The North Anna nuclear power plant. Photo: Dominion Energy

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has announced the establishment of an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board to address a hearing request filed last month concerning Dominion Energy’s subsequent license renewal (SLR) application for the two reactors at its North Anna plant. The application, submitted in August of last year, was docketed by the NRC in October.

The contention: Filed by three anti-nuclear groups—Beyond Nuclear, the Sierra Club, and the Alliance for a Progressive Virginia—the 71-page hearing request argues that Dominion’s environmental report, submitted in support of its application, “fails to satisfy” the National Environmental Policy Act, as well as 10 CFR 51.53(c)(2) and 51.45(a), “because [the report] does not address the environmental impacts of operating North Anna Units 1 and 2 during the extended SLR term under the significant risk of an earthquake that exceeds the design basis for the reactors.”

Crane

Christopher Crane, president and chief executive officer of Exelon, wrote in a Chicago Sun-Times op-ed, “The failure of national energy markets to support clean energy will soon force the premature retirement of two of [Illinois’s] six zero-carbon nuclear plants, putting thousands of people out of work, raising energy costs, and taking us decades backward in the fight against climate change."

Crane urged Illinois policymakers to act quickly, as they face critical decisions about the future of energy that will affect the state’s environment, the economy, and the health of every family for years to come.

The rising influence of Russia and China in the development, construction, and deployment of civilian nuclear reactors around the globe raises significant geopolitical challenges for the United States, according to “Twenty-First Century U.S. Nuclear Power: A National Security Imperative,” a recent paper by two University of Georgia (UGA) researchers.

Artist's concept of the Wylfa Newydd project. Image: Horizon Nuclear Power

The U.K. government has agreed to delay until April 30 its decision regarding the issuance of a development consent order (DCO) for, the nuclear new-build project proposed for the island of Anglesey, off the northwest coast of Wales. (DCOs are required for large infrastructure projects in the United Kingdom to move forward.)

Mary Lou Dunzik-Gougar

Happy New Year! I sincerely hope that each of you found time to refresh and rejuvenate over the holidays, or at least have fun. Many indicators suggest that 2021 will be a better year than 2020, including a growing understanding of COVID-19 and its impacts and the availability of a vaccine. So many have suffered from job loss or even loss of businesses in 2020. Even for those of us fortunate enough to be healthy, gainfully employed, and able to work from anywhere thanks to Zoom and its competitors, uncertainty is still a challenging aspect of the pandemic.

Craig Piercy

To you and all members of the nuclear professional community, Happy New Year! With the COVID-19 vaccine finally here, all indications point toward 2021 as the year we return to some semblance of normality. After all, this year has to be better than 2020, right?

Bauernschmidt
Photo: U.S. Navy

Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt will assume command of USS Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy announced last month. It marks the first time that a female commanding officer will lead the crew of one of the Navy’s 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

Bauernschmidt will take the Lincoln’s helm this summer, upon completion of the nuclear power, aviation, and leadership training required of aircraft carrier COs.

New research confirms the growing relevance of nuclear magnetic resonance technologies for the olive oil industry, according to the Olive Oil Times, based in Newport, R.I.

The latest Italian study, published in the scientific journal Foods, hints at the new opportunities emerging from the identification of the molecular footprint of extra virgin olive oil blends, which could be used to not only certify their contents but also to determine the transformational processes applied to the product.

The Palisades nuclear plant will be permanently retired in the spring of next year. Photo: Entergy Nuclear

Entergy Corporation and Holtec International have jointly submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for approval of the transfer of the licenses for the Palisades nuclear plant, in Covert, Mich., to Holtec, following the plant’s permanent shutdown and defueling in the spring of 2022.

The application, dated December 23, also requests approval of the license transfer of Entergy’s decommissioned Big Rock Point facility near Charlevoix, Mich., where only the independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) remains.

Chairman Kristine Svinicki announced today that she intends to leave the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on January 20. She issued a statement in a press release from the NRC.

Chairman Svinicki has served as a commissioner under three administrations and is the longest serving member of the commission. She was first appointed to the commission by President Bush in 2007, was reappointed in 2012 by President Obama, and was designated chairman by President Donald J. Trump on January 23, 2017. Her term would have ended on June 30, 2022.

The European Commission’s current strategy for developing a hydrogen economy—part of its overall goal of achieving a climate-neutral European Union by 2050—needs to make more room for nuclear power. That’s according to a report published in December by the New Nuclear Watch Institute (NNWI), an industry-supported think tank based in the United Kingdom.

The 28-page report, On the Role of Nuclear Power in the Development of a European Hydrogen Economy, notes that the commission’s strategy, set out in last summer’s A Hydrogen Strategy for a Climate-Neutral Europe, sees the long-term future of the European hydrogen economy as one based on hydrogen production solely utilizing renewable power, thereby excluding nuclear from a lasting role in the market.

