The EFMR Monitoring Group is a non-profit, non-partisan organization which monitors radiation levels surrounding Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station, Susquehanna Steam Electric Station and Three Mile Island Nuclear Station.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission - News Release No: III-24-021 July 25, 2024 Contact: Viktoria Mitlyng, 630-829-9662 Prema Chandrathil, 630-829-9663
NRC Will Hold Public Meeting August 1 To Discuss Potential Restart of Palisades Nuclear Plant
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a hybrid public meeting that will include the agency’s update on the plant’s readiness to potentially resume operation and a presentation from Holtec International on restart-related activities.
The meeting will be held at the Grand Upton Hall, Lake Michigan College, 2755 E. Napier Ave., in Benton Harbor. Information for attending virtually or by phone can be found in the meeting notice.
Palisades permanently ceased operations in May 2022. In early 2023, Holtec International, the Palisades license holder, expressed interest in returning the plant to an operational status. The NRC created the Palisades Restart Panel to guide staff efforts to review, inspect, and determine if Palisades could be safely returned to operation.
The presentations will be followed by a question and comment session for attendees to engage with panel members on the NRC’s presentation. In-person attendees will be given priority to speak. Additional information on a potential Palisades restart can be found on the NRC’s website.
It’s not just toxic chemicals. Radioactive waste was also dumped off Los Angeles coast
A research expedition led by UC Santa Barbara came across old discarded barrels sitting 3,000 feet underwater near Santa Catalina Island. (David Valentine / ROV Jason) BY ROSANNA XIASTAFF WRITER FEB. 21, 2024 5 AM PT
For decades, a graveyard of corroding barrels has littered the seafloor just off the coast of Los Angeles. It was out of sight, out of mind — a not-so-secret secret that haunted the marine environment until a team of researchers came across them with an advanced underwater camera.
Speculation abounded as to what these mysterious barrels might contain. Startling amounts of DDT near the barrels pointed to a little-known history of toxic pollution from what was once the largest DDT manufacturer in the nation, but federal regulators recently determined that the manufacturer had not bothered with barrels. (Its acid waste was poured straight into the ocean instead.)
Now, as part of an unprecedented reckoning with the legacy of ocean dumping in Southern California, scientists have concluded the barrels may actually contain low-level radioactive waste. Records show that from the 1940s through the 1960s, it was not uncommon for local hospitals, labs and other industrial operations to dispose barrels of tritium, carbon-14 and other similar waste at sea.
“This is a classic situation of bad versus worse. It’s bad we have potential low-level radioactive waste just sitting there on the seafloor. It’s worse that we have DDT compounds spread across a wide area of the seafloor at concerning concentrations,” said David Valentine, whose research team at UC Santa Barbara had first discovered the barrels and sparked concerns of what could be inside. “The question we grapple with now is how bad and how much worse.”
This latest revelation from Valentine’s team was published Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology as part of a broader, highly anticipated study that lays the groundwork for understanding just how much DDT is spread across the seafloor — and how the contamination might still be moving 3,000 feet underwater.
A man wearing an orange hard hat and life vest holds a device made of clear tubes while standing on the deck of a ship. David Valentine, whose team at UC Santa Barbara has been researching the legacy of DDT dumping in the deep ocean, prepares to collect more sediment samples from the seafloor. (Austin Straub / For The Times) Public concerns have intensified since The Times reported in 2020 that dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, banned in 1972 following Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” is still haunting the marine environment in insidious ways. Scientists continue to trace significant amounts of this decades-old “forever chemical” all the way up the marine food chain, and a recent study linked the presence of this once-popular pesticide to an aggressive cancer in California sea lions.
Dozens of ecotoxicologists and marine scientists are now trying to fill key data gaps, and the findings so far have been one plot twist after another. A research team led by UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography just recently set sail to help map and identify as many barrels as possible on the seafloor — only to discover a multitude of discarded military explosives from the World War II era.
And in the process of digging up old records, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discovered that from the 1930s to the early 1970s, 13 other areas off the Southern California coast had also been approved for dumping of military explosives, radioactive waste and various refinery byproducts — including 3 million metric tons of petroleum waste.
Massive dumping ground of WWII-era munitions discovered off Los Angeles coast
In the study published this week, Valentine found high concentrations of DDT spread across a wide swath of seafloor larger than the city of San Francisco. His team has been collecting hundreds of sediment samples as part of a methodical, large-scale effort to map the footprint of the dumping and analyze how the chemical might be moving through the water and whether it has broken down. After many trips out to sea, they still have yet to find the boundary of the dump site, but concluded that much of the DDT in the deep ocean remains in its most potent form.
Further analysis, using carbon-dating methods, determined that the DDT dumping peaked in the 1950s, when Montrose Chemical Corp. of California was still operating near Torrance during the pesticide’s postwar heyday — and prior to the onset of formal ocean dumping regulations.
