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Important Dates
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*All times are Central Time
March 4:
National Transportation Stakeholders Forum (NTSF) Planning Committee Meeting - 11:30 AM*
March 8 - 11:
March 8 - 12:
March 17:
Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (MRMTC) Planning Guide Review Work Group Meeting - 10 AM*
March 24:
March 24:
April 12:
MRMTC Regional Tribal Engagement (RTE) Work Group Quarterly Meeting - 2 PM*
April 14:
IAEA Webinar: Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) Decommissioning Progress and Prospects - 6:30 AM*
May 5:
IAEA Webinar: Building an International Safety Framework for Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste Management, Decommissioning and Environmental Remediation - 6:30 AM*
May 17 - 21:
June 2:
IAEA Webinar: Experiences in Setting Up Funds for Back End Liabilities in Nuclear Power Programmes - 6:30 AM*
May - June:
Annual Meeting Series of the NTSF - Virtual
TBD:
July 7:
IAEA Webinar: Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste Information System (SRIS): Benefits for Member States, Benefits for Collaboration between International Organizations - 6:30 AM*
July 12:
MRMTC RTE Work Group Quarterly Meeting - 2 PM*
July 21:
IAEA Webinar: Nuclear Decommissioning in the Context of Sustainability and Circular Economy - 6:30 AM*
September 22 - 24:
October 11:
MRMTC RTE Work Group Quarterly Meeting - 2 PM*
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| | Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns and Bryan Tuma bestowing the honor of Nebraska Admiral upon Lisa Janairo |
By Ken Niles
It's pop quiz time! (What else did you expect from me?)
With Lisa Janairo retiring as of February 26, what is the biggest reason you'll miss her?
- Her engaging personality and sense of humor;
- The expertise she adds to the meeting planning and meeting discussions (who else asked more insightful questions?);
- The leadership taken by Lisa and the Midwest on issues such as private shipments and public involvement;
- All of the above
The correct answer, of course, is 4. "All of the above."
I feel very fortunate to have worked with Lisa for nearly 30 years. I have to admit, I was a little intimidated by her at first. As I was just learning and finding my voice, it seemed to me that Lisa had already mastered the issues. I am grateful to have collaborated with Lisa on several professional papers and shared presentations, and frequently plotted strategy with her before meetings. Along the way, she became a close friend. I was not given nearly enough room here to even adequately cover all of Lisa's many accomplishments and achievements. I believe one of her most important contributions was how she consistently advocated for making progress where we could and not endlessly revisiting previous agreements. While other regional groups and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) went through repeated transitions of lead staff, Lisa was a steadying, knowledgeable and impactful voice on how to safely transport radioactive materials. While her main responsibility was to represent her region, she recognized the benefits of all the regional groups and the tribal governments working together with DOE. I don't believe any single person has had as much positive impact on this process as Lisa. From her start in 1991 as a graduate school intern, to expanding her duties to include public policies related to the Great Lakes and water quality, I'm sure it will surprise most of you to know Lisa overcame an intense fear of flying and public speaking along the way. I know that Lisa will continue to accomplish great things in her retirement. Congratulations on a great career - with much more to come!
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COMMITTEE HAPPENINGS
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As mentioned below, the in-person 2021 Annual Meeting of the National Transportation Stakeholders Forum (NTSF) has been cancelled. This also means that the in-person Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee (MRMTC) Spring Meeting has been cancelled. In its place, the committee will be holding a virtual meeting via Zoom. Much like the 2020 Virtual Spring Meeting, this meeting will be a 1.5 to 2 hour meeting held in May or June. MRMTC members, please use this Doodle poll to vote for your preferred day(s) to hold the MRMTC Spring Meeting.
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| | | MRMTC Senior Co-Chair Tiffany Drake will be a panelist during next week's Waste Management (WM) Symposia | |
In other committee news, MRMTC Senior Co-Chair Tiffany Drake (Missouri) will be a panelist during next week's Waste Management (WM) Symposia. The March 11 panel, "Stakeholder Involvement in Consolidated Interim Storage Facility (CISF) Storage, Disposal, and Transportation Initiatives," will discuss elements needed for success in engaging various stakeholders at all levels of the CISF project lifecycle, including best practices and lessons learned from previous projects. Appearing with Holtec International Senior Vice President Joy Russell and Deep Isolation Director of Partnerships Jim Hamilton, Ms. Drake will specifically give a state's perspective on rail shipments.
