Nuclear News

Since the inception of commercial nuclear power in the United States, every control room in every nuclear plant has looked essentially the same. You will see fixed alarm tiles, red and green lights, rows of switches, and analog meters. Until about a decade ago, you would even have seen paper charts (now replaced by digital versions of those same charts). Licensed operators have shown through a proven operating history that this control room design is safe and effective. Genius definitely went into the complexity of circuits and placement of switches and indications in the design, but things have come a long way over the years, and new technology, updated plant designs, and the need to improve efficiency and maintain reliability have impacted staffing and the role of operators. A control room update is long overdue. So, what lies ahead for the future of nuclear control room design? What possibilities exist for the next generation of plants?

The International Nuclear Energy Act (S. 4064), a bill aimed at developing a strategy to counter the growing influence of Russia and China on the global nuclear export market, was reported favorably out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on December 7.

The measure was introduced in April by Sens. Jim Risch (R., Idaho), the committee’s ranking member, and Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

While it currently has the lowest installed nuclear capacity of any nuclear-powered nation in Europe with one 482-MWe pressurized water reactor at Borssele, the Netherlands has in recent years been looking to move up in the rankings.

A technology developed to prevent poachers from killing endangered African species is being adapted by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to recognize individual motor vehicles. The capability could help secure checkpoints and track nuclear materials, among other uses.

Two diversion boxes were covered with concrete to permanently close them from future use. Top, one of the boxes is shown prior to it being entombed in concrete. Bottom, the diversion box after workers placed concrete over and around the structure. (Photo: DOE)

Two previously radioactive structures have been successfully entombed at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and the Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC), the DOE’s liquid waste contractor at SRS, placed concrete over and around two concrete structures—called diversion boxes—that contain a series of connection points that allowed high-level radioactive waste to be transferred from one tank or facility to another.

The two boxes have been out of service for more than 30 years. As part of the closure process, both structures were previously filled with grout, rendering them inoperable.

The boxes were the first ancillary structures closed in this way under SRMC’s liquid waste contract. They are located in the F Tank Farm, a grouping of large underground waste-storage tanks. The liquid waste program at SRS has closed eight of the site’s 51 massive waste tanks by filling them with cementitious grout.

It’s official: Early in the morning on December 5 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF), the laser-triggered implosion of a meticulously engineered capsule of deuterium and tritium about the size of a peppercorn yielded, for the first time on Earth, more energy from a fusion reaction than was delivered to the capsule. The input of 2.05 megajoules (MJ) to the target heated the diamond-shelled, spherical capsule to over 3 million degrees Celsius and yielded 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output. The achievement was announced earlier today by officials and scientists representing the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration, the White House, and LLNL during a livestreamed event.

Meteorological winter is here, and a chill is gripping northern Europe. Predictably, renewable generation has entered a seasonal lull and heating demand is up, despite a push to conserve natural gas, which means electricity and gas bills are up too. With a grudging nod to reality, German chancellor Olaf Scholz ensured in October that Germany’s three remaining nuclear power reactors will provide a few more months of clean, reliable power. Their premature closure, once scheduled for December 31, is now expected by April 15, 2023.

Zaitz

Hoff

In late 2015, we heard rumors that Diablo Canyon was under threat of premature closure. As details emerged, we realized the situation was dire—similar stories were emerging around the country and the world. Nuclear plants were shutting down early for reasons that had nothing to do with plant conditions or operations, but because of politics and poor public perception.

We started brainstorming possible ways we could help, then realized our efforts had to be about more than just one plant. We knew we were in a bit of a unique position. There aren’t a whole lot of women in our industry—­especially not hippie environmentalist moms. Our story is interesting in that we were initially skeptical about nuclear power, asked questions over many years, and eventually changed our minds to support it.

Unit 1 at South Korea’s Shin-Hanul nuclear power plant entered commercial operation last week, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power has announced. The 1,340-MWe APR-1400—designed by KHNP and parent firm Korea Electric Power Company—achieved initial criticality on May 22 of this year and was connected to the grid on June 9.

Cold hydro testing of Unit 4 at the Vogtle plant’s nuclear expansion site has been completed, Georgia Power announced on December 7.

Nuclear Newswire is back with the final #ThrowbackThursday post honoring the 80th anniversary of Chicago Pile-1 with offerings from past issues of Nuclear News. On November 17, we took a look at the lead-up to the first controlled nuclear chain reaction and on December 1, the events of December 2, 1942, the day a self-sustaining nuclear fission reaction was created and controlled inside a pile of graphite and uranium assembled on a squash court at the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy announced December 7 that its new HALEU Consortium is open for membership. And not just from U.S. enrichers, fuel fabricators, and others working in the front-end fuel cycle, but from “any U.S. entity, association, and government organization involved in the nuclear fuel cycle,” and—at the DOE’s discretion—“organizations whose facilities are in ally or partner nations.” The HALEU Consortium will essentially serve as an information clearinghouse to meet DOE-NE’s ongoing needs for firm supply and demand data as it supports the development of a commercial domestic high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) infrastructure to fuel advanced reactors. The consortium is open for business almost one full year after the DOE first requested public input on its structure.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has docketed Vistra Corporation’s license renewal application for the Comanche Peak reactors.

Operated by Vistra subsidiary Luminant and located in Glen Rose, Texas, the Comanche Peak plant is home to two pressurized water reactors. The original 40-year licenses for Units 1 and 2 expire in February 2030 and February 2033, respectively.

Steven Arndt
president@ans.org

For years the U.S. nuclear industry has done an outstanding job keeping plant availability high while simultaneously continuing to improve safety and economics. With capacity factors averaging more than 90 percent, you would think that no one would shut down an operational nuclear power plant. But that is what we have seen in a number of cases. Fortunately, this now seems to be changing. As I write this column, Diablo Canyon’s new life extension application has just been submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for review, and the Department of Energy’s program to support continued operation of nuclear power plants is providing hope that current plants will continue to have the opportunity to demonstrate their operational excellence.

How did we get here? When I ask this question—both of myself and the industry as a whole—I envision this as two sides of the same coin. Through the efforts of many we have improved our financial and economic viability, but challenges remain because the full value proposition of nuclear energy has not been realized.

The British government has announced an investment of £679 million (about $828 million) in the proposed Sizewell C nuclear plant in Suffolk, England, confirming chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt’s remarks on the project in his November 17 Autumn Statement.

The Ontario government has announced the start of site preparation at the Darlington nuclear power plant for Canada’s first grid-scale small modular reactor: GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s (GEH) BWRX-300.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Regulatory Research recently awarded 20 new research and development grants in the University Nuclear Leadership Program (UNLP). The grants, totaling $9,998,188, are derived from the $16 million that Congress appropriated for the program for fiscal year 2022. The 20 selected proposals were among the 89 that were submitted to the NRC and peer-reviewed by the commission staff and experts from academia.

A Westinghouse-Bechtel team, France’s EDF, and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power have all submitted their initial bids for securing the contract to build a fifth reactor at the Czech Republic’s Dukovany plant, Czech utility ČEZ has announced.

Centrus Energy confirmed on December 1 that its wholly owned subsidiary American Centrifuge Operating signed a contract with the Department of Energy, which was first announced on November 10, to complete and operate a demo-scale high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) gaseous centrifuge cascade.

NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes has completed construction and all equipment installation at its new facility in Beloit, Wis., to produce the medical radioisotope molybdenum-99 without the use of high-enriched uranium, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced last week.