Technicians at the Leningrad II-2 plant, where fuel loading recently took place. Photo: Rosenergoatom

The first of 163 nuclear fuel assemblies has been loaded into Leningrad II-2, marking the beginning of the Generation III+ unit’s physical startup, Rosenergoatom announced on July 19.

The electric power division of Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned atomic energy corporation, Rosenergoatom is the operator of all of Russia’s nuclear power plants. The fuel for Leningrad II-2, a 1,085-MWe VVER-1200 pressurized water reactor, was manufactured at the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant, part of Rosatom subsidiary TVEL.

UK EPR Design Centre, Bristol, England. Image: EDF Energy

EDF Energy has opened a new engineering design facility in Bristol, England, to support the next phase of construction at the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset, the company announced on July 14. The UK EPR Design Centre at Aztec West brings together nuclear designers and engineers from EDF and British engineering partners and suppliers, including Framatome UK, Atkins, Jacobs, Assystem, Anotech, and Vulcain, the announcement said.

Thirty-two companies and other entities, including trade unions and nuclear supply chain businesses, have formed a consortium to urge the U.K. government to greenlight Sizewell C, the proposed nuclear new–build project at the Sizewell site in Suffolk, according to a July 14 announcement by EDF Energy.

The UAE’s Barakah nuclear power plant. Photo: ENEC

The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) has completed construction of Unit 2 at the Barakah nuclear plant, the company announced on July 14. The plant, the Arab world’s first such facility, is located in the Al Dhafra region of Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates’ capital city.

Hot functional testing of the unit had been completed in August 2018, followed by structural integrity testing and integrated leak rate testing in March last year.

With construction complete, the unit has now been officially turned over to Nawah Energy Company, ENEC’s operating and maintenance subsidiary. According to the announcement, the focus at Barakah-2 now shifts to completing the operational readiness preparations, regulatory inspections, and international assessments required for obtaining an operating license from the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation, the UAE’s nuclear regulator.

A team from Arizona Public Service’s (APS) Palo Verde nuclear plant, in Wintersburg, Ariz., has won the Nuclear Energy Institute’s “Best of the Best” Top Innovative Practice (TIP) Award for developing in-house software applications that use machine learning to automate such time-consuming tasks as screening reports or searching maintenance logs. The award was announced July 9 during NEI’s first-ever virtual TIP Awards presentation.

Nuclear Engineering International reported this week on a new study for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) program. The 90-page study, “Cost and Performance Requirements for Flexible Advanced Nuclear Plants in Future US Power Markets,” finds that advanced reactors that cost less than $3,000/kW will create the most value for plant owners. The work was funded by ARPA-E’s Modeling-Enhanced Innovations Trailblazing Nuclear Energy Reinvigoration (MEITNER) program.

Unit 1 of Canada’s four-unit Darlington nuclear power plant, located in Clarington, Ontario, set a North American record on July 9 with 895 consecutive days of operation, according to Ontario Power Generation (OPG), the plant’s owner and operator.

The previous record of 894 days was held by Pickering-7, also part of OPG’s nuclear fleet. The reactors at the Darlington and Pickering plants are CANDU pressurized heavy-water reactors. Darlington-1, an 878-MWe PHWR, has been on line since January 26, 2018.

Closed vessel testing has been completed at Vogtle-3 at the Georgia Power site near Waynesboro, Ga., the company announced on July 14. The completion of the milestone prepares Unit 3 for cold hydro testing, which is required ahead of initial fuel load.

Vogtle-3 and -4 are the first new nuclear power reactors built in the United States in the past three decades. The new units will be powered by AP1000 reactors.

All energy sources, including small modular reactors, are being considered to meet Puerto Rico’s energy needs, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Peter J. Brown said on July 15 during the second day of PR-Grid Virtual, a three-day online conference on Puerto Rico’s energy grid. Brown’s comments were quickly circulated on Twitter by people who are already working to make nuclear power a reality for Puerto Rico, including members of the Nuclear Alternative Project (NAP), a non-profit organization of Puerto Rican engineers in the nuclear industry.