Workers in nuclear must be free to report potential problems without fear of retaliation. When it comes to issuing adverse actions, employers have a responsibility to ensure that protected activity rights are not infringed.

In this AI-designed layout for a boiling water reactor, fuel rods are ideally positioned around two fixed water rods to burn more efficiently. MIT researchers ran the equivalent of 36,000 simulations to find the optimal configurations. Colors correspond to varying amounts of uranium and gadolinium oxide in each rod. Image: Majdi Radaideh/MIT

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Exelon show that by turning the nuclear fuel assembly design process into a game, an artificial intelligence system can be trained to generate dozens of optimal configurations that can make each fuel rod last about 5 percent longer, saving a typical power plant an estimated $3 million a year, the researchers report.

The AI system can also find optimal solutions faster than a human and can quickly modify designs in a safe, simulated environment. The results appear in the journal Nuclear Engineering and Design.

In 1970, a bit more than 50 years ago, then–ANS President Nunzio Palladino gave an evening lecture in Brussels to the newly formed Belgian local section of the American Nuclear Society. It was the seed for what would become the Belgian Nuclear Society, but the story starts even earlier than that.

Neutrinos steal energy from the core and seemingly offer little in return. The science and history of neutrinos are closely linked to those of nuclear power, but if science and history are any guide, this ne’er-do-well particle may yet contribute to our nuclear future.

John Gilligan has been the director of the Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) since its creation in 2009 by the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE). NEUP consolidates DOE-NE’s university support under one program and engages colleges and universities in the United States to conduct research and development in nuclear technology. The two main R&D areas for NEUP funding are fuel cycle projects, which include evolving sustainable technologies that improve energy generation to enhance safety, limit proliferation risk, and reduce waste generation and resource consumption; and reactor projects, which strive to preserve the existing commercial light-water reactors as well as improve emerging advanced designs, such as small modular reactors, liquid-metal-cooled fast reactors, and gas- or liquid-salt-cooled high-temperature reactors.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy created the Innovations in Fuel Cycle Research Awards program for university students in 2010. Now known as the Innovations in Nuclear Technology R&D Awards, the program aims to engage faculty and students in innovation and innovative thinking, increase experiential activities related to nuclear technology, and prepare students to engage in nuclear policy discussions.

The COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States on a wide basis in March of this year, and life as we knew it changed. “Social distancing” and “essential workers” entered the jargon and working from home for many became the norm.

The number of remote meetings skyrocketed, and various companies have seen that business can be conducted without having employees in the office.

For universities, distance learning has been common for a while now, but with COVID it has become essential.

Nuclear News asked some nuclear engineering professors about how their programs have been dealing with the pandemic. We posed three questions and asked for responses to any or all of them:

How has COVID affected your NE program, and what have you learned from the experience?

Has your NE program been able to contribute to your university’s broader COVID response (e.g., through research or volunteer programs)?

What opportunities or challenges do you foresee in the next year for your program and your students?

The following are responses received by NN.

In order to deliver the next generation of nuclear power plants, the nuclear community needs to overcome a number of challenges identified in 2017 as part of the ANS Nuclear Grand Challenges presidential initiative. Knowledge transfer is one of the nine challenges identified. The goal of the challenge is to “expedite updates to the higher education Nuclear Engineering curriculum to better match today’s needs.”

The Nuclear Grand Challenges report noted that “effective means to transfer that knowledge to the newest group of scientists and engineers needs to be developed and implemented. With the advent of new reactor designs and the challenges within materials science to meet the needs of these new designs, the curriculum structure must be reviewed and updated to better meet the needs of industry, suppliers, and research organizations.”

Nuclear engineering programs at universities around the country are integral to training and developing the workforce to implement the next generation of nuclear energy. Nuclear News reached out to several such nuclear engineering departments, asking them to provide our readers with an update on how their unique programs are helping meet this important challenge.

A new M&O contract was awarded for SRNL. Photo: DOE

A management and operating (M&O) contract for the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) valued at approximately $3.8 billion was awarded to Battelle Savannah River Alliance (BSRA), a consortium of universities and private firms led by Columbus, Ohio–based Battelle. Awarded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, the cost-plus-award-fee contract will include a five-year base period (inclusive of 120-day transition period) and potential term of up to five more years, for a total period of up to 10 years.

As announced by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management on December 22, the new SRNL M&O contract is expected to enhance the laboratory’s ability to focus on research and development, increase its flexibility to pursue more diversified projects, and attract talent and the involvement of other research and academic institutions in its projects.

BSRA takes over responsibility for the SRNL work scope from the larger Savannah River Site (SRS) M&O contract with Savannah River Nuclear Solutions. The transition of the management and operation of SRNL to the new contract will start following issuance of a notice to proceed to BSRA, the DOE said.