LATEST UNION NEWS
Updated on November 19th, 2011

Online Meetings
The next Monthly Meeting is scheduled for Thursday, December 15th, 2011.  There will be one online meeting the third Thursday of every month at 8pm, CST.  All times are central.

Bartlett Negotiations
Negotiations continue on a Collective Bargaining Agreement for the Bartlett employees at the Crystal River nuclear plant with Bartlett management at their labor attorney's office in Washington, D.C.. There has been numerous delays since September, 2010 but both parties are now negotiating in good faith. We will update the membership with information as allowed under the NLRB agreement. 
 
Fukushima Daiichi
TEPCO personnel, along with support from companies such as Toshiba, Shaw, GE and Areva, have been busy stabilizing the reactors that were damaged. They are currently installing the framework to support the tent enclosure around the Unit One reactor building which can be seen on the webcast provided by TEPCO. This is in preparation to install the framework that will be used to attach the cover to enclose the reactor building. This will reduce the release of radioactivity to an acceptable level to begin full-scale decontamination of the surrounding country beginning with the 20km evacuation zone.

TEPCO has been training 4,000 "Radiation Controllers" to measure the levels of radioactivity during the cleanup. As of August 11, 2011, TEPCO is discussing with applicant companies the recruitment of workers within the nuclear field. We are watching this closely to see if any of the supporting companies start posting job openings for foreign (American) workers.

2011 Fall Outages
There are 24 outages schedule this coming fall. Two outages have an extended schedule with Davis Besse replacing the Reactor Head for 64 days and St. Lucie having an uprate modification scheduled for a 78 day outage.

There are two outages scheduled for early January. San Onofre has a 55 day outage starting on January 2nd, 2012. Robinson has a 35 day outage starting on January 21st, 2012.

DOE
The Department of Energy has authorized its environmental cleanup contractors at the Hanford nuclear reservation to lay off as many as 1,100 more workers in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, 2011. That’s in addition to up to 1,985 layoffs already announced this year, the majority of which will occur Sept. 29, 2011. The layoffs announced today are to prepare for a federal budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, which is expected to reduce Hanford’s annual budget. The 1,100 layoffs will start with up to 475 workers at the Hanford tank farms, a project of Washington River Protection Solutions.

The Office of Environmental Management (EM) has presented the FY2012 $6.13 billion budget to Congress. The largest recipient of funding at $2.36 billion, is at Hanford with $1.36 billion going to the Office of River Protection. Los Alamos is one of the other few facilities to see an increase in funding. They have a proposed increase of $170 million to $361 million for FY2012. Portsmouth sees a proposed increase of $47 million in it's annual budget to $300 million for FY2012. All other facilities see a reduction in proposed funding for 2012. Details of the EM budget proposal can be viewed in the NPUA forum.

Decommissioning
Several locations are ramping up staffing including Humboldt Bay, Portsmouth, the SPRU facility, and Zion. The pay rates at Humboldt Bay reflect the Collective Bargaining Agreement between PG&E and the local union. Bartlett is required to pay the Senior RP Technicians $43.00 per hour and $100/day per diem. There are over 150 RP and Decon Technicians working for PG&E, Bartlett, Energy Solutions and NEWEX at Humboldt Bay. The RP Technicians at Zion are being paid the rates comparable to the other Exelon plants at $29/hour and $100/day per diem.

There are opportunities coming up in Maryland at the old Walter Reed nuclear reactor and in Massachusetts at the Nuclear Metals Inc. Superfund site. We have more information in the NPUA forum.

Dry Cask Storage
There are several Dry Cask Storage projects ongoing across the country that were already scheduled or as a result of the accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. Robinson, Comanche Peak, Palo Verde, and San Onofre have contract RP Technicians working long term supporting the effort. La Crosse nuclear facility has been in Safestore since 1991 but has work scheduled this summer to place the spent fuel into Dry Cask cannisters.

Best Regards,
NPUA Leadership