Feature ArticleThe race for outage efficiencyThe U.S. Department of Energy’s Light Water Reactor Sustainability Program, led by Idaho National Laboratory, works closely with utilities to improve outage efficiencies and enable nuclear to go “toe-to-toe economically” with other energy sources.Nuclear NewsJuly 31, 2020, 2:54PM|Eric WilliamsWorking in INL’s Human Systems Simulation Laboratory, senior R&D scientist Ahmed Al Rashdan co-developed the Advanced Remote Monitoring project for the LWRS Program.There are numerous similarities between auto racing pit crews and the people in the nuclear power industry who get us through outages: Pace. Efficiency. Diagnostics. Teamwork. Skill. And safety above all else.To Paul Hunton, a research scientist at Idaho National Laboratory, the keys to successfully navigating a nuclear plant outage are planning and preparation. “When you go into an outage, you are ready,” Hunton said. “You need to manage outage time. You want to avoid adding delays to the scheduled outage work because if you do, it can add a couple million dollars to the cost.”Hunton was the principal investigator for the September 2019 report Addressing Nuclear Instrumentation and Control (I&C) Modernization Through Application of Techniques Employed in Other Industries, produced for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program, led by INL. Hunton drew on his experience outside the nuclear industry, including a decade at Newport News Shipbuilding.The LWRS Program is but one initiative by the DOE, its national laboratories, trade associations, and of course, the commercial nuclear power industry, aimed at modernizing nuclear power generation stations. For example, one group of nuclear utilities, the Utilities Service Alliance (USA), is working with the LWRS Program on a project on remote monitoring (more below), which was awarded through the DOE’s U.S. Industry Opportunities for Advanced Nuclear Technology Development funding opportunity.USA is a Kansas-based nonprofit co-op that facilitates collaboration between its eight member utilities representing 14 reactors and 15,000 MWe of generation. Its work is broader than addressing outages, explained John Christensen, president and chief executive officer. But downtime is always a major consideration.“When you staff up for an outage, you bring in a whole bunch of fire watch personnel” to ensure work such as grinding metal doesn’t spark a blaze, Christensen said. “Individuals conduct fire watches 24-7 during an outage.” USA is working to automate that process by using advanced fire-detection sensors and automated methods to replace or augment manual fire watch activities—a project led by Talen Energy’s Susquehanna Steam Electric Station.Conducting fire watches is, of course, a task grounded in safety. Another core aspect of improving reactor operations is reducing costs, and INL’s Bruce Hallbert believes making outages more efficient while maintaining safety is an important key to success.While it’s not exactly news, Hallbert, national technical director of the LWRS Program, said the fact remains that “We’ve got to be able to go toe-to-toe economically” with other energy generation technologies. The DOE is an equal-opportunity deployer, as evidenced by the agency’s research on fracking playing a role in plentiful and inexpensive natural gas as well as its work on next-generation wind and solar technologies.Of the multiple ongoing DOE-sponsored projects, two in the LWRS Program plant modernization area, Hallbert said, are particularly geared to address outage-related issues:Cooper nuclear power plant. Photo: Nebraska Public Power DistrictAdvanced Remote Monitoring for Operations Readiness (ARMOR) research is developing automated monitoring systems that gather data and detect process anomalies before something goes awry, in order to avoid forced outages. In one project, LWRS Program researchers collaborated with Cooper Nuclear Station (operated by USA member Nebraska Public Power District) to develop machine learning methods capable of detecting anomalies before they occur. The research showed that it is possible to use process data from components, coupled with machine learning, to detect deviations in fan-coil units days ahead of an actual failure.Instrumentation and Control (I&C) architecture modernization research provides specific ways to reduce operation and maintenance costs, improve operational performance, and maximize worker productivity through digitization of plant control systems. With collaborators Duke Energy and Honeywell Process Solutions, DOE researchers are developing effective techniques—including updating digital control system hardware while the plant continues operating—to reduce outage times for equipment modernization.The need for technology transition“Obsolescence” is a word nobody likes to use to describe their industry, and at the same time it describes an issue that nuclear must wrestle with to be cost-competitive.“Many nuclear plants have focused on sustaining older technology to control costs and produce power,” said INL’s Hunton. “While this has worked in the past, legacy I&C system obsolescence costs and the lack of advanced labor-saving features are now threatening economic viability.”The DOE released its Addressing Nuclear I&C Modernization report in 2019. It notes that attempting to sustain the existing fleet by doing the same things with the same equipment “has created an institutional inertia within the nuclear industry I&C community that has constrained efficient application of non-nuclear OT [operational technology] in a way that hinders nuclear from realizing the benefits of these technologies as demonstrated in non-nuclear applications.”Consider stopwatches, for example. USA’s Christensen pointed to scenarios in which stopwatches have long been used, such as during LOOP/LOCA (loss of off-site power/loss-of-coolant accident) testing.