Industry

Kairos Power and Google announced over the weekend a new power purchase agreement to provide the tech giant with 500 megawatts of clean energy by 2035.

Under the agreement, California-based Kairos Power will develop, construct, and operate a series of advanced reactor plants and sell energy, ancillary services, and environmental benefits to Google. Plants will be sited in “relevant service territories” to supply clean electricity to Google data centers. The first reactor is planned to be deployed by 2030 to support Google’s 24/7 carbon-free energy and net-zero goals.

Boemeke

Gebbia

A philanthropic gift recently established the Nuclear Scaling Initiative (NSI)—a collaborative effort to spur a new nuclear energy ecosystem to increase the rate of reactor deployment by 10 times by the 2030s.

A gift of $5 million to the NSI will support a host of resources and work to socialize first-of-a-kind technologies with governments, stakeholders, and opinion leaders needed to bring nuclear energy facilities to market. A second $5 million matching fund will incentivize additional philanthropic support from individuals and institutional donors.

The funding comes from Joe Gebbia, cofounder of Airbnb, and Isabelle Boemeke, a Brazilian fashion model, social media influencer, and executive director of advocacy organization Save Clean Energy.

Here is a recap of industry happenings from the recent past:

ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE

Collaboration on SMR-powered ships

The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and the Korea Ship & Offshore Plant Research Institute (KRISO) have formed a collaboration to advance the commercialization of ships powered by small modular reactors, as well as floating SMR power-generation platforms. ABS is to provide an analysis of regulatory guidelines and international standards for the design of SMR-powered ships. KRISO is to develop the core technologies for the ships, such as conceptual designs and propulsion systems, as well as a framework for integrated ship and nuclear power safety analysis. KRISO will also design a floating SMR power-generation platform together with a commercialization model for supplying stable power to island areas.

Beginning last week, the two Department of Energy offices responsible for the environmental cleanup of the department’s Hanford Site have been combined under a new name: the Hanford Field Office. Previously, management of the 586-square-mile site near Richland, Wash., was split between the Richland Operations Office and the DOE Office of River Protection (ORP).

As evidenced by the well-attended Climate Week NYC, there is a growing awareness that nuclear energy must be incorporated into national energy strategies if net-zero goals are to be achieved. In recent years, green bonds have found solid footing in the world of energy finance. These eco-friendly issuances have evolved from supporting just wind and solar projects and are increasingly being used to power much-needed growth in the civil nuclear sector. Green bonds that have been issued over the past several years in Canada, France, Finland, and the United States are now being used to support investment in nuclear projects, from breathing new life into old reactors to in certain instances supporting nuclear new build projects. However, a question remains: Can this liquidity be deployed where and when it is needed most—to support ambitious new nuclear project buildouts?

Westinghouse Electric Company has announced that it will create two new global business units from its Operating Plant Services business. Effective January 1, 2025, the new units will be Long-Term Operations and Outage & Maintenance Services.

Nearly six years after it was first announced, the Department of Energy has transitioned landlord responsibilities at the Savannah River Site from the Office of Environmental Management to the National Nuclear Security Administration. The shift will align with the start of federal fiscal year 2025.

Here is a recap of industry happenings from the recent past:

ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE

BWXT advanced nuclear reactor agreement signed

Burns & McDonnell, a family of construction and design companies, has entered into an agreement with BWX Technologies to further advance the design and development of the BWXT BANR microreactor, which has a “passively safe design” for powering remote facilities while providing a carbon-free source of heat and electricity. The two companies completed the first phase of their collaboration in early 2024 and intend to complete the second phase by the third quarter of 2025. Burns & McDonnell is helping BWXT develop the balance-of-plant systems for the BANR, generate the power plant layout, and perform preconstruction planning. Its scope of work also includes developing power cycle architecture, identifying critical components, integrating site design, and supporting steam and power distribution infrastructure and reactor building structures. The Wyoming Energy Authority is currently evaluating the feasibility of using the BANR in a state nuclear market for baseload heat and power deployed for remote industrial users, such as mining operations.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy has released a new report estimating that there may be the potential to install 60 GWe–95 GWe of new capacity at currently operating and recently retired nuclear power plants in the United States. The report also evaluated the potential of building new nuclear plants near current and retired coal power plants. The report, titled Evaluation of Nuclear Power Plant and Coal Power Plant Sites for New Nuclear Capacity, was prepared as part of DOE-NE’s Systems Analysis and Integration (SA&I) campaign.

