Westinghouse / India - Early Works Agreement (press release)

Following is a press release from Westinghouse direct to APR.

--------------------

News Release Issued: June 13, 2012 10:00 AM EDT

Westinghouse And Nuclear Power Company Of India Limited Sign Memorandum Of Understanding For Early Works Agreement


PITTSBURGH, June 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Westinghouse Electric Company LLC and Nuclear Power Company of India Limited today signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreeing to negotiate an Early Works Agreement (EWA) supporting future construction of AP1000® nuclear power plants at the Mithivirdi site in Gujarat.

The agreement represents significant progress toward the realization of the India – U.S. Civil Nuclear Agreement signed in 2008. The Early Works Agreement will include preliminary licensing and site development work.

"This agreement is an important step which will allow Westinghouse and NPCIL to continue the work necessary for keeping the Mithivirdi project moving forward," said Gary Urquhart, vice president and managing director of Westinghouse India.

The Westinghouse AP1000® nuclear power plant is licensed in both the U.S. and China, and is recognized as the safest, most advanced Generation III+ design. Rather than relying on active components such as diesel generators and pumps, the AP1000® relies on the natural forces of gravity, natural circulation, and compressed gases to keep the core and containment from overheating. Even with no operator action and a complete loss of all on-site and off-site AC power, the AP1000® will safely shut down and remain cool for seven days without the need for auxiliary water supply.

Westinghouse Electric Company, a group company of Toshiba Corporation (TKY:6502), is the world's pioneering nuclear energy company and is a leading supplier of nuclear plant products and technologies to utilities throughout the world. Westinghouse supplied the world's first pressurized water reactor in 1957 in Shippingport, Pa. Today, Westinghouse technology is the basis for approximately one-half of the world's operating nuclear plants.

SOURCE Westinghouse Electric Company

--------------------

10:45 AM Eastern 6/13/2012
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More

NuStart Energy Development LLC to disband June 30

Below is a direct press release from NuStart Energy Development LLC.

--------------------

Nuclear Energy Public-Private Partnership Achieves Industry Milestones, Now Disbanding

NuStart Energy Development, LLC achieves major milestones for the nuclear industry, helping to lay the foundation for the next generation of nuclear energy plants in the United States

WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 12, 2012) – After achieving its goal of licensing the first new nuclear power plants in decades and spurring more than $2 billion in private investment in new nuclear energy development, NuStart Energy Development, LLC will disband and reallocate its resources back to its 10-member companies effective June 30, 2012.

When NuStart Energy Development, LLC was formed in 2004 with the goal of helping to lay the foundation for the next generation of nuclear plants in the United States, the 10-utility-members outlined two objectives. The first objective was to obtain a Construction and Operating License (COL) from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) using previously never been tested licensing process developed in 1992; the second was to complete the design engineering for the Westinghouse AP1000® technology. Both objectives were achieved in the past six months: the AP1000 reactor was approved in December 2011 and the NRC issued the COL to Southern Company subsidiary Georgia Power’s Plant Vogtle in February.

“NuStart was the leader and motivator for the licensing efforts of what are now four new nuclear reactors in the United States ,” said Marilyn Kray, president, NuStart Energy. “In addition to the approval of the AP1000 reactor and Plant Vogtle, South Carolina Electric & Gas received approval for its expansion of V.C. Summer just weeks after Plant Vogtle, using the economies of scale NuStart created.”

Part of the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Power 2010 initiative, NuStart was funded by what was designed to be a 50-50 cost-shared program between the nuclear industry and the DOE. DOE funding for nuclear energy amounted to approximately $355 million. Together with Westinghouse, NuStart’s contributions amounted to approximately $975 million.

"Today we celebrate the fact that the NuStart vision of eight years ago is now a reality. Westinghouse is proud to have helped launch the next generation of nuclear energy as a NuStart partner,” said Kate Jackson, Westinghouse Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Research and Technology. “Now the stage is set for innovation and initiatives that will further ensure that America’s energy outlook continues to be safe, clean and reliable.”

“By coming together, the NuStart consortium members helped reduce risk and uncertainty, manage costs and ensure the best engineering minds in the business were used in the process,” Kray continued. “These accomplishments will allow nuclear energy to remain a safe, clean and reliable source of energy for generations to come.”

