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Important Dates
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2018
December 11-12:
Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Division of Spent Fuel Management Regulatory Conference - Rockville, MD
December 12-13:
SSEB Transportation Committees Fall 2018 Meeting - Austin, TX
2019
January 10:
NTSF Communications Ad Hoc Working Group Conference Call - 12PM
January 22-24:
Institute of Nuclear Materials Management; Spent Fuel Management Seminar - Alexandria, VA
January 23-25:
Tribal Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee Meeting - Crystal City/Washington, DC
May 7-9
Nuclear Energy Institute Used Fuel Management Conference - West Palm Beach, FL
June 10-13:
NTSF 2019 Annual Meeting - Crystal City/Washington, DC
August 4-9:
Packaging and Transportation of Radioactive Materials (PATRAM) - New Orleans
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Join Our List
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COMMITTEE HAPPENINGS
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Meet Mitch
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Mitch Arvidson, Policy Analyst for CSG Midwest |
CSG Midwest is pleased to announce the hiring of Mitchell (Mitch) Arvidson as a new policy analyst. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Mitch earned his master's at UW's La Follette School of Public Affairs earlier this year. He started at CSG Midwest's office in Lombard, Illinois, on November 19. He will devote half of his time to the Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Project. If you participated in the NTSF webinar on WIPP Road Shows or the WIEB High-Level Radioactive Waste Committee meeting in San Diego, you already had a chance to meet Mitch (at least virtually). Everyone else will have a chance to meet him at the committee's next meeting, which will take place the week of June 10 in Crystal City/Washington, DC, in conjunction with the 2019 Annual Meeting of the NTSF. Producing these monthly newsletters will be one of Mitch's responsibilities, so please
email him to share any ideas for news items to include in future editions. He'll also be the staff lead for the committee's work groups on the
Planning Guide and decommissioning guidance, both of which will be getting underway in January. Please join us in welcoming Mitch!
With Mitch's hiring, Melissa Bailey's temporary assignment with the transportation project will be wrapping up. Melissa provided much-needed assistance with the project on a part-time basis these past several months while retaining her full-time job in Vermont. She organized the two tours at the NTSF meeting in Omaha and also led the planning for the WIPP Tour in October. In addition, she has been single-handedly writing the newsletter since May. Most recently, late last month, Melissa represented the Midwest at the fall meeting of the Northeast High-Level Radioactive Waste Transportation Task Force. The committee members and staff all extend our thanks to Melissa for her exceptional service these past seven months. We hope to be able to work with her again on an ad hoc basis as the need arises.
In other committee news, the election of seven new governors on November 6 means the staff will be seeking several new appointments in 2019. A few members have already notified us that they will follow their own internal processes to secure the new appointments. For the other states, current appointees or alternates will receive copies of the appointment requests when they go out in January. Regardless of the method, the goal is to have all appointments in place well before the June committee meeting. Contact Lisa if you have any questions about the appointment process.
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NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION STAKEHOLDERS FORUM
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NTSF Updates
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On November 27, NTSF, the Western Governors' Association (WGA), and DOE's Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) presented a webinar on Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Roadshows as an Educational Tool. During the webinar, James Mason (CBFO) and Bobby St. John (Nuclear Waste Partnership) demonstrated the opportunities a road show affords to public safety officials, local elected officials, members of the public, and the media to understand the protocols and procedures of transporting waste to WIPP. Lt. Fred Wurster of the Nevada Highway Patrol also provided a participant's perspective about the week-long roadshow held in Nevada in June. James, Bobby, and Fred also answered questions from the audience. The webinar recording and slideshow can be found on
NTSF's wiki site.
The NTSF Planning Committee (PC) held a conference call at the end of November to discuss the status of the Ad Hoc Working Groups and provide an update on the NTSF 2019 Annual Meeting. Among other discussions, the committee is considering "20 Years of WIPP" as the theme for the June meeting. The next NTSF PC call is tentatively scheduled for the week of December 17.