MRMTC Co-Chairs Tiffany Drake and Michael Snee (Ohio) have recently been assisting and providing feedback to NUTRANSTOR, an international platform of trusted and independent experts in radioactive material transports, interim spent fuel & waste management solutions, as they plan for a future virtual workshop. The workshop, "International Spent Fuel Shipment Experience: Information Sharing of Lessons Learned and Best Practices," will seek to share best practices and lessons learned from successful international SNF shipments with an American audience. Keep an eye out for registration information when a workshop date is set.
Finally, the most recent Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Eight Week Rolling Schedule Shipment Summary shows that there will be no shipments of transuranic (TRU) waste from Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) until May at the earliest.
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NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION STAKEHOLDERS FORUM
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Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, the Annual Meeting of the NTSF that was scheduled to take place in Dallas, TX, in early June has been cancelled. Similar to 2020, content from the Annual Meeting agenda will be transformed into a series of virtual meetings starting in late May or early June.
During a meeting of the NTSF Planning Committee on February 11, six topics were chosen for the NTSF Virtual Meeting Series. In no particular order, the topics are "Nuclear Power Plant Site Evaluations Status Report," "DOE International Shipments," Day in the Life of a WIPP Shipment," "Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Aging Management Program for Dry Cask Storage," "Vermont Yankee: Charting a Path to Shipments," and "Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program." Keep an eye out for dates and registration information to be released in the coming weeks and months. In other NTSF news, the Rail/Routing Ad Hoc Working Group (AHWG) met on February 22. A summary of this meeting and more general updates on the working group can be found below. Speaking of NTSF AHWGs, Mitch Arvidson and Ellen Edge recently met to begin planning the formation of an NTSF Wiki Site AHWG. This group will be tasked with returning the site to its original role as a repository for NTSF groups, webinars, and meetings. Finally, the NTSF will be holding a webinar, "Type B Packaging Certification Requirements," on Wednesday, March 24, at 1 PM Central Time. Type B packages are those used to transport materials with high levels of radioactivity, such as spent fuel from nuclear power plants. We've all heard that these packages are "robust," but what does this mean from a regulatory and practical standpoint, and how does a new Type B package design get approved? Find out during this NTSF webinar, where participants will hear from the NRC and DOE on the regulatory and testing requirements that go into determining whether a Type B package design will be approved. Registration is required and can be done here. |
| FOCUS THIS MONTH | | |
NTSF Rail/Routing AHWG Updates
 The NTSF Rail/Routing AHWG had a very productive meeting on February 22. First, the group received an update from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). FRA managers are reviewing the revision of the Safety Compliance Oversight Plan (SCOP) document and are seeking to fast-track it after an FRA reorganization in 2020 led to some delays. The older SCOP, first published in 1998, specifies the steps the FRA or its state-certified inspectors must take in preparation for a shipment or shipping campaign involving SNF and high-level radioactive waste (HLW). Additionally, the FRA is monitoring gondola shipments of decommissioning debris from the Crystal River Nuclear Plant in Florida and working on a report of last June's railcar fire in Bedford Park, IL.
The majority of the meeting, however, was spent discussing the status of comments on the draft Railcar Safety Inspection Protocol. Currently, rail carriers, states, and the FRA all conduct inspections of rail shipments in the U.S. However, the reports from these inspections are not typically shared with other entities. The protocol seeks to serve the purpose of streamlining non-regulatory inspections by avoiding duplication and minimizing stops. While the inspections carried out under the draft protocol would not replace the regulatory inspections currently carried for all rail shipments, they would promote reciprocity along rail transport routes through information sharing for DOE's SNF shipments.
 Through the NTSF Rail/Routing AHWG, Tribes, states, the Association of State Rail Safety Inspectors (ASRSM), the Association of American Railroads (AAR), etc. have been able to submit comments to DOE as they develop the protocol. The MRMTC submitted comments (shout out to Kelly Horn (Illinois) and Tiffany Drake!) regarding en route inspections and who will get the inspection information, reiterating the need for states and Tribes to be involved in discussions on what re-inspection criteria are, etc.
DOE collected these comments and categorized them in the eight categories, or "bins," listed below.
- Who gets to see inspection reports;
- Comments about the relationship between the Inspection Protocol, the FRA State Rail Safety Program, the FRA SCOP, etc.;
- Inspection roles and responsibilities;
- En route inspections;
- Further inspections or protocols for stopping a train;
- Major defect vs. minor defect vs. defect free;
- Enforcement questions; and,
- Specifics of shipments
Regarding who gets to see the inspection reports, it was suggested by DOE that a program classification guide be developed to address who would have access to the DOE produced railcar safety inspection reports. When it comes to enforcement, existing regulatory enforcement regulations still apply and anything DOE considers imposing extra-regulatorily, would have to done through contracts with the rail carriers. Finally, DOE will take the MRMTC's suggestion to use a Venn Diagram to help make it clear who will be responsible for what actions in terms of rail carrier inspections, FRA inspections, FRA-certified state rail inspector inspections, DOE inspection documentation, etc.