Clues pointing to the radioactive waste emerged in the process of sorting through this DDT history.
Jacob Schmidt, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in Valentine’s lab, combed through hundreds of pages of old records and tracked down seven lines of evidence indicating that California Salvage, the same company tasked with pouring the DDT waste off the coast of Los Angeles, had also dumped low-level radioactive waste while out at sea.
The company, now defunct, had received a permit in 1959 to dump containerized radioactive waste about 150 miles offshore, according to the U.S. Federal Register. Although archived notes by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission say the permit was never activated, other records show California Salvage advertised its radioactive waste disposal services and received waste in the 1960s from a radioisotope facility in Burbank, as well as barrels of tritium and carbon-14 from a regional Veterans Administration hospital facility.
Old discarded barrels sitting 3,000 feet underwater near Santa Catalina Island. A research expedition led by UC Santa Barbara came across old discarded barrels sitting 3,000 feet underwater near Santa Catalina Island. (David Valentine / ROV Jason) Given recent revelations that the people in charge of getting rid of the DDT waste sometimes took shortcuts and just dumped it closer to port, researchers say they would not be surprised if the radioactive waste had also been dumped closer than 150 miles offshore.
“There’s quite a bit of a paper trail,” Valentine said. “It’s all circumstantial, but the circumstances seem to point toward this company that would take whatever waste people gave them and barge it offshore … with the other liquid wastes that we know they were dumping at the time.”
Ken Buesseler, a marine radiochemist who was not affiliated with the study, said that generally speaking, some of the more abundant radioactive isotopes that were dumped into the ocean at the time — such as tritium — would have largely decayed in the past 80 years. But many questions remain on what other potentially more hazardous isotopes could’ve been dumped.
The sobering reality, he noted, is that it wasn’t until the 1970s that people started to take radioactive waste to landfills rather than dump it in the ocean.
He pulled out an old map published by the International Atomic Energy Agency that noted from 1946 to 1970, more than 56,000 barrels of radioactive waste had been dumped into the Pacific Ocean on the U.S. side. And across the world even today, low-level radioactive waste is still being released into the ocean by nuclear power plants and decommissioned plants such as the one in Fukushima, Japan.
Screenshot of a black and white map from a 1999 International Atomic Energy Agency report. In a 1999 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency titled “Inventory of radioactive waste disposals at sea,” a grainy map shows that at least 56,261 containers of radioactive waste were dumped into the Pacific Ocean from 1946 to 1970. (International Atomic Energy Agency) “The problem with the oceans as a dumping solution is once it’s there, you can’t go back and get it,” said Buesseler, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and director of the Center for Marine and Environmental Radioactivity. “These 56,000 barrels, for example, we’re never going to get them back.”
Mark Gold, an environmental scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council who has worked on the toxic legacy of DDT for more than 30 years, said it is unsettling to think just how big the consequences of ocean dumping might be across the country and the world. Scientists have discovered DDT, military explosives and now radioactive waste off the Los Angeles coast because they knew to look. But what about all the other dump sites where no one’s looking?
“The more we look, the more we find, and every new bit of information seems to be scarier than the last,” said Gold, who called on federal officials to act more boldly on this information. “This has shown just how egregious and harmful the dumping has been off our nation’s coasts, and that we have no idea how big of an issue and how big of a problem this is nationally.”
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara), in a letter signed this week by 22 fellow members of Congress, urged the Biden administration to commit dedicated long-term funding to both studying and remediating the issue. (Congress has so far allocated more than $11 million in one-time funding that led to many of these initial scientific findings, and an additional $5.2 million in state funding recently kicked off 18 more months of research.)
“While DDT was banned more than 50 years ago, we still have only a murky picture of its potential impacts to human health, national security and ocean ecosystems,” the lawmakers said. “We encourage the administration to think about the next 50 years, creating a long-term national plan within EPA and [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] to address this toxic legacy off the coast of our communities.”
As for the EPA, regulators urged the growing research effort to stay focused on the agency’s most burning questions: Is this legacy contamination still moving through the ocean in a way that threatens the marine environment or human health? And if so, is there a potential path for remediation?
EPA scientists have also been refining their own sampling plan, in collaboration with a number of government agencies, to get a grasp of the many other chemicals that had been dumped into the ocean. The hope, they said, is that all these research efforts combined will ultimately inform how future investigations of other offshore dump sites — whether along the Southern California coast or elsewhere in the country — could be conducted.
“It’s extremely overwhelming. … There’s still so much we don’t know,” said John Chesnutt, a Superfund section manager who has been leading the EPA’s technical team on the ocean dumping investigation. “Whether it’s radioactivity or explosives or what have you, there’s potentially a wide range of contaminants out there that aren’t good for the environment and the food web, if they’re really moving through it.” Newsletter
...“Significant operational incidents persisted at WIPP following the safety stand-down in April,” the report read. “The (Department of Energy) Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO) is considering formal mechanisms to transmit to SIMCO its concerns about the trend of unsafe work practices at WIPP. The Board’s staff will continue monitoring progress with improving the safety culture at WIPP.”