The NTSF Communications Ad Hoc Working Group also got back to work with a conference call in November. The group is considering a refocusing of their efforts to create fact sheets on radioactive waste transportation for states and tribes. This switch stems from DOE never releasing the original fact sheets and the agency not being able to commit to using them in the future. The working group believes the state and tribal focused fact sheets could be useful for reaching out to relevant local stakeholders, recruiting participation from rail safety program personnel, and countering the inaccurate claims often presented in anti-nuclear campaigns. The group's next call will be on January 10.
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| FOCUS THIS MONTH |
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Wisconsin State Capitol
(photo by Dori) |
Committee's Focus in Madison Turned to Near-Term Shipments
This year's Fall Meeting reminded the committee members and other attendees that, while the Department of Energy's shipments of commercial spent fuel are far in the future, other shippers either are or soon will be actively planning shipments of radioactive material and waste -- including commercial spent nuclear fuel.
The two speakers in the session on Regional and National Developments in the Nuclear Industry emphasized the importance of involving the states and Tribes in transportation planning for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that opponents of nuclear power are organizing around the issue of transporting nuclear waste. The states can help to carry the message that shipments of radioactive waste can be and are conducted safely. According to Rod McCullum of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trend in the industry is early shutdown of smaller, less competitive plants, followed by prompt decommissioning. This new trend translates into a need to remove spent fuel as soon as possible from the shutdown sites -- something that the federal government has not been able to accomplish. Two private centralized interim storage facilities currently undergoing NRC licensing may be the solution temporarily, which means that shipments of spent fuel could begin in as early as five years if all goes well during the licensing process. The expectation is that the private sector, not DOE, would be making these shipments.
For the most part, spent fuel shipments conducted by the private sector would be very similar to those conducted by DOE. There are two significant differences, however. First, the requirement in Section 180(c) of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act -- namely, that DOE provide the states and Tribes with funds and technical assistance for training -- applies only to shipments destined for NWPA-authorized facilities. Unless Congress amends the NWPA to include the proposed interim storage facilities as authorized facilities, there would be no Section 180(c) assistance to states and Tribes in connection with shipments to these sites.
In addition, the states and Tribes expect to be involved very early in the planning of spent fuel shipments that DOE would conduct -- partly because Section 180(c) implementation is tentatively scheduled to begin at least four years prior to shipments. With private-sector shipments, this planning timeframe could be drastically condensed under the NRC's current requirement in
10 CFR Part 73.37 that shippers "preplan and coordinate shipment information
no later than 2 weeks prior to the shipment or prior to the first shipment of a series of shipments with the governor of a State, or the governor's designee, of a shipment of spent nuclear fuel through or across the boundary of the State" (emphasis added). Facing the possibility of private shipments in the near-term, the committee decided to make it a priority starting in 2019 to help the states understand what they'll need to do in order to be prepared if and when shipments commence.
More immediately, the committee discussed the plans and preparations for the resumption of transuranic waste shipments from Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago to WIPP in New Mexico after a hiatus of nearly four years. The Midwestern states and DOE began coordinating on the resumption of shipments back in February. As a result of this early planning, the region was able to complete training, a road show, and a tour of WIPP prior to the first shipment, which is expected to occur yet this year.
The committee also learned from two speakers that the next few years could see shipments of molybdenum-99 originating at two sites in southern Wisconsin. Both SHINE Medical Technologies and NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes are developing facilities to produce Mo-99, whose daughter isotope technetium-99 is used in 80 percent of nuclear diagnostic procedures throughout the world. There is no domestic or even North American source of Mo-99, so both SHINE and NorthStar expect to see significant demand for their products. Shipments of Mo-99 are expected to begin as early as 2019 from NorthStar in Beloit and in late 2020-early 2021 from SHINE, located in Janesville.
The
committee website contains a summary of the meeting as well as speaker presentations and other material.
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NUCLEAR NEWS
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Robots Go Where Humans Cannot at Fukushima Daiichi
On the November 25th edition of 60 Minutes, correspondent Lesley Stahl reports from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in northeast Japan which experienced the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl on March 11, 2011. Seven years later, it is still too radioactive in the three reactors that melted down for humans to begin the cleanup process.
