Nuclear News

Published since 1959, Nuclear News is recognized worldwide as the flagship trade publication for the nuclear community. News reports cover plant operations, maintenance and security; policy and legislation; international developments; waste management and fuel; and business and contract award news.


Ghana latest nation to ink civil nuclear MOU with U.S.

July 21, 2021, 9:30AMNuclear News

The United States and the Republic of Ghana have signed a nuclear cooperation memorandum of understanding. The NCMOU is a diplomatic instrument that, according to the U.S. State Department, strengthens and expands “strategic ties between the United States and a partner country by providing a framework for cooperation on civil nuclear issues and for engagement between experts from government, industry, national laboratories, and academic institutions.”

UAMPS downsizes NuScale SMR plans

July 21, 2021, 7:06AMNuclear News
A still image from a three-part video tour of NuScale’s facilities. (Photos: NuScale Power)

When Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) in 2015 announced its plan to develop the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) using NuScale Power’s modular light water reactor design, it envisioned the construction of a dozen 50-MWe modules for a plant that could produce a total of 600 MWe. The CFPP’s target output later rose to 720 MWe, when UAMPS opted to scale up to 60-MWe modules. In late June, the plans changed once again, as UAMPS participants chose to build 77-MWe modules but downsize the plant from 12 units to six, which would yield 462 MWe—about 64 percent of the 720 MWe that could have been generated from 12 of the 60-MWe modules.

Exelon touts reliability of nuclear as time runs short to save Byron, Dresden

July 20, 2021, 3:49PMNuclear News
The Dresden nuclear power plant (Photo: Nuclear Regulatory Commission)

As Illinois lawmakers continue to debate energy legislation that would allow the state’s Byron and Dresden nuclear plants to continue operation beyond this year, Exelon would like to remind everyone—including those legislators, no doubt—of what is at stake.

Mapping the scattered family tree of fission neutrons

July 20, 2021, 9:30AMNuclear News
Nicholas Thompson of LANL helps set up the neutron clustering measurements at the Walthousen Reactor Critical Facility at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Schenectady, NY. (Photo: LANL)

A statistically predicted tendency for neutrons produced inside fission reactors to form in clusters can cause asymmetrical energy production that is counterbalanced, at least in part, by the spontaneous fission of radioactive material in the reactor.

House appropriators pass bill with more funding for nuclear energy

July 19, 2021, 12:01PMNuclear News

The House Committee on Appropriations last week approved an Energy and Water Development funding bill for fiscal year 2022 that provides an 11 percent increase for the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy.

Reported favorably out of committee on July 16 via a party-line vote of 33 to 24, the House bill sports a total price tag of $53.2 billion, an increase of $1.5 billion from the FY 2021 enacted level. (The committee’s official report on appropriations for the next fiscal year can be found here.)

Work begins on training center to thwart nuclear terrorism

July 19, 2021, 9:30AMNuclear News
Rendering of the multipurpose building that will house the Nuclear Security Training and Demonstration Centre. (Photo: IAEA)

The International Atomic Energy Agency has broken ground for a new building designed to help countries combat nuclear terrorism in areas such as illegal material trafficking and physical protection of facilities.

Bill to preserve, expand U.S. nuclear energy sector reintroduced

July 19, 2021, 7:02AMNuclear News

Capito

A bipartisan group of senators has reintroduced the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act (ANIA), initially introduced last fall in the previous Congress. Sponsors include Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R., W.Va.), the ranking member of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee; John Barrasso (R., Wyo.); Cory Booker (D., N.J.); Mike Crapo (R., Idaho); and Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.).

Last month, the American Nuclear Society joined 23 other nuclear-focused entities in signing a letter to those lawmakers urging reintroduction of the bill.

China’s electron beam technology for treating industrial wastewater

July 16, 2021, 3:02PMNuclear NewsCarley Willis and Joanne Liou
Photo: Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology

With the capacity to treat 30,000 cubic meters of wastewater per day, the largest industrial wastewater treatment facility using electron beam technology in the world was inaugurated in China in June 2020. The treatment process has the capacity to save 4.5 million m3 of fresh water annually—equivalent to the amount of water consumed by about 100,000 people.

Expected global electricity demand outpaces growth in renewables

July 16, 2021, 12:00PMNuclear News

Despite strong growth over the next two years, renewables such as hydropower, wind, and solar won’t keep up with the projected increase in global electricity demand in 2021 and 2022, according to the International Energy Agency’s Electricity Market Report—July 2021. The result could be a sharp rise in the use of coal power that risks pushing carbon dioxide emissions from the electricity sector to record levels next year.

Kairos Power is building toward low-power demo operations in 2026

July 16, 2021, 9:00AMNuclear News
Artistic rendering of the Hermes low-power demonstration reactor. (Image: Kairos Power)

Today, Tennessee governor Bill Lee joined Department of Economic and Community Development commissioner Bob Rolfe and Kairos Power officials in Nashville, Tenn., to celebrate Kairos’s plans to construct a low-power demonstration reactor in the East Tennessee Technology Park in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The company first announced its plans to redevelop the former K-33 gaseous diffusion plant site at the Heritage Center, a former Department of Energy site complex, in December 2020.

Taishan spent three days in the spotlight: What can we learn?

