News & Videos

We are pleased to announce the adoption of a Memorandum of Agreement by Holtec International and the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance (ELEA), LLC to establish an underground consolidated interim storage facility in southeastern New Mexico, approximately 12 miles from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) facility (see map below). ELEA, a limited liability company owned by the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs, and Eddy County and Lea County, has successfully secured the support of the state of New Mexico to build a state-of-the-art interim storage facility on their industrial land.

We are pleased to report that the turnkey installation and commissioning effort of an independent spent fuel storage facility at the Laguna Verde site has made great strides in the past three months since the contract’s inception in December 2014. Mexico’s national utility, Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE) owns Laguna Verde’s two BWRs located on Mexico’s Gulf Coast in the state of Veracruz. Back in 1991, Holtec had equipped the Laguna Verde twin fuel pools with high density fuel storage racks under a successful turnkey contract. (more…)

We are pleased to announce that Southern California Edison (SCE) has awarded an Engineering, Procurement, Construction (EPC) contract to Holtec to place the used fuel inventory of the two retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) reactors into dry storage. Under the contract, Holtec will construct a HI-STORM UMAX underground storage facility to store 2,668 used fuel assemblies in the MPC-37 multi-purpose canister, each containing 37 used fuel assemblies. HI-STORM UMAX is an acronym for Underground and MAXimum Safety and Security. Holtec will also perform pool-to-pad loading services for all used fuel and non-fuel waste stored in the spent fuel pools of SONGS Unit 2 and 3. To insure a long service life in the site’s salt air environment, SCE has selected the most corrosion resistant grade of stainless steel, 316L grade austenitic stainless steel, for the confinement boundary of the MPC in lieu of the commonly used 304 grade. Likewise, all external surfaces of the storage cavity in contact with the ambient air will be upgraded from carbon steel to stainless steel to minimize in-service maintenance requirements. (more…)

We are pleased to report on the progress of the HI-STORM UMAX construction at Ameren’s Callaway Nuclear Plant. The HI-STORM UMAX support foundation pad (base mat), founded on the bottom of a 25 feet deep pit, now holds 48 Cavity Enclosure Canisters (CECs) (see photo below). (more…)

Over seventy delegates attended the autumn meeting of the Holtec User Group (HUG) (Nov 10-13) in New Orleans, LA to receive and dispense knowledge on best practices and lessons learned from continuing dry storage operations. (more…)

Spent fuel pools at nuclear power plants and at away-from-reactor (AFR) wet storage have, for the most part, performed reliably. Although seepage of contaminated water from the pool has been a relatively rare occurrence, leaching of contaminated pool water to the proximate land can have severe consequences. In order to mitigate this possibility, Holtec International has developed a new pool liner embodiment that precludes the risk of out-migration of the pool’s water. (more…)

Holtec is pleased to announce the completion of the largest pool to pad loading campaign to date at PSEG’s Hope Creek Nuclear Plant. At a celebratory dinner on Thursday, September, 4, Holtec thanked the PSEG dry storage team lead by Mr. Scott Kelley, Manager of Outage Services, and Mr. Tom McLaughlin, Outage Superintendent, for their support which contributed to the success of this campaign. The following article internally distributed as a ‘Hope Creek FYI’ by PSEG provides an exceptional summary of the campaign. (more…)