“The efforts of NuStart have been vital in achieving the first construction and operating licenses for new U.S. nuclear units in more than 30 years,” said Buzz Miller, Executive Vice President of Nuclear Development for Southern Nuclear. “These units will deliver clean, safe and reliable energy to our customers.”

Since its inception, the consortium and its members have:

§ Created in excess of 15,000 new manufacturing and technical service jobs since 2005

§ Spurred more than $2 billion in private investment in nuclear services and supplies

§ Supported 18 COL applications

§ Served as a model for similar groups, particularly for the small modular reactor development

For approximately every $24,000 the government spent, one new stable, high-paying manufacturing or technical services job was created, according to the estimated return on investment for federal dollars.

With its mission achieved, NuStart member utilities will concentrate resources on the companies’ respective nuclear projects, after the group disbands on June 30, 2012.

# # #

About NuStart Energy Members:

Providing approximately 60 percent of the electricity generated by nuclear power in the United States , the member utilities of NuStart Energy Development, LLC actively pursue diverse portfolios of generation options to meet their customers’ power needs safely, reliably and efficiently. NuStart members have worked together to demonstrate the nation’s licensing process and completed designs for the first advanced nuclear power reactors in the U.S. in nearly 30 years.

Members of NuStart Energy Development, LLC are:

DTE Energy, Detroit, Mich.; Duke Energy, Charlotte, N.C.; EDF Inc., Chevy Chase, Md.; Entergy Nuclear, Jackson, Miss.; Exelon Generation, Kennett Square, Pa.; Florida Power & Light Company, Juno Beach, Fla.; Progress Energy, Raleigh, N.C.; South Carolina Electric & Gas, Columbia, S.C.; Southern Nuclear, Birmingham, Ala.; Tennessee Valley Authority, Knoxville, Tenn.

Contact information:
Beth Archer, Anne Klein Communications Group
856-866-0411, ext. 17
beth@annekleincg.com


--------------------

11:13 AM Eastern 6/12/2012
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More

DFRP Concept: A fresh approach to national waste storage

This week's events and discussion with industry insiders have together led to the paper I present below. I welcome comments on this and would prefer that serious or interested commenters use the e-mail address provided on the right sidebar of Atomic Power Review.

--------------------

DFRP / Distributed Federal Repository Program: A concept to expedite spent nuclear fuel storage, with increased safety and reduced cost

The D.C. District Court of Appeals' decision to throw out the NRC's Waste Confidence Rule, along with other recent decisions, has again placed the issue of long-term storage of High-Level Waste (HLW) squarely in the American focus. Spent nuclear fuel - a major contributor to the total volume of HLW extant - has further been in the public eye as a result of a number of media stories concerning spent fuel in storage at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station in Japan, particularly as regards the safety of the spent fuel at that site. While many dire predictions have been made about effects on the fuel by various mechanisms and resulting environmental consequences, all have been addressed prior to now in the extant literature; further, the site operator and the Japanese government (through its regulatory bodies) are continuing to both assure the public of the safety of the fuel, and perform continuing assessment of the fuel condition and structural integrity of all buildings on site. Even so, safety of spent fuel is on the public opinion radar screen, and now that it is, we find ourselves at a juncture in the United States where the extant Waste Confidence Rule has been thrown out, threatening the existing "as-is, where-is" condition for spent nuclear fuel.

The federal mandate to provide a permanent, safe, federally funded HLW storage facility has never been taken off the books, although the NRC recently halted its study on the use of a facility partly constructed at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the national HLW facility. This places the program in a unique condition, since at this moment the study is halted, no alternative site has been identified, and the District Court has indicated in its decision that the NRC's assessment of spent fuel "as-is, where-is" is inadequate in terms of safety analysis.

Statements by individuals familiar with the industry, as well as an official statement by the Nuclear Energy Institute, seem confident that the NRC will quickly be permitted to reissue its Waste Confidence Rule which will occur only after safety of spent fuel "as-is, where-is" is reassured by presentation of further evidence from the literature, or by new studies. Assuming that is the case, spent fuel will remain on the sites of nuclear generating stations as it is now (both in water filled Spent Fuel Pools when still very "hot" in terms of heat, and also in radiological terms as well as in Dry Cask Storage, out of doors but securely on site.) What will then have changed, however, is that the NRC will have been mandated to finish its study of Yucca Mountain (funding to the tune of $10 million extra has been approved by the House, relieving the NRC of any excuse that funding is an issue) and regardless of the adequacy of that site, the federally mandated storage for spent nuclear fuel off the site of nuclear plant owner-operators will finally have to be completed.

