The North Anna nuclear power plant. Photo: Dominion Energy
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s draft environmental impact statement on Dominion Energy’s application for a subsequent license renewal (SLR) for North Anna’s nuclear units is now open for public comment.
Vogtle-3 (left) and -4 in June. (Photo: Georgia Power)
Oversight of the Vogtle nuclear new-build project will be increased if the preliminary conclusions in an August 26 Nuclear Regulatory Commission special inspection report are finalized.
Conducted from June 21 to July 2, the inspection looked into the cause and extent of construction-quality issues in the safety-related electrical cable raceway system at Vogtle-3.
Sandia's Brad Beeny (left) and Larry Humphries examine remnants from a series of lower head failure experiments. Results from these and other experiments are used to inform nuclear accident modeling computer code. (Photo: Randy Montoya)
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have been expanding MELCOR—the severe accident modeling computer code used by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to evaluate the safety of light water reactors—to study the small modular reactors and non-light-water advanced reactors that are under development. An article published in Sandia Lab News on August 27 describes in detail how MELCOR is being expanded to work with different reactor geometries, fuel types, and coolant systems.
Bellefonte nuclear power plant (Photo: TVA)
A federal court last week sided with the Tennessee Valley Authority in its legal dispute with Nuclear Development LLC over the proposed sale of the unfinished Bellefonte nuclear power plant. The court, however, also ordered the utility to refund millions to Nuclear Development over the aborted transaction.
The UAE’s Barakah-2 (Photo: FANR)
The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation has announced the startup of Unit 2 at the Barakah nuclear power plant, located in the Al Dhafra region of Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates’ capital city.
The milestone, ENEC noted in its August 27 announcement, was achieved approximately one year after the startup of the plant’s Unit 1 reactor and within five months of Unit 1’s entering commercial operation.
NorthStar’s RadioGenix system produces the medical radioisope Mo-99 without the use of uranium. (Photo: NorthStar)
NorthStar Medical Technologies of Beloit, Wis., will receive $37 million under two cooperative agreements with the National Nuclear Security Administration for the production of molybdenum-99 without the use of high-enriched uranium. Considered a critical medical radioisotope, Mo-99 is used in more than 40,000 medical procedures in the United States each day, including the diagnosis of heart disease and cancer.
Engie Electrabel’s four-unit Doel nuclear plant, in East Flanders, Belgium. Units 1, 2, and 4 are to be closed in 2025; Unit 3 is to be shuttered in 2022. (Photo: Torsade de Pointes)
A pronuclear think tank in Belgium has written a letter to the country’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, urging him to reevaluate the government’s plan to phase out nuclear power generation by 2025 and replace it with gas power.
Nine Mile Point (Photo: Constellation Energy)
Exelon Generation has received a grant from the Department of Energy to explore the potential benefits of on-site hydrogen production and has chosen its Nine Mile Point nuclear power plant as the demonstration site, the company announced on Wednesday. (In 2019, Exelon received a conditional commitment from the DOE to co-fund a hydrogen electrolyzer demonstration at a nuclear plant.) Located in Scriba, N.Y., Nine Mile Point consists of two boiling water reactors—the 620-MWe Unit 1 and the 1,287-MWe Unit 2.
A still image from a three-part video tour of NuScale’s facilities. (Photos: NuScale Power)
NuScale Power has signed a memorandum of understanding with Xcel Energy to explore the feasibility of the utility’s serving as a plant operator at NuScale plants, the Portland, Ore.-based small modular reactor developer announced earlier this week.
Xcel owns and, through subsidiary Northern States Power Company, operates Minnesota’s two nuclear plants, Monticello and Prairie Island. The Monticello facility houses one 671-MWe boiling water reactor, while Prairie Island has twin 550-MWe pressurized water reactors.
A color-enhanced photograph of the NIF target bay. (Photo: LLNL/Damien Jemison)
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is celebrating the yield from an experiment at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) of more than 1.3 megajoules of energy—eight times more than the yield from experiments conducted this spring and 25 times more than NIF’s 2018 record yield.