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.


PSEG to sell fossil fuel assets in pursuit of decarbonization

August 16, 2021, 6:59AMNuclear News
Hope Creek nuclear power station.

In the latest step toward its recently stated goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, Newark, N.J.–based Public Service Enterprise Group, owner of the Hope Creek and Salem nuclear plants, has entered into an agreement to sell its 6,750-MW fossil generating portfolio to newly formed subsidiaries of ArcLight Energy Partners Fund VII—a fund controlled by ArcLight Capital Partners. (ArcLight Capital is a Boston-based private equity firm, founded in 2001 and focused on energy infrastructure investments.) The $1.92 billion deal, announced by PSEG on August 12, is expected to be completed late in the fourth quarter of 2021 or the first quarter of 2022.

PowerLabs, Paragon, and the Parts Quality Initiative

August 13, 2021, 2:33PMNuclear NewsDavid Mueller

I still clearly remember a day in 2005. I was sitting at my desk when my boss at the time, Roosevelt Groves (then supply director of operations at Exelon), called me into his office with a select group and announced that we needed to figure out this “parts issue thing.”

Why was this “thing” such a pressing issue that it required an impromptu meeting? It was because manufacturing defects were having a significant impact on Exelon’s reliability. And this problem was well out of our direct control.

Kinzinger and Doyle reunite to preserve existing nuclear

August 13, 2021, 12:04PMNuclear News
Kinzinger (left) and Doyle (right).

Last week, Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.) and Mike Doyle (D., Pa.) introduced legislation that would establish a financial credit program for economically challenged nuclear power plants and would authorize funding for “nuclear closure communities.”

The Preserving Existing Nuclear Energy Generation Act (H.R. 4960) is the House companion to certain provisions in a Senate proposal that was reported favorably by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on July 14 and was subsequently included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan package that the Senate passed earlier this week via a 69–30 vote.

Bill calling for advanced nuclear PPAs introduced

August 13, 2021, 9:01AMNuclear News

Luria.

Newhouse.

Reps. Dan Newhouse (R., Wash.) and Elaine Luria (D., Va.) late last month introduced legislation to establish a long-term nuclear power purchase agreement program that would direct the secretary of energy to enter into one or more agreements to purchase nuclear power from reactors licensed after January 2020. Dubbed the Nuclear Power Purchase Agreements Act, the bill would also require the secretary to enter into one national security–related nuclear power purchase agreement prior to 2026 to provide reliable and resilient power in “remote off-grid” and emergency scenarios.

DOE seeking comments on domestic uranium reserve program

August 13, 2021, 6:14AMNuclear News
[Image: U.S. DOE]

The Department of Energy has issued a request for information (RFI), inviting public comment on topics related to the establishment of its Uranium Reserve Program to support U.S. fuel cycle capabilities. Notice of the RFI was published in the August 11 Federal Register, with a deadline of September 10 for submitting comments.

UWC presenters offer views on path forward for nuclear

August 12, 2021, 3:10PMNuclear News

Day three of the 2021 Utility Working Conference commenced early Tuesday morning with a plenary session featuring Rita Baranwal, the Electric Power Research Institute’s vice president of nuclear and chief nuclear officer, and Greg Cullen, Energy Northwest’s vice president for energy services and development.

The changing landscape of scholarly publishing

August 12, 2021, 12:04PMNuclear NewsJohn Fabian

The academic publishing industry—an industry that was very stable for over a century—is now experiencing a tremendous shift. Attitudes regarding the use, delivery, and costs of publication are at the center of the matter, causing publishers to investigate new publishing models. These changing attitudes require ANS to think differently to improve content offerings while continuing to generate needed revenue. The focus is on two trends: the elimination of author page charges, and the rise of open access publishing. The latter item is a relatively recent phenomenon that has been gaining traction over the past decade, especially in the medical and biology fields, but the former is an issue that has caused friction between authors and publishers for a generation or more.

Canada, Romania ink MOU on nuclear collaboration

August 11, 2021, 8:53AMNuclear News
Cernavodă Nuclear Power Plant. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Zlatko Krastev

Natural Resources Canada, a department of the Canadian government, and Romania’s energy ministry have signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen cooperation in the civil nuclear realm, including collaboration on CANDU refurbishments and new-build projects in Romania.

Clean hydrogen energy bill unveiled

August 10, 2021, 2:58PMNuclear News

Lamb

Fitzpatrick

Doyle

A bipartisan trio of House members from Pennsylvania last week introduced legislation to accelerate research and development, as well as deployment, of hydrogen from clean energy sources.

Hydrogen can be produced from a variety of domestically available clean sources, notes the Clean Hydrogen Energy Act, including nuclear power, renewables, and fossil fuels with carbon capture, utilization, and storage.

Reps. Mike Doyle (D., Pa.), Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), and Conor Lamb (D., Pa.) sponsored the measure.

UWC opening plenary session kicks off first ANS in-person meeting since COVID-19 outbreak

August 10, 2021, 12:06PMNuclear News

Even before the 2021 Utility Working Conference got fully underway on Monday morning, it was already a noteworthy event. The hybrid in-person/virtual meeting based at the JW Marriott in Marco Island, Fla., marks the first time that ANS has held an in-person event since the Winter Meeting in November 2019.

