Nuclear News

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted for review Northern States Power Company’s subsequent license renewal application for its Monticello nuclear power plant. A notice of the agency’s decision, along with information on requests for a hearing in the matter, was published in the March 3 Federal Register.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced last Friday the issuance of 2022 assessment letters to operators of the nation’s commercial nuclear reactors, noting that of the 93 units in the agency’s Reactor Oversight Process, 87 “reached the highest performance category in safety and security,” known as Licensee Response.

Women including Marie Skłodowska-Curie, Lise Meitner, Chien-Shiung Wu, and Katharine Way were key pioneers in nuclear science and technology, but today the visibility of women in the nuclear sector remains low. Women make up just one-quarter of people employed in the nuclear sector, and for STEM positions in that field specifically, they make up just one-fifth of the workforce. About 8,000 of those women responded to an a survey from the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, and their responses have been captured in Gender Balance in the Nuclear Sector, a new report from the OECD NEA.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has published a proposed rule that would update its generic environmental impact statement for license renewal of nuclear plants (LR GEIS).

Texas-based Vistra Corporation, owner of the Comanche Peak nuclear plant, has announced a $3.43 billion deal to acquire Energy Harbor, the Ohio-based owner and operator of the Beaver Valley, Davis-Besse, and Perry nuclear facilities.

The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory set a world record for accelerator-driven neutron research when its linear accelerator reached an operating power of 1.55 MW, improving on the facility’s original design capability of 1.4 MW. That higher power means more neutrons for researchers who use the facility for neutron scattering research to reach materials science advances, ORNL announced recently.

Unit 3 at the Vogtle nuclear power plant has achieved initial criticality, Georgia Power announced yesterday. A key milestone on the way to the reactor’s commercial operation, initial criticality demonstrates that operators have safely started, for the first time, the nuclear reaction inside the unit. (Fuel loading at Vogtle-3 began last October.)

Here is a recap of industry happenings over the past month:

ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE

INFUSE program funds 10 private-public projects

As part of the Department of Energy Office of Science’s Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program, $2.3 million in funding is being awarded to 10 projects that pair private industry with national laboratories for purposes of fusion energy development. The projects are being led by researchers at seven companies: Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Cambridge, Mass.; Energy Driven Technologies in Champaign, Ill.; Focused Energy in Austin, Texas; General Atomics in San Diego, Calif.; Princeton Stellarators in Princeton, N.J.; Tokamak Energy in Bruceton Mills, W.Va.; and Type One Energy Group in Madison, Wis. Through the INFUSE funding, these companies gain access to the expertise of the national labs as they conduct research into fusion energy systems. Each award provides between $50,000 and $500,000 for a one- to two-year project, with a 20 percent cost share for the industry partners.

Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter (R., Ga.)—a cosponsor of a quartet of pronuclear bills from House colleague Rep. Byron Donalds (R., Fla.)—recently reintroduced his own legislation in support of the U.S. nuclear sector: the Global Nuclear Energy Assessment and Cooperation Act (H.R. 995). Joining Carter again as original cosponsor is Rep. Scott Peters (D., Calif.).

Ivaylo Ivanov (left), member of Kozloduy NPP-Newbuilds’ board of directors, and Elias Gedeon, senior vice president for Westinghouse Energy Systems, complete the signing of an MOU for Westinghouse AP1000 technology. (Photo: Westinghouse)

Continuing to move forward with its ambitions in Central and Eastern Europe, Westinghouse Electric Company last week signed a memorandum of understanding with Kozloduy NPP–Newbuilds (KNPP-NB), establishing a working group to initiate planning for the potential deployment of one or more of the American company’s AP1000 reactors at Bulgaria’s Kozloduy nuclear power plant.

KNPP-NB was established in 2012 to commission new nuclear power capacity at Kozloduy.

The working group, according to a March 2 Westinghouse announcement, will also evaluate regulatory, licensing, and design bases to ensure compliance with applicable regulations, as well as a streamlined execution path to enable Bulgaria to achieve its nuclear energy goals.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted Pacific Gas & Electric a “timely renewal” exemption so the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant can continue operating while its license renewal application is under review, it was announced yesterday. This new decision clears a major regulatory hurdle to extending the operating license of the Units 1 and 2 beyond their original closure dates of 2024 and 2025, respectively.