Meanwhile, the DNFSB sent a letter to the U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, raising concerns that the final design of a rebuild of WIPP’s ventilation system known as the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS) did not demonstrate its ability to properly function in the underground, in environments with combustion products from fire and salt amid mining activities.
Construction on the SSCVS was completed in May, and it was being commissioned via various tests as the $486 million project was prepared for operations, increasing available airflow in the WIPP underground from 170,000 cubic feet per minute (cfm) to 540,000 cfm. The DNFSB said the “tentative date” for SIMCO to take over the system’s operations from its subcontractor was Aug. 26, 2024. The DOE was preparing a response to the DNFSB’s letter on the SSCVS...
US senators urge Biden admin to not fund nuclear fuel reprocessing
July 18, 2024 at 03:39 pm EDT
WASHINGTON, July 18 (Reuters) - Two Democratic U.S. senators have urged the administration of President Joe Biden to not fund proposals for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, saying such plants produce weapons-usable nuclear material and could encourage other countries to fund them abroad.
WHAT HAPPENED
Senators Jeff Merkley and Edward Markey, both Democrats, said in a letter dated Wednesday that reprocessing plants violate U.S. nuclear security policy which states that civil nuclear research and development must focus on approaches that avoid producing and accumulating weapons-usable nuclear material. They sent the letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Christopher Hanson.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
Many nonproliferation experts oppose reprocessing because they say its supply chain could be a target for militants seeking to seize plutonium and other materials for use in a crude nuclear bomb.
Former President Gerald Ford halted reprocessing in 1976, citing proliferation concerns. Former President Ronald Reagan lifted a moratorium in 1981, but high costs and security concerns have prevented plants from opening.
The lawmakers, co-chairs of the Congressional Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, did not name any projects. But ARPA-E, a Department of Energy agency, is funding reprocessing projects.
The DOE did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Granholm said when the ARPA-E funding was announced that recycling nuclear waste "can significantly reduce the amount of spent fuel at nuclear sites, and increase economic stability for the communities leading this important work."
ARPA-E has said concerns about proliferation related to the handling of dangerous nuclear materials during reprocessing are "precisely the challenges" the program aims to address.
KEY QUOTE
"The reprocessing of plutonium that would be undertaken at these plants would create security and proliferation risks that far outweigh any ostensible energy benefits," the senators said in the letter. "Furthermore, such projects would be vulnerable to attacks by nefarious actors who seek to exploit the infrastructure and nuclear fuel at these plants to threaten U.S. nationals and interests." (Reporting by Timothy Gardner Editing by Marguerita Choy)
Sellafield nuclear power plant (NPP) has experienced cybersecurity issues. Credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images.
As nuclear power establishes itself as an ever more important source of energy for nations across the world, cybersecurity risks are also becoming increasingly menacing, according to a new report by UK think tank Chatham House.
The Sellafield NPP debacle was a conspicuous case of nuclear cybersecurity going awry.
The site on the English coast has been hacked multiple times by actors with close ties to Russia and China since 2015 but this was “consistently covered up by senior staff”, the Guardian reported last December.
According to the Guardian, information and data on Sellafield’s most sensitive activities could have been fed back to foreign parties through “sleeper malware” that has lurked in the background of its computer systems for as long as ten years.
While Sellafield is used primarily as a nuclear waste and decommissioning site, rather than for active nuclear production, the site has the world’s largest stores of plutonium, a highly reactive metal used to make nuclear weapons. It also contains a set of emergency planning documents that detail the steps the UK Government would take should the country come under foreign attack, meaning foreign hackers could have accessed the “highest echelons of confidential material at the site”.
The case therefore illustrated how not only energy security, but national security can be comprised by nuclear cybersecurity threats.
According to Chatham House’s ‘Cybersecurity of the civil nuclear sector’ report, there are several reasons the nuclear power industry is particularly vulnerable to cybersecurity breaches.
An unprepared and oblivious industry
Firstly, a lot of the existing nuclear power infrastructure is dated and does not possess up-to-date cybersecurity technology.
Chatham House notes that, currently, many nuclear plants rely on software that is “built on insecure foundations and requiring frequent patches or updates” or “has reached the end of its supported lifespan and can no longer be updated”. The think tank pointed out that civil nuclear industries are thus playing catch up with other critical national infrastructure (CNI) industries when it comes to cybersecurity.
The fact that nuclear infrastructure is considered to be CNI also makes it an attractive target for hackers. As demonstrated by the Sellafield incident, nuclear sites can have implications beyond energy, including national security. Foreign actors could target another state’s nuclear industry to not only jeopardise the state’s energy security but also gain a military advantage, says Chatham House.
