NSCU's PULSTAR research reactor. (Photo: NCSU)

The Department of Nuclear Engineering at North Carolina State University marked the 50th anniversary in September of its PULSTAR research reactor, a milestone that was featured in the department’s fall newsletter. The nuclear reactor, located in the Burlington Laboratory on university’s north campus, has been in use since 1972 by research faculty and staff in the University of North Carolina system and other academic institutions, as well as by government agencies and companies in North Carolina and throughout the United States.

One further reason the university is celebrating this year is the infrastructure award that the PULSTAR reactor just received from the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy (NE). This financial award will help “facilitate an upgrade and enhancement to safety, operations, and utilization infrastructure.”

Nuclear Reactor Program: The PULSTAR reactor and its associated instrumentation are administered by NCSU’s Nuclear Reactor Program (NRP), which is a partner of the Nuclear Science User Facilities of Idaho National Laboratory. The NRP’s mission is “to enhance, promote, and utilize the PULSTAR research reactor and associated facilities in an exemplary manner, leading to national recognition as a premier 1-MW Nuclear Reactor Program dedicated to research, teaching, and extension.” The NRP began in 1950 with the construction of the R-1 reactor, the first academic research nuclear reactor in the world. The current director of the program is Ayman Hawari, distinguished professor of nuclear engineering.

A groundbreaking ceremony held last week at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s laboratories in Seibersdorf, Austria, marked the start of construction on a nuclear applications building that will host three state-of-the-art laboratories: Plant Breeding and Genetics, Terrestrial Environment and Radiochemistry, and Nuclear Science and Instrumentation.It was a significant achievement for the second phase of the Renovation of the Nuclear Applications Laboratories initiative, known as ReNuAL2—and a fitting way to observe the 60th anniversary of the nuclear applications laboratories at Seibersdorf, about an hour’s drive south the IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna. For Nuclear Newswire, it was all the reason we needed to dig into the Nuclear News archives and explore the bygone days of research at the IAEA.

Eddie M. Guerra (eddie.guerra@rizzointl.com) is vice president of civil infrastructure development at Rizzo International.

Eddie Guerra, VP of Civil Infrastructure: Our energy infrastructure is undergoing an unprecedented transformation, which is in turn opening a new wave of challenges for deploying the next generation of nuclear reactors.

The decentralization of power generation will require nuclear plants to be sited closer to demand centers. As the future grid becomes more distributed, energy--intensive customers will demand proximity and flexibility, and new--generation reactors will need to accommodate the intermittency and load--following requirements that a greener and more dynamic grid will pose. Added to that, nuclear projects will need to compete economically within a more liberalized electricity market. Advanced reactor deployments will face unprecedented challenges in today’s world, and in the future.

Despite challenges, advances in engineering and technology point to a very bright future. Smaller reactors with enhanced safety features will allow stakeholders to rethink proximity criteria on siting, opening doors for deployment in new scenarios: university campuses, municipalities in remote areas, or industrial conglomerates, just to name a few.

The Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) announced the three recipients of its fourth and final round of 2022 vouchers on October 10. The vouchers were awarded to Curio Solutions, which is developing a spent fuel recycling process, and to two companies that are separately investigating advanced reactor siting—Elementl Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The funds for each award will go directly to Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

A picture of the state of the global nuclear energy industry has been painted in a recent article by Dawn Stover, a contributing editor at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Stover based her comments on The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2022 (WNISR), published on October 5. The report refers to itself as an “independent assessment of nuclear developments in the world” compiled by an international team.

What’s in the WNISR: In the report, 10 countries—China, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—receive a focused analysis based on specific issues affecting their nuclear businesses. Other chapters deal with the statuses of Fukushima, decommissioning in general, potential newcomer countries to nuclear power, and small modular reactors. For the first time, the WNISR also contains a chapter on nuclear power and war.

Five years after bankruptcy, Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse is being sold again, this time with a 49 percent share going to Cameco Corp., the front-end uranium mining, milling, and conversion company headquartered in Saskatchewan, Canada. Cameco and Brookfield Business Partners, based in Toronto, Ontario, announced the deal yesterday. Once it closes as expected, in the second half of 2023, Brookfield Renewable Partners and other Brookfield institutional partners will own a 51 percent interest in a consortium with Cameco.

Crews at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, near Richland, Wash., have begun heating up the first of two 300-ton melters that will be used to vitrify mixed low-level radioactive and chemical tank waste. According to the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), initiating and completing the heating of the melter is a critical step to commissioning Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), which will treat and stabilize the site’s 56 million gallons of tank waste by immobilizing it in glass through the vitrification process.

The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Cwmni Egino to support the development of a small-scale nuclear project in North Wales.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

The Cheshire countryside in late summer has a lot to offer an American visitor besides cool, insect-free air; bacon sandwiches; and warm ales. It also provides the perfect vantage point to consider the fundamental shifts in energy availability and security we have witnessed over the last 12 months.

Residential energy prices here in the United Kingdom have increased by roughly 80 percent over the last year, prompting the government to advise Britons to turn their water heaters off at night and boil their kettles with only as much water as needed to make their tea.

While I was here, outgoing British prime minister Boris Johnson visited the Sizewell site to announce a £700 million investment in Sizewell C, two 1,600-MW EPR reactors soon to be under construction. His remarks had the wistful, poignant tone of a leader facing the end of his tenure in office:

The U.K. Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and Tokamak Energy announced on October 10 that they signed a framework agreement to collaborate on developing spherical tokamaks for power production. This news is a complement to last week’s announcement from the U.K. government that the West Burton A coal-fired power plant site in Nottinghamshire has been selected as the future home of STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production), the U.K.’s planned prototype fusion energy plant. The government is providing £220 million (about $250 million) of funding for the first phase of STEP, which will see the UKAEA produce a concept design by 2024.

