Contrary to what some believe, the nuclear industry, far from fading into the past, is experiencing an ongoing evolution. New generations of nuclear power technologies move closer to reality, while traditional nuclear generators are reaching retirement and entering decommissioning. As research on Small Modular Reactors (SMR) advances, prototype production is in full swing with the potential for SMRs to eventually replace the current fleet. And while technology advances, so do markets seeking to deal with the challenge of climate change in the face of the retirement of the currently operating nuclear power plants in the U.S. In an exceptional recent win for nuclear power, the Illinois legislature approved $700 million in subsidies for the Byron and Dresden nuclear stations over the next five years. It remains to be seen if this will be an isolated move in today’s nuclear plant lifecycle.

Holtec International said its manufacturing specialists continue to bring forth new welding and weld examination technologies. The company recently highlighted three “landmark achievements” that are transforming its manufacturing program.

In addition to manufacturing spent nuclear fuel storage and transportation casks, Holtec provides products and services to the nuclear industry, including nondestructive examination of in-service reactor components. The company is also developing its own small modular reactor, the SMR-160.

Commercial nuclear power has accumulated nearly 75 years and 19,000 reactor-years of operating experience around the globe. In that time, nuclear professionals “have developed a proven and effective state-of-the art approach to safety that is a model in any industrial setting, including in the development of next-generation nuclear technology,” states the American Nuclear Society’s Position Statement #51: Safety of Nuclear Power. The Board of Directors approved the revised position statement in October 2021, and it has just been published on the ANS website, replacing a position statement published in 2007.

The STP Nuclear Operating Company operates the South Texas Project Electric Generating Station, located eight miles west of Wadsworth, Texas. One of STP’s core values is innovation—a value that is evident in the organization’s 2021 Nuclear Energy Institute Top Innovative Practice (TIP) award–winning mobile work management (MWM) platform, which strives to utilize technology to bring efficiency to the field for nuclear professionals.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) has awarded Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC), of Lynchburg, Va., the Integrated Mission Completion Contract at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. The single-award, master indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract has an estimated contract ceiling of approximately $21 billion over a 10-year ordering period, with cost-reimbursement and fixed-price task orders to define the contract performance.

Hart

A recent podcast style conversation on YouTube spotlights the journey of J’Tia Hart, an ANS member with an uncommon and inspiring story. The video is part of the Argonne Voices series, an oral history project recording the stories of the people behind the science at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. This year is Argonne’s 75th anniversary.

Background: Hart, who recently moved from Argonne to the DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory, is a nuclear engineer and was the program initiator for Argonne’s Women in Science and Technology–also known as WIST–one of the lab’s employee resource groups.

Hart’s friend Amanda Joyce interviewed Hart in the YouTube post. Joyce is a cybersecurity expert who runs the DOE’s annual CyberForce Competition.

What is one thing that bridges, oil wells, and cancer treatment therapies have in common? Reliance on radioisotopes. Radioisotopes have played an important role in our society for decades, yet their benefits often go unrecognized. As Congress makes progress on new bipartisan infrastructure legislation, radioisotopes are essential to bringing new infrastructure projects to life.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) has awarded a 10-year, $8.3 billion contract to United Cleanup Oak Ridge (UCOR), of Germantown, Md., for the cleanup of the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee, including the Y-12 National Security Complex, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP).

Attendees at the 2021 Women in Nuclear Global Conference, held virtually October 17–21, had the opportunity to learn from nuclear professionals from around the world, including from the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), the group responsible for designing and implementing Canada’s plan for the long-term management of spent nuclear fuel.

A new funding model has been introduced by the U.K. government to attract a wider range of private investment into new nuclear power projects, cutting the cost of financing them and reducing the cost to consumers.

The Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill, announced by the government on October 26, will use a model known as the Regulated Asset Base (RAB) to fund future nuclear power plants in Britain. The model is tried and tested, according to the government, and has successfully financed other infrastructure projects, such as the U.K.’s Thames Tideway Tunnel and Heathrow Terminal 5.

Learn more about the RAB model.

“A group of professionals having fun in the fields of decommissioning and environmental sciences for the nuclear industry.”

That’s how the ANS DESD describes itself on its website. The focus of this professional division is the development and use of skills and technologies needed for the optimal management of the end-­of-­life care (decommissioning, decontamination, and remediation), long-­term surveillance, and maintenance of nuclear installations, materials, facilities, and sites.

Idaho National Laboratory recently released footage of a new experiment at its Transient Reactor Test Facility (TREAT) that simulates what happens to a nuclear fuel pin when it starts to overheat. Go to Twitter for the original post, or cut to the chase and watch a 14-second clip on YouTube.

Probabilistic risk assessment has been around for over 40 years, helping us understand the amazing, complex engineering systems we design, build, and operate. It’s a powerful tool, but the time has come to consider how we can modernize it. There are important gaps in PRA, including in areas such as human reliability, dynamics, natural hazards, and cybersecurity. However, there are three things that are even more important to do:

Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is working with the University of Guelph to launch a joint environmental DNA (eDNA) research program to further understand biodiversity conditions around two potential sites in Ontario for a deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) announced that it has accomplished another of its 2021 priorities by permanently disposing of a cumulative 12 million tons of uranium mill tailings from the Moab Site in Utah. The announcement, made on October 26, follows last week’s report by EM that it has shipped more than 1 million tons of tailings for disposal in fiscal year 2021, which ended on September 30, the largest annual amount since FY 2012.

Record-breaking heat and the vast size of the job did not stop the Department of Energy’s Office of River Protection and its tank operations contractor, Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS), from completing a construction project critical to the Hanford Site’s Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste program for treating radioactive tank waste.

Steven P. Nesbit

Depending on where you reside on this nuclear technology world of ours, you may care a great deal, or not at all, about who happens to be sitting on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at any given point in time. If you live on the Department of Energy continent or the Academia continent, it’s probably not a big deal. If you are on the Nuclear Power Plant Operator continent or the Vendor continent (which are actually part of the same landmass), it is quite important. If you are on the NRC island, it’s huge.

The NRC comprises five presidentially appointed, U.S. Senate–confirmed commissioners who are commonly referred to as “the Commission,” and approximately 3,000 federal employees referred to as the staff. The Commission oversees the NRC staff; together, they license and regulate the nation’s civilian use of radioactive materials to provide reasonable assurance of adequate protection of public health and safety. The president of the United States designates one of the commissioners to serve as chairman, the principal executive officer of and the official spokesperson for the agency.

“The price of anti-nuclear psychosis (for that is what it is) will be paid by vulnerable countries and future generations who suffer the escalating damages of climate breakdown,” writes environmentalist and author Mark Lynas in the foreword to a new study, One Billion Tons: CO₂ Reductions and a Faster Coal Exit in Germany. “This report puts numbers on this price to be paid for the first time—a nice round number of a billion tons.”

According to Lynas, the billion tons is the “opportunity cost” of the German government’s plan to shutter its remaining nuclear power plants by 2022 while keeping its coal plants going until 2038. (Three of those plants, Brokdorf, Grohnde, and Gundremmingen, are scheduled to close later this year.)

A new survey by the research and consulting firm BVA Group for France’s Orano finds an increased acceptance of nuclear energy among the French people from two years ago. (BVA conducted a similar poll for the nuclear fuel cycle company in 2019.)

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Pennsylvania State University have demonstrated that a natural protein found bonded to rare earth elements can be recovered and used as a tool to purify and effectively manage radioactive metals that show promise for cancer therapy and the detection of illicit nuclear activities.