Oneid

EnergySolutions announced that it has launched Management Consultants International (MCI) to provide specialized consulting services for the nuclear, energy, chemical, oil, gas, technology, and manufacturing sectors. Operating separately from EnergySolutions, MCI will provide expertise to clients addressing multiplex issues before federal, state, and international agencies.

Nuclear industry veteran Pierre Oneid has been appointed president of MCI. He will also continue in his current role as executive vice president supporting EnergySolutions’ growth efforts. Formerly senior vice president and chief nuclear officer for Holtec International, Oneid joined EnergySolutions in May of this year.

The Roving Reactor traveling exhibit will be in New York City at the end of the month to present “The Microreactor Salon: Tiny Nuclear vs. the Climate Crisis.” The event is part of the extensive lineup of Climate Week NYC, which will run September 22–29 this year and includes additional events all month long.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

I recently attended the 2024 Utility Working Conference where, despite the widespread travel disruptions created by Tropical Storm Debby, nearly 600 folks from the U.S. nuclear utility and supplier community had descended on southwest Florida to network, do business, and have a little fun.

The UWC has always been a bit different from other nuclear industry meetings: a little less “happy talk” about the future, a little more “real talk” about the practical challenges facing the industry.

To be sure, the mood on the expo floor was buoyant. Business is good for anyone serving the existing fleet these days. The Inflation Reduction Act’s investment incentives have finally gained traction, which has resulted in utilities taking a more long-term approach to their plant maintenance and uprate projects, which in turn has created bigger opportunities for suppliers.

Lisa Marshall
president@ans.org

I had the pleasure of speaking at ANS’s Utility Working Conference last month and would like to share my thoughts with our wider membership.

Electrification is the foundation of modern society. The nuclear enterprise has and must continue to play a crucial role in the era in which we find ourselves—the energy transition era. We have made important gains in post-COVID times, with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and more recently the ADVANCE Act of 2024—all aimed at, broadly speaking, enhancing (nuclear) industry.

We have also seen greater public support for nuclear power. The National Nuclear Energy Public Opinion Survey has been undertaken every year for the last four decades. It has demonstrated for the last three years that three-fourths of respondents strongly or somewhat favor the use of nuclear energy as one of the ways to provide electricity within the United States.

Here is a recap of industry happenings from the recent past:

ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE

Last Energy forms partnership with NATO center

The NATO Energy Security Center of Excellence (ENSEC COE), located in Vilnius, Lithuania, and Washington, D.C.–based Last Energy have formed a partnership to investigate military applications for microreactor technologies. The agreement was ENSEC COE’s first with a company in the nuclear energy sector. Last Energy, which is a spin-off of the research institute Energy Impact Center, will conduct research with ENSEC COE on microreactor applications for NATO military installations, explore opportunities for deploying microreactors on NATO bases, and serve as an industry advisor to ENSEC COE. Last Energy’s PWR-20 small modular reactor is a pressurized water reactor with a capacity of 20 MWe (60 MWt). It is designed to be built off-site and assembled in modules within a period of 24 months.

The Ogle County Board has approved a zoning change that designates 524 acres around the Byron nuclear power plant, located in northern Illinois, as industrial rather than agricultural.

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.

TerraPower has announced its selection of industry experts Sargent & Lundy to design the Kemmerer Training Center for its Natrium reactor demonstration project in Wyoming.

Engineering company Rolls-Royce is considering the sale of its small modular reactor subsidiary to inject new funding into the company’s overall business plans, the Sunday Telegraph first reported Aug. 3.

The company is looking to raise hundreds of millions, with a current valuation of £1.6 billion ($2 billion), as it sets its sights on being the first to deploy SMRs in the United Kingdom. Rolls-Royce recently cleared step two of the U.K.’s generic design assessment (GDA)—a competition launched in 2023 to bring SMRs on line in the 2030s.

A number of surveys and polls, such as Bisconti Research and University of Michigan surveys, have found steady or growing support for nuclear energy among Americans during the past several years. The Pew Research Center on Aug. 5 reported its nuclear-related findings from its survey conducted in May with a representative sample of U.S. adults. The results show 56 percent of respondents favor the construction of additional nuclear power plants in the United States.

That level of support is similar to last year’s findings (57 percent support) and is up substantially from the 43 percent, 50 percent, and 54 percent that Pew Research reported in 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively.

The United States and Singapore have signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement, commonly known as a 123 Agreement.

U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken and Singapore’s minister of foreign affairs Vivian Balakrishan met on July 31 to formalize the agreement, which outlines a comprehensive framework for peaceful nuclear collaboration between the two nations based on a mutual commitment to nuclear nonproliferation.