Nuclear-generated hydrogen could decarbonize marine shipping

August 10, 2021, 6:58AMNuclear News

On August 4, the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) released a white paper, Bridging the Gap: How Nuclear-Derived Zero-Carbon Fuels Can Help Decarbonize Marine Shipping, containing policy recommendations for a U.S.-led transition away from fossil-based shipping fuels to nuclear-produced fuels and energy carriers like hydrogen and ammonia. According to CATF, in 2018, the international shipping industry accounted for 2.6 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions—more than the international aviation sector. Sector-wide emissions are on pace to triple by 2050.

Water-saving technology developed at MIT could clear the air around nuclear plants

August 9, 2021, 12:14PMNuclear News
The right side of the cooling tower of MIT’s reactor has the new system installed, eliminating its plume of vapor, while the untreated left side continues to produce a steady vapor stream. (Image: MIT/courtesy of the researchers)

The white plumes of steam billowing from the cooling towers of nuclear power plants and other thermal power plants represent an opportunity to some—the opportunity to collect a valued resource, purified water, that is now lost to the atmosphere. A small company called Infinite Cooling is looking to commercialize a technology recently developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by the Varanasi Research Group, whose work is described in an article written by David L. Chandler, of the MIT News Office, and published on August 3.

Romania receives U.S. nuclear delegation

August 9, 2021, 9:18AMNuclear News
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Kathryn Huff (at left) and the U.S. Embassy in Romania’s Chargé d’Affaires David Muniz (at right), met with Virgil Popescu, Romania’s minister of energy, on July 29.

A delegation from the Department of Energy arrived in Romania in late July to discuss bilateral energy cooperation and Romania’s expansion plans for its sole nuclear power plant, Cernavoda. The delegation was led by Kathryn Huff, acting assistant secretary and principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy.

Senate panel seeks a more modest increase in NE funding than House counterparts

August 6, 2021, 12:00PMNuclear News

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved three of the 12 fiscal year 2022 funding measures, including an Energy and Water Development bill that provides the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) with an increase of 5.5 percent over last year’s allocation—half of the boost recommended for NE last month by House appropriators.

The Senate panel advanced the legislation by a vote of 25–5, with all five no votes from GOP members: Sens. Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), John Kennedy (R., La.), Mike Braun (R., Ind.), Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.), and Marco Rubio (R., Fla.).

High-energy physics gets DOE funding

August 6, 2021, 7:01AMNuclear News

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science (DOE-SC) on August 2 announced a plan to provide $100 million over the next four years for university-based research on a range of high-energy physics topics through a new funding opportunity announcement. The objective of “FY 2022 Research Opportunities in High Energy Physics,” sponsored by the Office of High Energy Physics within DOE-SC, is to advance fundamental knowledge about how the universe works.

Corey Hinderstein nominated for NNSA nonproliferation post

August 5, 2021, 3:01PMNuclear News

Hinderstein

President Biden has nominated Corey Hinderstein, ANS member since 2016, for deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

Hinderstein is vice president of international fuel cycle strategies at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, based in Washington, D.C. Her focus is on international nuclear fuel cycle and nonproliferation policy, global nuclear security, and arms control and nonproliferation monitoring and verification.

An inventive solution speeds up production of actinium-225

August 5, 2021, 12:00PMNuclear News
Chemist Kevin Gaddis has adapted components of a high-pressure ion chromatography system to withstand the extreme conditions of a hot cell. (Photo: ORNL/Carlos Jones)

An Oak Ridge National Laboratory researcher has built a device that can speed up the separation of the medical radioisotope actinium-225 from irradiated thorium targets and withstand the high-radiation environment of a hot cell. In July, ORNL announced that Kevin Gaddis, a chemistry technician at the lab, had built and tested a prototype and was working to secure a patent for a device that cut separations time by 75 percent.

Exelon still “hopeful” for state aid to IL plants, but solution remains in limbo

August 5, 2021, 9:30AMNuclear News

A $6 billion lifeline for struggling U.S. nuclear power plants is reportedly included in the nearly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill currently being mulled over in the U.S. Senate, but it won’t be thrown in time to rescue Illinois’s Byron and Dresden plants, according to owner and operator Exelon.

In an August 4 statement on second-quarter earnings, Exelon’s president and chief executive officer, Chris Crane, noted that while his company is encouraged by the growth of federal support for policies that acknowledge the value of nuclear’s clean energy generation, “passage of legislation remains uncertain and, regardless, will come too late to save our Byron and Dresden plants from early retirement this fall. While we remain hopeful that a state solution will pass in time to save the plants, clean energy legislation in Illinois remains caught in negotiations over unrelated policy matters, leaving us no choice but to continue down the path of closing the plants.” (Last August, Exelon announced its intention to prematurely retire Byron and Dresden, citing long­standing economic pressures. Last week, the company filed decommissioning plans for the two nuclear facilities.)

ORNL to test accident tolerant fuel irradiated at Byron-2

August 4, 2021, 3:02PMNuclear News
Irradiated lead test rods are delivered to Oak Ridge National Laboratory for examination. (Photo: ORNL)

Several lead test rods of Westinghouse’s EnCore accident tolerant fuel recently arrived at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for post-irradiation examination over the next year in support of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing process. The rods were installed in 2019 in Exelon’s Byron-2, a 1,158-MWe pressurized water reactor, and were removed in fall 2020 and prepared for shipment to ORNL.