The Midwestern Legislative Conference (MLC) held its 63rd annual meeting on July 13-16 in the far-western reaches of the region in Rapid City, South Dakota.  Kansas Senator Carolyn McGinn, member of the Midwestern Radioactive Materials Transportation Committee, provided the MLC Executive Committee with an update on the committee's activities, including the recent reduction in funding to CSG Midwest's cooperative agreement with DOE.  At the MLC Energy Committee meeting, Lisa Janairo was one of the panelists in a session on nuclear energy.  Speaking about the issue of waste as a potential obstacle to the nuclear renaissance, Lisa took the opportunity to highlight the transportation-related impacts that shipments of spent fuel will have on the Midwestern states.

Next summer, the MLC takes its annual meeting to Overland Park, Kansas.  Hosting the 2009 meeting will be incoming MLC chair Kansas Senator Jay Emler.  Committee members may remember Sen. Emler from the November 2006 committee meeting and WIPP tour.  The dates for the 2009 MLC annual meeting are August 9-12, 2009.

View Lisa Janairo's presentation to the MLC Energy Committee

French nuclear giant AREVA has had more than its share of problems this year.  In February, the company experienced a breakdown in procedures that led to a shipment of nuclear fuel servicing equipment leaving its Lynchburg, Virginia, facility and arriving at the Watts Bar nuclear plant in Tennessee with external contamination.  Health physics inspectors at Watts Bar logged readings of the quarter-sized spot that were 10 times the regulatory limit of 200 mrem/hr.  An AREVA spokeswoman apologized for the mistake on May 27 during a preliminary enforcement hearing, calling the event a "deep disappointment," and pledged to make sure it would never happen again.  Because of the company's very clean record of past performance, the NRC did not levy a fine for the violation.

More recently, AREVA suffered back-to-back leaks of radioactive waste at facilities in France.  First, on July 8 at AREVA's Tricastin facility, a leak of 30 cubic meters of diluted natural uranium worked its way into the sewage system and contaminated local water supplies.  People living in three nearby towns were told not to drink water from wells, fish or swim in the contaminated rivers, or use the water to irrigate their crops.  The incident prompted the French government to order tests of the groundwater at all of the nation's nuclear power plants.  AREVA was duly apologetic for the incident and worked closely with government authorities at all levels to maintain open lines of communication.  The company also replaced the general manager of the facility.

One week after the leak at Tricastin, workers at a different AREVA facility discovered that an underground pipe had been leaking -- perhaps for several years.  The leak appears not to have had any effect on the environment.