Lightbridge announces first U-Zr fuel rod samples extruded at INL

March 18, 2024, 3:12PMNuclear News
The extrusion in progress. (Photo: INL/Lightbridge)

Lightbridge Corporation announced today that it has reached “a critical milestone” in the development of its extruded solid fuel technology. Coupon samples using an alloy of zirconium and depleted uranium—not the high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) that Lightbridge plans to use to manufacture its fuel for the commercial market—were extruded at Idaho National Laboratory’s Materials and Fuels Complex.

How is Cold War–era radiation shaping the nuclear conversation today?

March 18, 2024, 7:00AMNuclear News

The Manhattan Project may have begun more than 80 years ago, but it’s still in the news—and not just because of Oppenheimer’s recent haul at the Academy Awards. On March 7, the Senate passed S. 3853, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Reauthorization Act, by a vote of 69 to 30, sending the bill to the House. It’s Sen. Josh Hawley's (R., Mo.) second attempt to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA)—which was first enacted in 1990 to address the legacy of U.S. nuclear weapons production—before it expires in June. The bill would extend the deadline to claim compensation by five years and expand it from the dozen states now covered to include individuals exposed to radiation in certain regions of Missouri, Alaska, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

NNSA awards counter–nuclear smuggling contracts

March 14, 2024, 1:13PMNuclear News

Contracts valued up to a combined $1 billion have been awarded by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Office of Nuclear Smuggling Detection and Deterrence to SeaTech Global Security Solutions of Richland, Wash., and Parsons Government Services International Inc. of Pasadena, Calif.

China’s new Linglong One reactor just one piece of nuclear expansion

March 13, 2024, 3:00PMNuclear News
Workers install the core module of Linglong One, the world's first commercial SMR, at a nuclear power plant in Changjiang Li autonomous county, Hainan province, in August 2023. (Photo: Zhang Liyun/chinadaily.com.cn)

China is on pace to add as many as 10 reactors a year and may surpass the United States’ total nuclear capacity by 2030.

As part of this growth, construction is wrapping up this month on the world’s first onshore commercial modular pressurized water reactor—Linglong One, which is located in the Hainan province. That’s according to China Metallurgical News, an established news unit reporting on China’s industrial chain.

Biden administration releases FY25 budget request—What’s in it for nuclear?

March 12, 2024, 3:59PMNuclear News

The White House asked for nearly $1.6 billion in funding for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy in the fiscal year 2025 budget proposal, released earlier this week. The requested funding is about 10 percent lower than the FY 2024 budget appropriation but still requires congressional review and approval.

GBN to buy sites for new nuclear

March 12, 2024, 12:00PMNuclear News
Hitachi pulled out of plans for a nuclear project at Wylfa in 2020 (Image: Horizon Nuclear Power)

Great Britain announced last week that it will purchase land at two nuclear sites from Hitachi for £160 million ($203 million).

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced the deal for the sites—Wylfa in northern Wales and Oldbury-on-Severn in southwestern England—during the annual budget speech to Parliament. Under Hitachi’s ownership, the land was prepped for developing a pair of advanced boiling water reactor units, but those plans were suspended in 2019 due to economic constraints.

X-energy’s helium coolant and fuel handling test facility gets EA/FONSI

March 11, 2024, 12:00PMNuclear News
Concept art of the planned X-energy helium test facility. (Image: DOE OCED)

The Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations issued a final environmental assessment (EA) and finding of no significant impact in February for a cost-shared X-energy project to construct and operate a helium test facility (HTF) in Oak Ridge, Tenn. According to the EA, construction would begin in early 2024 and take X-energy and its contracted partner, Kinetrics, about one year to complete. the facility would then operate for six years, with the possibility of extensions for up to an additional 20 years, to test equipment for a demonstration of X-energy’s high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor technology and also to “serve the reactor community at large as the technology continues to develop and is adopted around the world.”

Climate groups file suit against Diablo Canyon

March 11, 2024, 7:00AMNuclear News
In this 2013 photo, workers test switches and gauges in Diablo Canyon’s Unit 2 control room and review the results while the reactor is shut down for refueling and routine maintenance. (Photo: PG&E)

Three climate groups filed a motion for the immediate closure of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California, saying the nuclear plant poses an “unacceptable safety risk.”

Seth Kofi Debrah: Ghana’s nuclear plans

March 8, 2024, 3:11PMNuclear News

The continent of Africa and the 54 countries that share the land are an emerging force that will hold growing influence in the world’s economy by the end of this century. Throughout history, the world’s leading economies have been driven by large working-age populations, but the shift in demographics over the next 50 years will bring drastic changes to the global economy. As reported last year by the New York Times, most of the youngest countries in the world are in Africa (south/southeastern Asia and the Middle East being the other regions with young populations). This means that by 2050 and beyond, the countries with the largest working-age populations will be very different from the top economies today. The African Union understands these changes are coming and is working toward its Agenda 2063, the “master plan for transforming Africa into a global powerhouse of the future.”