Many insiders feel that the Yucca Mountain site, for all of this, will prove inadequate and in fact unsatisfactory - not for reasons of space, but for geological reasons (primarily, water intrusion.) Should this be the case, the DOE (Department of Energy, responsible to build the storage) will be left essentially at "square one" in terms of a location for storage of the nation's spent nuclear fuel and other HLW material.

At this juncture, it is time to give a fresh look to what is really an older proposal; a program to establish multiple, regional HLW storage sites, owned by the federal government (either operated by it, or by private contractors) and sited adequately to provide safety and security. Further advantage could be obtained by use of dry cask storage exactly like that used now, or similar (as developed by the further work on the Waste Confidence Rule) from a standpoint of economics, for a number of reasons. Such a program might be called the Distributed Federal Repository Program, and a number of sites for storage of HLW under this DOE / Federal program could be established regionally in the United States (hereafter, DRS or Distributed Repository Site.) Such a program has a number of advantages over a single, gigantic, underground centralized facility such as that considered at Yucca Mountain:

1. Shipment of HLW to the DRS locations would be easier logistically than shipment nationwide to a single large site, and less expensive.

2. Storage of HLW out of doors, but under cover in Dry Cask type storage would allow for easy access for inspection, easier movement, and cooling ultimately by air.

3. Cask containers in an underground facility would no doubt be exposed to moisture, and perhaps could be exposed directly to water either from overhead or standing water. Outdoor construction, while exposed to elements, would be less likely to suffer deleterious effect due to water (either by dripping or by submersion in case of fracturing of an underground facility.)

Such facilities' siting could be considered differently from that for power reactors, since the release due to accident is both far less likely, and far less concentrated. Many possible sites already exist, in fact, having been cleared and licensed for nuclear generating stations that were never completed or never built. Any or all of those sites whose construction cancellation was due to reasons other than geologic or environmental could be considered, again, for use as a DRS for this program. Further, many other sites could be located.

A further advantage of this kind of program is that it could be expanded as needed as spent fuel inventory grows. A gigantic underground site such as Yucca Mountain has, by nature, essentially a fixed upper volume limit; with the licensing process for a DFRP using multiple DRS locations the acquisition of added space for storage would in fact be far easier.

Many other considerations would need to be made for such a program, but the DFRP concept has enough merit now, faced with the need for permanent repository for spent fuel and the likely inadequacy of Yucca Mountain, that this old idea should be given a fresh examination.

-Will Davis, 6/10/2012

--------------------

2:30 PM Eastern 6/10/2012
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More

Spent Fuel Pool Containment: Guest Post

Recently, I wrote an article with help from many other people which was presented on the ANS Nuclear Cafe in order to refute misinformation about the safety of spent fuel at Fukushima Daiichi. There was some material that did not make the final edit, for space as well as focus related reasons.

Ted DelGaizo submitted a piece which was in response to statements by Mr. Markey and others on 'loss of containment' of spent fuel pools. With the very recent news this week surrounding spent fuel safety on nuclear plant sites, and the future of a spent fuel repository, I think it is important that his piece get published now. Below is the piece Ted submitted in its entirety; following the piece is a short bio.

--------------------

RADIOLOGICAL CONTAINMENT COMPARISONS

Ted DelGaizo


In a potential reactor accident, radioactive materials must be contained and release to the environment must be prevented. The reactor containment is designed for this purpose. In a spent fuel pool with a loss of cooling, the ultimate fuel-cooling is through the mechanism of pool boiling. The boiling pool steam is not contained but is released to the atmosphere. Hence, the concept of containment does not apply to spent fuel pool cooling other than indirectly by maintaining fuel integrity through pool boiling.

The reactor plants that comprise the current fleet of nuclear-electric generating plants in the USA are primarily pressurized water reactors or boiling water reactors. In either case, the reactor core is cooled by tens of thousands of gallons of water at temperatures typically at 500°F and above. In the unlikely event of a cooling-system piping-rupture, the water would be released to the surrounding (containment) building and would immediately flash to steam because the containment building is initially at or near atmospheric pressure. The large volume of steam would pressurize the containment building above atmospheric pressure, typically to pressures in the vicinity of 30 to 50 pounds per square inch (gauge pressure).

