Finland’s waste management organization Posiva announced that it has begun a trial run of placing spent fuel canisters in the Onkalo geologic repository, which is located near the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant in southwestern Finland. No spent fuel will be disposed of during the trial run, which is expected to last several months.

The OPTIMUS-H transportation cask from NAC International. (Photo: NAC)

NAC International announced that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has certified a highly shielded version of the company’s OPTIMUS (Optimal Modular Universal Shipping) transportation package for radioactive materials and waste. NAC’s OPTIMUS-H is now approved under 10 CFR Part 71 with Certificate of Compliance (CoC) USA/9392/B(U)F-96, effective Aug. 5, 2024.

The OPTIMUS-H CoC follows licensing approvals of the cask in Canada and Australia. Previously, the lightweight version of the OPTIMUS package, OPTIMUS-L, received certification from the NRC and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

NAC unveiled its first OPTIMUS to the public at the 2020 Waste Management Conference in Phoenix. Since then, NAC has delivered 22 OPTIMUS-L and nine OPTIMUS-H systems to support North American packaging and transportation projects.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is providing guidance to nuclear power plant licensees looking to use decommissioning trust fund (DTF) money to dispose of major reactor components like steam generators and reactor vessel heads while the plant is still operational.

On August 5, the NRC issued the interim staff guidance Use of the Decommissioning Trust Fund During Operations for Major Radioactive Component Disposal (REFS-ISG-2024-01), which provides the NRC staff’s regulatory position regarding the use a reactor’s DTF for the disposal of major radioactive components while the plant is still operational. Under NRC regulations, the DTF may be accessed solely for decommissioning expenses as defined in 10 CFR 50.2, unless an exemption is granted by the NRC.

The Department of Energy has issued a request for information to gather input on its proposed package performance demonstration, which is intended to demonstrate the robustness of spent nuclear fuel transportation casks in hypothetical accident conditions. By simulating severe accident scenarios, the DOE said it intends to show to the public and stakeholders the safety and reliability of transporting SNF by rail, heavy-haul truck, and barge.

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) announced it will hold a public meeting on August 29 to review information on the Department of Energy’s management and plans for disposing of its spent nuclear fuel. The hybrid (in-person/virtual) meeting will begin at 8:00 a.m. EDT and is scheduled to adjourn at approximately 5:00 p.m. EDT.

Despite efforts to increase hiring, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management continues to be understaffed, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. The GAO found that, at the end of fiscal year 2023, DOE-EM had 263 vacant positions across its headquarters, cleanup sites, and EM Consolidated Business Center—a vacancy rate of 17 percent. The office is responsible for the cleanup of the environmental legacy waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research.

The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) announced $40 million in funding to develop cutting-edge technologies to enable the transmutation of used nuclear fuel into less-radioactive substances. According to ARPA-E, the new initiative addresses one of the agency’s core goals as outlined by Congress: to provide transformative solutions to improve the management, cleanup, and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.

The township of Ignace in northwestern Ontario has indicated its willingness to host a potential deep geologic repository for Canada’s spent nuclear fuel. The town council voted unanimously on July 10 to pass a resolution indicating its willingness to participate in the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s (NWMO's) process for selecting a repository site, making it the first Canadian community to officially move forward with the next phase of a site selection process that began in 2010.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy has issued a request for information opportunity for the design and construction of a federal consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for spent nuclear fuel. The DOE is planning on establishing a federal CISF to manage SNF until a permanent repository is available. In May, the DOE received initial approval, known as “Critical Decision-0,” for such a facility.

The deadline for submissions is September 5.

The Energy Communities Alliance, a membership organization of local governments adjacent to or impacted by Department of Energy sites, has awarded grants to three community organizations to develop avenues for inclusive public engagement and discussions of consent-based approaches to siting facilities for the interim storage of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.

With increasing demand for clean, reliable, and safe sources of energy, the conversation around nuclear energy is changing. And so too is the conversation around nuclear waste, even as the country struggles to find a path for the disposal of its spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. From community engagement, to recycling, to existing success around other forms of nuclear waste management, the conversation around nuclear waste has many different angles, and an executive session of the American Nuclear Society’s 2024 Annual Conference in Las Vegas aimed to delve into some of those discussions.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced that it has completed construction of the new large-scale ventilation system at its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

The American Nuclear Society brought together 11 other energy and environmental advocacy organizations in calling on Congress to fund the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a new, technology-neutral, generic environmental standard for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in the United States.

In a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees, the groups ask for an additional $3 million in fiscal year 2025 for the EPA’s Office of Radiation and Indoor Air to work on the new standard.

Switzerland’s national cooperative for the disposal of radioactive waste, Nagra, is distancing itself from recent reports regarding the work of the Geneva-based engineering start-up Transmutex, which claims to have developed a new technology for the transmutation of radioactive waste.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced that its Office of River Protection (ORP) recently created a plan with contractor Bechtel National for completing the High-Level Waste Facility at the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, also known as the Vit Plant.

The Department of Energy has received initial approval, known as “Critical Decision-0” (CD-0), for siting a federal consolidated interim storage facility for commercial spent nuclear fuel. Paul Murray, deputy assistant secretary of energy within the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, confirmed to Nuclear Newswire that the DOE received CD-0 approval on May 6.

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent federal agency that evaluates the Department of Energy’s efforts to manage and dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, will hold a two-day public meeting May 21–22 to review information on the DOE’s research and development activities related to the disposal of SNF and HLW in crystalline host rocks and on the corrosion of commercial SNF after disposal.

The U.S. Department of Energy, Washington State Department of Ecology, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have reached an agreement on revised plans for managing millions of gallons of radioactive and chemical liquid waste stored in 177 underground tanks at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash.

Registration is open for Argonne National Laboratory’s Facility Decommissioning Training Course, a four-day instruction designed for those responsible for the decontamination and decommissioning of nuclear facilities and who are looking to understand the full breadth and depth of the D&D processes.

The next session will be held July 16–19 in Santa Fe, N.M. Information on the course and how to register can be found here.

Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) research laboratory in Germany have investigated a microorganism capable of transforming water-soluble hexavalent uranium [U(VI)] to the less-mobile tetravalent uranium [U(IV)]. The researchers found that the sulfate-reducing bacterium Desulfosporosinus hippei, a relative of naturally occurring microorganisms present in clay rock and bentonite, showed a relatively fast removal of uranium from clay pore water.