The Biden administration, facing over half a century of US failure to deal with spent nuclear fuel, including the latest, 30-year debacle of the now-abandoned Yucca Mountain geologic repository in Nevada, has decided to revive a push for monitored, retrievable interim storage. US high-level nuclear waste totals some 86,000 tons of metal, and the inventory … More Biden DOE pushing interim storage for nuke waste

As the Biden administration pushes advanced nuclear reactors as a weapon against global warming, including export of US technology, the Washington-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) is warning that the Department of Energy should eschew export of sodium-cooled, fast breeder reactors. In a Nov. 29 letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Henry Sokolski, NPEC executive … More Group warns against exporting fast reactors

It’s the nuclear news story that won’t go away. More delays look in store for the Southern Company’s troubled two-unit, 2,000-MW Vogtle 3-4 construction project. The Georgia Power project to build new, 1,000-MW Westinghouse reactors at an existing site, which began construction in 2009, with a project startup in 2014, could now be pushed back … More Vogtle Déjà Vu: More Schedule Delays?

It’s an all-too-familiar story. Southern Company subsidiary Georgia Power has again announced a delay in the long-anticipated, long-delayed, and vastly over budget opening of its two-unit Vogtle nuclear expansion project. Construction on the two-unit, 2,000-MW project, using Westinghouse AP-1000 advanced pressurized water reactors, began in 2009, with an anticipated startup of the first unit in … More More delays (yawn) at the Vogtle nuke project

Recent Ohio events have added details on how Akron-based utility giant FirstEnergy has owned Ohio’s utility regulators, the legislature, and, perhaps the state house. The utility has been accused of major bribery of the Republican Ohio House speaker, Larry Householder, in a scheme to promote and defend a $1 billion legislative bailout. More generally, critics … More Ohio events further detail depths of FirstEnergy’s intrusion into state government

The Southern Co. has begun demolishing its failed attempt to create a path to “clean coal technology” at the multi-billion-dollar Kemper County integrated gasification, combined cycle project (IGCC) in Mississippi. The Georgia-based power giant set off two explosions at the site on October 9. Here’s a video of the results of the demolition. Southern began … More Demolition at failed Southern Co. coal gasification project

The Tennessee Valley’s long nuclear nightmare at the Bellefonte plant in Hollywood, Ala., is over. The giant federally-owned regional power system says it will relinquish its Nuclear Regulatory Commission construction license after a 47-year failure to complete even one of its four originally-planned reactors. Engineering News Record reported that TVA “won’t renew permits requiring it … More TVA finally pulls the plug on Bellefonte nuke

With the Illinois bailout of two Exelon nuclear power plants this week as background, U.S. hard-core anti-nuclear groups are raising doubts about the details of the Biden administration’s massive infrastructure legislation. In a recent press release, the groups – Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), Beyond Nuclear, Indigenous Environmental Network (INEN), and Nuclear Energy Information … More In Illinois aftermath, anti-nukes target Biden’s massive infrastructure plan

The White House today (Sept. 9) said President Biden intends to nominate Willie L. Phillips, the Democratic chairman of the District of Columbia Public Service Commission, to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, replacing Republic Neil Chatterjee. That would the Democrats a 3-2 majority on the commission. FERC has traditionally not been particularly partisan, but that … More White House names DC regulator to FERC

Entergy’s elderly Palisades nuclear plant in southern Michigan on the Lake Michigan shore will shut down in May 2022, the New Orleans-based utility said early this month. The giant, multi-state utility, recently hammered by Hurricane Ida, said, before the storm, “It’s a business decision to shut down the plant, we plan to do so in … More Nuclear digest: Palisades gone, Vogtle’s increased scrutiny, Japan’s incoming PM