Another vulnerability highlighted by the report is the industry’s reliance on ‘security by obscurity’. Hubristic systems managers have often neglected adequate security measures due to the assumption that ICT (information and communication technology) systems in older NPPs are too small-scale to have well-known vulnerabilities that can be exploited.
The SMR threat
The Chatham House report also details how the uptake of small modular reactors (SMRs) could lead to increased cybersecurity risks.
Due to their diminutive size, SMRs can be deployed in disparate areas that lack the physical conditions necessary for the deployment of large-scale energy infrastructure. The inherent versatility of the advanced technology has made it popular among governments across the world as they seek to widen access to more forms of renewable energy.
However, SMR-centred nuclear infrastructure would look different to that of traditional reactors, requiring different security measures.
For one, there will be a larger number of SMRs in more locations due to their easily deployable nature. It might not be practical to have staff at each site, with operators instead opting to run the facility by a central computer system without human presence. Increased reliance on cloud systems to run infrastructure is bound to enhance the cybersecurity risks, Chatham House says.
Furthermore, SMRs present additional supply chain pinch-points for cybersecurity, as the materials for SMRs tend to be prefabricated by a larger number of varying suppliers than in traditional nuclear plants, according to Chatham House.
Combination of cyber and physical threats
Chatham House notes that while NPPs are not designed to operate in war zones, they do have several layers of physical safety built in to protect reactors from kinetic threats. However, physical threats combined with cybersecurity breaches could create far more menacing risks for plant operators that could overwhelm operating staff and enable unauthorised access to nuclear materials.
For instance, in Serbia during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, this combination of threats was realised at the Vinca research reactor, where research staff feared that highly enriched uranium fuel could be stolen. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was forced to carry out several inspections between 1995 and 1999. The plant was saved, but for some time the threat nearly escalated into catastrophe.
More recently, the Zaporizhzhia NPP has raised similar concerns. Since November 2022, Russia has controlled the NPP, which sits on the front line of Russian-occupied Ukraine. “Reckless attacks” on the power plant have “significantly increased the risk of a major nuclear accident”, Rafael Mariano Grossi, director-general of the IAEA, told the UN Security Council in April, although Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of carrying out the attacks.
Where does the industry go from here?
While no single legal regime addresses cyber threats to nuclear infrastructure, international law can provide safeguards against what is often a cross-border threat.
Chatham House recommends that states “develop strategies to both enhance the enforcement of international law in cyberspace and ensure accountability for unlawful cyber operations, including those targeting civil nuclear facilities”. Such strategies could include reforming existing treaties or laws to address cyber-nuclear, establishing an international cybersecurity management strategy and creating national computer emergency response teams specialised in industrial control systems.
With states rushing to grapple with rapaciously evolving cyber technologies, nuclear regulators may have their work cut out safeguarding the digital side of their industry. As the world becomes increasingly digitalised, and more reliant on decentralised, cloud-based systems, it is fair to expect cybersecurity to become a pressing issue for regulators in the near future.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission - News Release No: 24-059 July 18, 2024 CONTACT: David McIntyre, 301-415-8200
NRC Approves Simplified Mandatory Hearing Procedures for Reactor and Enrichment Licenses
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved simplified procedures for mandatory hearings on licensing decisions for commercial nuclear power plants and uranium enrichment facilities to make the hearings more transparent and efficient. The staff’s proposals, the Commission’s decision, and Commission Voting Records are available on the NRC website under SECY-24-0032.
The changes are effective immediately and will be employed in the mandatory hearing anticipated later this year for the Hermes 2 advanced reactor review. Mandatory hearings, also informally called “uncontested” hearings, for power reactors will involve written materials without oral presentations, with the Commission as presiding officer. Hearings for uranium enrichment facilities will be delegated to the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel with case-specific Commission direction for streamlined procedures.
“As the agency prepares for the potential increase in standardized reactor designs and applications for their deployment, it is important to balance efficiency, clarity, and openness in Commission decision-making,” NRC Chair Christopher T. Hanson wrote in a Feb. 7 memo directing the agency’s Office of the General Counsel to develop proposals for future hearings. “Within the guardrails of our current statutory requirements, I believe significant process efficiencies can be gained.”
The agency is required by law to conduct hearings to determine the sufficiency of the NRC staff’s review before issuing combined licenses, construction permits and early site permits for power reactors, or licenses for construction and operation of uranium enrichment facilities.
The Commission, or the ASLBP designated as “presiding officer,” has conducted 21 mandatory hearings over the past 20 years. These have typically involved oral arguments with witness testimony and extensive written briefs and responses.
Upcoming Ohio Supreme Court decisions could make it even harder to develop solar power in the state
Solar companies appealed two cases in which they say the Ohio Power Siting Board relied on local opposition to decide the projects weren’t in the public interest, rather than weighing all pros and cons.
