If you have not already done so, please remember to mark your calendars for the committee's fall meeting on December 13-14 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The meeting will be held at the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza, and registration and a preliminary agenda will be available on September 1. The committee will meet for a full day on December 13 and a half day on December 14. Unlike in past years, there will be no NTSF ad hoc working group (AHWG) meeting in conjunction with the committee's meeting.

In more meeting news, on August 23-24, committee co-chair Kevin Leuer (Minnesota), former co-chair Kelly Horn (Illinois), and CSG Midwest staff will represent the committee at the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) Transportation Core Group meeting in Colorado Springs. Next month's newsletter will feature a recap of the meeting, which will include a tour of the Association of American Railroads' Transportation Technology Center, Inc.

In other news, the new version of the Planning Guide for Shipments of Radioactive Material through the Midwestern States will be finalized later this month. Katelyn Tye will be emailing committee members to find out how many hard copies should be sent to each state when the print edition comes out in September.

Finally, the complete summary of the committee's spring meeting in Pittsburgh is now posted online. 

The NTSF Planning Committee held a conference call on July 27 to begin planning for next year's annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, on June 4-7. The meeting will be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Omaha Downtown. During the call, a handful of members volunteered to serve on the Agenda Team for the 2018 meeting. The team is holding a conference call on August 9 to review agenda structure options and brainstorm possible topics and speakers. Brian Folts (Nebraska) will participate on the Agenda Team from the Midwest, along with CSG Midwest staff Lisa Janairo and Katelyn Tye.

In AHWG news, the Information & Communications AHWG has undergone a transition in leadership and will be forming a revised work plan in the coming weeks. Thank you to Tammy Ottmer (Colorado) and Uldis Vanags (CSG/ERC) for their leadership of the AHWG since February 2015. The new AHWG will be led by Heather Westra (Prairie Island Indian Community) and Katelyn Tye. If any Midwestern committee members are interested in volunteering to serve on the new group, please email Katelyn.

In other AHWG news, the Rail/Routing AHWG is meeting in Colorado Springs on August 24-25, in conjunction with the DOE-NE Transportation Core Group meeting. The AHWG will attend a tour of TTCI and participate in a one-day routing workshop. During the workshop, AHWG members will discuss considerations for spent nuclear fuel (SNF) transportation with railroad representatives, focusing on route criteria from the U.S. Department of Transportation's hazmat rail routing rule, options for hypothetical routes from volunteer-selected origin-destination pairs, and other outstanding issues related to route selection for SNF shipments.

Other upcoming AHWG meetings include a web-meeting of the Section 180c AHWG on August 17 and a web-meeting of the Spent Fuel Transportation Materials AHWG on September 13.

State & Federal Legislative Roundup

During a July 26 meeting, officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) spoke with residents about the pending closure and decommissioning of Palisades Nuclear Plant in southwestern Michigan. According to an article on MLive.com, one resident "wanted to know if any radioactive materials would be transported off-site during decommissioning, and said she worries the infrastructure is not in place to transport radioactive materials." Others expressed concerns about the spent nuclear fuel being stored on-site. The article notes that because the plant owner, Entergy, is still in the process of submitting detailed plans for closure to the NRC, some residents' questions were left unanswered.

Palisades is scheduled to close on October 1, 2018.

An article published this month by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), a nonprofit investigative news organization, asserts that according to government documents, plutonium has been improperly packaged or shipped by nuclear weapons contractors at least 25 times in the past five years.

The article notes: "In total, 11 of the 25 known shipping mistakes since July 2012 involved shipments that either originated at Los Alamos [National Laboratory] or passed through the lab. Thirteen of the 25 incidents involved plutonium, highly-enriched uranium (another nuclear explosive), or other radioactive materials. Some of the mislabeled shipments went to toxic waste dumps and breached regulatory limits on what the dumps were allowed to accept, according to the [government documents]."

The most recent shipping violation covered by the CPI occurred in June, when a shipment of plutonium was sent from Los Alamos to the Lawrence Livermore and Savannah River national laboratories via FedEx cargo planes. According the the Los Alamos Daily Post, the lab responded by transferring the responsibility for fissile nuclear material shipments to a different organization within the lab.

Thank you to Ken Niles (Oregon) for sharing the Center for Public Integrity article.

Officials in Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, are moving on after the 2013 closing of Kewaunee Power Station, reports the Green Bay Press-Gazette.

According to the Press-Gazette, the county board enacted a 0.5 percent sales tax in April to replace the lost tax revenue from the plant closure and municipal leaders are now focused on boosting tourism to the area.

"The county is going to survive," County Board Chairman Robert Weidner told the Press-Gazette.