Various officials (back row) look on at the fuel supply contract signing in Sofia, Bulgaria. Front row, from left: Angie Darkey, Uranium Asset Management’s managing director; Boris Schucht, Urenco CEO; Tim Gitzel, Cameco president and CEO; and Aziz Dag, Westinghouse senior vice president of global BWR & VVER fuel business.
Canada’s Cameco and U.K.-based Urenco last week jointly announced the signing of agreements to become part of a Westinghouse-led fuel supply chain for Bulgaria’s Kozloduy nuclear power plant. (Also included in the partnership is Uranium Asset Management.)
From left: Francesco Venneri, chief executive officer of USNC; Hong Hyun-seong, CEO of Hyundai Engineering; and Park Kyung-il, CEO of SK ecoplant, following the signing of an MOU for the construction of a hydrogen micro hub. (Photo: USNC)
Seattle’s Ultra Safe Nuclear (USNC) has announced a partnership with two South Korean firms—Hyundai Engineering and SK ecoplant—for research and development on carbon-free hydrogen production. The three companies signed a memorandum of understanding on April 20 regarding the construction of a “hydrogen micro hub” at SK ecoplant’s headquarters in Seoul’s Jongno-gu district.
A member of Brookhaven’s MIRP team in the new hot cell area used for processing targets to make medical isotopes such as actinium-225. (Photo: BNL)
A refurbished hot cell laboratory is allowing the Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory to streamline the production and shipment of actinium-225 to support clinical trials of cancer therapies.
Here is a recap of industry happenings over the past months:
ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE
Ultra Safe and Framatome reach TRISO agreement
Ultra Safe Nuclear and Framatome have signed a nonbinding agreement to manufacture commercial quantities of TRISO fuel for advanced reactor designs, including USNC’s Micro Modular Reactor. It is expected that the manufacturing of both TRISO fuel particles and USNC’s fully ceramic microencapsulated fuel will begin in late 2025, with production capacity being made available to the broader global commercial market. At-scale production lines for these materials have been demonstrated at USNC’s Pilot Fuel Manufacturing facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the first privately funded producer of TRISO fuel particles in the United States.
From left: Billy Mack, president of Accelerant Solutions; Pamela Cowan, president of global engineered systems and solutions at Westinghouse; and Francisco Sanchez, vice president of safety, operation, and training at Tecnatom, after signing the teaming agreement creating the Nuclear Excellence Academy. (Photo: Westinghouse)
Westinghouse Electric Company has signed an agreement with engineering firm Tecnatom and training/consulting services provider Accelerant Solutions to launch a nuclear training program for utilities in the United States and Canada. (Westinghouse completed a 50 percent acquisition of Spain-based Tecnatom in March of last year.)
The program—the Nuclear Excellence Academy (NEXA)—will combine Westinghouse and Accelerant Solutions’ industry expertise with Tecnatom’s digital products and services to provide in-person, digital, and on-demand training for nuclear personnel, according to an April 18 Westinghouse announcement.
April 21, 2023, 3:19PMNuclear NewsSal Oriti, Ernestina Wozniak, and Max Yang The multimission radioisotope thermoelectric generator for NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is tested at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in 2020. The choice of an MMRTG as the rover’s power system gave mission planners significantly more flexibility in selecting the rover’s landing site and in planning its surface operations. (Photo: NASA)
Under the Radioisotope Power Systems Program, NASA and the Department of Energy have been advancing a novel radioisotope power system (RPS) based on dynamic energy conversion. This approach will manifest a dynamic RPS (DRPS) option with a conversion efficiency at least three times greater than a thermoelectric-based RPS. Significant progress has recently been made toward this end. A one-year system design phase has been completed by NASA industry partner Aerojet Rocketdyne, which resulted in a DRPS with power of 300 watts-electric (We) with convertor-level redundancy. In-house technology development at the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) has demonstrated the conversion devices in relevant environments and has shown all requirements can be met. Progress has also been made on the control electronics necessary for dynamic energy conversion. Flight-like controllers were recently upgraded and achieved an 11-percentage-point increase in efficiency. Control architectures have been developed to handle the multiconvertor arrangements in the latest DRPS design. A system-level DRPS testbed is currently being assembled that will experimentally demonstrate the DRPS concept being pursued.
Joo Han-Gyu, KAERI president, on teleconference with Albertan ministers Brian Jean and Rajan Sawhney during the signing of the MOU. (Photo: KAERI)
The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) and the government of Alberta have agreed on a comprehensive cooperation framework to explore the viability of using small modular reactors to help decarbonize the province—Canada’s biggest energy producer and its biggest polluter. The announcement comes the same week that Alberta’s United Conservative Party government released a climate plan aimed at reaching net zero by 2050.
Photos taken inside Hanford’s Tank AX-101 before workers started removing radioactive and chemical waste from it in January. As of April 18, crews have removed 35 percent of the tank waste. (Photos: DOE)
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) said in an April 18 release that workers have so far removed almost 150,000 gallons, or about 35 percent, of the radioactive and chemical waste from Tank AX-101 at the department’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. Retrieval from this tank began in January.
A rendition of Terrestrial Energy’s IMSR. (Image: NRC)
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has completed phase two of its prelicensing vendor design review for Terrestrial Energy’s Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR), the Ontario-based advanced nuclear technology firm announced Tuesday. Phase one of the VDR commenced in April 2016 and was completed in November of the following year.