Since the containment building would become pressurized in the loss-of-coolant accident postulated above, the containment must be capable of withstanding these pressures in order to preclude escape (to the outside environment) of the steam and any entrained radioactive gasses, particles, and other radioactive materials that would also be released to the containment atmosphere. Consequently, reactor containment buildings are generally constructed of several foot-thick concrete walls with reinforcing steel bars and with stainless-steel liners to completely contain the internal atmosphere.

These large and extremely strong buildings also protect the reactor and other internal equipment from external hazards such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and even aircraft impacts. The reactor building at the Chernobyl plant outside Kiev in the Ukraine was not constructed with this USA-style containment building and consequently substantial levels of radioactive materials escaped into the outside environment following the accident there in 1986.

Reactor containments are not needed for spent fuel pools. Spent fuel pools are large swimming-pool type structures open to atmospheric pressure. The pools are typically 35 to 40 feet deep, with the spent fuel sitting in steel racks at the bottom of the pools and a minimum of about 25 feet of water sitting above the top of the fuel racks. The water is essentially clean and contains some minimal radioactive contamination that leaches from the fuel but is constantly being filtered and purified by a filtration and cooling system.

If the forced cooling system fails and cannot be reestablished for a sustained time period (e.g. due to a total loss of electric power as occurred at Fukushima), the pool will slowly heat to 212°F and will eventually boil. A boiling pool is a safe pool from a nuclear or radioactive standpoint as long as the pool water that evaporates or boils from the surface is replaced such that the boiling (which is removing heat from the fuel) can continue indefinitely or until forced cooling is reestablished. Boiling rates would typically require less than 100 gallons per minute of replacement water that can normally be supplied from a variety of sources including gravity flow from make-up tanks or via make up pumps that can be supplied by diesel-engine driven pumps (such as fire-water pumps or fire trucks) even when site electrical power remains unavailable.

While spent fuel pools normally sit in buildings, the buildings themselves are unnecessary in order to capture or retain the boiling steam because the steam must be vented into the outside atmosphere in any case. Steam from a spent fuel pool may contain some minimal level of radioactive contamination that will be so low as to be essentially undetectable by current monitoring equipment and would pose no threat to the general public. There are no comparisons between the steam released from a boiling spent fuel pool and the radioactive materials (fission gases and other highly radioactive materials) that would be found in the atmosphere of a reactor containment building following a major loss-of-coolant accident. They are orders of magnitude different and should not in any way be considered as equivalent from a radiological or other hazard standpoint. Hence, comparisons of containments for reactors and containments for spent fuel pools are equally illegitimate.

--------------------

Mr. DelGaizo is a 1963 graduate of the US Naval Academy and has over forty-five years of experience in nuclear-power engineering, including plant operations, design, licensing, modification, and quality assurance. He has been a technical consultant to the USNRC and a consultant to senior nuclear utility management. Highlights of his professional career include nuclear plant operation as a US Navy submarine officer including duty as chief engineer officer and submarine executive officer; nuclear-mechanical design-engineer with a major architect-engineer firm; and an emergency response team member at Three Mile Island Unit 2 following the 1979 reactor accident.

--------------------

6:30 PM Eastern 6/9/2012
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More

Further, but misguided, action on spent fuel repository

Last Thursday, APR ran an article (click here) on actions that indicate a real future for a national spent fuel repository; the House guaranteed $10 million for continuation of the Yucca Mountain study by the NRC, and the DOE was rebuked by a Federal Court of Appeals for continuing to charge utility companies money for deposition in the spent fuel fund when there isn't any working plan to develop a national repository.

Yesterday, the future of the spent fuel repository - wherever it ends up, and whenever it gets built - seemed to have another positive contribution when the D.C. Court of Appeals threw out the NRC's "Waste Confidence Decision."

Click here to read the full Court of Appeals decision and considerations. (Thanks to Dan Yurman for the heads up on this.)

From the decision, we read the following introductory statement:

"This is another in the growing line of cases involving the federal government’s failure to establish a permanent repository for civilian nuclear waste."