A pickup truck pulling a trailer with spools of wire on it drives through a nearly completed solar array. Crews work on a solar farm near Minster, Ohio, in 2015. Credit: American Renewable Energy and Power
A pair of upcoming decisions by Ohio’s top court could further empower local opponents to block clean energy in what is already one of the hardest states to site new renewable projects.
Two cases before the Ohio Supreme Court ask whether local opposition is enough for the Ohio Power Siting Board to conclude a project is not in the public interest when it otherwise meets all statutory criteria.
The decisions are expected to guide future regulatory rulings, and clean energy industry and environmental advocates have voiced concerns about the potential impact on energy development.
Most power plants, solar farms and wind farms in Ohio need approval from the Ohio Power Siting Board before they can be built and operated.
What the law says State law provides eight criteria for approving new electric generation. They include its impacts on the environment, water conservation, and agricultural land, as well as whether a facility “will serve the interests of electric system economy and reliability” and “the public interest, convenience, and necessity.”
Solar developers are appealing two recent siting board decisions in which they say regulators took a narrower view of “public interest” than they and courts previously did, effectively changing the legal standard and giving outsized weight to local opposition instead of considering the question with a state-level perspective, they say.
One case deals with the Ohio Power Siting Board’s denial of a permit to construct and operate Lightsource bp’s Birch Solar project roughly 10 miles southwest of Lima. In the other case, the board denied a permit for Vesper Energy to build and operate the Kingwood Solar project in Greene County.
The developers in both cases made changes to address specific concerns raised by siting board staff or other parties to the cases. In both cases, the board basically ruled that the projects satisfied all criteria except the public interest standard.
Lawyers for the Ohio Power Siting Board argued its rulings are entitled to a presumption of correctness on review. The board also claimed it used a “broad lens” to weigh the pros and cons of each project and make its factual findings.
Several local government groups and a local opponents’ group raised similar arguments in support of upholding the siting board decisions.
“The court should decline Kingwood’s invitation to wade into its own weighing of the evidence in this complex fact-intensive decision,” said one such brief, filed in the Kingwood Solar case by lawyers for the trustees of Miami, Cedarville and Xenia townships along with Jack Van Kley, a lawyer who represented an opponents’ group. Considering local opposition is also properly part of balancing multiple factors to determine the public interest, they wrote.
‘Public opinion is not public interest’ Developers for each project maintained the power siting board erred as a matter of law when it let local opposition override other factors in its determination of the public interest.
In Birch Solar, the board concluded there was “universal opposition from local governments and residents,” and it then held that opposition by local government bodies was “a determining component” of whether the project met the public interest criterion, the developer’s reply brief noted. That approach also violated Ohio’s statutory law and constitution by improperly delegating the board’s legal authority to local governments, the company argued.
The board also erred by focusing only on the amount of opposition. Rather, the board should have looked at evidence relating to opponents’ objections and considered how permit conditions could address them, the company’s lawyers wrote.
“[T]he Board never even assessed whether there would be any potential negative impacts to the public before deciding that the Project was not in the ‘public interest,’” said a separate brief by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a local chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. What matters is the evidence of a project’s impacts, not the quantity of opinions, their brief said.
In a similar vein, the power siting board unlawfully found the opposition of three adjoining townships was “controlling” in the Kingwood Solar case, the developer’s brief said. In other words, the board treated the opposition as determinative of the outcome.
“Public opinion is not public interest,” said Lindsey Workman, community affairs manager for Vesper Energy, the developer for Kingwood Solar. Ohio’s statute does not say local opposition trumps all other interests, such as economic benefits or enhanced reliability for Ohio’s energy infrastructure, she said. “That’s not how the law is written, and that’s not how the law should go.”
A 2021 law known as Senate Bill 52 did give counties the power to ban most new solar and wind projects from various areas. Among other things, the law also gives counties a chance to review new solar and wind projects that aren’t otherwise banned before they get to the power siting board. Both solar projects in the current Supreme Court cases are exempt from those parts of the law, however.
While SB 52 gave local governments “a chance to participate” in the power siting board process, the legal criteria for approval stayed the same, said Chris Tavenor, an attorney for the Ohio Environmental Council, which filed a brief in the Birch Solar case. Yet by treating local opposition as determinative, the board was “creating essentially a political process for those projects to be approved or denied, as opposed to a legal analysis,” he said.
Other briefs in the Birch Solar case underscored that opposition wasn’t universal. One brief came from a group of local solar supporters. Another explained that leaders for Auglaize County and Logan Township took no position on the project after they reached agreement with the developer on some issues.
Other potential impacts In addition to the possibility that Vesper and Lightsource bp’s projects will be canceled, advocates are worried about the impact on future cases.
