Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (MRMTC) Newsletter

January 2022 | The Council of State Governments (CSG) | Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee

Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee Newsletter

Committee Happenings

Happy New Year from the Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (MRMTC)! We hope your holidays were joyous and you are entering 2022 rested and energized. CSG Midwest received some great news to start off the year. After a slight delay since the initial application in September, CSG Midwest was awarded a new, five-year cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE). Along with two other cooperative agreements with the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM), this award means the MRMTC will continue to be fully funded and staffed by CSG Midwest!

It has been a little over a month since the MRMTC met for its Fall 2021 Meeting in Chicago, IL. One of the sessions during the first half-day "Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Transportation Tabletop" was a standard contract explanation and discussion. One of the lingering questions from that session was whether or not DOE has entered into any contracts to dispose of SNF and/or high-level radioactive waste (HLW) with advanced small modular reactors (SMR). To follow up, DOE has not yet entered into any contracts with advanced SMRs. However, there is a contract amendment already published specifically for new reactors, which can be read here. The contract may be updated in the future, as needed.

We may only be a week into 2022, but two MRMTC work groups are already in full gear. First, the MRMTC Regional Tribal Engagement Work Group held its first quarterly call on January 4. After a successful 2021 in which the group created two work products (advance notification brochure and outreach guidance) to assist state committee members in their outreach to regional Tribes, the group came back together to discuss what can be done in 2022. With a new, more user-friendly, work group website, the MRMTC Regional Tribal Engagement Work Group will be exploring ways to conduct and/or help coordinate transportation-related trainings and exercises for regional Tribes. Furthermore, the group is trying to compile a centralized list of tribal liaisons in Midwestern states and/or agencies. If you know who your agency's or state's tribal liaison is, please let Mitch Arvidson know.

Second, the MRMTC Consent-Based Siting Request for Information (RFI) Ad Hoc Working Group (AHWG) will have its first meeting on January 10. This AHWG will develop the MRMTC's responses to DOE's RFI on Using a Consent-Based Siting Process to Identify Federal Interim Storage Facilities. The RFI seeks responses to questions addressing the consent-based siting process itself, seeking ways to remove barriers to meaningful participation, and addressing interim storage as part of a waste management system.

DOE has already received some responses from interested parties, including from Edward Sproat, the former Director of the DOE Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM). In his responses, Mr. Sproat says the federal government should start discussions at the state level first, since this is where opposition to Yucca Mountain, the Private Fuel Storage (PFS) project in Utah, and the Interim Storage Partners (ISP) project in Texas was, and is, the strongest. He also believes that the two primary barriers to making a consent-based siting process work are time and site adequacy, and that it will be difficult if not impossible to develop interim storage facilities without a determined permanent repository.

National Transportation Stakeholders Forum

Much like the MRMTC, the National Transportation Stakeholders Forum (NTSF) and the organizations that make it up are already in full gear. The Southern States Energy Board (SSEB) held its Joint Meeting of the Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee and the Transuranic Waste Transportation Working Group on December 16 and 17 in Nashville, TN. For those who attended the MRMTC Fall 2021 Meeting, there were some familiar presentations about the 2020 Bedford Park, IL, railcar fire and the Draft Railcar Safety Inspection Protocol. There were also some new presentations from the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition and a review of Transportation Emergency Preparedness Program (TEPP) trainings and exercises in the South. Tom Clawson, President of Technical Resources Group, Inc., gave a particularly interesting presentation about Chernobyl 35 years later and his many visits to the site.

The next group to hold a meeting will be the Tribal Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (TRMTC) on January 26 and 27 in San Diego, CA. The first day will be a full-day TRMTC business meeting with presentations on topics such as DOE-NE's consent-based siting efforts. The second day will be a half-day tour of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS).

As far as the NTSF goes, the Agenda Planning Subcommittee held its first meeting on January 5 to begin putting together the agenda for June's 2022 Annual Meeting of the NTSF in Philadelphia, PA. The agenda will be jam packed with plenary sessions, panels, luncheons, and breakout sessions covering everything you need to know about radioactive materials transportation throughout the country. Keep an eye out for registration details and keep June 6 - 9 open on your calendars. The NTSF Planning Committee will next meet on January 12 to continue its planning efforts.

Finally, NTSF members have been invited to respond to another DOE-NE RFI. This is an RFI Regarding Planning for Establishment of a Program to Support the Availability of High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) for Civilian Domestic Research, Development, Demonstration, and Commercial Use. The RFI includes questions about considerations for HALEU transport, including transporting HALEU in various chemical forms and questions for packaging companies.

Christopher Wells (SSEB) welcomes attendees to the SSEB's 2021 Joint Meeting

Focus This Month

NRC's Regulatory Readiness Review

Last month, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) released its long-awaited "NRC's Regulatory Readiness for Oversight of Large-Scale Commercial Transportation of Spent Nuclear Fuel" report. This report reviews the agency's readiness for SNF shipments across the country if the proposed consolidated interim storage facilities (CISF) in New Mexico and west Texas are approved, constructed, and begin operation. This report was released with the caveat that the NRC does not store or transport SNF and that its release does not mean that major shipping campaigns are imminent.

The review is divided into eight parts; an introduction, assessment areas, overview of the assessment results, recommended enhancements, areas potentially requiring commission direction, information needs, oversight roadmap, and summary of conclusions and recommendations. The review covered 19 assessment areas, including regulations and guidance for packaging and transportation, loading of SNF for storage and transportation, DOE-transported versus commercially transported SNF, interagency agreements for oversight of SNF transportation, route approval process, etc.