Enter robots. Plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO); their senior adviser, nuclear engineer and former DOE official Lake Barrett; and the Japanese government have worked with Japan's top tech companies and universities to develop a robotics research center near the plant. There, they train operators and develop robots that can navigate the abandoned reactors, locate the missing fuel, and eventually retrieve it.
The success rate of the initial generation of robots has been mixed. One, called Scorpion, designed to flatten under pipes and other barriers, hit debris and became lodged minutes into its mission. On the other hand, a robot called Little Sunfish was able to swim through and navigate a flooded reactor to send back the first verified evidence of the missing fuel. Despite these advances, Mr. Barrett believes it will be several decades before the cleanup is finished.
To watch the 60 Minutes segment,
click
here
.
Thanks to Ken Niles for sharing this story!
Nevada Launches Lawsuit Against the Department of Energy
Plans by the Department of Energy to transport one metric ton of radioactive weapons-grade plutonium from South Carolina to the Nevada National Security Site have been complicated by a lawsuit filed on November 30 by Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt. State officials are demanding a full environmental review of the plan. Additionally, the suit claims the federal government has ignored several possible sites outside of Nevada and that the plan will lead to contaminated land and groundwater and expose residents to increased radiation.
Much like the state's opposition to the Yucca Mountain repository, opposition to this plan is bipartisan. Outgoing Republicans like Senator Dean Heller and Governor Brian Sandoval and incoming Democrats like Senator-elect Jacky Rosen and Governor-elect Steve Sisolak have all come out in opposition to DOE's plan.
DOE says Nevada would only be a staging area for the plutonium before it went on to Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The staging site is about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Coverage in the
Reno Gazette Journal
can be found
here
.
Special thanks to Robert Halstead of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects for first bringing this development to the author's attention at the WIEB High-Level Radioactive Waste Committee's meeting.
Update on August's San Onofre Canister Incident
This newsletter's September edition covered the announcement of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) investigation into an incident involving the transfer of a spent nuclear fuel canister from wet storage pools to an onsite dry storage facility at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) in Southern California. NRC published their final report on November 28 and offered details earlier in the month during an unprecedented public webinar watched by 500 people.
NRC reported that the spent fuel canister became lodged on the inner ring of underground storage vault's divider shell liner. SONGS personnel failed to recognize that the canister was not fully inserted and it was left lodged about 18 feet above the bottom of the vault for nearly an hour until a radiation protection technician noticed higher radiation readings than expected. Personnel took immediate corrective actions and there was no damage to the canister. NRC determined that the incident stemmed from inattentiveness by the crane operator and the rest of the transfer team. Further details can be found in the full report linked below.
SONGS still has not resumed their wet to dry storage transfer activities. 44 spent fuel canisters remain to be moved.
To access the report
, click
here
. Coverage in the San Diego Union-Tribune can be found here.
Farewell
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Tanksi Clairmont (Lakota/Dakota)
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This edition of the newsletter began with a welcome and it ends with a farewell. Today is Tanksi Clairmont's last day as the coordinator for the Tribal Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee. Tanski joined the National Conference of State Legislatures just over a year ago as the Tribal Working Groups Coordinator for Environment, Energy & Transportation. During her time with NCSL, she helped to strengthen the TRMTC, assisted with planning the 2018 and 2019 NTSF annual meetings, and co-led the NTSF Communications Ad Hoc Working Group. Although she valued the chance to work with the TRMTC members on nuclear issues, she decided to follow her passion and pursue a career "building renewable energy capacity throughout Indian Country." In her new position, she will focus on building a tribal solar energy program. We wish Tanksi well in her new career and hope to cross paths again someday. Toksά Akẻ, Tanksi!
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Thank you for reading. Watch for the next edition to come out on
January 3, 2019.
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Missed a newsletter? Past issues are
archived
on the committee's webpage.
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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-NE0008604, DE-EM0004869, and DE-EM0005168.
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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