One might think that the rest of the decision would be extremely positive for the nuclear industry, given that overall the indications of the industry have generally been that the Federal Government needs to finally live up to its legal obligations to research, build and operate a national HLW (High Level Waste) repository. But that's not the case; this is where the NRC's intent - and by "intent" I mean Chairman Jaczko's intent - to indicate that spent fuel is safe as-is, where-is only seems to have gone so far as was necessary to support the Chairman's assertion that there was no rush to build a national waste repository, making it then possible to kill the Yucca Mountain project. (At least, until Thursday.)

Below, the Nuclear Energy Institute's press release on this latest court decision.

--------------------


Nuclear Energy Institute
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:202.739.8000
For Release:June 8, 2012


NEI Responds to Court Ruling to Vacate NRC Waste Confidence Decision

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Nuclear Energy Institute’s Ellen C. Ginsberg, vice president and general counsel, made the following remarks in reaction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling today to vacate and remand the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s waste confidence decision.

“We are disappointed by the court’s decision as we believe that the NRC supported its conclusions in the waste confidence decision. Nonetheless, we urge the commission to act expeditiously to undertake the additional environmental analysis identified by the court in the remand. We also encourage the agency to reissue the rule as soon as possible.

“We are pleased that the court specifically affirmed the agency’s discretion to address the environmental issues in a generic fashion using an environmental impact statement or an environmental assessment with a finding of no significant impact.”

--------------------

What essentially has happened here is that the D.C. Court has come to believe that spent fuel in dry cask storage, and in spent fuel pools, is dangerous. In fact, in the decision, the Court -- which has no nuclear engineering experience whatsoever -- mentions the possibility of spent fuel pool fires as one possible event that needs more examination.

Quite recently, a piece that was presented at the ANS Nuclear Cafe totally demolished the concept of spent fuel pool fires at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, in large part because of the age of the fuel involved and the total coverage of many multiple layers of backup power and equipment on site, near the site and transportable to the site. (Structural integrity of the buildings was also another issue, clearly addressed. This piece was produced in response to ridiculous and hyperbolic claims being made in anti-nuclear circles about the situation at the Fukushima Daiichi site.

Translating this notion to conditions in the United States, and with that making the assumption that the NRC (and thus probably no one else) has studied spent fuel storage enough to say whether or not it is safe as-is, where-is, is erroneous. In the ANS article, clear reference is made to a document with the following title:

NUREG / CR-4982 "Severe Accidents in Spent Fuel Pools in support of Generic Safety Issue 82."

This document, bearing a NUREG identifier, is clearly a Nuclear Regulatory Commission document. This document dates from mid-1987. This is by no means the only document ever produced on the subject. Even the simplest examination of the document, namely its title and publication date indicates that the NRC has been considering spent fuel conditions at existing plants for twenty-five years at least, and has considered worst-case scenarios (even though their likelihood is negligible in the case of spent fuel storage in the U.S.) There is much more work on the subject that can be found, but the point is that the NRC did in fact have good ground to stand on in saying that spent fuel is safe where it is now, as it is now.

The problem is that we will still eventually run out of room for it - and the utilities will still probably be paying the DOE whether a national facility is built rapidly or slowly.

Chairman Jaczko, then, was probably completely correct in his various statements that spent fuel can reside where it is for quite a few more years yet; it appears as if the Court thinks that this was an uninformed and all too convenient assumption. What the Court is not aware of, apparently, is decades of work on spent fuel safety and what the real situation concerning spent fuel at varied U.S. plants really is. With luck, this will all be reasserted as the NRC works to reissue the Waste Confidence Rule.

6:15 PM Eastern 6/9/2012
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More

San Onofre 6/7 update from SoCal Ed

Below is a press release direct to APR courtesy Southern California Edison.

--------------------


Southern California Edison Provides An Update on the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station


ROSEMEAD, Calif., June 7, 2012 – Edison International Chairman and CEO Ted Craver, in meetings with Southern California media representatives Thursday, said that safety, not timelines, would determine when the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) restarts.

Due to safety inspections and testing that Southern California Edison (SCE) is performing, the company expects to deliver a plan to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by the end of July regarding the operation of SONGS Unit 2. The NRC, which must approve the restart of SONGS, will then need time to respond. As a result, SCE estimates SONGS likely will remain off line through August. A plan for Unit 3 is expected to take longer to develop.