On the sidelines of the first European Political Community (EPC) summit in Prague last week, U.K. prime minister Liz Truss and French president Emmanuel Macron met to discuss bilateral cooperation, with a particular focus on the energy sector. (Macron proposed the creation of the EPC earlier this year, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Representatives of 44 European countries participated, as did the presidents of the European Council and European Commission. Conspicuously uninvited were Russia and Belarus.)

By fiscal year 2027, Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) will ramp up toward producing 21 metric tons of low-level radioactive glass a day, according to the Department of Energy’s five-year plan for the site near Richland, Wash.

The plan, which was released on October 3 and opened for a 31-day public comment period, outlines what cleanup work will be initiated or completed at the Hanford Site during FYs 2023–2027.

Hurricane Fiona slammed into Puerto Rico on September 18 with powerful winds and massive amounts of rain, resulting in mudslides, flooding, loss of power and water, wrecked homes and businesses, destroyed roads and bridges, and some deaths. Students from the American Nuclear Society student section at the University of Puerto Rico—Mayagüez (ANS UPRM) and other student groups have responded by distributing bottled water, nonperishable food items, cooked meals, first aid, personal hygiene items, flashlights with batteries, and other supplies, and by raising awareness of community needs and asking for monetary and food donations. In addition, ANS has established a fundraising drive for monetary donations to support students’ efforts in assisting ANS UPRM members in Mayagüez. The donations are being used to meet a number of needs during this challenging time.

Westinghouse Electric Company and Ansaldo Nucleare have announced the signing of a cooperation agreement to develop a next-generation nuclear power plant based on lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) technology.

Wholly owned by Italy’s Ansaldo Energia, Ansaldo Nucleare is involved in the production of high-tech nuclear components; the design and construction of new builds; decommissioning; and advanced research on radwaste management, fusion, fourth-generation plants, and small modular reactors. In addition, the firm played a significant role in the development of such Generation III technologies as Westinghouse’s AP600 and AP1000 reactors.

Under the agreement, Westinghouse and Ansaldo Nucleare will advance a common design to maximize synergies; combine experience in design, testing, and licensing; and align respective partner and supply-chain organizations.

Shannon Osaka
(Photo: Neel Dhanesha)

A recent Washington Post article profiles an “increasingly loud Internet subculture”: “nuclear bros.” A network of online pronuclear activists whose nickname is often used derisively, the group consists mostly of men who are primarily driven by their confidence that nuclear energy is the best way to combat the dangers of climate change. This is according to the writer, Shannon Osaka, who calls herself a “climate zeitgeist reporter.”

Left and formerly antinuclear: Osaka writes that the nuclear bros usually exchange ideas and information on shared WhatsApp groups, Reddit (r/nuclear), or Twitter. She provides profiles of a few of these bros and suggests that most are on the political Left and used to be antinuclear, until their fears of climate change pushed them to the pronuclear side.

One such bro, 40-year-old Toronto physician Chris Keefer, says he was formerly “tribally antinuclear” just because “everyone else he knew was opposed to it.” Then, after his son was born in 2018, he became “horrified” by the idea of a “much hotter world” in the future. So, he read up on nuclear energy and concluded that “hydro and nuclear are basically the only two tools that have helped achieve deep decarbonization.” By 2019, Keefer was organizing pronuclear rallies with Canadians for Nuclear Power, a group he cofounded. He also hosts a podcast in which he voices his support for nuclear power.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is seeking public comment on the scope of its supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) on the subsequent renewed licenses for Turkey Point-3 and -4, twin pressurized water reactors operated by Florida Power & Light (FPL). It’s the second time around for both the NRC and FPL—an SLR environmental scoping process conducted in 2018 already yielded renewed licenses for Turkey Point in December 2019. According to an October 7 NRC press release, “The staff intends to examine the environmental issues the commission determined were not properly evaluated for the subsequent license renewal term, as well as any new information for Turkey Point site–specific issues.”

On a recent Freakonomics Radio podcast, host Stephen J. Dubner and his guests explored the topic of nuclear power. The episode, “Nuclear Power Isn’t Perfect. Is It Good Enough?” was teased on the podcast website with this thought: “Liberals endorse harm reduction when it comes to the opioid epidemic. Are they ready to take the same approach to climate change?”

Two critical factors for the success of nuclear industry outages are safety and efficiency. This includes personal and nuclear safety for the team members working on the outage, equipment safety through proper inspections and maintenance, and ultimately public safety when a reactor system is returned to service, free of defects and ready for reliable power production.

To kick off the new academic year, the ANS Young Members Group hosted the online “Nuclear Mythbusting Pitch Competition” on September 22. Students competed in debunking nuclear misconceptions and misrepresentations in popular culture. While having fun and winning prizes, they set the record straight regarding nuclear science and technology.

Tomorrow, 10/08, is Hydrogen Day, in recognition of the atomic weight of hydrogen: 1.008. Newswire first covered Hydrogen Day in 2021 after the Department of Energy announced its Hydrogen Shot goal to lower the price of clean hydrogen by 80 percent, to $1 per kilogram, within the decade. Now, backed by industry partnerships, new legislation, an eye-popping $7 billion in federal funds for regional clean hydrogen hubs (H2Hubs), a new draft strategy, and on-site progress to pair electrolyzers with nuclear plants, the potential for nuclear-powered production of clean hydrogen is clearer than ever.