“You announce 3-2-1 mark, and the switch is flipped to start the test,” he said. People stationed throughout the plant to time critical elements of the test click their stopwatches on this mark. “Yet you don’t realize how easy it is to double-click a stopwatch, and in some cases, if certain data are missed, you have to completely redo the test,” Christensen said. “It sounds archaic because it is.”The work of USA and others takes on hurdles as basic as stopwatches and simultaneously grapples with broader changes needed to transform the industry.“We’re working from a more labor-intensive business model, based on older technology,” Hallbert said. “We’re unique in this way today, as other power generation sectors have made more complete technology transitions from analog to digital systems.”Making the transition from that business model and older technologies will equip the workforce to become more efficient and less reliant on manual efforts to accomplish work. This will enable plants to become more cost-competitive and sustainable in current and future energy markets.Everyone involved, Hallbert said, is working toward sustainability with modern technology using the skills of a highly trained and tech-savvy workforce.The quest for nuclear sustainabilityFor Clint Carter, the multifaceted drive for improvement is in concert with “Delivering the Nuclear Promise.” The initiative—led by the Nuclear Energy Institute and launched in 2014—was designed, according to NEI, to “strengthen the industry’s commitment to excellence in safety and reliability, assure future viability through efficiency improvements, and drive regulatory and market changes so that nuclear energy facilities are fully recognized for their value.”Carter, who ran Luminant’s groundbreaking Power Optimization Center and is now a loaned executive to USA in charge of fleet modernization, said sustainability is achieved by people deploying technology, not yielding to it. “Computers only do what humans program them to do,” Carter said. “With that in mind, there is the opportunity to apply algorithms, computer code, and machine learning to allow us to see things, to see anomalous behavior we don’t see now.”Broadly, that’s the approach that flags deviations in fan-coil units at the Cooper Nuclear Station days ahead of failure.“When we identify some anomalous behavior, we apply human expertise to figure out what that was. We then take that learning and fold it into the algorithm,” Carter explained. “Over time, the intelligence and capabilities of that machine learning advance, and we improve operational efficiency while maintaining safety.”Hallbert said that much like a high-performance auto racing pit crew, various sectors of the nuclear community working cooperatively to achieve competitiveness—always toward the same goal—will ensure success. Tags:armorcooperdiagnosticsdoeefficiencyfire watchi&cinllocalooplwrsobsolescencepacesafetyskillsustainabilityteamworktestingutilities service allianceworkforceShare:LinkedInTwitterFacebook
DOE looks to dispose of Savannah River process equipment as LLWThe Department of Energy is considering disposing of contaminated process equipment from its Savannah River Site (SRS) at a commercial low-level waste facility using its recent interpretation of the statutory term “high-level radioactive waste,” which classifies waste generated from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel based on its radiological content rather than its origin.Go to Article
Trump leaves space nuclear policy executive order for Biden teamA hot fire test of the core stage for NASA’s Space Launch System rocket at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi was not completed as planned. The SLS is the vehicle meant to propel a crewed mission to the moon in 2024. Source: NASA TelevisionAmong the executive orders President Trump issued during his last weeks in office was “Promoting Small Modular Reactors for National Defense and Space Exploration,” which builds on the Space Policy Directives published during his term. The order, issued on January 12, calls for actions within the next six months by NASA and the Department of Defense (DOD), together with the Department of Energy and other federal entities. Whether the Biden administration will retain some, all, or none of the specific goals of the Trump administration’s space nuclear policy remains to be seen, but one thing is very clear: If deep space exploration remains a priority, nuclear-powered and -propelled spacecraft will be needed.The prospects for near-term deployment of nuclear propulsion and power systems in space improved during Trump’s presidency. However, Trump left office days after a hot fire test of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket did not go as planned. The SLS rocket is meant to propel crewed missions to the moon in 2024 and to enable a series of long-duration lunar missions that could be powered by small lunar reactor installations. The test on January 16 of four engines that were supposed to fire for over eight minutes was automatically aborted after one minute, casting some doubt that a planned November 2021 Artemis I mission can go ahead on schedule.Go to Article
INL’s MARVEL could demonstrate remote operation on a micro scaleThe Department of Energy launched a 14-day public review and comment period on January 11 on a draft environmental assessment for a proposal to construct the Microreactor Applications Research Validation & EvaLuation (MARVEL) project microreactor inside Idaho National Laboratory’s Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) Facility.The basics: The MARVEL design is a sodium-potassium–cooled thermal microreactor fueled by uranium zirconium hydride fuel pins using high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU). It would be a 100-kWt reactor capable of generating about 20 kWe using Stirling engines over a core life of about two years.The DOE proposes to install the MARVEL microreactor in a concrete storage pit in the north high bay of the TREAT reactor building. Modifications to the building to accommodate MARVEL are anticipated to take five to seven months. Constructing, assembling, and performing preoperational testing are expected to take another two to three months prior to fuel loading.Go to Article
