Nuclear News

Ken Petersen
president@ans.org

It is a great time to be American Nuclear Society president. There are very positive articles in Nuclear News and other places on the advances in fusion, nuclear in space, isotopes, and new power plants. It seems that every month the good news keeps building. I am also fortunate to start my presidency after the extraordinary efforts of past presidents Steve Nesbit (2021–2022) and Steven Arndt (2022–2023).

Steve Nesbit created a special committee to make recommendations on the framework of a generic standard for a high-level radioactive waste repository. The excellent work is currently out for review and, once complete, this standard will be a significant step forward for existing and future reactors. When Steven Arndt started as ANS president last year, he said he would prioritize participation and advocacy, and in these regards he has been an outstanding nuclear advocate. He has taken advantage of being able to travel and has attended numerous conferences in person after the past few years of cancelations, postponements, and virtual meetings for ANS and other industry events. At the same time, Arndt has advocated for a Nuclear Worker Certification program. While the program is not yet approved, I believe it is an excellent initiative, particularly now, with so many people coming to the industry who are new to nuclear—and the growing need for more.

“It is critical after the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Station restart that we reduce our cost and increase our capacity factor while becoming more economically competitive.” Ichiro Ihara, chief nuclear officer of Chubu Electric Power, made this observation recently when the Electric Power Research Institute visited the Japanese nuclear power plant for a strategy development session for plant modernization. EPRI’s team of five specialists spent four days at Hamaoka to investigate the feasibility of potential improvements—the third step of the EPRI modernization strategy planning process. It was a trip six months in the making—and the first time EPRI has applied its nuclear plant modernization process outside the United States.

The government of Ontario announced Wednesday that it is starting predevelopment work with Bruce Power—operator of the eight-unit Bruce nuclear plant—to site the first large-scale nuclear build in Canada in more than thirty years.

Westinghouse Electric Company has submitted to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission the first set of vendor design review (VDR) documents for its eVinci microreactor, the Pennsylvania-based nuclear technology firm announced yesterday. In September 2021, Westinghouse signed a service agreement with the CNSC that initiated the VDR.

International Atomic Energy Agency experts at Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant have so far been unable to verify recent claims by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that Russia may have planted explosives at the site to “simulate an attack.”

In January 2003—early in the “nuclear renaissance” of the 2000s—around 70 nuclear utility executives attended an ANS Utility Executive Conference, which was organized around the theme “Future Vision.” They traveled to Scottsdale, Ariz., to discuss how the nuclear community could achieve the bright future they envisioned just ahead—does that sound familiar?

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

Wow, that was a banger! The 2023 Annual Meeting had the energy level of an ANS Student Conference. That’s no easy feat. I’ve had several requests for my opening plenary remarks. Here is a shortened version, edited for reading:

So, “Failure Is Not an Option.” I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure about it in the beginning. It’s not anodyne like “Powering Our Future!” or some punny Indy reference like “Racing to the Finish.” It didn’t seem to fit our situation.

That phrase, popularized by the movie Apollo 13, has its origins in a time of crisis: three men trying to “eyeball” a free return trajectory to Earth while a team of NASA engineers figures out how to literally put a square peg into a round hole to save the astronauts’ lives.

Consulting company TVO Nuclear Services (TVONS), a subsidiary of Teollisuuden Voima Oyj, owner and operator of Finland’s three-unit Olkiluoto nuclear plant, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Norsk Kjernekraft, aka Norwegian Nuclear, a firm established last July with the goal of bringing small modular reactors to power reactor–deprived Norway.

A June 27 announcement from TVO said the new MOU provides the Norwegian firm with “access to the know-how and experience of one of the world’s best-known nuclear power companies” and stressed TVO’s 60 percent ownership of Posiva, the company responsible for the disposal of Finland’s spent nuclear fuel. “Posiva has successfully built the world’s first final disposal facility for high-level nuclear waste,” TVO stated. “This is decisively important for Norwegian Nuclear’s plans for the management of the entire life cycle of nuclear power.”

