Cancel your flight to Phoenix, but keep your calendar free! ANS is transforming its 2020 ANS Annual Meeting—coming up June 8-11—into an online conference. The virtual meeting will deliver the top-quality content and technical exchange you've come to expect from ANS meetings while ensuring the health and safety of everyone involved.

Decommissioning work in parts of the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan has been delayed after engineers discovered that sandbags placed in the basements of buildings near Units 1 and 3 were found to contain excessive radiation levels. Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) operates the plant and is in charge of the decommissioning efforts following the accident caused by the earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011.

Recognizing the impacts of the current COVID–19 pandemic, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided to extend the public comment period on a proposed interpretation of its low-level radioactive waste disposal regulations. The new deadline for comments is July 20. The proposed LLW interpretive rule, announced on March 6, would permit licensees to dispose of waste by transfer to persons who hold specific exemptions for the purpose of disposal (NN, Apr. 2020, p. 47).

Jacobs has been awarded several contracts to support work on the ITER fusion project. Photo: ITER Organization

The global engineering company Jacobs announced on April 14 that it has been awarded several contracts with an estimated combined value of more than $25 million. The contracts are with the ITER Organization, Fusion for Energy, and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and are intended to support fusion energy projects in France and the United Kingdom.

Several companies involved in the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle have announced temporary shutdowns or staffing reductions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the modest increase in uranium spot prices triggered by production cuts could be a silver lining, uranium prices are still below a level that would prompt idled mines to get back in production once public health mandates are lifted.

The uranium market is global, and it should come as no surprise that a global pandemic is having an impact on facilities around the world, including in the following countries.

The winners of $32 million in funding for 15 projects to develop timely, commercially viable fusion energy were announced by the Department of Energy in April. As part of the DOE Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy’s (ARPA-E) Breakthroughs Enabling THermonuclear-fusion Energy (BETHE) program, the projects will work to increase the number and performance levels of lower-cost fusion concepts.

A forest fire near the Chernobyl site had no effect on radiation levels in the exclusion and evacuation zones around the site, according to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine (SESU) on April 8. The “equivalent dose rates of gamma radiation did not change,” SESU stated.

SESU’s statement came three days after Egor Firsov, the head of Ukraine’s ecological inspection service, wrote in an online post, “There is bad news---in the center of the fire, radiation is above normal.” On a video that accompanied the post, Firsov displayed a Geiger counter that showed elevated levels of radiation.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will defer collecting fees and charges from its licensees due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a letter from NRC Chairman Kristine Svinicki to a bipartisan group of lawmakers. The letter states, “The commission has approved a 90-day deferral of all annual fee (10 CFR Part 171) invoices that would have been issued in the third quarter of fiscal year 2020. The NRC is taking this action to temporarily mitigate the financial impacts and economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The new billing date for annual fees that were scheduled to be billed in the third quarter (April, May, and June) will be July 22, 2020.”

Here are some important updates to our April 10 story on COVID-19 cases at nuclear power plants:

An Atomic Safety and Licensing Board notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and other concerned parties that it will not render its decision on a challenge to a license amendment regarding concrete degradation at Seabrook until this summer. The decision on the challenge—which was brought by the C-10 Research and Education Foundation, an opponent of license renewal for the New Hampshire plant—had been expected on April 9.

The Department of Energy is awarding up to $16 million in new funding to advance research and development of isotope production. The funding opportunity is part of a federal program that produces critical isotopes that are otherwise unavailable or in short supply for U.S. science, medicine, and industry. The effort is aimed at sustaining longstanding U.S. leadership in the vital field of isotope production, research, and development, according to the DOE.

Recognizing the challenges that nuclear materials licensees may face in meeting certain regulatory requirements, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has developed options for licensees that may need regulatory relief during the COVID-19 pandemic. The options for providing regulatory relief were outlined in an April 7 letter from the NRC to licensees authorized to possess by-product, source, and special nuclear materials, including licensed nuclear materials users, uranium recovery, decommissioning (both materials and users), fuel facilities, and spent nuclear fuel storage facilities.

Surry Power Station. Photo: Dominion Energy.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued its final supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) on April 6 for Dominion Energy’s subsequent license renewal (SLR) application for Surry-1 and -2, concluding that the potential environmental impacts from continued operation of the units are not substantial enough to prevent the agency from considering issuance of the SLRs. The NRC had issued its final safety evaluation report on the Surry SLR application on March 9, with a similarly positive conclusion.

The Department of Defense extended the comment period on the scope of an environmental impact statement for the construction and demonstration of a prototype mobile microreactor through April 30. The public comment opportunity opened on March 2 and was initially set to close on April 1.

The Nuclear Energy Institute has released Nuclear by the Numbers, a 28-page report brimming with statistics showing the benefits of U.S. nuclear power generation. NEI issued a summary of the report in March (NN, Apr. 2020, p. 19).

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on universities has been wide-ranging, as it has forced remote learning across campuses, with a few exceptions.

Steve Biegalski, chair of the Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization (NEDHO), whose membership consists of 44 academic institutions, said that the group’s universities have also transitioned to online education. The switch has gone fairly well, he said, adding that laboratory courses have not transitioned as well as regular classroom lectures. The biggest impact, however, has been in the area of research.

The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) initiated an investigation into possible alternatives to participation in the regional capacity market administered by PJM Interconnection, New Jersey’s regional transmission organization.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) has reduced operations at the majority of its cleanup sites as a result of stay-at-home orders in some states. The DOE said that most EM sites have transitioned to “essential mission-critical operations status with maximum telework” as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. The DOE said that EM is continuing to monitor developments associated with COVID-19 and is evaluating its potential impacts on projects.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has dispatched equipment to more than 40 countries to enable them to rapidly detect the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the agency announced on April 1. The IAEA said that the action is part of its response to requests for support from about 90 member states in controlling the number of infections worldwide.

Cases of the COVID-19 virus have been confirmed at nuclear power facilities in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Illinois at this writing: five at the Limerick plant, one at the Susquehanna plant, one at Vogtle, and one at Quad Cities.