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In a letter to a senator likely to bring enhanced political scrutiny to the Department of Energy, a federal panel has reiterated several concerns it lodged with the DOE over its partially built vitrification plant and waste storage at the Hanford site. The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board outlined...

The Savannah River Site's facility for encasing liquid defense waste in glass received its fourth melter earlier this month. In a release Tuesday, the Department of Energy site announced the fourth melter for the Defense Waste Processing Facility arrived March 6 for final assembly. The 65-ton piece...

On Monday the president nominated a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and former member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future to serve as the next secretary of energy. If confirmed by the Senate, Ernest J. Moniz will replace outgoing Energy Secretary Steven Chu....

The number of underground liquid waste tanks with suspected leaks at the Hanford site has grown to six. A week after announcing the first suspected leak in a single-shell tank since an interim stabilization program in 2005, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday that five additional single-shell tanks...

Sludge levels in a buried single-shell tank at the Hanford site in Washington are dropping at a rate of 150 to 300 gallons per year, the Department of Energy acknowledged Friday. The source of the drop within tank T-111 has not been confirmed, the DOE said in a release. Nearby monitoring wells have not...

California's attorney general has announced that the man who led a successful drive to shut down the Rancho Seco nuclear plant in 1989 can begin gathering signatures for an initiative that would close all of the state's power reactors. On Thursday, the attorney general's office announced...

In line with the results of similar lawsuits filed by other nuclear plant owners, a judge ruled Thursday that the federal government must compensate the Sacramento Municipal Utility District for spent fuel storage costs at the decommissioned Rancho Seco nuclear plant. The utility argued that the government's...

Transnuclear has won a key regulatory approval for its new waste cask that will allow larger shipments and can accommodate fuel from Areva's EPR plant design. The TN Long Cask received a certificate of compliance from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Transnuclear announced this week. Operational...

Last week Hitachi Zosen announced it would acquire nuclear technology provider NAC International from USEC in a deal valued at $45 million. Norcross, Ga.-based NAC engineers and sells equipment for storing and moving nuclear material. USEC, a Maryland-based uranium-enrichment company, has owned NAC since...

Work on a new waste treatment plant at the Department of Energy's Hanford site will pick back up after construction problems delayed progress on some of its facilities. In a statement Tuesday, Energy Secretary Steven Chu and former Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire said work over the last several months...

Paris-based conglomerate Veolia Environment announced an agreement Tuesday with a French government agency to remediate nuclear sites. Veolia had not counted nuclear waste cleanup among its subsidiaries' primary markets before 2011, when it partnered with Areva to help create a water treatment system...

The Obama administration is preparing to present a new plan for spent nuclear fuel to Congress that envisions an interim storage site opened by 2025. The proposal would implement ideas proposed last year by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, which recommended that spent fuel...

On Thursday, the Transnuclear subsidiary of French multi-national Areva purchased custom fabricator Columbiana Hi Tech. In a release, Transnuclear CEO Michael McMahon said, "This is an exciting forward-looking step for Transnuclear, strengthening our position in the U.S. market as it increases our...

Utah-based EnergySolutions announced Monday that it plans to go private following a $1.1 billion sale to Energy Capital Partners. In a release, EnergySolutions said its board approved an acquisition agreement that would pay shareholders $3.75 per share, which includes a premium of about 20 percent above...

The refurbishment of a massive overhead crane has hastened cleanup work at a British facility storing 14,000 square meters of nuclear waste. Between 1986 and 1992, nearly 30,000 tons of spent fuel from Magnox reactors in the UK, Italy and Japan were housed in the First Generation Magnox Storage Pond...

After three decades of study, TVO and Fortum have completed their application to build a geologic repository for nuclear waste in Finland. Posiva, which is owned jointly by the two companies, submitted the application Friday, according to a release. It seeks government approval for the facility to eventually...

As part of a $500 million program to dispose of Cold-War era waste stored at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the Department of Energy plans to move material containing uranium-233, U-235 and U-232 to a facility in Nevada this year. DOE officials recently told the Knoxville News Sentinel...

A group of utilities has formally ended its pursuit of a spent fuel storage site on tribal land near Salt Lake City, Utah. The Salt Lake Tribune reported Dec. 21 that Private Fuel Storage has asked the NRC to withdraw a license for the facility on land leased from the Skull Valley Goshute tribe. The...

The Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank that promotes conservative causes, recently uploaded this video to YouTube that argues America's approach to nuclear waste should be more like that of France. After a brief history of spent-fuel policies in the U.S., it includes an overview of Areva's...

Areva Federal Services recently briefed a South Carolina advisory panel about the state's potential options for hosting a facility to store or recycle spent nuclear fuel. In line with the "consent-based" approach recommended by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future...

The Department of Energy has offered a tentative sign that it may be interested in consolidated spent-fuel storage projects in the future. The Augusta Chronicle noted that DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy posted a notice last week to identify potential private-sector resources for a large-scale spent...

In the coming months regulators in Canada will hold a public hearing on a storage facility for low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste – one of the last steps before permitting the first deep geologic repository in that country. As noted by Michigan Radio Tuesday, it is sited near Ontario Power...

Crews at the Hanford site have successfully extracted a 10-ton, two-story-tall glovebox from a plutonium processing plant, the Department of Energy announced last week. DOE described the box as one of the largest and most complex pieces of equipment to be removed from the Hanford Plutonium Finishing...

On Friday, Areva announced the formation of a consortium that will compete for the oversight of Magnox Ltd. and Research Sites Restoration Ltd. (RSRL) in the UK. Britain's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is seeking firms to take over the so-called parent body organizations for both companies. RSRL...

Federal regulators on Monday announced a memorandum of understanding with the Prairie Island Indian Community regarding the relicensing process for spent fuel storage at Xcel Energy's nuclear plant of the same name. It gives added weight to many of the tribe's comments on the relicensing but...