Nuclear News

According to a statement from the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), a key hot performance test was conducted on Unit 5 of the Fuqing nuclear power plant in Fuzhou, in East China’s Fujian Province, on March 2. The CNNC said it is the world’s first nuclear power project using Hualong One technology, also known as HPR 1000, a third-­generation reactor design developed by China. A total of five nuclear power units adopting HPR 1000 technology are under construction by CNNC in China and other countries.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general, called on Iran on March 9 to cooperate immediately and fully with the IAEA and to provide prompt access to locations that it has refused to let agency inspectors visit. “The agency has identified a number of questions related to possible undeclared nuclear material and nuclear-related activities at three locations that have not been declared by Iran,” Grossi said in his first address to the IAEA’s Board of Governors since being named director general in December.

The lead test rods for the world’s first installed accident tolerant fuel (ATF) have completed a full cycle at Unit 1 of the Hatch nuclear power plant in Baxley, Ga. Southern Nuclear Operating Company operates the two-unit plant.

During a planned spring 2020 maintenance and refueling outage at Unit 1, operators transferred a sampling of the lead test rods from the reactor to the spent fuel pool. An initial inspection of the fuel in comparison to standard zirconium rods has been completed.

Three reactor developers got a boost on March 9 when they were each awarded a contract from the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to design a reactor that can fit inside a standard shipping container for military deployment. The DOD’s Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO), in partnership with the Department of Energy, proposes to build and demonstrate a 1–10 MWe reactor within four years that, if successful, could be widely deployed to support the DOD’s domestic and operational energy demands.

BWX Technologies announced on March 11 that its BWXT Nuclear Operations Group (BWXT NOG) subsidiary had been awarded a contract from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to manufacture TRISO nuclear fuel to support the continued development of the Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR). Plans to restart a TRISO production line at the company’s Lynchburg, Va., manufacturing site will be finalized to allow for production to be completed by the fall of 2020.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently identified a number of what it refers to as “apparent violations” of agency regulations at Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear facilities.

On March 2, the NRC issued TVA an Office of Investigation (OI) report, which pointed to an apparent violation of employee protection requirements at the utility’s Sequoyah nuclear plant, located near Soddy-­Daisy, Tenn. According to the report, a former Sequoyah employee had been “constructively discharged” for raising concerns from 2015 to 2018 with TVA’s Corporate Nuclear Licensing group regarding regulatory noncompliance and for expressing concerns about a chilled work environment. The former employee reportedly expressed these concerns both to TVA’s Employee Concern Program and to other employees.

A group of Republican senators on March 2 penned a letter to Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Kristine Svinicki to express their support for the ROP Enhancement Initiative—an effort to assess and modernize the agency’s nuclear safety inspection program, better known as the Reactor Oversight Process. The letter was signed by Sens. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works; Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.); Shelley Moore Capito (R., W.Va.); Kevin Cramer (R., N.D.); Mike Braun (R., Ind.); Mike Rounds (R., S.D.); John Boozman (R., Ark.); and Roger Wicker (R., Miss.).

As the nuclear industry pursues a new generation of reactors to meet economic and political realities, the process for developing and qualifying new fuels and materials has come into focus. It’s clear that the 30-year development process the industry has come to expect is no longer viable, just as the economic reality of the current reactor fleet is increasingly coming under pressure from low-cost alternatives, particularly natural gas. To reduce carbon emissions while meeting ever-growing energy needs, new nuclear plants must be built soon.

The TCR program is leveraging an agile approach—one that is centered around continuously informing the process—to accelerate deployment timelines and introduce performance improvements. Image: Adam Malin, ORNL

Soon after Enrico Fermi’s Chicago Pile-­1 went critical for a brief duration in December 1942, the construction of the first continuously operating reactor, the X-­10 Graphite Reactor, was initiated in February 1943 at Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tenn. On November 4 of that year, a mere nine months after the start of construction, the reactor began operation. This marked the onset of what Alvin M. Weinberg referred to as “the first nuclear era,” during which many reactors of various designs and operating parameters were built and demonstrated across the United States. Forty years ago, the Fast Flux Test Facility was the last U.S. non-­light-­water reactor to reach criticality, and it has since been decommissioned.

National laboratories from Canada and the United Kingdom have developed an action plan under an existing memorandum of understanding designed to boost collaboration across the areas of clean energy, medical isotopes, waste management, and decommissioning. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), Canada’s nuclear science and technology organization, and the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), the nuclear services technology provider owned and operated by the United Kingdom, announced the plan on March 4. The agreement will address shared challenges in relation to climate change, public health, and environmental stewardship.

