Left to right: Newly elected Co-Chair Tiffany Drake (Missouri) poses with outgoing Co-Chair Greg Gothard (Michigan) and current Co-Chair Kaci Studer (Indiana)

The Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee's (MRMTC) Fall Meeting took place on November 13 and 14 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Thank you to all who attended, presented, and participated! During the meeting, there were great updates from the three Department of Energy (DOE) offices that the MRMTC has cooperative agreements with, the Carlsbad Field Office (CBFO), the Office of Packaging and Transportation (OPT), and the Office of Nuclear Energy (NE). Attendees also heard presentations from the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) about the political and legislative landscape for radioactive materials transportation, from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) about packaging approvals, from Interim Storage Partners (ISP) about their proposed spent nuclear fuel (SNF) consolidated interim storage facility (CISF), and from Orano TN Americas about their decommissioning activities at the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant. 

Aside from these presentations, there were also plenty of committee business decisions made. After being nominated by past Co-Chair Kelly Horn of Illinois, Tiffany Drake of Missouri was unanimously elected MRMTC Co-Chair for the 2020-2021 biennium! She will serve as the junior co-chair with Kaci Studer of Indiana in 2020. Congratulations to Tiffany and many thanks to outgoing Co-Chair Greg Gothard of Michigan for his hard work these past two years. 

• Licensees are aiming for 2023 SNF shipments pending approval of the proposed CISFs,
• Route approvals last five years for highway shipments and seven years for rail shipments,
• Railroads may require state inspectors to have specific training in order to access railyards and may deny access regardless,
• States and Tribes would be able to receive Section 180(c) financial assistance under DOE shipments but NOT licensee shipments, and
• Secured escorts do not cross state lines and different states have different requirements.

• Relevant attendees will work to get more people on the Stakeholder Tool for Assessing Radioactive Transportation (START) system,
• States will work to give SNF awareness training to local emergency responders,
• States and Tribes need to determine how they will protect safeguard information,
• States and Tribes must determine if railroads would allow them to do rad inspections at transload sites or while a shipment is en route, and
• Tribes must declare and/or opt in if they want to receive advanced notifications of shipments.

Nuclear Power Plants Under Duress at Home and Abroad

As covered in last month's newsletter, Exelon, Illinois' largest energy provider, recently threatened to shut down their LaSalle, Byron, Braidwood, and Dresden nuclear power plants unless the Illinois legislature provides a subsidy in 2020. This threat from CEO Chris Crane is not as simple as flipping an off switch. There are two major impediments Exelon would face before shutting down these sites. First, the company would have to submit a plan to PJM Interconnection, which manages the energy grid in a multistate region including northern Illinois, on how Exelon would ensure they can continue to provide power to their customers, including the majority of the Chicago area. Second, thanks to an Illinois law passed in the late 90s, Exelon would be on the hook to finance the entirety of decommissioning activities. The current funds for these activities are woefully underfunded. At Dresden, which is already scheduled to close its two reactors in 2029 and 2031, the fund currently sits at $660 million for the estimated final cost of $1.2 billion. At Braidwood and Byron, the largest plants in Exelon's portfolio, the decommissioning funds at the end of 2018 only sat at $344 and $379 million respectively.

Crain's Chicago Business  has the story.

Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, photo courtesy of ZDNet

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu suffered a cyberattack earlier this year. After initially denying it, officials at the plant acknowledged the attack on October 30. "DTrack" malware was discovered on an "administrative" computer that allows the hackers to monitor users' keystrokes, making it easier to launch further cyberattacks and gain access to sensitive information and personnel records. Hacking this "administrative" computer did not give hackers access to Kudankulam's reactors because the reactor control systems are disconnected from the internet via air-gaps, firewalls, and/or data diodes. Regardless, the cyberattack is troubling for the civil nuclear energy industry in India, and the rest of the world.

The Economist has more details including who the hackers may have been.

State and National Nuclear Waste Legislation

U.S. Reps. Debbie Dingell and Fred Upton, both of Michigan, recently succeeded in adding an amendment to  H.R. 2699 , the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act (NWPAA) of 2019. Their amendment states, "It is the Sense of Congress that the Governments of the United States and Canada should not allow permanent or long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel or other radioactive waste near the Great Lakes." H.R. 2699 advanced from the full House Energy and Commerce Committee on November 20. If passed, the bill would restart the formal licensing process to determine if Yucca Mountain should be the nation's permanent repository, direct DOE to consolidate SNF at temporary storage sites while a permanent repository is sited, and reform the original NWPA's financing mechanisms. The bipartisan amendment comes on the heels of Canada's announcement that only two sites remain under consideration as potential locations for the country's SNF repository, and both are located near Lake Huron.

Thanks to Greg Gothard for forwarding this news.

In other temporary nuclear waste storage news, the Wyoming Legislature appeared to be moving forward with a proposed temporary SNF storage facility, only to back off the proposal less than two weeks later. This story was first covered in the MRMTC's September Newsletter. State Sen. Jim Anderson, Co-Chair of the Joint Committee on Minerals, Business and Economic Development, told committee members that Gov. Mark Gordon did not need legislative approval to pursue an agreement with the DOE. After learning that the state would only receive $10 million per year for the storage facility, Gov. Gordon has indicated that he believes there are better revenue sources for the state.

The Casper Star Tribune has more details. You can find the Spent Fuel Rods Subcommittee's report to the full joint committee here.

Finally, the Sustainable Fuel Cycle Task Force Science Panel recently released a letter to Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak urging him to allow an independent public NRC adjudicatory hearing process to take place if Congressional funding is provided for the conclusion of the Yucca Mountain licensing process. This letter was in response to the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects' Biennial Report to the Governor and the Legislature of Nevada that says, "The State of Nevada has demonstrated convincingly that Yucca Mountain is an unsafe and unworkable site for a geologic repository." The Science Panel says this statement is inaccurate and that the proposed repository site meets all safety and environmental standards.

Read the full letter here.

News You Can Use

First, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has established an e-learning portal with on-line training courses in SNF Management, Safe Transport of Radioactive Material, Decommissioning Implementation, and Preparation for Decommissioning. If you are interested in any of these courses, you must register with the  IAEA NUCLEAS portal .

Thanks to Steve Maheras for sharing this training opportunity.

Second, the DOE Office of Integrated Waste Management (IWM) has released a new technical report called "Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste Inventory Report (2019)." This report is a comprehensive inventory of all SNF and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) in the United States.

Thanks to Erica Bickford for sharing this report .

Finally, for those interested in an international view, the International Joint Commission has compiled a volume of "unbiased background information" on all 38 nuclear reactors at U.S. or Canadian generating stations in the Great Lakes Basin. (The IJC oversees boundary water resources in Canada and the U.S.) The report will serve as background for a contracted report analyzing the "environmental hazards and significant differences in nuclear decommissioning approaches between Canada, Europe, and the United States." Both reports will inform the work of the IJC's Legacy Issues Work Group and Water Quality Board as they develop recommendations regarding any additional actions needed in the U.S. or Canada to "reduce or eliminate threats to the Great Lakes from the release of radioactive contaminants as a result of decommissioning." The recommendations are expected to be released in the fall of 2020.

Thanks to Greg Gothard for sharing this report.