SONGS Units 2 and 3 Status

SCE engineers and third-party experts are currently working on a plan to address the NRC Confirmatory Action Letter (CAL) that outlines actions SCE must complete at SONGS before seeking permission from the NRC to restart either Unit 2 or Unit 3.

As the actions for each unit are completed, SCE will submit its responses to the NRC. There is no deadline for submitting the CAL responses. A series of regularly scheduled inspections and equipment testing will continue as planned over the next couple of months. As a result of some of these tests, steam will be visible. Also, the NRC has set June 18 as the date of a public meeting to discuss the Augmented Inspection Team findings.

Steam Generator Replacement Process

SCE followed the NRC’s detailed guidance in procuring its replacement steam generators, meeting the NRC’s technical specifications outlined in Title 10, Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Section 50.59.

Both SONGS units are currently safely shut down for inspections, analysis and testing. Unit 2 was taken out of service Jan. 9 for a planned outage. Unit 3 was safely taken off line Jan. 31 after station operators detected a leak in a steam generator tube.

About Southern California Edison

An Edison International (NYSE:EIX) company, Southern California Edison is one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving a population of nearly 14 million via 4.9 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within Central, Coastal and Southern California.


-###-

Jennifer Manfrè
Senior Manager, Media Relations
Southern California Edison
626-302-7964

--------------------

5:45 AM Eastern 6/8/2012
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More

A fresh life for spent fuel storage?

News out of Washington today is most promising for those of us who have been seriously concerned about the issue of long term storage of high-level waste (spent nuclear fuel) in the United States, as the DOE has been found to have no basis for continuing to charge utilities for payments into the Nuclear Waste Fund (since the NRC Chairman killed the Yucca Mountain fuel repository program review process); in a different move, a fair injection of further cash has been made to fund the full completion of the Yucca Mountain study by the NRC so that there is no chance of the resurfacing of the Chairman's claim that funding was an issue.

We have been talking about this issue around here for quite some time. Click here to see just one of a whole string of articles that I posted during the last year. Note my analysis of Jaczko's actions vis a vis Yucca Mountain:

"...Jaczko's appointment was made with the understanding that his sole purpose was to kill the Yucca Mountain HLW (High Level Waste) storage facility plan, which was to be located Nevada - Reid's state - and which Reid opposed. Jaczko is accused in many quarters of having shut down the review of Yucca Mountain when it in fact was the NRC's obligation to complete the review even if the findings were that the facility would be impractical or even unsafe. (The study was shut down far before any final report was launched.)

It should be kept in mind when reading the above fact that the Federal Government is and has been for many years legally obligated to provide such a long term storage facility, in order to get HLW off the sites of owner-operators (i.e. the nuclear power plant sites themselves) and has totally failed in this obligation. Jaczko's killing of the project study is thus especially troubling in light of the fact that no alternative was prepared, or even suggested."

In the above, "Reid" is Harry Reid, for whom Jaczko previously worked (prior to going to the NRC.)

In Jaczko's eyes, and in Reid's eyes, this probably should have been the end of this. But there have been some serious reversals in the last week. Let's look at two of the Nuclear Energy Institute's press releases on the matters at hand, from which we can obtain full and clear detail.

--------------------

Nuclear Energy Institute
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:202.739.8000
For Release:June 1, 2012


Court of Appeals Rebukes DOE on Nuclear Waste Fund Fee


WASHINGTON, D.C., June 1, 2012—The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the Department of Energy (DOE) failed to justify continued payments by consumers of electricity from nuclear power plants into the Nuclear Waste Fund. Consumers since 1982 have paid more than $30 billion into the fund. The court ordered DOE to conduct a complete reassessment of this fee within six months. While the court did not order DOE to suspend the fee payments, the court rejected DOE’s bases for continuing to collect the fees. The Nuclear Energy Institute’s Ellen Ginsberg, vice president, general counsel and secretary, made the following remarks in reaction to today’s decision:

“The court is unequivocal in finding DOE’s interpretation of its legal obligation ‘unacceptable’ and rejecting DOE’s use of Yucca Mountain costs as a ‘proxy’ when the agency terminated the program. The industry’s priority continues to be realization of a fully functioning used fuel management program at DOE.