July 16, 2021, 7:02AMNuclear NewsSusan Gallier
Taishan’s Unit 1 was the world’s first EPR to be connected to the grid. (Photo: CGN)

The facts, once known, were uncomplicated. At Taishan-1 in China—the first Framatome EPR to be commissioned—operators detected an increase of fission product gases within the primary coolant circuit sometime after the reactor’s first refueling outage in October 2020. The cladding on a handful of the more than 60,000 fuel rods in the reactor had been breached, posing an operational issue—but not a public safety issue—for the plant.

Senate panel endorses energy infrastructure bill

July 15, 2021, 3:00PMNuclear News

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee yesterday approved a bill on energy infrastructure, including initiatives that would provide a boost to the U.S. nuclear industry.

Barasso

Murkowski

The Energy Infrastructure Act, which is expected to serve as the legislative text for key portions of a more comprehensive $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, was approved 13–7, following the adoption of 48 amendments. All committee Democrats voted in favor of the bill, as well as three of the panel’s 10 GOP members, Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Steve Daines of Montana, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Two well-known Republican proponents of nuclear, John Barrasso of Wyoming and Jim Risch of Idaho, voted no. (Barrasso expressed a number of concerns with the bill, including its price tag.)

California Republicans debut bill to save Diablo Canyon

July 15, 2021, 9:30AMNuclear News

Nunes

Rep. Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) introduced legislation last week that would keep California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in operation beyond its expected 2025 closure date. Dubbed the Clean Energy Production Act (H.R. 4394), the bill was introduced July 9 and referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Cosponsoring the measure is the remainder of the Golden State’s GOP contingent to the House: Reps. Ken Calvert, Mike Garcia, Darrell Issa, Young Kim, Doug LaMalfa, Kevin McCarthy, Tom McClintock, Jay Obernolte, Michelle Steel, and David G. Valadao.

TVA's OIG spots “high” risks in Sequoyah chemistry program

July 14, 2021, 9:30AMNuclear News
Sequoyah nuclear power plant (Photo: Photorush/Wikimedia Commons)

In an evaluation report released last week on the Sequoyah nuclear plant’s chemistry/environmental program, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Office of the Inspector General identified certain risks, both behavioral and operational, that could impact organizational effectiveness. Program behavior was assessed from interviews and field work conducted from September 21 through November 3, 2020, with operations assessed in February of this year.

PJM board okays plan to ease concerns with MOPR ruling

July 14, 2021, 6:59AMNuclear News
Map of the PJM Interconnection territory in dark blue. Image: PJM

PJM Interconnection’s board of managers has approved the grid operator’s proposal to address the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s controversial December 2019 minimum offer price rule (MOPR) order affecting PJM’s forward-looking capacity auctions. (PJM operates the largest wholesale competitive electricity market in the country.)

EU lawmakers call on EC to recognize nuclear as sustainable

July 13, 2021, 9:30AMNuclear News
The hemicycle of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Photo by DAVID ILIFF.

Eighty-seven members of the European Parliament sent a letter to the European Commission last week to lobby for the addition of nuclear energy to the EU taxonomy, the purpose of which is to direct investments toward environmentally sustainable economic projects to meet the European Union’s climate change mitigation and energy-mix targets.

RaFTS: The Radiation Field Training Simulator

July 9, 2021, 2:43PMNuclear NewsGreg White, Steve Kreek, William Dunlop, Joshua Oakgrove, Dan Bower, Dave Trombino, Erik Swanberg, and Steven Pike

One of the biggest challenges in training for incidents and emergencies that involve high-radiation-dose hazards is balancing between realism and safety. To be truly prepared for the realities of real-world nuclear and radiological emergencies, responder personnel need experience against those hazards but without introducing additional and very personal risks associated with unnecessary radiation exposure. The difficulty is in figuring out how we can achieve a level of realism that encompasses the entire process, from the initial detection of a hazard or threat, through its characterization, to recommending actions and leadership decision-making.

Euratom program receives EC funding

July 9, 2021, 12:38PMNuclear News
Flags in front of the European Commission building in Brussels. (Image: Sébastien Bertrand)

The European Commission last week adopted the Euratom Work Programme 2021–2022, implementing the Euratom Research and Training Programme 2021–2025, a complement to Horizon Europe, the European Union’s key funding program for research and innovation.

Radioactive molecules could probe origins of the universe

July 9, 2021, 9:13AMNuclear News

Physicists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other institutions have measured the effect of a single neutron in a molecule of radium monofluoride and hypothesize that radioactive molecules could be used as a tool to explore why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe. The research team’s findings were published in the journal Physical Review Letters on July 7, and on the same day, an article published online by MIT News explained the implications of their work.

Texas governor calls for incentivizing nuclear, gas, coal for grid reliability

July 8, 2021, 3:02PMNuclear News
Map of ERCOT over the state of Texas (Image: ERCOT)

Motivated by February’s Texas grid debacle and last month’s Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) alert pleading with residents to conserve energy, Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this week issued a letter to members of the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC), directing them to take immediate action to improve electric reliability across the state. According to the governor’s office, the directives build on reforms passed in the 87th legislative session to increase power generation capacity and ensure the reliability of the Texas power grid.