The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy announced last week that the Association of American Railroads has certified its Atlas railcar system to operate on all major freight railroads in the United States.

Watch a video of the Atlas railcar development here.

The Department of Energy will enter into lease negotiations with two solar energy developers for 400 megawatts of solar electricity generation within the Idaho National Laboratory site. Announced on June 5, the projects are the first proposed projects selected under the department’s Cleanup to Clean Energy initiative, an effort to repurpose parts of DOE-owned lands—portions of which were previously used in the nation’s nuclear weapons program—into sites of clean-energy generation, including for solar, geothermal, wind, and nuclear.

Switzerland’s national cooperative for the disposal of radioactive waste, Nagra, is distancing itself from recent reports regarding the work of the Geneva-based engineering start-up Transmutex, which claims to have developed a new technology for the transmutation of radioactive waste.

The large vehicle used to transport highly radioactive canisters at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site has completed a pit stop to ensure the continued movement of the site’s radioactive liquid waste work.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced that its Office of River Protection (ORP) recently created a plan with contractor Bechtel National for completing the High-Level Waste Facility at the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, also known as the Vit Plant.

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), an independent government organization responsible for overseeing public health and safety issues at Department of Energy defense nuclear facilities, has alerted the DOE because of safety concerns it has regarding the use of continuous air monitors (CAM) at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

Part of WIPP’s new Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS), the CAM system is intended to detect a radiological release in the repository and automatically close vent dampers to prevent the escape of radioactive particles to the outside environment. The SSCVS, which began commissioning in November 2023, is intended to increase airflow to the underground to allow for simultaneous underground waste emplacement, mining, and ground control work.

Department of Energy cleanup contractor Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC) has garnered national recognition for its commitment to safety, recently receiving three awards from the National Safety Council: the Occupational Excellence Award, the Perfect Record Award, and the Superior Safety Performance Award.

The Department of Energy has received initial approval, known as “Critical Decision-0” (CD-0), for siting a federal consolidated interim storage facility for commercial spent nuclear fuel. Paul Murray, deputy assistant secretary of energy within the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, confirmed to Nuclear Newswire that the DOE received CD-0 approval on May 6.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory are investigating the details of plutonium chemistry with the goal of aiding the cleanup of the Hanford Site in Washington state. For more than 40 years, reactors located at Hanford produced plutonium for America’s defense program, resulting in millions of gallons of liquid radioactive and chemical waste.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced that the 30-foot-long, 37,600-pound reactor vessel from Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Low Intensity Test Reactor was shipped to EnergySolutions’ low-level radioactive waste facility in Clive, Utah, in late April.