HALEU enrichment begins at the American Centrifuge plant in southern Ohio

October 16, 2023, 2:36PMNuclear News
The 16-centrifuge HALEU demonstration cascade sits within a vast DOE-owned facility with room for more than 11,000 centrifuges. (Photo: Centrus)

American Centrifuge Operating (ACO), a subsidiary of Centrus Energy, has started enriching uranium hexafluoride gas to high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) levels at the Department of Energy’s enrichment facility in Piketon, Ohio, the DOE announced October 11. The HALEU will be used to help fuel the initial cores of two demonstration reactors awarded under DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program and will also support fuel qualification and the testing of other new advanced reactor designs.

DOE seeks input on Hanford’s 5-year cleanup plan

October 16, 2023, 12:40PMRadwaste Solutions
Crews with Hanford contractor Central Plateau Cleanup Company break up concrete and remove contaminated soil near the former K Area reactors on the Hanford Site earlier this year. (Photo: DOE)

The Department of Energy is seeking the public’s input on the Hanford Site’s 5-year plan, which outlines planned cleanup work either to be completed or initiated at the former plutonium production site near Richland, Wash. The DOE updates Hanford’s 5-year plan annually to reflect current progress and ongoing integrated planning for future work at the site.

New Mexico approves WIPP’s 10-year permit renewal

October 12, 2023, 9:31AMRadwaste Solutions
Mining crews view progress in an ongoing mining tunnel, known as a drift, at the WIPP facility in New Mexico. (Photo: DOE)

The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) signed a final order approving a 10-year permit renewal for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the nation’s deep geologic repository for defense-related transuranic (TRU) waste.

Fusion power? Yes!

October 12, 2023, 7:00AMNuclear NewsKen Petersen

Ken Petersen
president@ans.org

I have jumped on the fusion power bandwagon! Power from fusion is going to happen. When I look at it, there are several factors that reinforce this. Technology has advanced and moved from basic science/research to engineering solutions. Several breakthroughs in supportive technologies have made fusion power plants a possibility. Finally—and most importantly—the private sector is heavily involved and investing to help move engineering solutions forward. This has resulted in a few dozen fusion companies developing different technologies with the same power generation goals. It is very reminiscent of the development of LW fission reactors in the 1950s and ’60s.

Technology has advanced in regard to materials and especially high-temperature superconducting magnets, high-energy lasers, and computer modeling. These improvements have allowed machines to become smaller and achieve the density, temperature, and time needed for fusion to occur.

NNSA looks to strengthen workforce through partnership program

October 10, 2023, 7:02AMNuclear News

Through its Minority Serving Institution Partnership Program (MSIPP) and Tribal Education Partnership Program (TEPP), the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded five grants totaling $2.5 million to minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and tribal colleges and universities (TCUs).

Cavendish Nuclear announces its new board

October 5, 2023, 12:00PMNuclear News
From left, Rand Fisher, Cavendish Nuclear board member; Terry Michalske, board member; Rick Provencher, Cavendish Nuclear USA vice president; Bill Ostendorff, board chairman; and Michael Bond, board member. (Photo: Cavendish Nuclear USA)

Cavendish Nuclear (USA) Inc., a U.S.-incorporated, wholly owned subsidiary of Babcock International Group, has recently appointed its corporate board of directors and held its first board meeting at corporate headquarters in Arlington, Va.

With reactor gone, Halden project lives on in human factors research

October 5, 2023, 9:30AMNuclear NewsPaul Menser

When Norway’s Halden research reactor shut down in 2018, nuclear researchers around the world were forced to scramble. For 60 years, the Halden Reactor Project offered a 25-MWt boiling water reactor for research where scientists could expand their understanding of nuclear fuel reliability, reactor internals, plant procedures and monitoring, and human factors.

New TRIGA fuel delivered to a U.S. university reactor for the first time in a decade

October 3, 2023, 3:22PMNuclear News
The TRIGA shipment was received September 27. (Photo: Kate Myers/Penn State)

Penn State’s Radiation Science and Engineering Center (RSEC) has received the first new TRIGA fuel shipped to the United States since 2012, the university announced on September 28. The fuel reached University Park, Pa., on September 27 and is destined for RSEC’s Breazeale Reactor, the nation’s longest continuously operating university research reactor.

NRC moves ahead on HALEU enrichment, rulemaking, and guidance

September 28, 2023, 1:59PMNuclear News
Upper-level view of Centrus’s HALEU cascade. (Photo: Centrus Energy)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is requesting comments on the regulatory basis for a proposed rule for light water reactor fuel designs featuring high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), including accident tolerant fuel (ATF) designs, and on draft guidance for the environmental evaluation of ATFs containing uranium enriched up to 8 percent U-235. Some of the HALEU feedstock for those LWR fuels and for advanced reactor fuels could be produced within the first Category II fuel facility licensed by the NRC—Centrus Energy’s American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio. On September 21, the NRC approved the start of enrichment operations in the plant’s modest 16-machine HALEU demonstration cascade.

