December 2021 | The Council of State Governments (CSG) | Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee
Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee Newsletter
Upcoming Events
*All times are Central Time
December 7 - 9:
December 13 - 17:
December 16:
December 16 - 17:
Southern States Energy Board (SSEB) Joint Meeting of the Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee and the Transuranic Waste Transportation Working Group - Nashville, TN
January 9 - 13, 2022:
January 26 - 27, 2022:
February 1, 2022:
Comments Due on Department of Energy (DOE) Revised Draft Railcar Safety Inspection Protocol
March 1 - 2, 2022:
March 4, 2022:
Comments Due on DOE Consent-Based Siting Process Request for Information (RFI)
March 6 - 10, 2022:
March 8 - 10, 2022:
June 6 - 9, 2022:
June 7, 2022:
Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (MRMTC) Spring 2022 Meeting - Philadelphia, PA
June 27 - July 8, 2022:
August 28 - September 1, 2022:
Committee Happenings
Thank you to everyone who helped make the Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (MRMTC) Fall 2021 Meeting a great success! With 28 people at the Hyatt Regency Chicago and 13 people listening in on Zoom, the meeting proved to be an excellent way for Midwestern state representatives and other stakeholders to come together for the first time in over two years. On December 1, attendees were treated to a half-day Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Transportation Tabletop and on December 2, they heard presentations and updates from various groups. The details of these sessions can be found in the "Focus This Month" section below. This "Committee Happenings" section will focus on the committee business that took place during the meeting.

First and foremost, the MRMTC elected a new Co-Chair to accompany Mike Snee of Ohio (right in the picture above)! Rodney Pitchford of Illinois (left in the picture above) will serve as the committee's junior Co-Chair starting now until the end of 2022. At that time he will become the committee's senior Co-Chair. Rodney is a Health Physicist with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) and is the supervisor for IEMA's Radiological Field Services Unit which houses the Agency's Radioactive Material Transportation Inspection and Escort Program. He has approximately seven years of experience with radioactive materials transportation and has performed approximately 100 radioactive material shipments inspections as a certified Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) Level VI inspector. Rodney became a member of the MRMTC in 2018. Congratulations Rodney!

In addition, committee members volunteered to serve on a new committee work group and on two restarting National Transportation Stakeholders Forum (NTSF) ad hoc working groups (AHWG). If you were not able to attend the meeting in person or on Zoom but would like to participate in one or more of these groups, please let Mitch Arvidson know. First, the MRMTC is starting up a Consent-Based Siting Request for Information (RFI) Work Group. More information on the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Consent-Based Siting RFI can be found in the "NTSF" section below. Rodney and Mike will serve on this work group.

Next, the NTSF Section 180(c) AHWG was established to, and will continue to, evaluate DOE's proposed Section 180(c) policy. The AHWG will identify outstanding issues/activities necessary for successful implementation of the policy including, but not limited to, allocation of funds, allowable activities, development of grant guidance documents, and a technical assistance plan. Swapan Saha (Kansas) and Ryan Seabaugh (Missouri) will serve on this NTSF AHWG. Last, the Transportation Emergency Preparedness Program (TEPP) AHWG was established to, and will continue to, solicit input from States and Tribes on revisions to sections of the Modular Emergency Response Radiological Transportation Training (MERRTT). Christopher Boswell (Iowa), Greg Gothard (Michigan), and Tad Rumas (Ohio) will serve on this NTSF AHWG.

Finally, as we look toward the MRMTC Spring 2022 Meeting and the 2022 Annual Meeting of the NTSF, organizers are soliciting ideas for presentations and sessions during those meetings. If you have any recommendations for the MRMTC meeting, please reach out to Mitch Arvidson and if you have any recommendations for the NTSF meeting, please reach out to Uldis Vanags.
National Transportation Stakeholders Forum
As mentioned above, DOE recently released an RFI on Using a Consent-Based Siting Process to Identify Federal Interim Storage Facilities. The RFI summary states that the Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) is looking for "information on how to site Federal facilities for the temporary, consolidated storage of spent nuclear fuel using a consent-based approach" and that they expect responses from local, State, and Tribal governments; members of the public; energy and environmental justice groups; and others.

The RFI asks for responses to 16 questions broken into three areas. Area 1 addresses the consent-based siting process itself, Area 2 seeks ways to remove barriers to meaningful participation, and Area 3 addresses interim storage as part of a waste management system. A committee work group of Rodney Pitchford, Mike Snee, and Mitch Arvidson (and any other committee members that would like to volunteer) will hold two or three virtual meetings in 2022 to develop the MRMTC's responses to the RFI by the March 4, 2022, deadline.

In other NTSF news, the NTSF Planning Committee met yesterday, December 8. Planning for the 2022 Annual Meeting of the NTSF in Philadelphia, PA, continues and an agenda subcommittee will be formed in early 2022 to begin developing the meeting's sessions. The MRMTC will host the 2023 Annual Meeting of the NTSF and very preliminary planning for that meeting will also begin in early 2022.