“Significantly, the court said that the plain language of the statute ‘utterly destroy[s] the Secretary’s claim that he can remain entirely passive and only act to meet DOE’s legal commitment if some [god from above] were to bring him information.’ The court highlighted DOE’s failure to provide an accurate estimate of the ultimate cost of the program, saying the government’s calculation ‘appears to be off by $30 billion.’ The agency must provide clear justification to continue to collect the Nuclear Waste Fund fee at the present level.

“Based on its finding that DOE has a ‘disposition to delay,’ the court appropriately ordered the Energy Secretary to reassess the fee within six months. The industry is pleased that the court retained jurisdiction over this matter, and further, ruled that it has authority to direct the Secretary of Energy to suspend collection of the fee.”

###

The Nuclear Energy Institute is the nuclear energy industry’s policy organization. This news release and additional information about nuclear energy are available at www.nei.org.

--------------------

To summarize the above, it's important to understand that the Court of Appeals knows that the Yucca Mountain project has been halted by Chairman Jaczko, and thus the DOE cannot continue to charge US utility companies that own and operate nuclear power plants for a spent fuel repository program that DOES NOT EXIST.

Of course, the major problem with the above statement I've just made is that the program actually DOES exist - it's legislated, and has been for decades. That's right! As I've mentioned so many times before, the government is obligated to locate a site for, and to build and operate, a national nuclear waste storage facility. This was to be at Yucca Mountain; when Jaczko killed the study, it was thought that he killed the program. Of course, he can't do that because he has no legal authority to do so; his business, if you will, is regulatory oversight of the nuclear energy industry. He's not the legislative branch of the government - although his statements during one or more press conferences DO indicate that he feels that as NRC Chairman he does have appellate authority over submissions and studies made to the NRC.

The NRC is obligated to fully complete the Yucca Mountain study. And now, there will apparently be plenty of cash on hand to ensure that this is possible. Let's look at the second Nuclear Energy Institute press release we'll see today.

--------------------


Nuclear Energy Institute
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:202.739.8023
For Release:June 20, 2012


NEI Commends Rep. Shimkus, House for Increasing Yucca Review Funding


WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Nuclear Energy Institute’s Alex Flint, senior vice president for governmental affairs, made the following remarks in reaction to the House of Representatives’ passage today of an amendment to the fiscal 2013 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act. The amendment will increase funding by $10 million for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review of the license application for a repository for used nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, Nev.

“The nuclear energy industry applauds action taken today by the House of Representatives to increase funding for the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s review of the Department of Energy’s license application to build a disposal facility for used nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain. Congressman Shimkus’ leadership in this area has been central to Congress’ effort to spur the development of a disposal facility that will safely and securely manage nuclear fuel from commercial and defense applications.

“The nuclear industry remains concerned about the termination of Yucca Mountain, the only program fulfilling the Department of Energy’s legal obligation under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to dispose of used nuclear fuel from commercial reactors and defense applications. The Yucca Mountain project should proceed and be funded so the technical review of the license application is completed. The industry, in written testimony to the House Energy and Water Appropriations Committee earlier this year, urged the committee to request a specific plan and resources required for continuing the Yucca Mountain licensing process. State and local governments and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners also support NRC review of the license application.”

--------------------

For detailed news on this action I highly suggest reading this link, which is at The Hill.

The final analysis of the above events and actions can be summed up as follows:

-The NRC has an obligation to complete the Yucca Mountain HLW facility study.

-The NRC Chairman does not have authority to suspend the Yucca Mountain study.

-The DOE cannot continue to charge utilities for a spent fuel disposal program that (at least temporarily) does not exist.

-If the DOE wishes to continue to collect money for the Nuclear Waste Fund it must follow the letter of the law and get the national repository for HLW studied, built and operational somewhere, even if it is not at Yucca Mountain.

This amounts essentially to a whirlwind turnaround from where we were when the announcement was made that the Yucca Mountain study was terminated by Chairman Jaczko. If events continue along these lines, the nuclear renaissance can look toward a stable future for spent fuel and not worry about whether or not the DOE and the Federal Government will finally meet their legal obligations.

12:35 PM Eastern 6/7/2012
ATOMIC POWER REVIEW

Read More