NNSA welcomes opening of Kazakhstan storage facility

September 26, 2023, 8:49AMNuclear News

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration recently marked the completion of a new long-term radioactive waste storage facility in Kazakhstan.

The facility, at Kazakhstan’s Institute of Nuclear Physics (INP), has been operational since 2022 and has an expected lifespan of 50 years. According to the NNSA, the facility conforms with all Kazakhstan and International Atomic Energy Agency guidelines and replaces a much older facility located at an INP property in Turaz.

MARVEL prototype “fired up” as testing gets underway

September 25, 2023, 2:46PMNuclear News
The electrically heated PCAT replica of the MARVEL microreactor is installed and ready for testing at CEI’s facility in Pennsylvania. (Photo: DOE)

While initial operation of MARVEL, a tiny microreactor that will be installed and operated inside Idaho National Laboratory’s Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) Facility, might not occur until 2025, testing of a nonnuclear prototype is now under way at the New Freedom, Pa., manufacturing facility of Creative Engineers, Inc. (CEI). The Department of Energy announced the start of prototype testing on September 20.

Nuclear-powered carbon management options evaluated in DOE report

September 20, 2023, 9:30AMNuclear News
Conceptual art of a direct air capture CO2 removal system. (Image: DOE)

Given how much carbon dioxide has been released into the atmosphere from fossil fuels, replacing those fuels with clean options like nuclear energy is urgent, but could be likened to shutting the barn door after the proverbial horse has bolted. But what if you could also round up excess CO2 already in the atmosphere? That’s the goal of direct air capture (DAC) and other so-called negative emission technologies—to capture climate warming CO2 for use in products or processes or for permanent storage.

Washington reaches settlement with DOE in Hanford data access spat

September 19, 2023, 9:32AMRadwaste Solutions
A Department of Ecology inspector at the Hanford Site. (Photo: Department of Ecology)

Washington state’s Department of Ecology said it has reached a settlement with the Department of Energy over access to data the state described as “critical” to the cleanup of the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash.

DOE-supported nuclear data benchmarking will support diverse missions

September 15, 2023, 7:01AMNuclear News

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science announced $5.8 million in funding on September 13 for five projects to benchmark nuclear data for a range of nuclear science investigations and applications, including energy, space exploration, and nonproliferation. Four of the five funded projects include participation from Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Hanford begins removing Vit Plant startup heaters

September 14, 2023, 12:01PMRadwaste Solutions
A startup heater is removed from a melter in the Vit Plant’s Low-Activity Waste Facility. (Photo: DOE)

Workers at the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, also known as the Vit Plant, have begun removing the first three of 18 temporary startup heaters, the Department of Energy announced on September 12. The startup heaters were used to raise the first of two 300-ton glass melters in the plant’s Low-Activity Waste Facility to its operating temperature of 2,100°F.

New research funding will leverage machine learning and AI for fusion energy

September 12, 2023, 9:27AMNuclear News

The Department of Energy announced $29 million in funding for seven team awards for research in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data resources for fusion energy sciences on August 31. In all, 19 institutions will build algorithms to address high-priority research opportunities in fusion and plasma sciences using interdisciplinary collaborations of fusion and plasma researchers teamed with data and computational scientists.

Centrus Energy expects first HALEU production in October

September 7, 2023, 12:00PMNuclear News

Centrus Energy’s HALEU demonstration cascade. (Photo: Centrus Energy)

Centrus Energy announced on September 6 that it is conducting final system tests and expects to begin producing high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) in October from its 16-machine gaseous centrifuge enrichment demonstration cascade at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio. After achieving initial HALEU production, Centrus has specific goals to meet under contract as the company ramps the demonstration cascade to its target annual production rate of 900 kg per year.

Centrus is required under a cost-share contract with the Department of Energy to produce 20 kg of 19.75 percent–enriched HALEU in uranium hexafluoride (UF6) form by the end of this year. That contract, announced in November 2022, replaced an earlier contract signed in October 2019 that called for first production of HALEU by June 2022. The current contract calls for production at an annual rate of 900 kg of HALEU UF6 per year in 2024, with additional options—subject to appropriations—to produce material in future years.

DOE delegation visits Japan for info exchange

September 1, 2023, 7:00AMRadwaste Solutions
DOE-EM senior advisor Ike White provided remarks to the audience during 7th International Forum on the Decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. (Photo: DOE)

Senior advisor Ike White and others with the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management traveled to Japan this week to attend the 7th International Forum on the Decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.