Power & Operations

Gov. Whitmer

While the fate of Michigan’s Palisades nuclear plant remains uncertain, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has approved legislation requiring a feasibility study to examine the potential for new nuclear generation in the state.

Signed into law last Friday, House Bill 1609 instructs the Michigan Public Service Commission to engage an outside consulting firm to conduct the study.

The measure was introduced in the House on April 14 by Rep. Graham Filler (R., 93rd Dist.) and passed that chamber on May 19, 85–20. On September 28, the bill passed even more comfortably in the Senate, 32–4.

The mandated study is due to the governor and leaders of the state legislature in 18 months.

Eric Darios

Billy Cox

Arguably, nowhere does a more robust safety culture exist than in nuclear, an industry that is a model of a learning organization, dedicated to continuous improvement through transparency in identifying and correcting errors and failures. Over the course of maintenance and outage planning, the cornerstones of reactor safety are considered in every decision regarding maintenance and outage activities. Radiation monitoring systems in nuclear power plants are vital to plant safety and regulatory compliance. In addition to the 10 CFR 20 applications, the industry relies on radiation monitors for measuring effluents (RG 1.21, RG 4.15, and Part 50 App A GDC 64), reactor pressure boundary leakage (RG 1.45), and PWR primary to secondary leakage, and to assist in emergency classification (RG 1.97). The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s well-intended Maintenance Rule places maintenance priorities on systems, structures, and components (SSCs) used to mitigate accidents and SSCs used in emergency operating procedures (EOPs). The Maintenance Rule also includes SSCs whose failure could prevent a safety-related SSC from fulfilling its safety-related function and SSCs whose failure could cause a reactor scram or actuation of a safety-related system. Unfortunately, the narrow scope of the Maintenance Rule leaves a significant portion of radiation monitoring systems outside the scope of the rule, which often delays repairs.

Some two weeks after unveiling his state’s 2022 Energy Plan, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has announced his intention to include $10 million in the state’s next budget proposal—due in December—to create the Virginia Power Innovation Fund for research and development of nuclear, hydrogen, carbon capture and utilization, and battery storage technologies.

Duke Energy’s Harris nuclear power plant’s 24th refueling outage began in early October. The plant, located in New Hill, N.C., is a 964-MWe Westinghouse three-loop pressurized water reactor that started commercial operation in May 1987.

Georgia Power announced this morning that fuel loading at Vogtle-3 has commenced, marking an important milestone on what has proved to be a long and bumpy road to startup and commercial operation of the first new nuclear power reactors to be built in the United States in more than three decades. (Major work on the Vogtle-3 and -4 project began in 2012, with a price tag of $14 billion and scheduled unit start dates of 2016 and 2017. The project’s total cost is now expected to exceed $30 billion.)

Canada’s Ontario Power Generation (OPG) and Czech Republic–based ČEZ have agreed to collaborate on nuclear technology deployment, including small modular reactors, under a memorandum of understanding signed yesterday in Prague.

Ontario’s largest electricity generator and the European energy giant have both pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040.

Eddie M. Guerra (eddie.guerra@rizzointl.com) is vice president of civil infrastructure development at Rizzo International.

Eddie Guerra, VP of Civil Infrastructure: Our energy infrastructure is undergoing an unprecedented transformation, which is in turn opening a new wave of challenges for deploying the next generation of nuclear reactors.

The decentralization of power generation will require nuclear plants to be sited closer to demand centers. As the future grid becomes more distributed, energy--intensive customers will demand proximity and flexibility, and new--generation reactors will need to accommodate the intermittency and load--following requirements that a greener and more dynamic grid will pose. Added to that, nuclear projects will need to compete economically within a more liberalized electricity market. Advanced reactor deployments will face unprecedented challenges in today’s world, and in the future.

Despite challenges, advances in engineering and technology point to a very bright future. Smaller reactors with enhanced safety features will allow stakeholders to rethink proximity criteria on siting, opening doors for deployment in new scenarios: university campuses, municipalities in remote areas, or industrial conglomerates, just to name a few.

A picture of the state of the global nuclear energy industry has been painted in a recent article by Dawn Stover, a contributing editor at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Stover based her comments on The World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2022 (WNISR), published on October 5. The report refers to itself as an “independent assessment of nuclear developments in the world” compiled by an international team.

What’s in the WNISR: In the report, 10 countries—China, Finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States—receive a focused analysis based on specific issues affecting their nuclear businesses. Other chapters deal with the statuses of Fukushima, decommissioning in general, potential newcomer countries to nuclear power, and small modular reactors. For the first time, the WNISR also contains a chapter on nuclear power and war.

