Decommissioning news at nuclear.com
Decommissioning news

nuclear.com Radiation Bookstore Gift Shop About nuclear.com
Decommissioning FAQs

nuclear.com also has a power reactor decommissioning page.

Decommissioning news

February 27, 2007

New Jersey - Shieldalloy is wrong about nature of the settlement agreement, sez NRC Commissioner Merryfield

NRC Commissioner Jeffrey Merryfield visited the Shieldalloy facility in Newfield, New Jersey recently. After hearing Shieldalloy Preident Eric Jackson's presentation that day, the Commissioner reviewed the "Settlement Agreement of Environmental Claims and Issues By and Between Debtors and the United States of America and the State of New Jersey". Mr. Jackson had made a claim that the settlement agreement was a binding document in which the NRC had agreed both that the slag pile could be left onsite and that the cost to the company of decommissioning would not exceed $5-million. Commissioner Merryfield's reading of the agreement is quite different. Commissioner Merryfield's letter to Mr. Jackson, dated February 22, 2007, quotes from various paragraphs of the agreement, and is available as ADAMS ACN ML070530666.

New Jersey - Borough of Newfield's petition for Shieldalloy ASLB hearing doesn't meet specificity requirements, sez Shieldalloy's lawyers

The Borough of Newfield is concerned about the decommissioning of Shieldalloy's Newfield facility. The Borough has concluded that Shieldalloy has not complied with a Consent Order issued by the New Jersey state Department of Environmental Protection, and that this failure has placed the Borough and its residents at significant risk for continued environmental harm which will cause significant health, safety and welfare concerns to the Borough's residents and will otherwise significantly impact upon property values and the ability to use over seventy acres of property available within the Borough. A formal resolution opposing Shielalloy's plans has been adopted by the Mayor and Borough Council. These points were expressed in a petition to the Shieldalloy ASLB for a hearing. Shieldalloy's reply to the petition notes that if a hearing is held about Shieldalloy site, the Borough could certainly participate as an "interested state". But, Shieldalloy argues, the ASLB can only hold a hearing if some intervenor has submitted an admissible contention. The Borough's petition does not contain any such contention, because the points it raised were too vague. Shieldalloy's legal brief, dated February 13, 2007, is available as ADAMS ACN ML070520696.

New Jersey - Cumberland County's petition for Shieldalloy ASLB hearing doesn't meet specificity requirements, sez Shieldalloy's lawyers

Cumberland County is concerned about the decommissioning of Shieldalloy's Newfield facility. In a petition for hearing by Shieldalloy ASLB, the County said "the slag materials should be removed from the site in an environmentally sound manner and taken to an approved landfill for disposal thus eliminating and alleviating the prospective and potential health impacts on the public." The County also said that "proposals to decommission the site and allow it to sit unremediated for hundreds, if not thousands of years is the inappropriate manner in which the site should be handled because of concerns to the health, safety and welfare of the general public in the area surrounding the site and in the area impacted by the site." Shieldalloy's legal brief opposing the petition notes that these points made by the County do not raise any genuine dispute with Shieldalloy on any material issue of fact or law relating to the Decommissioning Plan, and thus the petition does not contain any admissible contentions. Shieldalloy's legal brief, dated February 13, 2007, is available as ADAMS ACN ML070520445.

April 18, 2005

* Atomic body plans more site work
Peter Marsh, Financial Times (London, England), p. 4

The UK Atomic Energy Authority plans to increase its revenues from cleaning up disused UK nuclear sites by 50 per cent in the next four years -- to at least Pounds 450m by 2009, from about Pounds 300m last year. It also hopes to pick up contracts from governments in the rest of Europe and the former Soviet Union. Dipesh Shah, the chief executive, yesterday announced his ambitions for the UKAEA after winning approval from the government for a business plan that encourages the organisation to act similarly to a private enterprise. It will continue to be a public body answerable to the Department of Trade and Industry. It also hopes to win contracts for environment clean-up work in fields outside the nuclear sector - such as the oil and gas industry - through taking advantage of the expertise it has gained in dealing with nuclear installations. Of the Pounds 2bn spent annually by the UK government on nuclear clean-up, the UKAEA receives about a sixth for working on research sites, while British Nuclear Fuels, another state body, gains most of the rest for decommissioning former power plants. This month, ministers established a new government agency, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which will take overall responsibility for making former nuclear sites in the UK safe for other uses.

March 18, 2004

* Cleanup of n-legacy sites - Bush has cut 35 years from schedule and saved $50-billion in costs

February 27, 2004

* Soil contamination - differences between EPA trigger values and NRC screening values

August 14, 2003

* Decommissioning Strategies Implemented in USA - an overview by NRC's Dominick A. Orlando

May 1, 2003

* Paducah - "Drum Mountain" Is Gone



(c) 2003 - 2007 nuclear.com. All rights reserved.