An external radiation monitoring station was taken out by shelling and fire near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine the last week of June.

This brings the total to four of the plant’s 14 radiation monitoring sites that are out of commission, further reducing the effectiveness of its off-site capability to detect and measure any radioactive release during an emergency, said IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi.

The Energy Communities Alliance, a membership organization of local governments adjacent to or impacted by Department of Energy sites, has awarded grants to three community organizations to develop avenues for inclusive public engagement and discussions of consent-based approaches to siting facilities for the interim storage of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

A good bit of this month’s edition of Nuclear News is devoted to the latest developments in fusion energy.

While 2024 may not have the punchy investment headlines of ’22, I think it’s fair to say that fusion energy technology is making tangible progress beneath the surface, with unannounced stealth funding plans and the continuation of public-private partnerships.

When will it become a productive element of our global energy architecture? No one knows for sure. There are still myriad challenges to be solved in high-temperature ­materials, high–critical temperature superconductors, advanced algorithms, and tritium fuel cycle control, just to name a few. But every day, fusion feels a tiny bit more mature, like somehow it has left its childhood bedroom in physics to move into the dorm room of engineering.

A new radio series on National Public Radio’s “Marketplace Morning Report” recently highlighted career opportunities and job training at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site.

To listen to the radio segment, click here.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have signed a revised memorandum of understanding establishing a framework for the agencies to cooperate on emergency preparedness for commercial nuclear power plants.

Lynne Degitz

Public and private sectors are actively advancing research and development and concepts to realize a path to practical, clean, safe fusion energy. New fusion performance records continue to be set around the world, including at the National Ignition Facility (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), which demonstrated fusion ignition in 2022 and 2023.

However, significant obstacles for practical fusion remain. One challenge is to create and sustain a fusion power source. That is the mission of the international ITER project and the fundamental reason ITER is so valuable to the United States and the other ITER members (China, Europe, India, Japan, Korea, and Russia). Now under assembly in France, ITER is an experimental facility that will provide essential data and experience while also reducing risk for other fusion concepts. ITER will deliver unprecedented self-heated fusion performance, including fusion gain of up to 10 times greater power out of the plasma than the power into the plasma, fusion power of up to 500 megawatts, and long durations of hundreds to thousands of seconds.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Defense Sciences Office (DSO) wants to mimic and accelerate the natural half-life decay chain of alpha-emitting radioisotopes and plans to invite proposals for experimental or theoretical research tracks under Decay on Demand—a new DARPA disruptioneering opportunity. The solicitation was published in draft form on June 27.

The recent article “How Innovative Is China in Nuclear Power?” published by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) describes how China has become the world’s leading proponent of nuclear energy. The reason, the article maintains, is because its nuclear industry has been “supported by a whole-of-government strategy that provides extensive financing and systemic coordination.”

Every year, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) puts out a set of technology-specific cost and performance parameters for electricity generation. Now in its 10th year, the Electricity Annual Technology Baseline (ATB) has nearly 100,000 users from 144 countries, according to NREL. Utility planners and grid operators who look to the ATB to assess their investment options in a changing market require complete and accurate information and will be glad to know that the 2024 Electricity ATB, released June 24, includes—for the first time—a range of data on nuclear energy.

Holtec International announced that it has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Fifth Circuit’s March 2024 ruling that vacated the license for the company’s HI-STORE consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for commercial spent nuclear fuel in southeastern New Mexico.

Lisa Marshall
president@ans.org

Thank you for the opportunity to serve as your American Nuclear Society president. The support from within the Society, academia, professional organizations, and international partners has been heartwarming. Students have expressed joy about what the future holds, and they are ready, as am I, to be part of keeping the industry moving forward.

The year 2001 was pivotal for me; it represented my start in nuclear engineering. My career has centered around precollege and university students. To be cliché, they are our future, and we must continue to support their maturation in the field and in ANS. My cup is full when students thrive, and the Society has made many gains in this arena. We have a robust K-12 STEM program that continues to be refined, and partners among educators and organizations that strengthen the routes into the discipline.

Robert Roche-Rivera and Marcos Rolón-Acevedo are licensed professional engineers who work at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. They are also alumni of the University of Puerto Rico–Mayagüez (UPRM) and have been sharing their knowledge and experience with students at their alma mater since last year, serving as adjunct professors in the university’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. During the 2023–2024 school year, they each taught two courses: Fundamentals of Nuclear Science and Engineering, and Nuclear Power Plant Engineering.

The Department of Energy released an anticipated request for proposals on June 27 for low-enriched uranium enrichment. “Today’s action will help spur the safe and responsible build-out of uranium enrichment capacity in the United States, promote diversity in the market, and provide a reliable supply of commercial nuclear fuel to support the energy security and resilience of the American people and domestic industries, free from Russian influence,” the DOE declared.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management awarded a 10-year contract worth up to $630 million to Louisiana-based Aptim Federal Services for deactivation and decommissioning work at two U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program sites in New York.

With increasing demand for clean, reliable, and safe sources of energy, the conversation around nuclear energy is changing. And so too is the conversation around nuclear waste, even as the country struggles to find a path for the disposal of its spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. From community engagement, to recycling, to existing success around other forms of nuclear waste management, the conversation around nuclear waste has many different angles, and an executive session of the American Nuclear Society’s 2024 Annual Conference in Las Vegas aimed to delve into some of those discussions.

Regardless of how you power our grid or how you attempt to decarbonize our economy, we will need many various metals to achieve any future, or even to just continue with business as usual. Critical metals like cobalt, lithium, nickel, and neodymium are essential to a low-carbon-energy future if renewables and electric vehicles are to play a large role.¹ Even if nuclear provides 100 percent of our power, just operating the grid and electrifying most sectors will take huge amounts of critical metals like copper, notwithstanding the fact that nuclear power requires the least amount of metals and other materials of any energy source.

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory want to make the sensors in nuclear power plants more accurate by linking them to electronics that can withstand the intense radiation inside a reactor. Electronics containing transistors made with gallium nitride, a wide-bandgap semiconductor, have been tested in the ionizing radiation environment of space. Now, according to a June 24 article from ORNL, tests carried out in the research reactor at Ohio State University indicate they could withstand neutron bombardment within a nuclear fission reactor.

The Department of Energy’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) announced June 20 that two companies—one power plant operator and one advanced reactor developer—are getting vouchers to access the extensive nuclear research capabilities and expertise available across the DOE national laboratories in the third round of GAIN vouchers awarded for fiscal year 2024. 

Earlier this month, nearly 250 personnel at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina took part in an annual exercise to test preparedness for a radiological release and contamination emergency.

Natura Resources, which is supporting the construction of a molten salt research reactor on the campus of Texas’s Abilene Christian University, announced in mid-June that it expects the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete its safety assessment and issue a permit for the nonpower test reactor in September.