Sweden’s parliament, the Riksdag, recently endorsed a proposal in the government’s spring amending budget to change the country’s 2040 climate goal of 100 percent renewable electricity production to 100 percent fossil fuel–free electricity production.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently revised its regulations for the licensing, inspection, special projects, and annual fees it will charge its applicants and licensees for fiscal year 2023.

Princeton Stellarators Inc. (PSI) and Type One Energy Group are two of the eight fusion developers selected by the Department of Energy in late May to receive a total of $46 million in funding to kick off a public-private Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program aimed at developing fusion pilot plant designs and resolving related scientific and technological challenges within five to 10 years. The DOE’s selections cover an array of plasma confinement concepts, including the magnetic confinement stellarators being developed by PSI and Type One more than 70 years after the stellarator was first envisioned.

Nuclear Newswire previously took a close look at two of the DOE’s picks: Realta Fusion and Zap Energy (“innovative concept”) and Focused Energy and Xcimer Energy (inertial fusion). Here, we’ll examine how PSI and Type One are engineering solutions to the fusion plasma confinement challenge. Both companies are benefiting from recent advances in computing power and high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. It’s in plans for design, manufacturing, assembly, and control of their stellarators that they differ.

When Ken Petersen is asked what he sees as the biggest challenges facing nuclear today and in the future, he immediately turns the question around. The 69th president of the American Nuclear Society prefers to focus on the positives of nuclear power instead of dwelling on the biggest challenges facing nuclear’s future prospects. That’s because there’s a lot to celebrate within the nuclear community—especially recently.

Most everything is trending up—from advanced technologies such as SMRs and microreactors to the promise of fusion energy to new ways of creating medical isotopes to progress in space exploration. “There’s huge momentum for nuclear right now,” Petersen said. “We're getting support from the environmentalist community and from legislation. I see it as a huge opportunity for us to continue to grow. It’s an exciting time. And it’s not just the U.S. It’s worldwide, too.”

Jeff Baran, who has been renominated for another five-year term on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has received a vote of confidence from a progressive policy research organization. On June 14, the same day his renomination was reported favorably out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in a 10–9 vote, the organization—Good Energy Collective—released a statement from its deputy director, Jackie Toth, in praise of the commissioner.

Westinghouse Electric Company has signed a contract extension with EDF Energy to supply fuel for the United Kingdom’s advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) fleet, the American firm announced yesterday.

Advanced reactors may be key to a clean energy future, but to prove it they’re going to need fuel—and that fuel will be derived from limited uranium resources and managed throughout the nuclear fuel cycle, whether that cycle is open (like the current fuel cycle) or closed (with reprocessing). Six panelists convened on June 12 during the Annual Meeting of the American Nuclear Society for the executive session “Merits and Viability of Advanced Nuclear Fuel Cycles: A Discussion with the National Academies.” They discussed those fuel cycles and the findings of a National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) consensus committee released as a draft report in November 2022 and published earlier this year.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Poland’s National Atomic Energy Agency (PAA) have renewed their cooperation agreement for the next five years.

Westinghouse and TerraPower, in conjunction with Belgium’s Pan Tera, have announced plans to produce large quantities of actinium-225, a radioisotope used for targeted alpha radiation therapy for certain types of cancer.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has completed its final safety evaluation for Kairos Power’s application to build its Hermes advanced test reactor at a site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the agency announced recently. The evaluation found no safety aspects precluding issuance of a construction permit for the proposed reactor.

The American Nuclear Society is collaborating with the Kenan Fellows Program for Teacher Leadership (KFP) at North Carolina State University to introduce a nuclear science curriculum to Kenan Fellows and the K-12 students they teach.

Fusion tech company SHINE Technologies announced that it is opening the largest facility in North America dedicated to the production of non-carrier-added lutetium-177, a medical isotope used in targeted cancer therapies.