The nuclear community’s reaction to last month’s proposal from the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to eliminate its legacy prohibition on financing international nuclear energy projects was unsurprisingly positive (see here and here). On the negative side of things, however, was the reaction from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt) and Edward Markey (D., Mass.), expressed in a July 10 letter to the DFC.

The House Appropriations Committee held its full committee markup of the Energy and Water Development bill on July 13. (The Bill Report provides a more detailed funding breakdown.) The final bill passed the committee by a party line vote of 30-21. No schedule for Floor consideration of the bill has been set, but it is likely to happen next week or the week after.

Goldstein

William H. Goldstein announced on July 7 that he will retire as director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and president of Lawrence Livermore National Security (LLNS) following the selection of his successor.

Federal Judge Margaret Seymour signed off on a $192.5 million settlement on July 9 in a civil lawsuit filed in 2017 by SCANA shareholders over the company’s failed Summer nuclear construction project.

Fanning

Tom Fanning, president and chief executive officer of Southern Company, on July 10 announced via Twitter that he has tested positive for COVID-19. One of the largest U.S. utilities, Southern is the parent company of the owners and operators of the Farley, Hatch, and Vogtle nuclear power plants.

Also on July 10, the state of Georgia obliterated its record for the number of COVID-19 cases in a single day, reporting 4,484 new cases, topping the previous record by more than 1,000. Fanning lives in Atlanta.

Citing the history of cost overruns and delays with the EPR projects at Flamanville and Olkiluoto, France’s public auditor told Électricité de France via a July 9 report that it needs to ensure financing and profitability for projects involving its proposed EPR2 reactor before moving those plans forward. The EPR2 is being designed by EDF’s Framatome unit in a bid to make a less costly version of the EPR and one that is easier to build.

A quantum computer, such as this 50-bit version that IBM demonstrated at the International Consumer Electronics Show in 2018, is capable of solving tasks inaccessible to the most powerful “classic ” supercomputer. (Photo: IBM)

Rosatom, Russia’s state atomic energy corporation, and the Russian Quantum Center (RQC) on July 7 announced the creation of the first laboratory in Russia to research and develop machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) methods on quantum computers, specializing in the application of these technologies in the nuclear industry. An agreement was signed between the RQC and Tsifrum, a Rosatom subsidiary that was created in 2019 to support the implementation of Rosatom’s digitalization strategy.

As industry steps up its efforts to design, develop, and deploy advanced reactors, codes and standards must be developed to support these technologies. Toward that end, ANS and the Nuclear Energy Institute collaborated to host a virtual workshop on June 23 for industry partners to discuss the development of advanced reactor codes and standards.

NEI’s senior director of new reactors, Marc Nichol, welcomed more than 400 attendees to the online meeting, and ANS’s director of government relations, John Starkey, outlined the meeting logistics.

An Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has denied a Michigan antinuclear group’s petition for a public hearing on a DTE Energy license amendment request (LAR) concerning the fuel racks used in the Fermi-2 spent fuel pool (SFP). In its July 7 order, the ASLB rejected the arguments of Redford, Mich.’s Citizens’ Resistance at Fermi 2 (CRAFT), stating that the organization “plainly has failed to submit an admissible contention.”

The ASLB had agreed in April to hear oral arguments from CRAFT via a telephone conference (NN, June 2020, p. 15). The conference was held June 10 and included staff from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and representatives of DTE.

The World Nuclear Association (WNA) released a white paper yesterday, Building a stronger tomorrow: Nuclear power in the post-pandemic world, outlining why nuclear projects should be part of the world’s economic and employment recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the paper, recovery plans that include investment in nuclear energy could not only boost economic growth and jobs, but also fulfill climate change commitments and build a clean and resilient energy system.

A new report from the American Institute of Physics declares the physical sciences to be at a “tipping point” between a “perilous” future and a “vibrant” one as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The 28-page report, Peril and Promise: Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Physical Sciences, outlines several areas where the scientific community has been tested by the pandemic and examines what the future could look like for the workforce, infrastructure, and conduct of research. Further, the report challenges leaders in government, academia, the private sector, and other areas who depend on the physical sciences to craft specific recommendations to address the pandemic’s impacts.