Finally, a fellow state regional group (SRG), the Western Interstate Energy Board (WIEB) held its High Level Radioactive Waste Committee Fall 2021 Virtual Meeting on November 30. In addition to the traditional state roundtable and SRG/Tribal Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (TRMTC) updates, attendees of the WIEB meeting received updates on several DOE-NE activities and learned about the Southwest Research Institute's (SwRI) new Community Preparedness Decision Framework Tool.
Focus This Month
MRMTC Fall 2021 Meeting
In addition to the important committee business that took place in Chicago, IL, last week, there was also a wealth of information presented to and by committee members. On December 1, the MRMTC held its second Spent Nuclear Fuel Transportation Tabletop. As opposed to 2019's tabletop which simulated a bi-modal heavy haul truck to rail shipment of SNF from Big Rock Point in Michigan to an unspecified location outside the Midwest, this year's tabletop was all about understanding the leadup to eventual SNF shipments and how DOE, the railways, and the states are preparing to prepare for them. The tabletop was broken down into six sessions. There were explanations and discussions about the Standard Contract, shutdown and operating site evaluations, the carrier route selection process and the Rail Corridor Risk Management System (RCRMS), how DOE prepares for shipment after route selection, transportation infrastructure, and state preparation activities. These sessions showed the committee what activities are taking place now and what activities will take place in the years before SNF shipments. Hopefully the MRMTC can build off this exercise and run tabletops for particular shipments in the future.

On December 2, the MRMTC heard six guest presentations that are summarized below.

Keep an eye out on the meeting webpage for more information to be posted in the coming days, like a meeting summary, final attendance, and action items.
Nuclear News
A Tale of Two Wisconsin Nukes
Located just five miles apart, two Wisconsin nuclear power plants have been in the news recently for very different reasons. The first, Point Beach Nuclear Plant could see its approved lifespan extended for an additional 20 years to 2050 for its Unit 1 reactor and 2053 for its Unit 2 reactor. Last November, NextEra Energy submitted a 20-year extension application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and last month, the NRC released its draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the application. The draft EIS concludes that the "environmental impacts are not great enough to prevent the agency from considering issuance of the renewed licenses."

Now the NRC is seeking public comment on the draft EIS until January 3, 2022. The EIS considered the impacts of five scenarios; renewing the licenses for 20 years (proposed action), taking no action (letting the licenses expire in 2030 and 2033), a new nuclear (small modular reactor (SMR)) alternative, a natural gas combined-cycle alternative, and a combination alternative (SMR, solar, onshore wind). Regarding transportation, the EIS claims that the license renewal and the no-action alternative would have the smallest impacts and that the new nuclear alternative (SMR) and the combination alternative would have the largest impacts.

Just up the road, Kewaunee Power Station has been in the news because its decommissioning and ownership is facing delays and legal fights. NorthStar, a New York-based infrastructure and environmental solutions company has objected to the proposed sale of Kewaunee and its decommissioning funds to Utah-based EnergySolutions, claiming that NorthStar can decommission the site faster and cheaper than EnergySolutions. The sale must be approved by the Public Service Commission (PSC) of Wisconsin. According to the transcript of a PSC prehearing conference, an administrative judge granted NorthStar's request to include the rationale behind the sale in an ongoing public review. EnergySolutions unsuccessfully argued that the only thing that should be covered in the review is whether or not the company has sufficient financial resources to operate and decommission the site.

Prairie Island Indian Community Featured in The New York Times
Last month, the "newspaper of record" covered the dual existential challenges that have faced the Prairie Island Indian Community (PIIC), located along the Mississippi River in southeastern Minnesota for decades. The first challenge is the near constant flooding. Only two years after the federal government recognized the Tribe in 1936, the Army Corps of Engineers installed a dam system to the south of reservation. This led to repeated flooding and reduced the livable land to just 300 acres. While this is a dreadful fact, you may be asking yourself what this has to do with radioactive materials transportation.

The second challenge covered in the article is the fact that the SNF storage installation at the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant has tripled in size since the 1990s, coming within mere hundreds of yards from PIIC residents' homes. The article goes into greater detail but the federal stalemate of SNF transportation and disposal and the State of Minnesota's repeated approvals to expand the storage installation have led the Tribe to look for land elsewhere. In 2018, the PIIC purchased about 1,200 acres of land 35 miles from the current reservation. Now, they are asking Congress to put the land into trust, allowing the Tribe to exercise jurisdiction there. The PIIC argues that the newly purchased land offers a safer alternative location and would help alleviate a waitlist of more than 150 tribal members hoping to live on their ancestral lands.

Check out The New York Times for the full story.

Updates from Our Northern Neighbors
We're watching two stories about two very different kinds of radioactive materials storage in Canada. The first story highlights the successful conclusion of one project and the other highlights opposition to another project that hasn't even started yet. First, Canadian National Laboratories (CNL) recently announced the successful completion of its project to relocate 1.3 million tons of low-level radioactive waste (LLW). The waste, contaminated soil and industrial waste from the radium and uranium refining operations of Eldorado Nuclear that ended in 1988, had been stored at the Port Granby Legacy Waste Management Site on the shores of Lake Ontario near Clarington. The site was incompatible for long-term storage due to receding shorelines and porous soils. Construction on the new site, a storage mound with multi-layered base liners further inland, began in 2016. The mound was recently capped and closed and will be monitored for hundreds of years into the future.

World Nuclear News has more information.

Second, American lawmakers are already expressing opposition to a Canadian SNF repository that has not yet been approved. Several Michigan members of Congress requested that President Joe Biden talk to the Canadian government about stopping a proposed SNF repository located in South Bruce, Ontario, near Lake Huron. The South Bruce site is one of two under consideration by Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), the other located at Ignace in western Ontario. The representatives point out that Canada opposed any U.S. repository in the Great Lakes basin during America's search for a repository in the 1980s. The NWMO responded by saying that the two proposed sites are both landlocked, miles away from the Great Lakes, consent-based, and will only go forward after demonstrating it is safe for people and the environment. It is unknown if President Biden has brought up these concerns with his Canadian counterparts.

The Detroit News has further coverage.
kewaunee
Kewaunee Power Station, who will get to decommission it?
Thank you for reading. Watch for the next edition to come out on
January 6, 2022.
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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.