Five years after bankruptcy, Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse is being sold again, this time with a 49 percent share going to Cameco Corp., the front-end uranium mining, milling, and conversion company headquartered in Saskatchewan, Canada. Cameco and Brookfield Business Partners, based in Toronto, Ontario, announced the deal yesterday. Once it closes as expected, in the second half of 2023, Brookfield Renewable Partners and other Brookfield institutional partners will own a 51 percent interest in a consortium with Cameco.

The United Kingdom’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Cwmni Egino to support the development of a small-scale nuclear project in North Wales.

On the sidelines of the first European Political Community (EPC) summit in Prague last week, U.K. prime minister Liz Truss and French president Emmanuel Macron met to discuss bilateral cooperation, with a particular focus on the energy sector. (Macron proposed the creation of the EPC earlier this year, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Representatives of 44 European countries participated, as did the presidents of the European Council and European Commission. Conspicuously uninvited were Russia and Belarus.)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is seeking public comment on the scope of its supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) on the subsequent renewed licenses for Turkey Point-3 and -4, twin pressurized water reactors operated by Florida Power & Light (FPL). It’s the second time around for both the NRC and FPL—an SLR environmental scoping process conducted in 2018 already yielded renewed licenses for Turkey Point in December 2019. According to an October 7 NRC press release, “The staff intends to examine the environmental issues the commission determined were not properly evaluated for the subsequent license renewal term, as well as any new information for Turkey Point site–specific issues.”

Two critical factors for the success of nuclear industry outages are safety and efficiency. This includes personal and nuclear safety for the team members working on the outage, equipment safety through proper inspections and maintenance, and ultimately public safety when a reactor system is returned to service, free of defects and ready for reliable power production.

The government of Ontario has announced its support for extending the operation of Ontario Power Generation’s Pickering nuclear plant for a year past its scheduled 2025 closure date, adding that a much longer extension is also being mulled.

OPG, at the government’s request, has reviewed its operational plans and concluded that the facility can continue to safely produce electricity for an additional year, according to a recent news release.

The Department of the Air Force and the Defense Logistics Agency–Energy have released a request for proposals (RFP) for the construction and operation of a microreactor in central Alaska. The Department of Defense wants a 20-year supply of electricity and steam from a 1–5-MW microreactor, but the Eielson Air Force Base (AFB) Microreactor Pilot Program will go beyond a simple power purchase agreement and put the reactor through its paces with tests, at least annually, of the reactor’s walk-away safety and black-start capabilities. The final RFP is available at sam.gov.

The Unit 3 EPR at Finland’s Olkiluoto nuclear power plant has reached its full capacity of approximately 1,600 MWe for the first time, plant owner and operator Teollisuuden Voima Oyj has announced. Olkiluoto-3 is now the most powerful reactor in Europe and the third most powerful globally, according to TVO. (Currently, the world champions in that department are China’s 1,660-MWe Taishan-1 and -2, also EPRs.)

The Department of Energy released draft guidance for the second award cycle of the $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit (CNC) Program on September 30, ahead of a decision on which reactors could receive four years of economic aid from the program’s first award cycle.

The DOE’s draft guidance for the second award cycle describes CNC program timelines and all supporting information required for owners or operators of nuclear power plants to apply for certification of eligibility and submit sealed bids. Feedback is requested by 5:00 p.m. EDT on November 4. While no date has been set for the second-round application process to open, the DOE plans to initiate the award cycle before the end of the year.

Vistra Corporation announced yesterday that it is seeking 20-year life extensions for its Comanche Peak reactors and has submitted an application for license renewals to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Operated by Vistra subsidiary Luminant and located in Glen Rose, Texas, Comanche Peak is home to two Westinghouse-supplied pressurized water reactors. The 1,218-MWe Unit 1 began commercial operation in August 1990, with the 1,207-MWe Unit 2 joining in August 1993. The original 40-year licenses for Units 1 and 2 expire in February 2030 and February 2033, respectively.

The Department of Energy’s management of its commercial-scale reactor demonstration projects has “generally been consistent with requirements to address risk,” according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published recently. The GAO found that the DOE has met existing project management requirements, and that the two offices managing the awards—the Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) and the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED)—plan to introduce additional project management tools, such as external independent reviews. The GAO recommended that the DOE adopt those plans as institutional best practices for other large energy projects, and the DOE concurred.

With a reluctant bow to the reality of the energy crisis gripping Europe, the German government this week took a slight step back from its antinuclear power stance, forging an agreement with the operators of the Isar and Neckarwestheim plants to keep those facilities in “operational reserve” this winter should they be needed to ensure the country’s energy security.