Nuclear Engineering International reported this week on a new study for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) program. The 90-page study, “Cost and Performance Requirements for Flexible Advanced Nuclear Plants in Future US Power Markets,” finds that advanced reactors that cost less than $3,000/kW will create the most value for plant owners. The work was funded by ARPA-E’s Modeling-Enhanced Innovations Trailblazing Nuclear Energy Reinvigoration (MEITNER) program.

Unit 1 of Canada’s four-unit Darlington nuclear power plant, located in Clarington, Ontario, set a North American record on July 9 with 895 consecutive days of operation, according to Ontario Power Generation (OPG), the plant’s owner and operator.

The previous record of 894 days was held by Pickering-7, also part of OPG’s nuclear fleet. The reactors at the Darlington and Pickering plants are CANDU pressurized heavy-water reactors. Darlington-1, an 878-MWe PHWR, has been on line since January 26, 2018.

Closed vessel testing has been completed at Vogtle-3 at the Georgia Power site near Waynesboro, Ga., the company announced on July 14. The completion of the milestone prepares Unit 3 for cold hydro testing, which is required ahead of initial fuel load.

Vogtle-3 and -4 are the first new nuclear power reactors built in the United States in the past three decades. The new units will be powered by AP1000 reactors.

All energy sources, including small modular reactors, are being considered to meet Puerto Rico’s energy needs, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Peter J. Brown said on July 15 during the second day of PR-Grid Virtual, a three-day online conference on Puerto Rico’s energy grid. Brown’s comments were quickly circulated on Twitter by people who are already working to make nuclear power a reality for Puerto Rico, including members of the Nuclear Alternative Project (NAP), a non-profit organization of Puerto Rican engineers in the nuclear industry.

The nuclear community’s reaction to last month’s proposal from the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to eliminate its legacy prohibition on financing international nuclear energy projects was unsurprisingly positive (see here and here). On the negative side of things, however, was the reaction from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt) and Edward Markey (D., Mass.), expressed in a July 10 letter to the DFC.

The House Appropriations Committee held its full committee markup of the Energy and Water Development bill on July 13. (The Bill Report provides a more detailed funding breakdown.) The final bill passed the committee by a party line vote of 30-21. No schedule for Floor consideration of the bill has been set, but it is likely to happen next week or the week after.

Goldstein

William H. Goldstein announced on July 7 that he will retire as director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and president of Lawrence Livermore National Security (LLNS) following the selection of his successor.

Federal Judge Margaret Seymour signed off on a $192.5 million settlement on July 9 in a civil lawsuit filed in 2017 by SCANA shareholders over the company’s failed Summer nuclear construction project.

Fanning

Tom Fanning, president and chief executive officer of Southern Company, on July 10 announced via Twitter that he has tested positive for COVID-19. One of the largest U.S. utilities, Southern is the parent company of the owners and operators of the Farley, Hatch, and Vogtle nuclear power plants.

Also on July 10, the state of Georgia obliterated its record for the number of COVID-19 cases in a single day, reporting 4,484 new cases, topping the previous record by more than 1,000. Fanning lives in Atlanta.

Citing the history of cost overruns and delays with the EPR projects at Flamanville and Olkiluoto, France’s public auditor told Électricité de France via a July 9 report that it needs to ensure financing and profitability for projects involving its proposed EPR2 reactor before moving those plans forward. The EPR2 is being designed by EDF’s Framatome unit in a bid to make a less costly version of the EPR and one that is easier to build.

A quantum computer, such as this 50-bit version that IBM demonstrated at the International Consumer Electronics Show in 2018, is capable of solving tasks inaccessible to the most powerful “classic ” supercomputer. (Photo: IBM)

Rosatom, Russia’s state atomic energy corporation, and the Russian Quantum Center (RQC) on July 7 announced the creation of the first laboratory in Russia to research and develop machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) methods on quantum computers, specializing in the application of these technologies in the nuclear industry. An agreement was signed between the RQC and Tsifrum, a Rosatom subsidiary that was created in 2019 to support the implementation of Rosatom’s digitalization strategy.

As industry steps up its efforts to design, develop, and deploy advanced reactors, codes and standards must be developed to support these technologies. Toward that end, ANS and the Nuclear Energy Institute collaborated to host a virtual workshop on June 23 for industry partners to discuss the development of advanced reactor codes and standards.

NEI’s senior director of new reactors, Marc Nichol, welcomed more than 400 attendees to the online meeting, and ANS’s director of government relations, John Starkey, outlined the meeting logistics.

An Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has denied a Michigan antinuclear group’s petition for a public hearing on a DTE Energy license amendment request (LAR) concerning the fuel racks used in the Fermi-2 spent fuel pool (SFP). In its July 7 order, the ASLB rejected the arguments of Redford, Mich.’s Citizens’ Resistance at Fermi 2 (CRAFT), stating that the organization “plainly has failed to submit an admissible contention.”

The ASLB had agreed in April to hear oral arguments from CRAFT via a telephone conference (NN, June 2020, p. 15). The conference was held June 10 and included staff from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and representatives of DTE.

The World Nuclear Association (WNA) released a white paper yesterday, Building a stronger tomorrow: Nuclear power in the post-pandemic world, outlining why nuclear projects should be part of the world’s economic and employment recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the paper, recovery plans that include investment in nuclear energy could not only boost economic growth and jobs, but also fulfill climate change commitments and build a clean and resilient energy system.

A new report from the American Institute of Physics declares the physical sciences to be at a “tipping point” between a “perilous” future and a “vibrant” one as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The 28-page report, Peril and Promise: Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Physical Sciences, outlines several areas where the scientific community has been tested by the pandemic and examines what the future could look like for the workforce, infrastructure, and conduct of research. Further, the report challenges leaders in government, academia, the private sector, and other areas who depend on the physical sciences to craft specific recommendations to address the pandemic’s impacts.

In an entertaining “alternate history” article from The Economist posted online on July 4, a turning point in human history may have occurred on March 6, 1974. That was the day that French prime minister Pierre Messmer made an announcement that “may have saved the world from a dangerous rise in temperatures—an obscure phenomenon known in scientific circles as ‘global warming,’” noted the article. The article, What if nuclear power had taken off in the 1970s? gives a fictional account of what might have happened around the world had nuclear energy been more widely accepted decades ago.

According to a recent story published by AAAS, researchers from the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams Laboratory at Michigan State University have taken a major step toward a theoretical first-principles description of neutrinoless double-beta decay.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has initiated a crowdsourcing competition for innovative ideas to boost the competitiveness of nuclear power plants, the agency announced on July 3. The deadline is August 15 for the submission of abstracts, which should be based on practices already in place at plants. Chosen participants will be invited to present their ideas at the annual Nuclear Operators’ Forum, to be held during the IAEA’s 64th IAEA General Conference, scheduled for September 21–25 in Vienna.

Leningrad nuclear plant. Photo: Rosenergoatom

Preparations have begun for the construction of four nuclear reactors in Russia—two VVER-1200 units at the Leningrad plant and two VVER-TOI units near the Smolensk plant, according to Rosenergoatom, a division of Russia’s state-owned atomic energy corporation Rosatom.

Rosenergoatom operates all of Russia’s nuclear power facilities. Authorization to move forward with the new-build projects was signed by Alexey Likhachev, Rosatom’s director general.

BWX Technologies has signed a $26-million, 20-month contract to expand and upgrade its TRISO fuel manufacturing line. The recently announced deal, awarded by Idaho National Laboratory, calls for the expansion of BWXT’s capacity for the manufacture of TRISO fuel compacts and the upgrading of existing systems for delivering production-scale quantities of TRISO fuel.