The ministers representing their respective nations as the statement on civil nuclear fuel cooperation was announced were (from left) Jonathan Wilkinson, minister of natural resources of Canada; Yasutoshi Nishimura, Japan’s minister of economy, trade, and industry; Jennifer Granholm, U.S. energy secretary; Grant Shapps, U.K. energy security secretary; and Agnes Pannier-Runacher, French minister for energy transition.
A civil nuclear fuel security agreement between the five nuclear leaders of the G7—announced on April 16 on the sidelines of the G7 Ministers’ Meeting on Climate, Energy and Environment in Sapporo, Japan—establishes cooperation between Canada, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States to flatten Russia’s influence in the global nuclear fuel supply chain.
In the new year, ANS launched Trustees of Nuclear, a corporate partnership program ANS executive director/chief executive officer Craig Piercy announced in the January issue of Nuclear News (p. 25). The goal of Trustees of Nuclear is to directly support ANS’s programs aimed at improving nuclear literacy, like the Society’s K-12 nuclear STEM activities, public engagement, and discussions with policymakers. As the main professional organization for the whole nuclear discipline, ANS is in a unique position to unite leaders in the nuclear community to focus on these long-term programs and help the country realize the full potential of the atom.
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Hill
The recent shutdown of Germany’s three remaining nuclear reactors is “a senseless act of folly, against all the science and available evidence.” So writes Lincoln Hill, director of policy and external affairs at the Nuclear Industry Association, in a strong opinion piece on CapX, a publication of the London-based Centre for Policy Studies.
Illogical: Hill is emphatic is criticizing Germany’s move as an antiscience action that is ideologically driven and harmful to the cause of battling climate change. He calls it “the single worst decision Europe has taken in the fight against climate change, and one for which we all are paying the price.”
He points out that Germany’s former chancellor, Angela Merkel, “ostensibly” made the decision to phase out nuclear energy as a reaction to the Fukushima accident in Japan. However, Japan itself is seeking to “restart its 30-GW nuclear fleet, even as Germany finishes shuttering a fleet of 20 GW.”
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has put out the call for interested members of the public to fill vacancies on its Environmental Management Advisory Board (EMAB), which provides independent and external advice and recommendations to the DOE-EM assistant secretary on corporate issues.
The month of April, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, is a time for transformation and growth as we emerge from the depths of winter—and it is also the time we learn of the newest American Nuclear Society members elected to positions of leadership. Not only did members vote for the next vice president/president-elect but the treasurer position was also up for grabs along with six board of director positions. The election opened on February 21 and closed April 11, with 20 percent of eligible ANS members voting (roughly the average turnout over the last few years).
Germany may have walked away from nuclear energy, but just across the border, Poland continues to stride confidently toward it.
After solidifying plans in February for deploying Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactors in Poland, Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe (PEJ) on April 13 submitted an application to the Ministry of Climate and Environment for a decision-in-principle regarding the nation’s initial nuclear project—construction of an AP1000 plant at a site some 40 miles northwest of Gdansk, the capital of Poland’s Pomeranian province.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced on April 14 that it will regulate fusion energy systems using a framework based on the agency’s 10 CFR Part 30 process for licensing byproduct material facilities—such as particle accelerators—rather than 10 CFR Parts 50 and 52, which are used to license utilization facilities like fission power reactors. The commission’s decision means that future fusion energy facilities could be regulated by Agreement States acting with guidance from the NRC.
Although the first quarter of the year saw some of the French nuclear fleet return to service, it was not at the rate originally anticipated, according to data analysis company EnAppSys. France’s nuclear availability, the company noted, was expected to reach a maximum of 50 GW by the middle of the first quarter, but that goal was not reached due to several reasons, including the need for additional repairs and maintenance when stress corrosion cracking first appeared in several reactors last year. Workforce strikes at nuclear operator Électricité de France also led to widespread employee walkouts from nuclear power plants.
Demolition of the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant’s X-326 building was completed in June 2022. (Photo: Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth)
As part of its ongoing cleanup work, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management is looking into the potential reuse of approximately 6,400 tons of radiologically surface-contaminated nickel that has been removed from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio. DOE-EM began decommissioning the Portsmouth plant, one of three Cold War–era gaseous diffusion plant in the United States, in 2011.
Representatives of six nuclear organizations sign a declaration in Sapporo, Japan. Seated, left to right, are George Christidis (representing CNA chief executive officer John Gorman), Shiro Arai, Maria Korsnick, Tom Greatrex, Yves Desbazeille, and Sama Bilbao y León. (Photo: World Nuclear Association)
G7 governments should support life extension for today’s power reactor fleet, restart operable units, and accelerate the deployment of advanced reactors, states a joint declaration issued April 16 at the Nuclear Energy Forum, a first-of-its-kind colloquy held on the margins of the G7 Ministers’ Meeting on Climate, Energy and Environment in Sapporo, Japan.
A health-care technician performs a carotid artery scan on an SRS employee during the 2023 Wellness Fair at the site. (Photo: SRNS)
Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, the managing and operating contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., was recognized by the American Heart Association for its commitments to employee health and well-being. The company received a gold level, as measured by the association’s 2022 Workforce Well-being Scorecard.