Grossi, Putin meet to discuss Ukraine nuclear plant concerns

March 6, 2024, 3:03PMNuclear News
Vladimir Putin (left), Rafael Mariano Grossi (right), with Alexey Likhachev (Image: Kremlin.ru)

International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Mariano Grossi visited Russia this week to discuss the “future operational status” of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

IAEA: released Fukushima water below operational limits

March 6, 2024, 12:00PMNuclear News
An IAEA task force visited Fukushima in October 2023 to review the safety of TEPCO’s discharge of ALPS-treated water. (Photo: TEPCO)

International Atomic Energy Agency experts have confirmed that the tritium concentration in the fourth batch of treated water released from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is far below the country’s operational limit.

UAE’s Barakah-4 unit reaches start-up

March 6, 2024, 9:30AMNuclear News
Unit 4 at the Barakah nuclear power plant. (Photo: Nawah)

The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation announced last week start-up at its fourth nuclear unit at the Barakah plant in the UAE.

The plant is run by ENEC’s operating and maintenance subsidiary Nawah Energy Company. In the coming weeks, Unit 4 will be linked to the national electricity grid and undergo testing as power production is gradually increased to full capacity.

Bipartisan support launches pronuclear bill from Congress

March 6, 2024, 8:29AMNuclear News

A bipartisan group of lawmakers passed legislation from the U.S. House of Representatives this week in support of nuclear energy production.

H. R. 6544 emerged from the chamber following a 365–36 vote. The legislation would speed up environmental reviews for new nuclear projects and reduce fees for advanced nuclear reactor licenses. It would also update the Price-Anderson Act, which limits the industry’s legal liability for nuclear accidents, by extending it for 40 years as well as increasing the indemnity coverage—changes advocated for by the American Nuclear Society in recent position statement updates.

NEDHO diversity panels inspire and raise awareness

March 5, 2024, 7:03AMNuclear News

The NEDHO Diversity Panel featured, from left, University of Michigan professor John Foster; Jeffrey Harper, then a vice president at X-energy; William D. Magwood, director general of the NEA; and Londrea Garrett, a Ph.D. student at UM. (Photo: Aditi Verma/University of Michigan)

The Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization (NEDHO) has been sponsoring Diversity Panels since October 2022, when the inaugural meeting was hosted by the University of Tennessee Department of Nuclear Engineering. The panels were established as a distinguished speaker series by a working group led by Wes Hines, head of the UT Department of Nuclear Engineering, and Todd Allen, a former NEDHO chair and the current chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences (NERS) at the University of Michigan.

Allen explained that the panels are meant to be “a first step toward improving the diversity of the talent entering the nuclear science and engineering fields.” The idea came from a presentation by Andreas Enqvist, director of the nuclear engineering program at the University of Florida, at the November 2021 NEDHO meeting. According to Allen, Enqvist described “ASEE [American Society for Engineering Education] data on how poorly the nuclear engineering field was doing at getting black students to study nuclear at the B.S. level and, even worse, how few moved from B.S. to graduate programs.”

AI can predict and prevent fusion plasma instabilities in milliseconds

March 4, 2024, 2:59PMNuclear News
The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. (Photo: PPPL)

A team of engineers, physicists, and data scientists from Princeton University and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have used artificial intelligence (AI) to predict—and then avoid—the formation of a specific type of plasma instability in magnetic confinement fusion tokamaks. The researchers built and trained a model using past experimental data from operations at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego, Calif., before proving through real-time experiments that their model could forecast so-called tearing mode instabilities up to 300 milliseconds in advance—enough time for an AI controller to adjust operating parameters and avoid a tear in the plasma that could potentially end the fusion reaction.

Vogtle-4 plant in home stretch, connects to grid

March 4, 2024, 12:00PMNuclear News
Southern Nuclear’s Vogtle-4. (Photo: Georgia Power)

Vogtle Unit 4 synchronized and successfully connected to the electric grid on March 1, just two weeks after reaching initial criticality.

This milestone is one of the final steps to completing Southern Nuclear’s long-awaited Vogtle project, adding the second of two large-scale reactors to the United States’ fleet in as many years—the first such additions to that fleet in more than three decades.

Engineering scholarship established by L&A at WSU Tri-Cities

March 4, 2024, 9:30AMNuclear News
The Washington State University Tri-Cities campus. (Photo: WSU)

A new engineering scholarship at Washington State University (WSU) Tri-Cities has been established by Longenecker & Associates for students interested in careers that support Department of Energy missions.

Bruce Power expansion plans get federal funding infusion

March 1, 2024, 12:03PMNuclear News
Ontario energy minister Todd Smith (center) and Bruce Power president and CEO Mike Rencheck (right) applaud as Jonathan Wilkinson, Canadian minister of energy and natural resources, announces funding to support Bruce Power’s predevelopment work for expansion. (Photo: Bruce Power)

The Canadian government has announced up to C$50 million ($36.8 million) in funding for predevelopment work to study the feasibility of building 4,800 megawatts of new generating capacity at the Bruce nuclear power plant in Ontario.