The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy for the first time has awarded access to Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) for Super Rapid Turnaround Experiments (RTEs). The 13 selected research projects, announced August 21, will examine the performance of nuclear fuels and materials for existing and planned nuclear power reactors. The project teams include 13 principal investigators collectively representing six universities, three national lab facilities, and one industry partner. They are getting no-cost access to capabilities valued at about $1.8 million.

Workers at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state recently finished filling the last large concrete basin at the K Reactor Area with cement-like grout. The basin stored reactor fuel rods from historic plutonium production in the 1950s.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

Duck, N.C.—A summer beach vacation with the extended family: There’s nothing else quite like it, reliving old memories and developing a greater appreciation for how others felt about them at that moment. One particular topic came up at our multigenerational dinner the other night: “Describe your experience of riding on a two-wheel bike for the first time.”

Among the Gen Z crowd at the table, we heard stories of stitched up chins and falls into prickly bushes. However, despite a few harrowing starts, all are now confident twentysomething cyclists with no residual trauma.

The parents’ recollections of events seemed more sober. After all, there are few parental experiences more fraught than teaching your child to ride a two-wheeled bike. It’s as scary as it is unavoidable.

A collaboration between Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) and Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) is making progress toward processing non-aluminum spent nuclear fuel (NASNF) as part of the site’s accelerated basin de-inventory mission. SRNL is the managing and operating contractor at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the management and operations contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, announced that it has injected more than 100 million gallons of clean artesian well water to neutralize shallow groundwater contamination underneath 33 acres of a former coal storage yard and the associated runoff basin at the site in South Carolina. According to Ashley Shull, senior scientist for the project, “100 million gallons is nine times more water than [is] contained in the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta.”

Today’s nuclear power plants are the nation’s largest source of carbon-free energy, but they come with high operating and maintenance costs.

Competition from other sources, especially natural gas, coupled with low electricity prices, has resulted in the closure of some plants in the last decade due to economic reasons.

One way to alleviate these economic pressures is to reduce the cost of operating nuclear power plants, including the costs associated with physical security.

Team members at Oak Ridge National Laboratory achieved a milestone with the removal of a lower reactor vessel, according to a U.S. Department of Energy news release.

Workers with the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) contractor UCOR successfully lifted and removed the lower reactor vessel from the Oak Ridge Research Reactor, also known as Building 3042.

A facility at Argonne National Laboratory has been simulating nuclear reactor cooling systems under a wide range of conditions since the 1980s. Its latest task, described by Argonne in an August 13 news release, is testing the performance of passive safety systems for new reactor designs.

Designed as a half-scale model of a real reactor system, Argonne’s Natural Convection Shutdown Heat Removal Test Facility (NSTF) is used for large-scale experimental testing of the performance of passive safety systems, which are designed to remove decay heat using natural forces including gravity and heat convection. Those tests yield benchmarking data qualified to the level of National Quality Assurance-1 (NQA-1) that is shared with vendors and regulators to validate computational models and guide licensing of new reactors and components.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine recently made new appointments—including American Nuclear Society members Raymond Cao of Ohio State University and Alicia Walls of BWX Technologies—to the Ohio Nuclear Development Authority.

The nine-member governor-appointed board was created in June 2023 by state lawmakers aimed at boosting research and development of advanced nuclear reactors, commercial isotope production, and nuclear waste reduction and storage technology. The group has initial funding of $750,000.

Westinghouse Electric Company announced Aug. 8 that it has completed the first pressing of ADOPT nuclear fuel pellets at the company’s Springfields Fuel Manufacturing Facility in the United Kingdom. The pellets, which can contain up to 8 percent uranium-235 by weight, are destined for irradiation testing in Southern Nuclear’s Vogtle-2 pressurized water reactor.

Transparency is one advantage of certain molten salts that could serve as both a coolant and fuel carrier in an advanced reactor. For scientists studying molten salt chemistry and behavior at the laboratory scale, it helps if the test vessel is transparent too. Now, Oak Ridge National Laboratory has created a custom glass test cell with a 1-liter capacity to observe how gases move within a column of molten salt, the Department of Energy announced August 5.

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which provides safety oversight of Department of Energy sites, is holding a public hearing on August 14 on benchmarking of best practices in the management of aging infrastructure.

According to the DNFSB, the goal of the hearing is to gather information from relevant organizations on best practices in infrastructure aging management to inform the development of potential safety improvements to DOE programs.

Generative artificial intelligence paired with advanced diagnostic tools could detect potential problems in nuclear power plants and deliver a straightforward explanation to operators in real time. That’s the premise of research out of the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, and just one example of the DOE’s increasing exploration of AI applications in nuclear science and technology research. Training and restraining novel AI systems take expertise and data, and the DOE has access to both. According to a flurry of reports and announcements in recent months, the DOE is setting out its plans to ensure the United States can use AI to its advantage to enhance energy security and national security.

The Department of Energy has issued a request for information to gather input on its proposed package performance demonstration, which is intended to demonstrate the robustness of spent nuclear fuel transportation casks in hypothetical accident conditions. By simulating severe accident scenarios, the DOE said it intends to show to the public and stakeholders the safety and reliability of transporting SNF by rail, heavy-haul truck, and barge.

The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) announced it will hold a public meeting on August 29 to review information on the Department of Energy’s management and plans for disposing of its spent nuclear fuel. The hybrid (in-person/virtual) meeting will begin at 8:00 a.m. EDT and is scheduled to adjourn at approximately 5:00 p.m. EDT.

Earlier today, on a site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., that was formerly home to the K-33 Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Kairos Power marked the start of construction on its low-power demonstration reactor. Named Hermes, the 35-MWt test reactor claims status as the first Gen IV reactor to be approved for construction by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the first non–light water reactor to be permitted in the United States in more than 50 years.

Despite efforts to increase hiring, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management continues to be understaffed, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. The GAO found that, at the end of fiscal year 2023, DOE-EM had 263 vacant positions across its headquarters, cleanup sites, and EM Consolidated Business Center—a vacancy rate of 17 percent. The office is responsible for the cleanup of the environmental legacy waste resulting from decades of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research.

A major milestone has been reached in the construction of a plutonium pit production facility at the Savannah River Site, located near Aiken, S.C.

After 18 months of work involving local trade unions, the dismantlement and removal (D&R) of commodities and equipment throughout the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility (SRPPF), previously installed by the Mixed Oxide (MOX) project, was completed in June 2024, the Department of Energy reported on July 24.

ANSI/ANS-8.28-2024, Administrative Practices for the Use of Nondestructive Assay Measurements for Nuclear Criticality Safety, was issued on July 15 after receiving approval of the American National Standards Institute in March.

ANSI/ANS-8.28-2024 is now available for purchase in the ANS Online Store.

Oklo Inc. announced that it has completed the first end-to-end demonstration of its advanced fuel recycling process as part of an ongoing $5 million project in collaboration with Argonne and Idaho National Laboratories. Oklo’s goal: scaling up its fuel recycling capabilities to deploy a commercial-scale recycling facility that would increase advanced reactor fuel supplies and enhance fuel cost effectiveness for its planned sodium fast reactors.