September 2011 Nuclear News is online

Posted on September 19, 2011 by rmichal| Leave a comment

The September issue of Nuclear News is available in hard copy and electronically for American Nuclear Society members (must enter ANS user name and password in Member Center). The issue contains a variety of features, including:

• An interview with Cliff Hamal, of Navigant Economics, on the expected cost increase in the coming decades of storing spent nuclear fuel at retired reactor sites.
• A look at the Blue Ribbon Commission’s draft recommendations for spent fuel management.
• Insights from the Fukushima Daiichi accident: Comments on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s near-term task force report.
• An in-depth review of ANS’s 2011 annual meeting, which was held in Hollywood, Fla.

Hanford workers load a mixed LLW container onto a shipping platform.

Other news items in the September issue deal with: an NRC staff memo that addresses small modular reactor staffing issues; the summer heat that led to power level reductions at nuclear power plants; the commercial start of Watts Bar-2 being officially delayed until 2013; the NRC’s extending the time to apply for NFPA 805 amendments; the seismic studies scheduled for Diablo Canyon’s license renewal; the draft environmental impact statement issued for Seabrook’s renewal; U.S. Department of Homeland Security, European Commission teaming up to enhance security; first applications submitted for new reactor construction in United Kingdom; U.K. energy market reforms aim to attract nuclear investment; Sellafield MOX fuel plant closing as demand dips; Japan’s prime minister’s call for a nuclear phaseout; the arrival of the world’s first AP1000 reactor pressure vessel in China; the tsunami countermeasures planned for Japan’s Hamaoka nuclear station; India’s signing of a cooperation agreement with South Korea; the completion of a retubing project at South Korea’s Wolsong-1; the Department of Energy beating of deadlines for dealing with transuranic and mixed waste at the Hanford Site; investors extend deadline for USEC to obtain a DOE loan guarantee for the American Centrifuge Plant; the DOE awards $39 million for university-led nuclear R&D; and more.
Past issues of Nuclear News are available here.