The Natural Resources Defense Counsel wrote in its brief that “allowing the Board’s unprecedented and unreasonable decision on Birch Solar to stand will prevent the development of other well-planned renewable energy projects in Ohio.” That would reinforce continued use of fossil fuel generation, which releases greenhouse gases that drive human-caused climate change, as well as other pollution.
The natural gas industry also has a stake in the outcome, because the cases could open the door for local opposition to block power plants, pipelines and other infrastructure.
The Ohio Independent Power Producers’ brief in each case said the power siting board’s ruling “erodes a fair and predictable permitting process upon which new investment in power generating facilities in Ohio relies.” The Ohio Chamber of Commerce’s briefs also voiced a fear that the boards’ rulings inject “undue uncertainty into Ohio’s historically stable and predictable regulatory framework for building in-state power generation.”
The Ohio Supreme Court has yet to schedule oral argument in each case. It would likely take several months after that for that court to issue its decisions.
Electricity generation from solar and wind hit a record-high of 401.4 terawatt hours (TWh) between January and June 2024, surpassing the 390.5 TWh of power generated from nuclear power plants, Ember’s data showed.
Duke is again considering Levy County site for new nuclear plant
The proposal could revive a major fight from over a decade ago, where a plan to build a different type of nuclear plant met resistance from environmentalists and consumer advocates.
BY: | 07/11/2024 06:42 AM EDT
Duke Energy is considering putting a nuclear power plant in Levy County, Florida.Mike Stewart/AP
ENERGYWIRE | TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Duke Energy Florida is again considering putting a nuclear power plant on 5,000 acres it owns in Levy County, regulatory documents reviewed by POLITICO reveal, as state and federal officials encourage the expansion of nuclear energy.
Duke Energy has not publicized its plans. But documents filed with state regulators in April by the utility say that it is considering building a "next generation" nuclear plant at the site between 2038 and 2048. The proposal could revive a major fight from over a decade ago, where a plan to build a different type of nuclear plant met resistance from environmentalists and consumer advocates.
The utility's pending decision was buried in testimony filed as part of a three-year, $818-million rate hike request filed with the Public Service Commission. The request includes a proposal to charge consumers a collective $94 million to hold the Levy County land for a future power plant.
Benjamin M.H. Borsch, the utility's managing director of integrated resource planning and analytics, said the company is considering placing a small modular nuclear reactor on the site. "The site remains especially valuable given its access to water, transportation, and transmission," Borsch said in written testimony.
Duke Energy in 2013 said it had eliminated the site from consideration for a different proposed nuclear project. Four years later, the utility signed a legal agreement canceling the project and absorbing $150 million in site costs.
Some project opponents said Wednesday they were surprised by the prospect of the new nuclear plant.
"I know it's a long way off," former Republican state Sen. Mike Fasano, now the Pasco County tax collector, told POLITICO. "My question would be, how much is it going to cost and who is going to pay for it?"
Duke spokesperson Audrey Stasko said via email the plant that was proposed prior to 2013 had been canceled, but nuclear energy remains an option "as utilities across the nation move toward a carbon free future." She did not respond Wednesday to questions about the cost and whether a federal license obtained in 2016 could still be used at the plant site.
Public Counsel Walt Trierweiler also declined to comment on the Levy County site, after contesting the utility's $94 million request to hold onto the site. His office announced Monday that it had reached a tentative agreement with Duke Energy to settle the overall rate request dispute.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed federal legislation intended to streamline the permitting process to encourage new nuclear plants, which his administration says can help battle climate change. And agency staff told the state Public Service Commission on Tuesday they have begun working on recommendations to encourage the development of advanced nuclear technology as required by state legislation, H.B. 1645 (24R), which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed May 15.
Duke Energy Florida and its predecessor, Progress Energy, collected more than $1 billion from customers for the two 1,100-megawatt nuclear units that had been planned at the Levy County site.
Duke announced in 2013 that it was abandoning the project because of delays in issuing the federal license and uncertainties about the future cost of the project.
Although the plant was never built, the utility said in 2013 it continued to regard the Levy site as a "viable option" for a nuclear plant. The utility continued pursuing the federal nuclear plant license.
In 2017, Duke Energy struck the deal with the Office of Public Counsel in which the utility agreed to write off the $150 million in site costs. The utility also was required to remove by 2019 the plant site from the base rates it charges customers.
As for the proposed Levy County nuclear plant, "this is putting the nails in the coffin and nailing it shut," then-Public Counsel J.R. Kelly said in 2016.
But that settlement also specifically allowed Duke to request customer charges for the plant site in the future.
Duke had not sought those charges in recent years. Borsch said in his April testimony that transmission line improvements scheduled between 2025 and 2030 would improve access to the plant site.
Helmuth W. Schultz III a regulatory consultant hired by Trierweiler to testify in the rate case, said the PSC should refuse to allow the company to collect from customers the $94 million to hold the site.
