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SRSCRO Annual Congressional Staff Workshop
 The SRSCRO hosted its second annual workshop for Congressional staff representing GA and SC (Washington, DC and local) on August 14-16. This year staffers from the House Energy and Commerce Committee also attended the workshop. It consisted of a half-day meeting where the staffers heard about SRSCRO initiatives including the Nuclear Workforce Initiative and community concerns about SRS issues. Additional presentations highlighted the SRSCRO partnerships with SRS, local community proposals working with the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL), a MOX update, and an update on the liquid waste disposition and tank closure status. The group got to tour the SRNL and hear about Enterprise SRS and the SRNL initiatives. They also toured Georgia Health Sciences University (GHSU) and heard about nuclear medicine and collaborations between GHSU and SRNL. There was also a tour of Plant Vogtle operations and the site of the two new nuclear reactor construction. The workshop objective of having the delegations from both sides of the river better informed about our local initiatives can only make the communities stronger, politically.
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Small Modular Reactor (SMR) - Video
Back in March 2012, the Energy Department, Savannah River Site and Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) entered into three separate agreements with Hyperion Power Generation Inc.; SMR, LLC, a subsidiary of Holtec International; and NuScale Power, LLC. The agreements will help these private companies obtain information on potential SMR reactor siting at Savannah River and provide a framework for developing land use and site services agreements to further these efforts.
Also in March, the DOE issued a "funding opportunity announcement" noting the availability of investment funds of up to $452 million to develop small, modular reactors or SMRs. The DOE plans to consider SMR applications that incorporate passive safety features and that can be licensed expeditiously, achieving a commercial operation date on a domestic site by 2022. The agency will make up to two awards by the end of September this year.
The main benefit SMRs would provide over larger reactors: significantly lower upfront costs. Utilities could purchase an SMR and then incrementally add modules later if the electricity demand increased. Each module is also completely self-contained, and some designs can operate for years before refueling is needed.
 A recent video outlines the planned SMR program at SRS. Click on the photo on the right to preview the video.
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Plutonium Disposition Alternatives - Public Comment
 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.
In the Surplus Plutonium Disposition Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, recently released, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) considers alternatives that involve DOE facilities at (1) Savannah River Site, near Aiken, SC; (2) Los Alamos National Laboratory, near Los Alamos, NM; and (3) Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, NM. DOE also analyzes the potential environmental impacts of using MOX fuel in Tennessee Valley Authority's Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant near Athens, AL and Sequoyah Nuclear Plant near Soddy-Daisy, TN.
A Notice of Availability (NOA) of the Draft Surplus Plutonium Disposition Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (Draft SPD Supplemental EIS or Draft SEIS) was published in the Federal Register on July 27, 2012, announcing the availability for public review and comment. The comment period is July 27, 2012 through September 25, 2012. A local public comment session has been schedule for:
September 4, 2012, Starting at 5:30 PM
North Augusta Municipal Center
100 Georgia Avenue
North Augusta, SC 29841
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Yucca Lawsuit(s) Update - Four Related Cases
 A summary of four related Yucca lawsuits were highlighted in a previous issue (May 2012). There has been recent action on one of the lawsuits involving Aiken County and South Carolina. Below is a summary on the recent lawsuit rulings.
(Lawsuit #2 - Petitioners v. NRC)
The question before the court was whether Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) must continue to work on the Energy Department's Yucca application even though the Administration has said it wants to abandon the project and Congress has not appropriated funds. NRC had argued that it has only $10.4 million in hand to conduct the inquiry, far less than it would need.
A federal appeals court indicated on August 3, 2012, that it would issue an order for the NRC to resume an evaluation of a possible nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain unless Congress acted by December or before to resolve the legal tangle around the project. If Congress does not resolve the conflict, the federal judges themselves will probably order the NRC to continue its work until its money runs out, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia indicated.
If the current pending Continuing Resolution for FY 2013 is passed by Congress which does not have any appropriate funds for Yucca, this order could come before the December date. Although the court put further action on hold while Congress makes upcoming appropriations decisions, two judges acknowledged a point that lawyers have made all along.
In a concurring opinion, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh said the court "will likely have to grant mandamus" if congressional budget action this year does not provide any additional clarity. A dissenting opinion on the matter used even stronger language.
"Whether mandamus should issue when an agency is willfully defying an earlier Congress's command has never depended on the possibility that a later Congress might do something to excuse the violation," wrote Judge Arthur Raymond Randolph. "Here, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has disregarded a clear statutory mandate, citing a lack of funding, when in fact it has sufficient funds to move forward. There is no reason to delay issuing a writ of mandamus to correct this transparent violation of the law."
A copy of the Order can be found here. |
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SRSCRO Spotlight | |
SRSCRO
Appointing Entity
Augusta-Richmond County Consolidated Government
Augusta-Richmond County, Georgia operates under a Mayor / Commission / Administrator
form of government. The Mayor is the Chief Executive of Augusta-Richmond County, Georgia. The Mayor is elected on a county-wide basis by the electors of the entire county in a non-partisan general election. Each mayor serves a four-year term and is eligible to serve two consecutive four-year terms.
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The current mayor, Deke Copenhaver, was elected in 2005 to fill the unexpired term of former Mayor Bob Young. In November 2011 he was re-elected to a four-year term which continues through December 31, 2014.
In addtion to the Mayor, the Commission has ten Commissioners.
The Augusta-Richmond County's current appointtee to the SRSCRO Board of Directors is Mr. William R. Toole.
To find more information on the Augusta-Ricmond County, Georgia, please
click here.
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NRC MOX Inspection Report
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) found no violations at the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility during inspections of construction activities conducted April 1 through June 30. The scope of the NRC inspections included ongoing construction activities, engineering processes and oversight of subcontractor activities. On July 24, 2012, members of the public heard from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Shaw Areva MOX Services about the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility being constructed at the Savannah River Site.
The project is on schedule to be operational in 2016 and estimated to be 60 percent complete. The next meeting to discuss the progress is expected to be held in early 2013.
A copy of the most recent inspection report can be found here.
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