Power & Operations

Concept art of the BANR microreactor system. (Image: BWXT)

BWX Technologies last week announced a contract with the Wyoming Energy Authority (WEA) to evaluate the viability of deploying microreactors in the state.

The Lynchburg, Va., tech firm said its BWXT Advanced Technologies subsidiary will execute the two-year, two-phase agreement in close consultation with the state government and other Wyoming organizations and companies.

The ongoing major component replacement (MCR) project at Ontario’s Bruce nuclear power plant reached another milestone last Friday with the reconnection to the grid of the facility’s Unit 6 reactor. According to a release from plant operator Bruce Power, the work was completed ahead of schedule and on budget despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee—Knoxville hosted a presentation titled “A Conversation of the Future of Nuclear Energy in the United States” on Tuesday, September 5. Panelists were ANS member Jamie Coble, associate professor of nuclear engineering at UTK and associate editor of the American Nuclear Society journal Nuclear Technology; ANS member Scott Hunnewell, vice president for new nuclear at the Tennessee Valley Authority; and ANS member Andrew Nelson, section head for nuclear fuel development at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The discussion was moderated by Charles Sims, director of the Center for Energy, Transportation, and Environmental Policy at the Baker School.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has released for public comment a draft site-specific environmental impact statement concerning subsequent license renewal for the two reactors at Florida’s Turkey Point power plant. The EIS’s preliminary conclusion is that any environmental impacts from the continued operation of the units for a period of 20 years beyond their current expiration dates “are not so great that preserving the option of SLR for energy-planning decision-makers would be unreasonable.”

Holtec International’s ongoing effort to repower Michigan’s closed Palisades nuclear plant made progress this week with the signing of a power purchase agreement (PPA) between the firm’s Holtec Palisades Energy LLC subsidiary and Wolverine Power Cooperative, a not-for-profit energy provider to the rural communities across Michigan.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted for review CFPP LLC’s limited work authorization (LWA) application to permit certain early construction activities at the Carbon Free Power Project site in Idaho prior to the issuance of a combined license. (An LWA, according to 10 CFR 50.10, allows for “the driving of piles, subsurface preparation, placement of backfill, concrete, or permanent retaining walls within an excavation, installation of the foundation, including placement of concrete, any of which are for an SSC [safety-related structures, systems, or components] of the facility for which either a construction permit or combined license is otherwise required.”)

In the second tranche of planned investment in Britain’s nuclear sector this summer, the U.K. government has made available £341 million (about $426 million) of previously allocated funding for development work on the proposed Sizewell C project in Suffolk, England.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will conduct a mandatory hearing on October 19 regarding Kairos Power’s application for a construction permit to build a Hermes nonpower test reactor in Oak Ridge, Tenn. This hearing marks the final step in the agency’s review of the application.

Georgia Power has signed a proposed agreement with the Georgia Public Service Commission’s (PSC’s) Public Interest Advocacy (PIA) staff and several intervening parties on the total amount the utility should be allowed to recover from ratepayers for the remaining costs associated with the Vogtle-3 and -4 nuclear expansion project. If adopted by the commissioners, the agreement will resolve all issues of the project’s prudency review, according to an August 30 PSC news release.

The Defense Logistics Agency Energy (DLA Energy) has selected Oklo Inc. as the pending contractor awardee to site a microreactor at Alaska’s Eielson Air Force Base, the advanced reactor firm announced this morning. Eielson is located on 63,195 acres in central Alaska, 26 miles southeast of Fairbanks.

Speaking at an event last week at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign, Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker defended his recent veto of S.B. 76—the bipartisan bill that would have lifted the state’s decades-old moratorium on nuclear plant construction. At the same time, he extolled the promise of small modular reactors and said he would sign an amended version of the legislation.

A California court has dismissed a lawsuit brought in April by Friends of the Earth (FOE), an inveterate enemy of nuclear power, to derail last year’s state-supported plan to keep the two-unit Diablo Canyon plant running past 2025.

A Government Accountability Office report released last week on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s preparedness to review and approve advanced reactor applications finds—to scant surprise from nuclear advocates—room for improvement.

The 48-page report, Nuclear Power: NRC Needs to Take Additional Actions to Prepare to License Advanced Reactors, had been requested in February 2022 by two prominent Capitol Hill supporters of the technology—Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R., W.Va.), ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The Department Justice earlier this week filed comments with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission regarding Vistra Corporation’s proposed acquisition of Energy Harbor, the Ohio-based owner and operator of the Beaver Valley, Davis-Besse, and Perry nuclear plants. Echoing misgivings raised in June by PJM Interconnection’s market monitor Monitoring Analytics regarding the possible exercise of undue market power as a result of the deal, the DOJ Antitrust Division’s 16-page document urges FERC to carefully review the proposal to ensure it will not substantially lessen competition and increase wholesale electricity prices in the PJM region.

In a notice published in the August 21 Federal Register, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is requesting public input on the latest set of results from a multiyear project to study risk at a two-unit nuclear power plant site.

The Wyoming Energy Authority (WEA) recently recommended nearly $10 million—$9,999,802 to be exact—in funding from its Energy Matching Funds (EMF) program for a proposed project to deploy a BWXT Advanced Technologies microreactor in the state. (BWXT AT is a subsidiary of BWX Technologies Inc.)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has completed its final environmental impact statement (FEIS) for Kairos Power’s application to build the Hermes demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and is advising that the construction permit (CP) be issued.

“After weighing the environmental, economic, technical, and other benefits against environmental and other costs, and considering reasonable alternatives, the NRC staff recommends, unless safety issues mandate otherwise, that the NRC issue the CP to Kairos,” the FEIS states.

Georgia Power has begun the process of loading fuel into the Vogtle plant’s Unit 4 reactor, the company announced yesterday, marking another pivotal milestone toward commercial operation of the second of the facility’s two new units.

Duke Energy has filed an update to its 2022 state-mandated carbon-reduction plan with the public utility commissions of North and South Carolina, proposing the deployment of small modular reactors at the Belews Creek coal plant in Stokes County, N.C., which is slated for retirement next decade. A similar system would be added at a second site yet to be determined for a total of 600 MW of advanced nuclear. (Both the advanced reactor production tax credit and investment tax credit included in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act offer a 10 percent bonus for facilities sited in certain energy communities, including those with retiring coal plants.)

Nuclear thermal hydraulics—for light water reactors or advanced reactors cooled by gas, metal, or salt—is all about defining safety and performance margins as things heat up.