"There is no evidence that it is probable that the land will be used for a regulated project in the foreseeable near future," Schultz said in written testimony.
Borsch responded in testimony filed last week that the site's designation under federal legislation for additional clean energy credits makes it worth hundreds of millions of dollars more to customers.
Susan Glickman, a veteran environmental lobbyist, said Wednesday the possible new Duke project confirmed her concerns about the state legislation that seeks to encourage new nuclear plants, which she said are costly and take too much time to build.
"We don't want some new technology that has not been fully developed delaying the clean energy solutions that are readily available at low cost," she said. Glickman is vice president of policy and partnerships at the left-leaning CLEO Institute.
State Rep. Bobby Payne, a Republican from Palatka and who sponsored the recent legislation that DeSantis signed in May, told legislators in January that millions of dollars spent by the federal government on clean energy had led to only slight increases in its overall use.
"The NIMBY mentality has kept us from developing nuclear power in this area and all throughout the country," Payne told the state House Energy, Communications and Cybersecurity Subcommittee.
EN Revision Text: AUTOMATIC REACTOR SCRAM DUE TO MANUAL TURBINE TRIP
The following information was provided by the licensee via phone and email:
"At 0728 EDT on July 10, 2024, with Unit 2 in Mode 1 at 24 percent power, the reactor automatically scrammed due to a manual turbine trip. The [reactor] scram was not complex with all systems responding normally. Reactor vessel level reached the low-level set-point following the scram, resulting in valid Group 2 and Group 3 containment isolation signals. Due to the reactor protection system actuation while critical, this event is being reported as a four hour, non-emergency notification per 10 CFR 50.72(b)(2)(iv)(B) and an eight hour, non-emergency notification per 10 CFR 50.72(b)(3)(iv)(A) for the Group 2 and Group 3 isolations.
"Operations responded using emergency operating procedures and stabilized the plant in Mode 3. Decay heat is being removed by discharging steam to the main condenser using the turbine bypass valves. Unit 3 was not affected.
"There was no impact on the health and safety of the public or plant personnel. The NRC Resident Inspector has been notified."
Page Last Reviewed/Updated Thursday, July 11, 2024
No: 24-056 July 10, 2024 CONTACT: David McIntyre, 301-415-8200
NRC Publishes Annual Report to Congress on Security Inspections
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has posted an unclassified version of its annual report to Congress on the results of the agency’s security inspection activities in 2023.
The report covers the NRC’s security inspection program, including force-on-force exercises, for commercial nuclear power reactors and Category I fuel cycle facilities. The report keeps Congress and the public informed of the NRC’s efforts to oversee the protection of the nation’s civilian nuclear power infrastructure and strategic special nuclear material.
In 2023, the NRC conducted 184 security inspections at commercial nuclear power plants and Category I fuel cycle facilities. These included 18 force-on-force inspections, held every three years at nuclear power plants, involving simulated attacks to test the effectiveness of a licensee’s physical protection program. The publicly available inspection results are discussed in the report.
When NRC inspectors identify a security finding, they ensure that the licensee corrects the situation in a timely manner. Details of security findings are considered sensitive and not released to the public.
DOE Seeks Input on Federal Consolidated Interim Storage Facility for Spent Nuclear Fuel
Request for Information Responses Due Sept. 5, 2024
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued a request for information (RFI) to identify industry partners interested in contributing to the development of federal consolidated interim storage facilities for the management of spent nuclear fuel. DOE is also seeking information from parties interested in providing engineering design, project management, integration, and other services needed to build and manage consolidated interim storage facilities.
DOE is seeking input on the following key areas:
Improvements to the draft performance work statement
Technical assessment of the work scope and marketplace options
Multidisciplinary expertise and experience required
Evaluation criteria for the solicitation
Resource requirements and regulatory risks
Projected timeline and potential time-saving measures
Strategies to include small business participation
This RFI is open to all interested parties who wish to comment or have questions on DOE’s planned solicitation approach, acquisition strategy, and other relevant requirements for federal consolidated interim storage facilities. Interested parties are invited to submit their responses electronically by 6 PM EST on September 5, 2024.
The comments and feedback collected will help inform a competitive request for proposals (RFP) for the engineering design of a federal consolidated interim storage facility.
Federal consolidated interim storage facilities are just one piece of DOE’s broader strategy to establish an integrated waste management system that includes transportation, storage, and eventual disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.
For more information on this RFI and instructions to submit comments please visit SAM.gov
Last time I wrote to you, I breezily promised it would be the first of monthly updates through 2024. And then...nothing!
I'm not so self-important as to imagine anyone's been crying into their inboxes wondering where the emails from me have gone (!) But I certainly don't take for granted anyone who's been kind enough to entrust me with their email address, so I wanted to explain where I've been.