All of these comments will be taken into consideration and a revised inspection protocol should be finished by the end of April. The document will then need to go through DOE review which will take about five to six weeks. The Rail/Routing AHWG will next meet when the revised version is made available and there has been ample time to review, probably in late June or early July.
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NUCLEAR NEWS
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DOE Leadership Updates
On Thursday, February 25, by a 64-35 vote, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm was confirmed as the newest Secretary of the DOE. As covered in previous newsletters, Secretary Granholm is a long-time advocate for electric cars and the development of alternative energy sources. During her confirmation hearings, she committed to not reopening DOE's consideration of Yucca Mountain for the U.S.'s nuclear waste repository.
Secretary Granholm's deputy, if approved, would be David Turk. Mr. Turk, nominated by President Biden on February 10, was most recently working at the International Energy Agency and had previously served as Deputy Secretary for International Climate and Technology at DOE. The Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources will hold a hearing today at 9 AM Central Time to consider David Turk's nomination. Both Granholm and Turk have said that their top priority is to create more clean energy jobs as the country moves to transition to a carbon neutral economy.
AP News has more information on Secretary Granholm's confirmation and The Hill has the story on David Turk's nomination.
Drama Surrounds Midwest Nuclear Power Plants
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| | | Dresden Generating Station, located about 60 miles southwest of Chicago, IL | |
After announcing recently that it will have to close its Dresden and Byron Nuclear Power Plants due to economic hardships, Exelon announced last week that it plans to split into two separate companies. One company will control the six utilities, including ComEd, that provide power to 10 million customers in the U.S., the most of any utility in the country. The other company will retain control of Exelon's power generating sources, including 14 nuclear power plants, six of which are in Illinois. Exelon says the breakup is being undertaken so the separate companies "will benefit from the strategic flexibility to focus on their unique customer, market and community priorities." Analysts believe the breakup may benefit ratepayers but the underlying challenges faced by nuclear plants will not change.
Meanwhile, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is seeking to stop or delay the transfer of Palisades Nuclear Plant and Big Rock Point SNF storage site from Entergy Corp. to Holtec International. Holtec is seeking the licenses for these sites by the end of 2021 to accelerate decommissioning at Palisades and eventually move SNF from both sites to its proposed consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) in New Mexico. Holtec and Entergy say the transfer would allow Palisades to be dismantled, decontaminated, and remediated by 2041, 40 years sooner than Entergy could on its own. Nessel disputes this claim and has asked the NRC to hold a hearing because she believes Holtec lacks adequate financial resources and underestimates the costs of decommissioning. Holtec estimates Palisades decommissioning costs to be $644 million while a 2006 rate filings estimate says $1.3 billion would be needed.
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| | Perry Nuclear Power Plant, located about 40 miles northeast of Cleveland, OH |
Finally, in the seemingly never-ending saga of 2016 Ohio HB 6, the new owner of Perry and Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plants, Energy Harbor, has said they would no longer accept up to $1 billion in subsidies to keep the plants running. The subsidies would have been funded through an increase on ratepayers' bills that was approved by HB 6, which was guided through the Ohio Legislature by former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four associates, who received $60 million in bribes from the former owner of the plants, FirstEnergy. Ohio legislators have been unable to agree on a way to repeal or replace the ill-gotten law. According to State Sen. Jerry Cirino and State Rep. Bill Seitz, Energy Harbor would reject the subsidies because of concerns about competing with non-subsidized suppliers in the PJM energy markets. Additionally, the rescinding of the Keystone XL Pipeline by the Biden Administration could foster renewed interest in nuclear power.
DOE's Formidable Fortis
In January, the Association of American Railroads (AAR) signed off on DOE's design of a new eight-axle, flat-deck railcar called Fortis. This approval allows the department to begin fabricating and testing the prototype. Fortis will be used to transport large containers of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste and will come equipped with a monitoring system that will report to the operators on 11 different performance features. Combined with DOE's 12-axle Atlas railcar, which is a little further along in development, the two railcars will provide flexibility to the department's transportation system. Fortis and Atlas are expected to receive full AAR-approval by the mid-2020s.
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Thank you for reading. Watch for the next edition to come out on
April 1, 2021.
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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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