Group items tagged

Pug Renwand admits he's scared. He's scared of the day when his Chronic Beryllium Disease, the lung illness that has afflicted him for 10 years, might force him to carry an oxygen tank around to help him breathe. He worries he might lose the dream house he worked so hard to build because he can't afford mortgage payments. He said he can't work for more than a few hours a day without becoming tired and winded, so he doesn't have a job. And he wonders whether CBD eventually will kill him.

Only the older folk among us can remember the headline in the Aiken Standard and Review on Nov. 29, 1950, "AEC To Construct Huge Plant Near Aiken." That headline heralded a permanent change in the economy and culture of Aiken and the whole area. More importantly, that event greatly benefited the history of the planet by making it clear to the Soviet Union that their brutal expansionist plans would not be tolerated. President Truman had become convinced the Soviet Union was rapidly developing their nuclear weapons program, perhaps including a "super" bomb, now called the hydrogen bomb. America had no choice but to do the same because the survival of the free world was at stake. So, a new facility was needed to make tritium (the heaviest isotope of hydrogen) and plutonium. The Savannah River Plant was born. The end result was that freedom-loving countries, led by the U.S., stopped the expansion of the Soviet Union, and made it possible to win the Cold War.

Plan would bring 500 containers of plutonium to site Savannah River Site is exploring options to expand its K Area storage facility to accommodate 500 additional containers of plutonium from other nuclear weapons sites. Sign up for breaking news alerts from The Chronicle The plans stem from a 2007 decision by the U.S. Energy Department to consolidate surplus plutonium from three sites -- Hanford in Washington state, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The original plan called for shipping 2,300 containers from Hanford, 96 from Los Alamos and 115 from Lawrence Livermore, said Allen Gunter, senior technical adviser for Savannah River Site's Nuclear Materials Stabilization Project.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued its final safety evaluation report (SER) for the proposed renewal of the operating licenses for Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit numbers 2 and 3, and concluded that there are no open items that would preclude license renewal for an additional 20 years of operation. The report documents the results of the NRC staff's review of the license renewal application and site audits of the plant's aging management programs to address the safety of plant operations during the period of extended operation. It represents the culmination of NRC's comprehensive review of the application and inspection of the plant to verify license renewal implementation is consistent with the application. Overall, the results show that the applicant has identified actions that have been or will be taken to manage the effects of aging in the appropriate systems, structures and components of the plant and that their functions will be maintained during the period of extended operation.

Nearly 15,000 drums of depleted uranium oxide will be shipped from South Carolina for disposal in Utah under a contract awarded by the Department of Energy. The 14,800 drums of Savannah River Site waste will be disposed of at EnergySolutions Inc.'s facility about 70 miles west of Salt Lake City. The shipments will take place over 14 months, although it was unclear Wednesday when they would start. The announcement, made by the Energy Department in mid-July, comes as EnergySolutions fights an effort to place a moratorium on the disposal of depleted uranium in Utah.

Nearly 15,000 drums of depleted uranium oxide will be shipped from South Carolina for disposal in Utah under a contract awarded by the Department of Energy. The 14,800 drums of Savannah River Site waste will be disposed of at EnergySolutions Inc.'s facility about 70 miles west of Salt Lake City. The shipments will take place over 14 months, although it was unclear Wednesday when they would start. The announcement, made by the Energy Department in mid-July, comes as EnergySolutions fights an effort to place a moratorium on the disposal of depleted uranium in Utah.

Nearly 15,000 drums of depleted uranium oxide will be shipped from South Carolina for disposal in Utah under a contract awarded by the Department of Energy. The 14,800 drums of Savannah River Site waste will be disposed of at EnergySolutions Inc.'s facility about 70 miles west of Salt Lake City. The shipments will take place over 14 months, although it was unclear Wednesday when they would start. The announcement, made by the Energy Department in mid-July, comes as EnergySolutions fights an effort to place a moratorium on the disposal of depleted uranium in Utah.

Officials representing the Department of Energy, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the Savannah River Operations Office, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Environmental control came together to give the public opportunity to assess an Early Action Proposed Plan for the decommissioning End-State alternatives of four reactors at the site. The presentation was planned to show how the reactors, though they have differences, have many basic similarities and as such a broad plan to bring one - R reactor - to a final state will be tailored for the other three - reactors C, K and L. The four reactor decommissioning are scheduled to be completed by 2031.

Savannah River Site officials have taken corrective actions - and fired two workers - after two incidents in H Canyon in which bundles of highly enriched uranium were dropped by a crane. According to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report - dated Aug. 21 and made public Thursday - the incidents "had potential criticality safety implications" and halted reprocessing operations for a week. A criticality accident is one in which a chain reaction occurs, said Charles Nickell, the site's nuclear materials disposition manager. "It is something we definitely don't want to happen." The H Canyon area is where highly enriched uranium is loaded by cranes into vats of acid, called "dissolvers," that help purify and convert the material from solid to a liquid form. The liquid is later blended with natural uranium to create low-enriched uranium and shipped off-site for use in the manufacture of fuel rods for commercial reactors.

The following links on this page are to documents in our Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS). ADAMS documents are provided in either Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) or Tagged Image File Format (TIFF). To obtain free viewers for displaying these formats, see our Plugins, Viewers, and Other Tools. If you have problems with viewing or printing documents from ADAMS, please contact the Public Document Room staff. * NUREG-0585 (PDF - 3.53 MB) In its final report reviewing the Three Mile Island accident, the TMI-2 Lessons Learned Task Force has suggested change in several fundamental aspects of basic safety policy for nuclear power plants. Changes in nuclear power plant design and operations and in the regulatory process are discussed in terms of general goals. The appendix sets forth specific recommendations for reaching these goals.