Slaybaugh named to lead Berkeley Lab’s Cyclotron RoadSlaybaughThe Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recently named Rachel Slaybaugh, ANS member since 2003 and associate professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California–Berkeley, to lead the lab’s Cyclotron Road Division.Get to know her: Prior to coming to Berkeley, Slaybaugh served as a program director for the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), whose mission is to advance high-potential and high-impact energy technologies. From 2017 through 2020 at ARPA-E, Slaybaugh led programs supporting research in advanced nuclear fission reactors, agriculture technologies, and sensing and data analytics for four years.Go to Article
Reclassification of HLW could reduce risks while saving billions, DOE saysAn engineered stainless steel container designed to hold LLW at Hanford. Photo: Bechtel National, Inc.A Department of Energy report to the U.S. Congress shows that the reclassification of high-level radioactive waste could save more than $200 billion in treatment and disposal costs while allowing DOE sites to be cleaned up sooner—all still without jeopardizing public health and safety.The report, Evaluation of Potential Opportunities to Classify Certain Defense Nuclear Waste from Reprocessing as Other than High-Level Radioactive Waste, identifies potential opportunities for the DOE to reduce risk to public and environment while completing its cleanup mission more efficiently and effectively. Those opportunities are based on the DOE’s 2019 interpretation of the statutory term HLW, which classifies waste based on its radiological characteristics rather than its origin.Under the DOE’s interpretation of HLW, waste from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel may be determined to be non-HLW if the waste (1) does not exceed concentration limits for Class C low-level radioactive waste as set out in federal regulations and meets the performance objectives of a disposal facility; or (2) does not require disposal in a deep geologic repository and meets the performance objectives of a disposal facility as demonstrated through a performance assessment conducted in accordance with applicable requirements.Go to Article
EPRI names Rita Baranwal as new VP of nuclear, CNOBaranwalThe Electric Power Research Institute today announced Rita Baranwal as its new vice president of nuclear energy and chief nuclear officer. Baranwal succeeds Neil Wilmshurst, who was promoted to senior vice president of energy system resources in November.Baranwal most recently served as the Department of Energy’s assistant secretary for its Office of Nuclear Energy, where she managed the DOE's portfolio of nuclear research for existing and advanced reactors and new designs. Baranwal unexpectedly resigned from that position late last week.Go to Article
The year in review 2020: Waste ManagementHere is a look back at the top stories of 2020 from our Waste Management section in Newswire and Nuclear News magazine. Remember to check back to Newswire soon for more top stories from 2020.Waste Management sectionFirst-ever cleanup of uranium enrichment plant celebrated at Oak Ridge: The completion of the decades-long effort to clean up the former Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant was celebrated on October 13, with Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette joining U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, and other state and community leaders at the East Tennessee Technology Park, where the uranium enrichment complex once stood. Read more.Go to Article
The year in review 2020: Research and ApplicationsHere is a look back at the top stories of 2020 from our Research and Applications section in Newswire and Nuclear News magazine. Remember to check back to Newswire soon for more top stories from 2020.Research and Applications sectionARDP picks divergent technologies in Natrium, Xe-100: Is nuclear’s future taking shape? The Department of Energy has put two reactor designs—TerraPower’s Natrium and X-energy’s Xe-100—on a fast track to commercialization, each with an initial $80 million in 50-50 cost-shared funds awarded through the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. Read more.Go to Article
John Gilligan: NEUP in support of university nuclear R&DJohn Gilligan has been the director of the Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) since its creation in 2009 by the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE). NEUP consolidates DOE-NE’s university support under one program and engages colleges and universities in the United States to conduct research and development in nuclear technology. The two main R&D areas for NEUP funding are fuel cycle projects, which include evolving sustainable technologies that improve energy generation to enhance safety, limit proliferation risk, and reduce waste generation and resource consumption; and reactor projects, which strive to preserve the existing commercial light-water reactors as well as improve emerging advanced designs, such as small modular reactors, liquid-metal-cooled fast reactors, and gas- or liquid-salt-cooled high-temperature reactors.Go to Article
Congress set to pass year-end funding billThe final text of the approximately 5,600-page Consolidated Appropriations Act 2021 was released on December 22. While the timing of final passage is still fluid, the Senate was expected to approve it and send it on to President Trump to sign into law, according to John Starkey, American Nuclear Society government relations director.Below are some key funding highlights from the legislation pertaining to nuclear energy.Go to Article