Please remember to register and reserve hotel rooms for the Committee's June 8 meeting in Pittsburgh, which is being held in conjunction with the National Transportation Stakeholders Forum (NTSF) annual meeting on June 5-8. Registration for both the Committee meeting and the NTSF meeting are being handled through a single online registration system, available here. The cut-off date to receive a group rate for the hotel is next Friday, May 12. Committee members will be reimbursed to their travel to Pittsburgh, as will other state personnel serving on ad hoc working groups (AHWG). A reminder to committee members: you should only plan to arrive on Sunday night if you are planning to take part in training on Monday; otherwise, plan to arrive on Monday.

In more meeting news, a preliminary agenda and other information for the Committee's June 8 meeting are now posted online. In addition to the general committee business session, the meeting will feature a presentation on findings from a Department of Energy (DOE) site visit to the shutdown Fort Calhoun nuclear plant in Nebraska, as well as information about future visits to shutdown sites in the Midwest. Attendees will also hear an update on the Transportation Emergency Preparedness Program.

Another item on the agenda will be to go over proposed changes for the next edition of the Planning Guide for Shipments of Radioactive Material through the Midwestern States. A marked-up copy of the Planning Guide language will be shared with Committee members prior to the meeting for those who are willing and able to look it over in advance. Members will also be asked to update their state-specific information before the publication goes to print in August. Many thanks to Kevin Hogan (Michigan), Aaron Kallunki (Minnesota) and Paul Schmidt (Wisconsin), who graciously volunteered to serve on the Planning Guide review group. They were a tremendous help.

At the end of the meeting, details about the Committee's fall 2017 meeting will be announced. Committee members should have received an email from Katelyn Tye with a SurveyMonkey link. The potential dates for the meeting were originally limited to the week of November 13, but due to a scheduling conflict for several members, those options have been expanded. The revised survey will close on June 2, so please submit your responses before then.

In other Committee news, Kelly Horn (Illinois) presented at the Nuclear Energy Institute's Used Fuel Management Conference this week during a panel discussion on transportation. Kelly will give a report on his presentation during the Committee's meeting in Pittsburgh.

Finally, we would like to wish Tonya Ngotel the best of luck as she departs the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) for a position with the Center for Preparedness Education at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Tonya was with NEMA for 14 years and became active on the Committee in connection with the Section 180c exercise and reviewing DOE Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) public information materials. Her last day at NEMA was April 14.

Registration is still open for this year's annual meeting of the NTSF, which is being held from June 5-8 in Pittsburgh. A preliminary agenda is available on the registration page and linked here. ( Please note, the June 8 visit to Holtec International has reached capacity, so registration for that event is now closed.) During the meeting's opening keynote, attendees will hear from John Mulkern, Secretary General of the World Nuclear Transport Institute. For the closing plenary, Rod McCullum with the Nuclear Energy Institute and Andrew Zach with the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce will participate in a panel discussion on the outlook for the nation's management of spent fuel and high-level waste. Ken Niles (Oregon) will moderate the session.

In other NTSF annual meeting news, the hotel search for the 2018 meeting, hosted by the Midwest, has concluded and the location for next year's meeting with be announced in Pittsburgh.

The NTSF Planning Committee will hold its final pre-meeting conference calls on May 8 and 22.

In NTSF webinar news, for those who missed the April 19 webinar on the Department of Energy's (DOE) initial site-specific de-inventory reports for the Maine Yankee and Trojan plants, a recording and slides are posted on the NTSF wiki site. The webinar was very well-received by NTSF participants, so DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) has offered to host future webinars as the other de-inventory reports are released.

Also ahead in webinars, Planning Committee members are coordinating an NTSF Newcomers Orientation webinar, which will be held on May 24 at 1 pm Central and is intended for first-time attendees of the NTSF annual meeting. An invitation for that webinar will be sent out in the near future to meeting registrants who are attending their first NTSF meting.

In AHWG news, the Spent Fuel Transportation Materials AHWG will meet on June 7, during the NTSF annual meeting, to review additional fact sheets from DOE-NE. Jay Jones (DOE-NE) will become the group's new DOE-lead, as Giulia Bisconti (DOE-NE) will be resuming her work on DOE-NE's international programs.

In other AHWG news, the Rail/Routing AHWG held a web-meeting this afternoon to discuss plans for a routing workshop with rail representatives, tentatively scheduled for August 24 in Colorado Springs. More updates on the proposed workshop will be shared in future editions of the newsletter.

	Yucca Mountain in Nevada

In an April 10 news release, DOE's Office of Environmental Management (DOE-EM) announced that the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico, had received its first shipment on transuranic (TRU) waste since the facility reopened in January. WIPP had suspended waste emplacement operations since February 2014, due to an underground fire and an unrelated radiological release.

According to the news release, the facility plans to receive shipments initially from Idaho, Savannah River Site, and Waste Control Specialists at a rate of two shipments a week. The schedule is expected to ramp up to four shipments a week by the end of 2017, with packages coming from Oak Ridge and Los Alamos National Laboratory, as well.

In related news, former MRMTC member Tim Runyon, who had been doing communication support as a subcontractor for the Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO), has taken a new position with the Carlsbad Technical Assistance Contract (CTAC). At CTAC, Tim will be providing technical services to CBFO for quality assurance audits, and project reviews and oversight. Best of luck to Tim in his new post!

Thank you to Mike Wangler (DOE-EM) for sharing the EM News Flash announcing the first shipments.

Ohio Legislature Holds Hearing on FirstEnergy Bill
On April 25, the Ohio House Public Utilities Committee heard testimony on House Bill 178, which would provide financial aid to nuclear power plants through a Zero-Emissions Nuclear Resource Program. The legislation and its companion in the Senate (Senate Bill 128) are the result of warnings from plant operator FirstEnergy that it would be forced to shut down its Davis-Besse and Perry plants in the absence of economic assistance.

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the program would provide plant operators with about $300 million annually, and all FirstEnergy customers would pay for a delivery rate increase of about 5 percent.

Opponents of the proposal, which include independent power companies with wind, gas, and coal-fired power plants, are expected to seek a federal court ruling against the state if Ohio lawmakers approve it, reported the Plain Dealer.

Financial Implications of Fort Calhoun Shutdown Come to Light
Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) ratepayers will have to shell out more than $1 billion over the next seven years to pay for the decommissioning of the Fort Calhoun plant, reports the Omaha World-Herald. In all, spending on the project could hit $3 billion.

The World-Herald article goes on to detail the decommissioning process, saying OPPD plans to use the SAFSTOR dry cask system to house the spent fuel that remains at the plant. The fuel rods will remain in a cooling pool until 2022, when they can be moved into storage.

Some representatives of the MRMTC will accompany DOE and other personnel on a site visit to Fort Calhoun on May 16-18. The agenda for the Committee's June 8 meeting includes a presentation on the findings of that site visit.

In related news, Steve Maheras' paper entitled "Preliminary Evaluation of Removing Used Nuclear Fuel from Shutdown Sites," which was presented at the PATRAM conference in Japan last year, received one of three Aoki Awards for Distinguished Oral Presentations. Congratulations to Steve and everyone else who contributed to the shutdown sites work!