Leningrad:Unit II-1 has been credited with a nearly 15 percent decrease in cooling water usage at the plant. Photo: Rosatom

Using a VVER-1200 reactor for Leningrad II Unit 1 has resulted in a nearly 15 percent reduction in cooling water usage at the Leningrad nuclear power plant, according to Rosatom, Russia’s state atomic energy corporation. “The design features of the new power units can significantly reduce the amount of water consumed by a nuclear power plant from natural reservoirs,” said Vladimir Pereguda, director of the plant. He credited the replacing of RBMK-1000 units with VVER-1200 ones for a decrease of 730.7 million cubic meters of seawater withdrawn from Kopory Bay, a 14.8 percent drop in 2019 compared to 2018. Kopory Bay is located in the southern part of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. “We will continue to observe such indicators to reduce the environmental impact, since the Leningrad [plant] is gradually replacing RBMK-1000 units with VVER-1200 units,” Pereguda added.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on February 21 released its fourth and final report on its review of possible approaches to treating low-­activity waste at the Hanford Site. The Department of Energy plans to vitrify approximately 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, which is currently under construction at Hanford. The waste will be separated into high-­level waste and low-­activity waste (LAW) streams before being turned into a solid glass form through vitrification. Not all of the LAW, however, will be vitrified, and the DOE has not determined a treatment method for the excess waste, called supplemental LAW (SLAW).

A report released to the public on February 20 by the Government Accountability Office concluded that maintenance inspections at several contaminated excess facilities at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, near Richland, Wash., have not been comprehensive and that there are areas of some facilities that personnel infrequently or never enter, either physically or by remote means, to conduct inspections. The GAO reviewed surveillance and maintenance (S&M) requirements and activities at 18 of Hanford’s approximately 800 excess facilities that require cleanup and found that improvements to the site’s S&M program are needed.

David Gandy, the senior technical executive for nuclear materials at the Electric Power Research Institute, is charged with leading a project to lower the costs and manufacturing time for small modular reactors and advanced reactors. The Department of Energy–funded project is led by EPRI, and its collaborators include the United Kingdom–based Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Center and Oregon-based reactor developer NuScale Power. The testing has focused on producing the upper and lower pressure vessel assemblies for NuScale’s 60-megawatt SMR.

Gandy said that the project team has already produced a 3,650-pound reactor upper head at 44 percent scale and has made other components as heavy as 7,000 pounds. Over the next two years, if the tests still to be conducted are successful, EPRI plans to transfer the technologies to other reactor manufacturers. Gandy expects these new technologies to be available in about five to seven years, once the testing is completed and the necessary approvals are obtained from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and ASME.

Gandy talked about the project with Nuclear News Editor-in-Chief Rick Michal.

The United States is pursuing the objective to land humans more than 100 million miles away on Mars, and nuclear power has the potential to be a key technology in getting to the Red Planet and providing power while there. Specifically, nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) is a promising approach that could enable astronauts to travel from Earth’s orbit to Mars and back in a fraction of the time, and with greater safety, than is available with other options.

An overhead view of the inside of Vogtle-4's containment vessel in February. Photo: Georgia Power

Georgia Power, primary owner of the Vogtle nuclear plant near Waynesboro, Ga., has ordered the first nuclear fuel load for Vogtle-4, completing the initial fuel order necessary for the startup of the reactor, as well as its twin, Unit 3, the company announced on March 5.

The third Strategic Dialogue on Energy between government officials from Poland and the United States was held on February 26 as a way to extend the nations’ advanced nuclear energy cooperation. U.S. Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette met with Piotr Naimski, Poland’s secretary of state in the chancellery of the prime minister and plenipotentiary for strategic energy infrastructure, and Poland’s Minister of Climate Michal Kurtyka at the Department of Energy headquarters in Washington, D.C. In a DOE press release, Brouillette acknowledged the U.S. nuclear industry’s continued interest in providing clean, reliable, and resilient nuclear energy to Poland as a means to strengthen their energy security. In a post on Twitter, Kurtyka described the meeting as “fruitful.”

In its report for fiscal year 2019, published in February, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Investigations (OI) shows a total case inventory that continues its downward trend: OI reported 160 cases in FY 2019, down 18 percent from 195 in FY 2018. The number of cases in 2015, 2016, and 2017 were 235, 231, and 209, respectively.

Exelon Generation’s Peach Bottom-2 and -3, located in Delta, Pa., have joined Florida Power & Light Company’s Turkey Point-3 and -4 as the only U.S. nuclear reactors licensed to operate for a total of 80 years.

On March 5, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued subsequent license renewals to Exelon for the Peach Bottom boiling water reactors, with expiration dates of August 8, 2053, for Unit 2, and July 2, 2054, for Unit 3. The FPL units received their first--in--the-nation SLRs last December (NN, Jan. 2020, p. 15).

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is issuing a proposed interpretation of its low-­level radioactive waste disposal regulations that would permit licensees to dispose of waste by transfer to persons who hold specific disposal exemptions. The NRC said that it will consider approval of requests for specific exemptions only if they are for the disposal of very low-­level radioactive waste by land burial. Notice of the proposed interpretive rule was published in the March 6 Federal Register.