Avram

At a recent meeting of the Southwest Virginia Energy Research and Development Authority, advanced nuclear was on the docket for discussion. According to an article in the Bristol (Va.) Herald Courier, Dominion Energy vice president for business development Emil Avram discussed Dominion’s plans for developing advanced nuclear facilities featuring small modular reactors in southwestern Virginia, as well as the company’s vision regarding other energy sources.

Avram’s May 9 talk came at a time when Virginia is at the forefront of national efforts to deploy commercial SMRs. Gov. Glenn Youngkin has pledged that the commonwealth will be the first to build and deploy a commercial SMR, with plans to locate it in the coalfield region of southwestern Virginia.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) is seeking proposals from small businesses for a nationwide contract to perform deactivation, decommissioning, and removal (DD&R) work, along with waste management and program support services.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory hosted current and former staff, government officials, and media on May 8 to celebrate the lab’s achievement of fusion ignition at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) on December 5, 2022. Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm and undersecretary for nuclear security and National Nuclear Security Administration administrator Jill Hruby were in attendance, and Granholm took the opportunity to announce funding of up to $45 million to support inertial fusion energy (IFE) research and development. The Department of Energy’s Office of Science (DOE-SC) wants to establish multiple IFE Science and Technology Innovation Hubs (IFE S&T hubs), with total funding for 2023 of up to $9 million for projects lasting up to four years in duration.

Just days after immediately achieving key-player status in the small modular reactor market with the unveiling of its AP300 SMR, Westinghouse Electric Company on May 9 announced the filing of the new unit’s preapplication regulatory engagement plan with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The plan outlines the preapplication activities Westinghouse intends to carry out with NRC staff to support the AP300’s licensing. According to the announcement, the plan documents the basic design philosophy of the technology, an overview of the proposed licensing approach, and a timeline for the planned preapplication interactions between the NRC and Westinghouse, with the goal of soliciting agency feedback on noteworthy topics.

Reuters has reported that India is considering the recommendation of a government panel to overturn the nation’s ban on foreign investment in the domestic nuclear energy industry. The panel—established by think tank Niti Aayog, which is headed by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi—also recommended that policies be revised to allow for greater participation by private Indian companies in the nuclear energy industry, which is currently dominated by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India and Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam, both of which are wholly owned by the government of India. The panel made these recommendations, according to Reuters, so that “both domestic and foreign private companies can complement nuclear power generation by public companies.”

Dow and X-energy have announced the location of their Xe-100 small modular reactor deployment project: Dow’s UCC Seadrift Operations manufacturing site in Texas. According to a May 11 joint news release, the SMR plant will provide the Seadrift site with power and heat as the site’s existing energy and steam assets near the end of their operational lives.

Purdue University and Duke Energy released an interim report on May 10 that documents the first year of an ongoing feasibility study, first announced in April 2022, that could help bring nuclear power to the state of Indiana. No technology has been selected and no decision to build a new nuclear plant has been made at Purdue University or elsewhere in the state, but in the Small Modular Reactor and Advanced Reactor Feasibility Study Interim Report the study participants conclude that “small modular reactors and advanced reactors are a viable option that warrant continued exploration to meet the future carbon-free energy needs of Purdue University and Duke Energy Indiana.”

On September 1, 1859, amateur astronomer Richard Carrington was observing sunspots when a bright flash—a solar flare—erupted from the sun’s surface.

Unbeknownst to Carrington, the solar flare was accompanied by two large expulsions of magnetically charged plasma, what is now known as a coronal mass ejection. That plasma traveled 150 million miles in just 17.6 hours before slamming into the Earth’s magnetic field, inducing strong electrical currents under the Earth’s surface that today could impact electrical circuits across a significant area of the planet.

A recent NPR article has reported that Florida legislators have sent a bill to Gov. Ron DeSantis that would require the state’s Department of Transportation to study the use of a radioactive waste material in road paving projects.

The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) facility is one of hundreds of old, contaminated buildings at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee that are slated to be taken down.

Washington state has trouble on the horizon—trouble with its electrical grid. Trouble as in not being reliable. Trouble as in big risks of rolling blackouts.

The trouble stems from attempts to decarbonize our society. Getting rid of coal, oil, and gas in generating electricity is the low-hanging fruit, but just getting rid of them without a realistic plan to replace them will do more harm than good.

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy announced May 9 that it intends to transfer ownership of the 1,600-acre GEH Vallecitos Nuclear Center to NorthStar Group Services for nuclear decontamination, decommissioning, and environmental site restoration.

Amy Roma

Flipping on a light switch and knowing that the power will come on is a luxury. While it sounds like a simple act, it is achieved through deliberate government policies that ensure our electricity comes from a mix of sources, some of which are continuously operational—such as nuclear and gas—and some of which only operate at certain times—such as wind and solar. If any one source is unavailable or overly expensive, another source needs to deliver on demand. Diversity of energy sources ensures the grid is able to adapt and recover from changing conditions so that we can always flip the lights on.

While grid resilience—the grid’s ability to anticipate, absorb, and recover from major disruptions and rapidly restore electric service in their wake—is a matter of paramount importance, the source diversity required to achieve this is at risk. For power grids relying on renewables, supply and demand hang in a balance based on time of day and weather.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a license to Holtec International to construct and operate a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for spent nuclear fuel in southeastern New Mexico. Holtec is proposing building the facility, called the HI-STORE CISF, between the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs in Lea County on land provided by the Eddy Lea Energy Alliance (ELEA).

With funding from the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the International Atomic Energy Agency is working to help developing countries scale up their cancer care capacities in radiotherapy, the agency said. A multilateral development bank, IsDB works to improve lives by promoting social and economic development in 57 member states and Muslim communities around the world.

Helion Energy, based in Everett, Wash., today announced an agreement to use its first fusion power plant to provide electricity to Microsoft. Constellation, which operates 21 commercial nuclear reactors in the United States, will serve as the power marketer and will manage transmission for the project.

The Department of Energy yesterday announced the awarding of $22.1 million to 10 industry-led nuclear projects, including two aimed at expanding clean hydrogen production and one at advancing a microreactor design. Other projects selected for funding are focused on addressing nuclear regulatory hurdles, improving existing reactor operation, and facilitating new advanced reactor developments.

Abstracts for all 10 projects can be found here.

Savannah River National Laboratory and Augusta University have announced a new agreement that formalizes a long-standing partnership and expands on a shared mission to address global security issues.

A recent multinational survey of attitudes toward nuclear energy has found widespread public support for advanced nuclear technologies in countries around the world, according to the 50-page report The World Wants New Nuclear, released yesterday by nongovernmental organizations ClearPath, Third Way, Potential Energy Coalition, and RePlanet.

The report is based on a large-scale online quantitative survey across three continents, among 13,500 members of the general public. Nationally representative samples were surveyed for each of eight nations—France, Germany, Japan, Poland, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States—between November 2022 and January 2023.

Meredith Angwin

When my book Shorting the Grid was published in 2020, many described it as “alarmist.” Most people in the United States took grid reliability for granted. Sure, there were always power outages during storms, but weird things like “rolling blackouts” only happened in California.

Public perception is changing, however. Part of this change is due to the major February 2021 blackout in Texas, as well as the grid emergencies during December 2022. People became aware that their own grid could have problems, and not just the usual power-line-fails-in-a-snowstorm type of problems. For example, last December, the service areas for Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority in the southeastern U.S. experienced rolling blackouts. Grid operators had to take emergency measures. The Midwest, Texas, and New England experienced near misses with grid trouble. In other words, most of the country was at risk of rolling blackouts due to one relatively short winter storm.