Power & Operations

In his article, “The nuclear policy America needs,” journalist Matthew Yglesias says upfront that he is not a “nuclear bro.” He is not a scientist or a nuclear engineer. But he is part of an open, online conversation about the energy policy decisions shaping our future. And in the article posted on newsletter platform Substack on October 12, Yglesias says that nuclear prospects should not be determined by a zero-sum competition between zero-carbon energy resources. Instead, he says, “What nuclear really needs is specific regulatory changes that would give advanced reactor designs a chance to prove themselves.”

Kevin Marsh, former chief executive officer and chairman of the board of directors of SCANA Corporation, has become the first person to be sentenced to prison for involvement in the 2017 collapse of the $10 billion Summer nuclear plant expansion project. Marsh was sentenced in federal court on October 7 and in state court on October 11.

The failure to complete the construction of two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at the single-unit nuclear plant in Jenkinsville, S.C., cost ratepayers and investors billions, damaged the brands of then owners SCANA and Santee Cooper, and put some 6,000 people out of work.

Over the course of the last year, many power plants have shortened, postponed, or rescheduled their maintenance outages due to the pandemic. Unfortunately, this has caused some critical maintenance activities to be put on the back burner. For some in the power generation industry, this has presented uncertainties as the volume of unplanned outages caused by deferred maintenance has risen.

Canada’s Bruce Power, operator of the eight-unit Bruce nuclear power plant in Kincardine, Ontario, is undertaking a series of environmental initiatives to help attain its goal, announced in March, to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from site operations by 2027.

The Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) last week released Small Modular Reactors in the Australian Context, an overview of SMRs, their potential role in Australia, and their likely operating costs.

The 36-page report, written by Australian nuclear energy advocate Ben Heard, takes a look at three of the most advanced SMR designs currently undergoing regulatory approval: NuScale’s Power Module, GE-Hitachi’s BWRX 300, and Terrestrial Energy’s Integral Molten Salt Reactor.

Some 200 Polish business leaders gathered in Warsaw earlier this month to discuss local supply chain opportunities with two U.S. companies hoping to become major players in Poland’s nascent civil nuclear power program.

The companies, Westinghouse and industry partner Bechtel, hosted their second nuclear supply symposium on October 5, touting Westinghouse’s AP1000 reactor technology.

Michelle Zietlow-Miller

Michelle Zietlow-­Miller, outage manager at Exelon’s Quad Cities plant, had no particular interest in nuclear while growing up in the (very) small town of Great Bend, N.D. She was, however, good at math and science, and taking her mother’s advice to pursue a career in engineering, she earned a degree in chemical engineering from Iowa State University in December 2004.

At the time, one of her dream jobs was to work as a chemical engineer for Budweiser. (“Making beer is a chemical process that involves fermentation,” Zietlow-­Miller explains. “Chemical engineers are hired as process engineers to oversee the fermentation and bottling processes.”) Alas, the King of Beers was not in her future. Instead, Exelon came calling, and in January 2005, she began a career in the nuclear industry as a systems engineer at Quad Cities, located in northwestern Illinois. She’s been at the two-­unit boiling water reactor facility ever since, but in a variety of roles.

Zietlow-­Miller recently spoke about her career and outage management strategies and challenges with Nuclear News staff writer Michael McQueen.

Dorman

Daniel H. Dorman has been chosen as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s next executive director for operations, effective October 10. He succeeds Margaret M. Doane, who leaves the agency October 8 to take a senior position with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Dorman currently serves as the NRC’s deputy executive director for reactor and preparedness programs, which includes oversight of all four of the agency’s regional offices.

“Dan has admirably served the NRC for more than 30 years in key leadership positions,” said NRC chairman Christopher T. Hanson. “He is someone who keenly understands the needs of our agency and our people. Dan is a problem solver, a champion for agency modernization and innovation, and has proven through results his ability to rally our staff for a common purpose. He has earned the respect of our workforce, the NRC leadership, and the agency’s diverse stakeholders.”

The first of eight 160-ton steam generators for Unit 6 at Canada’s Bruce nuclear power plant was installed last week as part of the facility’s major component replacement project. “Congrats to the MCR team and our partners, including @AeconGroup, @Framatome_CA, @UEandC, @mammoetglobal, @BWXT, and others who contributed to this historic moment,” Bruce Power tweeted on September 30.

The component was fabricated at BWXT Canada’s Cambridge, Ontario, location and was shipped to the Bruce site in late 2020, as shown in this video.

The vendor responsible for generator removal is the Steam Generator Replacement Team (SGRT), a 50-50 joint venture between Aecon and the Steam Generating Team, itself a partnership between Framatome and United Engineers & Constructors. In July, Framatome announced that SGRT had been awarded an approximately C$350 million (about $278 million) contract by Bruce Power to replace the steam generators at Units 3 and 4.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has proposed a $150,000 fine to Entergy Operations after conducting investigations that identified three willful violations of agency requirements at the company’s River Bend nuclear power plant. Located in Francisville, La., River Bend houses a 974-MWe boiling water reactor.

