NEI Nuclear Notes

Later this week, The Nuclear Energy Commission will host what it calls a mandatory meeting between the commissioners and the NRC staff on the combined license for Southern Co.’s two reactors at its Vogtle site in Georgia. This is important as it is the first time this type of meeting has been held under NRC’s more streamlined process for licensing nuclear reactors. So what is it?  The Atlanta Journal-Constitutions Kristy Swartz offers a preview : Meanwhile, Tuesday’s mandatory hearing will review, among other things, emergency planning, cybersecurity and how nuclear waste will be stored at the reactor site. The NRC will not issue a ruling until perhaps early next year; with that ruling comes the construction license for the units. Nathan Ives, a senior manager with Ernst & Young, said his initial review of documents didn’t turn up any red flags. But Ives, a consultant in the energy and nuclear industry, said regulators likely will scrutinize heavily Southern Nuclear...

This is the winning one: The Iowa Senate approved a bill that would allow an Iowa energy company to raise fees to pay for a study on the feasibility of building a nuclear power plant in the state. The bill is a stepping stone in what lawmakers called a scramble to turn to carbon-neutral energy sources. In other words, Iowa wants to have a plant if a plant makes sense there. It won handily, too: The bill easily passed 37-13, but opponents raised questions about the disposal of nuclear waste, why nuclear had priority over other forms of renewable energy and whether lawmakers should back a rate fee hike during the recession. MidAmerican would charge a fee increase of 0.5 percent of its revenues to collect $15 million to conduct the study. We guess that answers the last one – which means the opponents were pulling arguments out of a hat – and the first belongs to the federal government. The second seems fair enough, so we breezed on over to MidAmerican’s Web site to see ...