The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved the licenses to build two new nuclear reactors (Units 3 and 4) at Plant Vogtle on February 9, 2012, the first approvals in over 30 years. The commission voted 4-1 to approve a license allowing construction and conditional operation of two reactors at Southern Co.'s Vogtle power plant near Waynesboro, Ga. Commission Chairman Gregory Jaczko dissented.

Although new nuclear reactors have been built in this country within the last couple of decades, NRC hasn't issued a license to build a new reactor since 1978. The reactors that have opened in the last decades were approved before 1978.

The utilities building the new Vogtle reactors submitted their application seven years ago. Prep-work at the site has been under way for some time, but the actual reactors couldn't be built until now. The new reactors are a Westinghouse design called the AP 1000. The AP 1000 is the newest NRC-approved nuclear reactor. This would be the first one built in the United States, although four are already under construction in China.

The first Plant Vogtle reactor is expected to come online in 2016 and the second one in 2017. Construction of the reactors is expected to create 3,500 to 4,000 jobs

The NRC also is considering a 2008-filed license for SCANA Corp.'s proposal to build two AP1000 reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station site in Fairfield County, S.C. A decision is expected soon on these additional reactors. If approved, the SC reactors (Units 2 and 3) will come online in 2016 and 2019.

Click here to see a copy of the NRC Announcement.

On January 26, 2011, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC) released its final report to the Secretary of the Department of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu. The report is the culmination of nearly two years of work by the commission and its subcommittees, which met more than two dozen times since March 2010, gathering testimony from experts and stakeholders, as well as visiting nuclear waste management facilities both domestic and overseas.

The commission, co-chaired by former Congressman Lee H. Hamilton and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, was tasked by Energy Secretary Steven Chu with devising a new strategy for managing the Nation's sizable and growing inventory of nuclear waste.

The BRC's recommendations address a broad range of issues, including siting future nuclear waste management facilities, the transport and storage of spent fuel and high-level waste, institutional arrangements for managing spent nuclear fuel and high-level wastes, reactor and fuel cycle technologies, and international considerations.

The BRC final eight high-level strategic recommendations include: 

1. A new, consent-based approach to siting future nuclear waste management facilities.
2. A new organization dedicated solely to implementing the waste management program and empowered with the authority and resources to succeed.
3. Access to the funds nuclear utility ratepayers are providing for the purpose of nuclear waste management.
4. Prompt efforts to develop one or more geologic disposal facilities.
5. Prompt efforts to develop one or more consolidated interim storage facilities.
6. Prompt efforts to prepare for the eventual large-scale transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste to consolidated storage and disposal facilities when such facilities become available.
7. Support for continued U.S. innovation in nuclear energy technology and for workforce development.
8. Active U.S. leadership in international efforts to address safety, waste management, non-proliferation, and security concerns.

The BRC did not take a position on the Obama Administration's request to withdraw the Yucca Mountain license application, but recommends a waste management approach that can be applied to all potential disposal facility sites and neither includes nor excludes Yucca Mountain.

The BRC was established as an advisory committee to the Secretary of Energy. It will be up to the Secretary to decide how to utilize the recommendations given in the final report. Implementation of the BRC's recommendations will require action by both the Administration and Congress; however, the BRC calls for urgent action to break the current stalemate in our country's nuclear waste management policy.

To reduce the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is engaged in a program to disposition U.S. surplus, weapons-usable plutonium in a safe, secure, and environmentally sound manner, by converting such plutonium into proliferation-resistant forms that can never again be readily used in nuclear weapons.

The MOX fuel alternative is DOE's preferred alternative for surplus plutonium disposition. DOE's preferred alternative for disposition of surplus plutonium that is not suitable for MOX fuel fabrication is disposal at WIPP.

DOE's preferred alternative for pit disassembly and the conversion of surplus plutonium metal to feed material for the MFFF, is to use some combination of facilities at TA-55 at LANL, K-Area at SRS, H-Canyon/HB-Line at SRS and MFFF at SRS, rather than to construct a new stand-alone facility at SRS, which was known as the Pit Disassembly and Conversion Facility (PDCF).

DOE is re-opening scoping as it has identified new alternatives for the pit disassembly and conversion capability that have not previously been considered or analyzed under the National Environmental Policy Act process. The Surplus Plutonium Disposition Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SPD Supplemental EIS) will analyze four alternative disposition pathways: disposition of both the non-pit and pit plutonium using the can-in-canister vitrification approach, involving small cans of material, which would be placed in a rack inside a Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) canister and surrounded with vitrified high-level radioactive waste at the Savannah River Site (SRS); disposition of non-pit plutonium via H-Canyon and DWPF at SRS; disposal of non-pit plutonium at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico; and fabrication of pit and some non-pit plutonium into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for use in domestic commercial nuclear power reactors.

The SPD Supplemental EIS also includes alternatives for providing a pit disassembly and conversion capability discussed above. In addition, DOE has decided not to analyze an alternative, described in the 2010 Amended NOI, to construct a separate Plutonium Preparation (PuP) capability for non-pit plutonium because the necessary preparation activities are adequately encompassed within the other alternatives.

DOE will consider all comments on the scope of the SPD Supplemental EIS received during the 60-day public comment period which will end on March 12, 2012. Comments received or postmarked after that date will be considered to the extent practicable.