Salt Lake City, Utah – March 29, 2022 – Radiation Safety and Control Services Inc. (RSCS) and EnergySolutions, today announced a partnership to decommission the world’s first nuclear-powered merchant ship, the N.S. Savannah.

RSCS started working with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration in 2007 on Phase 1 decommissioning preparations and completed this phase in early 2021.  The RSCS-EnergySolutions Joint Venture (Nuclear Ship Support Services, LLC) is now conducting Phase II and Phase III decommissioning where remediation is expected to be complete mid-2023 and License termination expected to be completed by 2025.

“This ship is designed with a one-of-a-kind reactor and associated support systems,” stated Jay Tarzia, Executive Director, RSCS.  “The goal of the project is to safely and surgically decommission the ship, maintaining maximum ship integrity to preserve this national historic landmark.  To complete this job we have assembled a world-class team with our partners EnergySolutions to achieve this goal.

“This is a unique opportunity for EnergySolutions to apply our decommissioning experience to the decommissioning efforts of the N.S. Savannah and we value our partnership with RSCS on this important project,” said Ken Robuck, President and CEO of EnergySolutions.  “We are confident as a team we will safely decommission the Savannah applying lessons learned from our experience at commercial reactor decommissioning projects while at the same time preserving this national treasure.”

A National Historic, Nuclear Engineering and Mechanical Engineering Landmark, the N.S. Savannah was commissioned July 20, 1956 under President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peach Program.”  The ship, originally constructed under a joint agreement between the U.S. DOT Maritime Division and the Atomic Energy Agency, is currently licensed with the NRC.  An 80 Mw reactor powered the ship, which weighs 9,570 tons with an overall length of 595 feet and was operated by a sixty-person crew.

Decommissioning activities include safely removing the control rod drive system, pressurizer, reactor pressure vessel, neutron shield tank, steam generators, primary system piping, reactor vessel and all primary system components.  All of this material is considered low-level waste and will be safely transported and disposed of at the EnergySolutions “Clive” disposal facility located in Utah’s West Desert.

Our joint team will carefully perform the decommissioning to preserve the ship for future use as a museum.

About Radiation Safety & Control Services (RSCS)

RSCS provides project management, technical, and laboratory services to the nuclear power industry, the Government, and other companies that use radioactive material.  We actively manage and support nuclear and radiological operations and decommissioning projects through our specialty services and staff augmentation.   Our project services, ISO/IEC accredited laboratory, and our manufacturing division provide state-of-the art solutions to our clients to improve quality and efficiency.  For more information about RSCS please visit http://www.radsafety.com

About EnergySolutions

EnergySolutions offers customers a full range of integrated services and solutions, including nuclear operations, characterization, decommissioning, decontamination, site closure, transportation, nuclear materials management, processing, recycling, and disposition of nuclear waste, and research and engineering services across the nuclear fuel cycle. For additional information about EnergySolutions visit http://www.energysolutions.com 

For additional information about this announcement please contact Mark Walker at [email protected] or 801- 231 -9194.

Project website http://www.nssavannahdecommissioning.com will be available in April to monitor project process.

In late 2020, RSCS was requested to assist the management of a Midwestern nuclear power plant in responding to a potential NRC inspection finding that was initially screened as White. NRC inspectors believed that during preparation of a radioactive resin shipment, plant personnel failed to meet regulatory requirements, resulting in a performance deficiency of low to moderate safety significance or White. The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) estimates the cost to a plant in response to a White finding is about $1 M due to necessary corrective actions and supplemental NRC inspection activities. The RSCS Team coordinated a two-prong attack on this situation.

Ellen Anderson teamed with the regulatory staff and Radiation Protection Manager (RPM) to assist in their response to NRC. She provided regulatory guidance and recommendations to plant staff based on her many years of experience in this area. She addressed the regulatory aspect by researching past NRC precedence on similar industry performance deficiencies that NRC had previously screened as Green, or low safety significance.

In addition, Nasser Rashidifard demonstrated his technical expertise by performing independent Microshield dose calculations on the resin liner in parallel with plant staff. His calculations were 100% aligned with that of the client, concluding that dose rates on the resin liner did not meet the criteria for a White finding.

Based on their independent reviews on the two perspectives, both Ellen and Nasser concluded that this performance deficiency constituted a Green finding, not a White one.  They were able to provide additional information to the client which allowed a more complete assessment of the regulatory significance.

In late January, RSCS was notified by a very pleased plant management that the final NRC screening of this finding was determined to be Green rather than White.  The RPM noted that their success in overturning the White finding was due to the of the RSCS team. Not only did this maintain the client’s regulatory margin with the NRC but also saved them a considerable expense.

As many of you may know, the three owners of RSCS are all alumni of the University of Massachusetts – Lowell’s radiological health program. Their college mentors, Ken Skrable, George Chabot and Clay French, performed an exhaustive and compelling analysis of the potential cause (or lack-thereof) of global warming and prepared a scientific article that details their conclusions (links below). 

Most people believe that global warming is due to increases of CO₂ released to the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels by humans (i.e. anthropogenic CO₂). Here are a few things you may not know.

1. ‘Most’ carbon in the environment contains a radioactive isotope of carbon (carbon-14) at low but measurable levels. This is formed by nuclear reactions in the upper atmosphere from radiation emitted by the sun at a very constant level over the eons. We use this fact to do carbon-dating of old bones and other old organic matter. The exception to this is fossil fuels, which has virtually no C-14 remaining because of its age and the 5,730 year half-life of C-14.
2. NOAA has been conducting air sampling at 2 mountain-top locations since 1959 where they measure CO₂ and C-14 in the atmosphere.

If burning fossil fuels were the culprit for increasing CO₂ levels then we would see a predictable decrease of C-14 specific activity, as the lack of C-14 in fossil fuels would dilute the predictable C-14 in the atmosphere. As indicated in the Figure above, as the anthropogenic component increases, the specific activity of carbon-14 decreases in a very predictable way as a result of the dilution of the initial specific activity in 1750 by the anthropogenic fossil component. In 2020 (i.e. 270 y since 1750), the specific activity is 13.81 dpm/gC, and the anthropogenic fossil component is 51.07 ppm, which is 12.4% of the total carbon dioxide of 411.36 ppm (not shown in Figure). Thus, carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere in 2020 from the burning of fossil fuels does not dominate the total, and it cannot be the primary cause of global warming.

Attempts to present this analysis to NOAA with the hope of obtaining a review and constructive criticism of the approach and methodologies taken have not been successful. We believe the research conducted by Ken Skrable, George Chabot and Clay French provides an unbiased analysis that has scientific merit. While the conclusions provided may be contrary to what many believe, we are presenting this research as it may have significant implications on the issue of global warming, its world-wide cost, and global politics.

Three separate documents describing this issue in detail are available for review; a synopsis of the research, an essay “Anthropogenic-fossil and Non Fossil Components of Mauna Loa and Niwot Ridge Annual Mean Carbon Dioxide”, and the article “Anthropogenic Fossil Carbon Dioxide and Claims of Its Dominance and Role in Global Warming“.