And more importantly, what's coming next for this newsletter.
The short answer is, I started playing in the Substack playground.
My publication on Substack is called 'Meandering Over the Pebbles' (you can read why I chose that name here).
And over the past 6 months, I've written a handful of standalone posts as well what I'm calling my 'Weekly Meanders' - updates from my week just gone with a focus on what I'm doing workwise, from screening 'The Atom: A Love Affair' and developing new film ideas to (so far, I have to confess, not very successfully!) working on my new life stories business.
And honestly, I've been having such a good time over there I've decided to go all in and make it the main hub for my online life...
What this means is that over the next couple of weeks I'll be porting this mailing list over to Substack - and using it as my main way of keeping in touch from now on.
From your point of view, nothing will change - you'll still get my messages delivered straight to your inbox just as you do now.
But... if you'd rather not keep hearing from me, you can absolutely just unsubscribe now and I won't transfer your email across. I may still use this original list to make one-off, big announcements (eg a new film, a new launch for the life stories business) but these will be very occasional.
Just click here and I'll take you off the list for the move over to Substack - there's no hard feelings at all and I'm just happy & thankful to have had you along for the ride up to this point.
Hopefully though you will want to stick around - in which case all you need to do is sit tight while I tinker under the bonnet.
I've got loads of exciting plans for my new online home, including:
a forthcoming nuclear-themed interview series
an atomic movie club
an ongoing strand based on an A to Z rundown of my favourite feature documentaries
Plus I'm now developing a new short documentary with the wonderful nuclear novelist Philippa Holloway, whom you'll hopefully remember from the online in-conversation event I organised with her last summer. And Substack will be the place to hear about that as it progresses over the second half of this year.
But at this point, I imagine you may be asking...
What even is Substack anyway?
I know I've mentioned it once or twice before - but I've also become increasingly aware from talking to people that it is still a relatively unknown platform. So I thought I'd do a little primer for you.
At its heart, Substack combines the functionality of a standard mailing list platform that delivers emails straight to your inbox (like Mailchimp, where this newsletter is currently hosted) with that of an old-style blogging platform, where every post remains live online and available to read at any time into the future.
But on top of that, it also has features you might recognise from other social media spaces: Substack Notes which is a little like Twitter; audio for podcasts, narrated versions of posts or voice notes to subscribers; and most recently video, offering options akin to YouTube, Instagram or TikTok. And it offers the possibility of hosting online communities through things like group video calls and private chat threads.
Plus, there's one more crucial difference compared with Facebook and the rest - there are no ads on Substack.
The platform makes its money by taking a small cut from paid subscriptions from writers who offer them, usually in return for some extra paywalled content. There are big name journalists and novelists now writing on Substack who have hundreds of paying subscribers - out of many thousands of free subscribers - who are making a genuinely good living out of the platform (though, obviously, I'm not in this category )
What this means is an interface that's visually pared down and strikingly calm compared with the usual algorithmic overload. And a reading experience that encourages the time and space to settle in with longer newsletters rather than the blur of the scroll, with its constant interruptions from unrelated posts butting in and trying to sell you stuff.
Here's a fancy infographic which I think sums it all up pretty well:
Of course all I will be doing is moving your existing subscription to my newsletter over there.
But if you're interest is piqued I would definitely invite you to head to the Substack website or download the app and have a look around - there's some great writing there and a lovely, supportive community feel in the comments and other social features, which I've rarely experienced online elsewhere in recent years.
Anyway, I've probably wittered on for quite long enough now. Long story short, if you'd still like to get my emails delivered to your inbox like always, there's absolutely nothing you need to do.
But if you'd rather duck out at this point, that's totally cool too. And here's the button for you again.
A little animation treat for you
Lastly I just wanted to share a great animated short I watched this week. I've missed sharing my favourite watch recommendations in these newsletters (and I've not actually been doing it on Substack either - note to self, should start doing this again ) so this is a little filmic gift from me to you to make amends. I hope you like it!
'The Burden' is a bizarre, darkly funny, apocalyptic Swedish animated musical - featuring a variety of animals singing and dancing in depressing late-capitalism locales.
It's weird but kind of amazing.
Do check it out and see what you think (and maybe hit reply to tell me if you feel like it? I know I always say it, but it genuinely is lovely to hear from you!) Here's the link:
And that's it. If I've worked out the process properly the next message you get from me should be a welcome email via Substack (unless you're unsubscribing now or have already subscribed to Substack before this point - in which case BIG THANKS and sorry for preaching to the converted!)
I'm really looking forward to hanging out with you again after this longish break in my swanky new online home - it's gonna be a good time I'm sure of it. See you there!
With love and grateful thanks as always,
Vicki x
Do you have a friend who might be interested in The Atom: A Love Affair? You can share this email by forwarding to a friend
by 
BY: | 07/11/2024 06:42 AM EDT
)