The Department of Energy has announced the release of application guidance for the second award cycle of its $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit (CNC) Program.

Part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—the $1.2 trillion bipartisan measure signed by President Biden in November 2021—the CNC Program was established to prevent the premature retirement of economically challenged nuclear power plants in recognition of the crucial role the Biden administration sees nuclear playing in achieving its ambitious decarbonization goals, including 100 percent clean electricity by 2035.

Walker

A bipartisan effort in the Illinois General Assembly to repeal the state’s decades-old prohibition on new nuclear plant construction made some progress this week when the House Public Utilities Committee voted 18–3 to advance a bill lifting the ban.

Introduced on January 12 by Rep. Mark Walker (D., 53rd Dist.)—who sponsored identical legislation last year—H.B. 1079 would delete language in the Illinois Public Utilities Act that prohibits nuclear plant construction in the state “until the director of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency finds that the United States government, through its authorized agency, has identified and approved a demonstrable technology or means for the disposal of high-level nuclear waste, or until such construction has been specifically approved by a statute enacted by the General Assembly.” The bill has 31 cosponsors—four Democrats and 27 Republicans.

Lightbridge Corporation, which is continuing to work closely with national laboratories on the manufacture and testing of its metallic fuel rod designs for light water reactors, just announced the results of an investigation on the casting process for molten uranium and zirconium with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory under the Department of Energy’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) program.

Dow and X-energy announced today that they have signed a joint development agreement (JDA) to demonstrate the first grid-scale advanced nuclear reactor at an industrial site in North America within a decade. As part of the agreement, Dow is now a subawardee under X-energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) Cooperative Agreement with the Department of Energy.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued its final safety evaluation report (SER) related to the operating license application for SHINE Technologies' large-scale medical isotope production facility, known as The Chrysalis, in Janesville, Wis. The SER documents the results of NRC staff’s technical and safety review of SHINE’s application. SHINE announced the NRC’s decision on February 27.

A record of decision concerning the proposed issuance of the operating license will be published by the NRC at a future date.

Donalds

Rep. Byron Donalds (R., Fla.) recently introduced in the House a four-bill nuclear energy package that, according to the congressman’s office, seeks to “reshape the way our country uses and views nuclear energy.”

Included in the package are the following measures—all originally introduced in the 117th Congress:

• H.R. 1009—National Strategy to Utilize Microreactors for Natural Disaster Response Efforts Act. This legislation calls on the president to collaborate with several federal entities that currently enjoy minimal interaction to develop a national strategy for the use of microreactors to assist with natural disaster impacts. Cosponsors include Reps. Earl “Buddy” Carter (R., Ga.), Randy Feenstra (R., Iowa), Chuck Fleischmann (R., Tenn.), Doug Lamborn (R., Colo.), Nancy Mace (R., S.C.), Jay Obernolte (R., Calif.), and John Rose (R., Tenn.).

Westinghouse Electric Company has filed a notice of intent to submit key licensing reports for its eVinci microreactor to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for joint review, the firm announced last week. (The two nuclear regulators signed a memorandum of cooperation in August 2019 to increase collaboration on the technical reviews of advanced reactor and small modular reactor technologies.)

Three up, one to go: The third of four Korean-designed APR-1400 reactors at the United Arab Emirates’ Barakah nuclear power plant has begun commercial operation, Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) announced on February 24.

Jasmina Vujic

Nuclear energy is uniquely poised to create reliable, carbon-free, domestically produced baseload electricity to meet our rising energy demands. It must be a central part of our energy mix in order to have sustainable development, competitiveness, and independence as global energy demand continues to grow. There is also a growing need to address national security challenges like nuclear proliferation resistance and nuclear threat reduction. The fastest and most efficient way to realize the full potential of nuclear power and address nuclear security challenges is to draw on the strengths of our universities, national laboratories, and industry.

U.S. universities are well equipped to be the preeminent providers of nuclear science and engineering education at the undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate levels and to perform world-class research across all nuclear science and engineering disciplines, utilizing the resources available across the higher education network and through unique national laboratory partnerships.