Appendices III & IV * Failure Data (Appendix III) * Common Mode Failures - Bounding Techniques and Special Techniques (Appendix IV) Appendix V * Quantitative Results of Accident Sequences Appendix VI * Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences Appendix VII - X * Release of Radioactivity in Reactor Accidents (Appendix VII) * Physical Processes in Reactor Meltdown Accidents (Appendix VIII) * Safety Design Rationale for Nuclear Power Plants (Appendix IX) * Design Adequacy (Appendix X)

This is the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff's report of its monitoring of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) non-high-level waste disposal actions in calendar year 2008, pursuant to Section 3116(b) of the Ronald W. Reagan National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005 (the NDAA). Section 3116 of the NDAA requires that DOE consult with the NRC on its non-high-level waste determinations and plans and that the NRC, in coordination with the covered States of South Carolina and Idaho, monitor disposal actions that DOE takes to assess compliance with NRC regulations in Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Part 61, "Licensing Requirements for Land Disposal of Radioactive Waste," Subpart C, "Performance Objectives." The NRC has prepared this report in accordance with NUREG-1854, "NRC Staff Guidance for Activities Related to U.S. Department of Energy Waste Determinations," issued August 2007.

This report fulfills the requirements of Chapter 14, Section 170D, of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2201 et seq.), as amended by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which states, "not less often than once each year, the Commission shall submit to the Committee on Environment and Public Works of the Senate and the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives, a report, in safeguards form and unclassified form, that describes the results of each security response evaluation conducted and any relevant corrective action taken by a licensee during the previous year." This is the fourth annual report, which covers calendar year (CY) 2008. In addition to information on the security response evaluation program (force-on-force (FOF) inspections), the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is providing additional information regarding the overall security performance of the commercial nuclear power industry and Category I (CAT I) fuel cycle facilities to keep Congress and the public informed of the NRC's efforts to protect the public health and safety, the common defense and security, and the environment, through effective regulation of the Nation's electric power infrastructure and strategic special nuclear material (SSNM).

The U.S. Energy Department made official today its plan to scrap a Bush administration initiative that could have brought a major nuclear fuel reprocessing facility to South Carolina. Economic developers, however, say the cancellation of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership-published in today's Federal Register- doesn't mean Barnwell County and Savannah River Site won't win a similar venture in the future. "At this point, GNEP, as a concept, is dead, but the issue of what do do with this material isn't," said Danny Black, president of the Barnwell-based SouthernCarolina Alliance, a regional economic development consortium. The GNEP program, unveiled in 2006, was a broad plan to reprocess spent commercial nuclear fuel to maximize its efficiency, reduce waste volume and prevent its exploitation for nuclear weapons.

The Savannah River Site has become the home of an Australian import that is a lot less cute than a kangaroo or koala. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced Thursday that the Savannah River Site will be the new home for 32 pounds of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in spent nuclear fuel from Australia. The HEU spent fuel was transported by truck, rail and ship under secure conditions with the cooperation of Australia and several international organizations. With the completion of this shipment, NNSA's Global Threat Reduction Initiative has successfully removed more than 220 pounds of U.S.-origin HEU fuel from Australia since 1998. "The NNSA worked closely with Australia to oversee this important shipment of highly enriched uranium spent nuclear fuel," said NNSA Principal Deputy Administrator Ken Baker. "The removal of this U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium from Australia is another major milestone in NNSA's cooperative effort to reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation and demonstrates the strong international commitment to nonproliferation."

Congressman Joe Wilson is proposing a new energy bill he believes balances energy needs and environmental concerns, without compromising either. Drilling for oil off the coast of South Carolina and others states, building a nuclear reprocessing center and commercial reactors at the Savannah River Site and coal furnaces are all part of Wilson's proposal for "American Conservation and Clean Energy." Wilson unveiled a bill this week that the Congressman believes will take great strides toward the future of clean energy. A bill that has support from both sides of the isle and would be a boon for the Savannah River Site and the Congressman's state.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Regulatory Agenda is a semiannual compilation of the agency's recent rulemaking activities. It contains a summary and the status for each ongoing rulemaking and petition for rulemaking received by the agency. Organization of the Agenda The agenda consists of two sections that have been updated through December 31, 2008. Section I, "Rules," includes: (A) rules on which final action has been taken since June 30, 2008, the closing date of the last NRC Regulatory Agenda; (B) rules published previously as proposed rules on which the Commission has not taken final action; (C) rules published as advance notices of proposed rulemaking for which neither a proposed nor final rule has been issued; and (D) unpublished rules on which the NRC expects to take action. Section II, "Petitions for Rulemaking," includes: (A) final actions on petitions for rulemaking since June 30, 2008; and (B) petitions pending staff review. In Section I of the agenda, the rules are aligned numerically with the parts of Title 10, Chapter I, of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) (Title 10). If more than one rule appears under the same part, the rules are arranged within that part by date of most recent publication. If a rule amends multiple parts, the rule is listed under the lowest numbered affected part. In Section II of the agenda, the petitions are aligned numerically with the parts of Title 10 and are identified with a petition for rulemaking (PRM) number. If more than one petition appears under the same CFR part, the petitions are arranged by PRM numbers in consecutive order within that part of Title 10.