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Duke Energy has filed a subsequent license renewal (SLR) application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the Oconee nuclear plant reactors, the Charlotte, N.C.–based utility announced on June 21.
Neutron resonance transmission analysis (NRTA) was developed by researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory to identify unknown materials inside a sealed object using a beam of neutrons from a laboratory-scale apparatus. Recognizing that the potential nuclear security applications of NRTA were limited by the size and location of the apparatus, Areg Danagoulian, an associate professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, began about five years ago to consider how NRTA could be made portable to examine materials on location.
Luria
Gonzalez
Reps. Anthony Gonzalez (R., Ohio) and Elaine Luria (D., Va.) last week introduced the Twenty First Century Nuclear Security Act—legislation the sponsors say would “deploy a whole-of-government effort” to gauge the risk to U.S. national security from a growing Russian and Chinese dominance in the global nuclear energy market and to identify opportunities for the United States to reestablish leadership in that arena.
The measure, according to a June 17 joint press release from the lawmakers, would require federal agencies to submit a report to Congress analyzing the importance of civilian nuclear power agreements and opportunities for advancing U.S. national security interests.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently released its Enforcement Program Annual Report for calendar year 2020, showing a total of 61 escalated enforcement actions taken last year against licensees, non-licensees, and individuals—an increase of 7 percent from CY 2019, but a number that remains below the five-year (2016–2020) average.
Centrus Energy Corporation has announced that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the company’s license amendment request to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium at its Piketon, Ohio, enrichment facility. The Piketon plant is now the only U.S. facility licensed to enrich uranium up to 20 percent uranium-235, and it is expected to begin demonstrating HALEU production early next year, according to Centrus.
Exelon on June 16 filed with grid operator PJM Interconnection to deactivate the two Byron reactors in Illinois. The move came one day after the Illinois Senate adjourned without reaching an agreement on a comprehensive energy package that would have provided nearly $700 million to keep Byron’s reactors, as well as Exelon’s Dresden and Braidwood nuclear power plants, in operation. (In August of 2020, Exelon announced that it would close the economically challenged Byron and Dresden facilities in the fall of 2021 without some form of state aid to provide compensation for their clean power.) The state’s House of Representatives also adjourned earlier this week without taking up the bill.
Online monitoring (OLM) technology can be used in nuclear power plants as an analytical tool to measure sensor drift during plant operation and thereby identify the sensors whose calibration must be checked physically during an outage. The technology involves a procedure to (1) retrieve redundant sensor measurements from the process computer or through a separate data acquisition system, (2) calculate the average of these measurements and the deviation of each sensor from the average, and (3) identify any sensor that has deviated beyond its predetermined monitoring limit.
What role will nuclear play in meeting clean energy goals?
The 2021 ANS Annual Meeting brought together three leading chief executive officers from the nuclear industry on June 16 for a discussion centered on the future role of nuclear energy deployment and the challenges of portfolio management during a time of net-zero carbon goals.
After a decade of design and fabrication, General Atomics (GA) is preparing to ship the first module of the central solenoid—the largest of ITER’s magnets—to the site in southern France where 35 partner countries are collaborating to build the world’s largest tokamak and the first fusion device to produce net energy.
A virtual job fair for the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Security Enterprise (NSE) is being held on Wednesday, June 23, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. (EDT). The job fair will be hosted by the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration.
The NSE is looking for the next generation of nuclear security professionals and is planning to hire more than 2,500 new employees in 2021.
Interested candidates are encouraged to register online for the event.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has published notice in the Federal Register of a final rule amending the licensing, inspection, special projects, and annual fees to be charged to the agency’s applicants and licensees for fiscal year 2021. The rule goes into effect August 16.
The current orthodoxy on climate change—that it is an existential threat to global civilization—was challenged on June 15 during the 2021 ANS Virtual Annual Meeting's President’s Special Session, which featured two prominent dissenters from that view, Michael Shellenberger and Mark P. Mills.
Mary Lou Dunzik-Gougar
Nuclear energy is the cleanest, safest, densest, and most reliable energy source. The value proposition for nuclear energy is unparalleled. It is the only commercially proven, “dispatchable” clean energy technology that can be scaled up fast enough to meet the demand for electricity in a decarbonizing scenario. It is the answer for governments and nongovernmental organizations worldwide that are clamoring for a reduction in human-generated CO2 emissions. Humans flourish when they have access to plentiful, safe, and reliable energy. Nuclear excels at all of these.
The pace of advances in nuclear instrumentation, controls, and human-machine interface technologies and their deployment has increased in recent years and are essential to achieving the enhanced safety and improved economics of advanced reactors.
When it comes to technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM) produced by the oil and gas industry, “regulations have not kept up with technology,” said the Environmental Protection Agency’s Philip Egidi during a panel session on the opening day of the 2021 ANS Annual Meeting.
The theme of the 2021 ANS Virtual Annual Meeting—Breaking Through to Deployment—is a theme of action. It can take substantial momentum, shrewdly applied, to break through barriers.
Craig Piercy
“Prejudice” is a word we hear often these days. The dictionary defines it as a “preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.” In our current public discourse on race and gender, prejudice hangs in the air like a persistent fog that obscures the path to real progress. But prejudice is also a much broader societal phenomenon—our caveman brains are constantly looking for quick shortcuts (which psychologists call heuristics) to make sense of the world, which often leads us to conclusions that are outdated, unfair, or just plain wrong.
Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) has announced that it will develop marine molten salt reactor (MSR) technology with the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI). SHI president Jintaek Jeong and KAERI president Park Won-seok on June 9 signed an agreement to establish a strategic cooperative relationship and conduct joint research.
In her career as a chemist, Meredith Angwin headed projects that lowered pollution and increased reliability on the electric grid. Her work included pollution control for nitrogen oxides in gas-fired combustion turbines and corrosion control in geothermal and nuclear systems.
Angwin, an ANS member, was one of the first women to be a project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute, leading projects in nuclear energy and renewables.
In the past decade, Angwin began to study and take part in grid oversight and governance. For four years, she served on the Coordinating Committee for the Consumer Liaison Group associated with ISO New England, her local grid operator. It was during this time that she realized what a maze of confusion surrounded grid rules and grid management.
The global production of uranium should increase by 3.1 percent to reach 51.2 metric kilotons this year, due to the return of production at Canada’s Cigar Lake and other mines where work was suspended in 2020, according to GlobalData, a U.K.-based data analytics firm.