the button to apply to join. There is no cost to join, but you do have to sign up for a free 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 Wikidot account.
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FOCUS THIS MONTH
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Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) Level VI Instructors Attend Development Training at Argonne National Laboratory
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| Loading demo attendees at Argonne National Laboratory, August 25, 2015 |
On August 25-26, CVSA Level VI national instructors and representatives of the Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee attended a mobile loading unit (MLU) demonstration at Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago in Lemont, Illinois.
In the two-day loading demo, observers watched an MLU team perform contact-handled and remote-handled loading of empty transuranic waste canisters into a TRUPACT-II container and RH-72B cask.
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From left to right, Tony Anderson, Kelly Horn, Todd Armstrong, and Rob Rohr get a close-up look at the lid of the outer containment vessel of a TRUPACT II shipping cask.
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During work breaks, attendees were able to get a rare, up-close look at the containers, while personnel from the MLU team and Andy Walker from the DOE Carlsbad Field Office answered questions about the packaging and loading process.
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| Technicians prepare to remove the second impact limiter from an RH-72B cask. |
"Having inspected numerous Waste Isolation Pilot Plant trucks over the last decade, I found the loading demo to be very insightful," said Kelly Horn of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. "It allowed me to more thoroughly understand the waste management side of the process before the package is offered for transportation."
Prior to the
canister breach and truck fire that halted disposal operations at WIPP in February 2014, the facility had received nearly 200 shipments of transuranic waste from Argonne. According to a recent announcement by DOE, the proposed March 2016 date for resuming disposal operations at WIPP "is no longer viable due to a variety of unanticipated issues." No new date has been identified, although the DOE press release indicated that the new date would be in 2016.
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NUCLEAR NEWS
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NRC Issues Draft Supplement to Yucca Mountain EIS, Public Comment Period Open
In August, the NRC released a
draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on the effect of a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste at Yucca Mountain. According to
an abstract on the document, "the NRC staff finds that all of the potential direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts on the resources evaluated in this supplement would be SMALL" (emphasis in original). The public comment period on the draft opened August 21 and
comments will be accepted until October 20, 2015.
On
September 3 from 2:00-4:00 p.m. CDT, the NRC will hold the first in a series of public meetings at NRC Headquarters. The
meeting will be webcast and a telephone line is available. Contact
Christine Pineda for more details and call-in information.
In other Yucca Mountain news, U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada told the
Nevada Appeal last month, that he expects the House to pass legislation reviving Yucca Mountain by 400 votes in the 114th Congress. He added that his support for such a bill depends on what incentives Nevada will receive in exchange for housing the nation's high-level radioactive waste. According to the article, Rep. Crescent Hardy of Nevada has also suggested he could support a Yucca Mountain repository if the right incentives were offered.
In related news, the Nuclear Energy Institute issued an updated version of its Legislative Principles for Nuclear Waste Management Reform. One strategy mentioned in the document is "a consolidated storage facility for used nuclear fuel and DOE high-level waste in a willing host community and state made available only after the NRC has issued a final decision on the Yucca Mountain repository license application."
In Loving Memory of Willie Preacher
Today's newsletter ends with the very sad news of the passing of Willie Preacher, director of the Tribal DOE program of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. Willie was an active member of the National Transportation Stakeholders Forum (NTSF) Tribal Caucus, serving on the NTSF Planning Committee since its inception in 2009. Willie also was a member of the Section 180(c) Implementation and Transportation Planning Ad Hoc Working Groups, and he represented the Tribal Caucus on the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy's Transportation Core Group.
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Willie Preacher (1952-2015)
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According to his
obituary, Willie began working at the Idaho Chemical Processing Plant at Idaho National Laboratory in 1973 as an operator and eventually as a trainer. Following his career at INL, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes hired him to be the Tribes' liaison with the Department of Energy. Born on September 28, 1952, Willie was 62 years old when he died peacefully last week on August 23, surrounded by family and friends. Willie was highly respected by his colleagues, and all who knew him will remember him as a kind, good-natured man. We will miss him.
Thank you to Brooke Oleen Tieperman for her help with this article.
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Thank you for reading. Watch for the next edition to
come out on October 6, 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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