Areva sees nuclear waste recycling planning by 2015 | Reuters
June 11th, 2011
(Reuters) – Areva hopes that by 2015, it can start planning construction of a facility for recycling nuclear waste in the United States, an executive for the French nuclear power company said on Monday.
Jacques Besnainou, head of Areva’s North American unit, said the company was in discussions with several utilities about forming an alliance to advocate for a recycling center.
“We’re hopeful that we can start planning for such a facility by 2015,” Besnainou told reporters at a briefing held by The Energy Daily, a trade publication.
Once planning began, it would take about 10 years to get a facility up and running, he said.
Interest in nuclear waste recycling has grown since Japan’s nuclear crisis exposed the dangers of storing waste at power plants indefinitely, Besnainou said.
via Areva sees nuclear waste recycling planning by 2015 | Reuters.
More Yucca Mountain turmoil at Nuclear Regulatory Commission – News – ReviewJournal.com
April 10th, 2011
WASHINGTON — Yucca Mountain continues to generate turmoil within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the agency chairman was outvoted by four fellow commissioners late last month on whether to provide Congress with a key safety document on the Nevada nuclear waste plan.
NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko argued against forwarding an NRC staff-prepared safety evaluation on the proposed repository to a House committee chairman. Jaczko said the document had not been vetted.
But he was outnumbered by four other commissioners in a vote taken on March 24-25, according to agency officials and documents obtained Wednesday.
via More Yucca Mountain turmoil at Nuclear Regulatory Commission – News – ReviewJournal.com.
EDITORIAL: Japan to Yucca Mountain
March 20th, 2011The distance from Japan to Yucca Mountain isn’t all that far —- about 5,500 miles —- nor is the connection all that far-fetched.
From the beginning of the nuclear disaster in Japan, some watchers focused on what was happening to the spent fuel rods in storage at the doomed Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in northeast Japan.
When the massive earthquake struck, the plant’s safety system dropped control rods into the cores, shutting down the reactors. But the ensuing tsunami blew out the remainder of the safety systems, those that should have kept generators running to power the cooling pumps. So the struggle has been to keep water on the fuel rods.
Please mess with Texas State offers a glowing example for nuclear waste policy | Regional Voices – The News Tribune
March 20th, 2011Japan’s earthquake and its aftermath highlight the vulnerability of nuclear reactors and nuclear waste storage.
Spent fuel stored on site may be exposed and emitting radiation. When the crisis is over, an enormous volume of contaminated materials at the plant will require disposal.
In U.S. law, this waste would fall into two categories: spent fuel and low-level radioactive waste. Spent fuel includes only the highly radioactive fuel rods, while low-level radioactive waste is a catch-all category of contaminated materials with widely varying levels of radiation and risk.
Revive Yucca – Chicago Tribune
March 19th, 2011Before the nuclear disaster in Japan, most people probably didn’t know that there is something potentially worse than a nuclear reactor core meltdown. That’s the breach and exposure of containers holding hundreds of radioactive rods of spent nuclear fuel.
That’s what crews are battling at the crippled Fukushima nuclear facility.
Here’s why that is potentially a bigger problem than a meltdown: In the Japanese reactors — as in many U.S. reactors — the spent fuel is housed in large water-filled pools in the reactor building but outside the concrete-and-steel fortress that surrounds the reactor core.
Energy Secretary: Yucca Mountain could restart
March 16th, 2011The Obama administration would revive the Yucca Mountain program if it loses upcoming legal challenges over the fate of the nuclear waste site, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told Congress on Tuesday.
It would take two or three years for the Department of Energy to restart the repository project, terminated by President Barack Obama, Chu told members of a House subcommittee.
“We will take it one step at a time,” Chu said. “We have preserved the records, and some of the key people have been transferred to the nuclear energy division and so we can start this up. If we are required to start it up, we will start it up.”
via Energy Secretary: Yucca Mountain could restart – News – ReviewJournal.com.
NRC senior staffers protest Yucca Mountain shutdown – News – ReviewJournal.com
March 11th, 2011WASHINGTON — Three senior staff members at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission signed written dissents to the agency’s ongoing shutdown of the Yucca Mountain project, according to documents made public Friday.
The documents show that the controversial directive from NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko last October to halt publication of a license report on the proposed Nevada nuclear waste repository continues to reverberate at the nuclear safety agency.
The staffers in January and early February signed protests to an update prepared by the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards detailing the ongoing termination of the Yucca program.
via NRC senior staffers protest Yucca Mountain shutdown – News – ReviewJournal.com.
University of Texas: Spent nuclear fuel is anything but waste
February 25th, 2011The entire article is available here.Time has come revive long-dormant reprocessing program
Failure to pursue a program for recycling spent nuclear fuel has put the U.S. far behind other countries and represents a missed opportunity to enhance the nation’s energy security and influence other countries, the former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Sunday.
Dale Klein, Ph.D., Associate Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Texas System, said largely unfounded concerns and “long-held myths” about the reprocessing of spent fuel have prevented the U.S. from tapping into an extremely valuable resource.