Citing national security interests, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued an order suspending the general license authority to export radioactive material and deuterium to China General Nuclear (CGN) and its subsidiaries or related entities.

The NRC licensees subject to the order had been authorized to ship radioactive materials and heavy water to China through a general license granted in sections 110.21 through 110.24 of 10 CFR Part 110. Notice of the order was published in the October 1 Federal Register.

Work itself can be digitalized

Almost every aspect of work within a nuclear plant can be digitalized—from your frontline maintenance to back-end support functions. Digitalized work improves productivity, efficiency, and safety while substantially reducing costs.

From a work performance perspective, an organization can be defined as a collection of processes, often governed by regulatory policies. These processes are implemented using paper-centric procedures, work instructions, forms and checklists, often touching many hands during preparation, performance, and record management. This perspective applies to both direct powerplant operations and maintenance as well as administrative and support functions.

A proposal by PJM Interconnection to modify the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s contentious minimum offer price rule (MOPR) order went into effect by default on Wednesday after the commission failed to take action on it.

According to a notice from the FERC secretary, “In the absence of commission action on or before September 28, 2021, PJM’s proposal became effective by operation of law. Accordingly, the effective date of the proposed tariff sheets is September 29, 2021. The commission did not act on PJM’s filing because the commissioners are divided two against two as to the lawfulness of the change.”

Claiming 3.8 million members and supporters, the Sierra Club is one of the most influential grassroots environmental organizations in the United States. Yet, the Sierra Club says it remains “unequivocally opposed to nuclear energy,” despite the technology’s incredible ability to provide clean, safe, and reliable energy.

Exelon Generation announced yesterday that it is investing more than $300 million in capital projects at its Byron and Dresden nuclear plants in Illinois over the next five years and filling some 650 vacant positions across the state.

These actions are in response to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s recent signing of S.B. 2408, the hard-won legislation that rescued the nuclear facilities from premature retirement.

The 2021 Pennsylvania Climate Action Plan recommends 18 “strategies” for realizing Gov. Tom Wolf’s goal of an 80 percent reduction in the state’s greenhouse gas emissions (from 2005 levels) by 2050. Two of the strategies are for the electricity-generation sector: (1) maintain operation at Pennsylvania’s nuclear power plants through at least 2050, and (2) achieve a 100 percent carbon-free grid by 2050.

In addition to focusing on electric power generation, the plan includes strategies for other major carbon-emitting sectors in the fossil fuel–heavy state, including transportation, industry, agriculture, and residential and commercial buildings. For each strategy, emission reductions, costs, and benefits in jobs and economic growth are quantified and health and social benefits analyzed.

In late January, after plans were scrapped for Wylfa Newydd—the Hitachi-led project to build two ABWR units at the site of the decommissioned Wylfa reactors on the Welsh island of Anglesey—the British government stated, “Wylfa remains an important site for potential new projects, and the U.K. government will continue to explore future opportunities for it.”

With the goal of providing basic information on advanced reactors to help the public and stakeholders understand the technology’s promise, the nonprofit think tank Nuclear Innovation Alliance has published Advanced Nuclear Technology: A Primer.

Matthew Denman

Probabilistic risk assessment is a systematic methodology for evaluating risks associated with a complex engineered technology such as nuclear energy. PRA risk is defined in terms of possible detrimental outcomes of an activity or action, and as such, risk is characterized by three quantities: what can go wrong, the likelihood of the problem, and the resulting consequences of the problem.

Matthew Denman is principal engineer for reliability engineering at Kairos Power and the chair of the American Nuclear Society and American Society of Mechanical Engineers Joint Committee on Nuclear Risk Management’s Subcommittee of Standards Development. As a college student at the University of Florida, Denman took a course on PRA but didn’t enjoy it, because he did not see its connection to the nuclear power industry. Later, during his Ph.D. study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his advisor was Neil Todreas, a well-known thermal hydraulics expert. Todreas was working on a project with George Apostolakis, who would leave MIT to become a commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The project, “Risk Informing the Design of the Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor,” was a multi-university effort funded through a Department of Energy Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (NERI) grant. Todreas and Apostolakis were joined in this project by a who’s who of nuclear academia, including Andy Kadak (MIT, ANS past president [1999–2000]), Mike Driscoll (MIT), Mike Golay (MIT), Mike Lineberry (Idaho State University, former ANS treasurer), Rich Denning (Ohio State University), and Tunc Aldemir (Ohio State University).

To prevent future winter storms from causing the kind of widespread, lethal power outages wrought by February’s frigid blast through Texas and other states, the electric and natural gas industries need to bolster their winterization and cold weather preparedness and coordination, a just-released preliminary report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and North American Electric Reliability Corporation concludes.

The two agencies had announced on February 16 that they planned to open a joint inquiry to identify problems with the performance of the bulk power system during the storm and to offer solutions. A team of FERC and NERC staff members presented the report at a FERC meeting on September 23.

A presentation of the report, February 2021 Cold Weather Grid Operations: Preliminary Findings and Recommendations, is available.