NRC staff concluded that the NRC regulatory framework aligns well with those of other Federal agencies with responsibilities for SNF transportation, that the NRC has well-established and strong working relationships with these federal agencies, and that they did not identify any rulemaking needed at this time. The review did, however, identify and recommend six specific enhancements:

Create new or enhance existing safety inspection procedures (IPs)
Create new or enhance existing security IPs
Develop guidance for scheduling inspections
Enhance the qualification and training requirements for inspectors
Develop new or enhance existing Inspection Manual Chapters (IMCs)
Develop a communication strategy and outreach plan

In "Appendix B: Roles and Responsibilities," the review says that "States and Tribes along transportation routes will be involved as necessary and appropriate to support transportation oversight activities at the local level, especially the implementation of emergency response plans." The review goes on to acknowledge that commercial shipments of SNF to private CISF are not subject to provisions in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA), including the funding provision in Section 180(c).

Stakeholders can expect additional information from the NRC in the New Year. Furthermore, NRC staff will strive to present their findings to stakeholder groups throughout 2022, whether that be through NTSF webinars, the 2022 Annual Meeting of the NTSF, or at state regional group (SRG) meetings.

Nuclear News

Holtec Receives Federal Approval to Decommission Two Michigan Nukes

On December 13, the NRC approved the transfer of the Palisades nuclear power plant licenses, Palisades independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI), and the Big Rock Point ISFSI from Entergy Nuclear Operations to Holtec International. Holtec, and its decommissioning operator Holtec Decommissioning International (HDI), will be allowed to use Palisades' $550 million decommissioning trust fund for radiological decommissioning, spent fuel management, and site restoration.

While the approval is effective immediately, the license transfer won't take place until Palisades shuts down permanently on May 31 and the financial transaction is finalized by June 30. The outcomes of several hearing requests submitted to the NRC by antinuclear groups and the Michigan Attorney General's office could challenge the final transfer. If the sales are finalized, Holtec will have five active decommissioning projects; the two in Michigan, Oyster Creek in New Jersey, Indian Point in New York, and Pilgrim in Massachusetts.

American Nuclear Society's (ANS) NuclearNewswire has further coverage.

Changes in Waste Interpretation That Will Affect DOE Sites

Three New Mexico appellate judges have rejected an appeal of a DOE permit modification request (PMR) that was approved by the New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) in 2019. The PMR aimed to change how the department counted the amount of transuranic (TRU) waste stored at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, NM. In the original operating permit, the site's 6.2 million cubic foot limit was to be calculated by the volume of the outer containers. It was incorrectly assumed that the drums would be completely full and the outer containers would be a good measure of the amount of waste stored underground. In reality, the drums are not filled completely and a good amount of empty air between the waste and the outer container was counting towards the statutory limit. With the appeal denial, WIPP went from being statutorily half full, to only a third full. This also means that the site could hypothetically be active until 2050.

The Carlsbad Current Argus has more details.

In other waste interpretation news, the Biden administration and the DOE have reaffirmed a decision by the Trump administration to determine radioactive waste's level by radioactivity, rather than how it was produced. Previously, all waste that derived from the nation's nuclear weapons production program was considered HLW. Under the new interpretation, some government owned radioactive sludge, slurry, liquid, debris, and contaminated equipment will now be considered low-level radioactive waste (LLW). DOE says this decision allows them "to focus on other high-priority cleanup projects, reduce how long radioactive waste is stored at Energy Department facilities, and increase safety for workers, communities and the environment." A large amount of waste stored at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington, and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina will now be eligible to be shipped to LLW storage sites such as Waste Control Specialists (WCS) in Andrews County, Texas, and EnergySolutions in Clive, Utah.

Read the Associated Press for more information.

For FirstEnergy, When It Rains It Pours

The last few years for FirstEnergy, an Ohio-based electric utility, have been nothing but bad news. Anyone who has read this newsletter a time or two probably knows about the Ohio House Bill (HB) 6 corruption scandal. In the fallout of that scandal, FirstEnergy has been ordered to refund Ohioans $306 million and signed a deferred prosecution agreement in which the company admitted wrongdoing and must pay $230 million to the state and federal government. Entering December, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) had three active investigations into FirstEnergy's conduct. By the end of the month, there were four. PUCO announced that their audit will now include an investigation into a "side deal" with an industrial energy group that had opposed FirstEnergy's electric security plan.

Cleveland Patch has the story.

If that wasn't bad enough, the NRC cited the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Toledo, Ohio, with five safety violations. Davis-Besse is owned and operated by FirstEnergy's Energy Harbor subsidiary. The safety violations stem from multiple diesel generator failures from July 2019 to June 2021. Diesel generators are essential to nuclear plant safety in order to keep electricity flowing to the reactor cooling mechanisms in the event of a blackout. Additionally, on July 8, 2021, there were "multiple complicating equipment issues" with a reactor trip or unplanned shutdown. The NRC has said that the identified problems have been fixed to their satisfaction and that Energy Harbor will have the opportunity to appeal any enforcement actions the NRC decides to take.

Check out the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for more.

Palisades power plant, in Covert Township, Michigan (photo courtesy of NuclearNewswire

Thank you for reading. Watch for the next edition to come out on

February 3, 2022.

Missed a newsletter? Past issues are archived on the committee's webpage.

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.