Principal investigator Ruchi Gakhar (left), technician Dean Burt (center), and intern Diego Macias, shown loading salt into the loop. (Photo: INL)
The Department of Energy announced March 31 that a new Molten Salt Flow Loop Test Bed at Idaho National Laboratory recently went through its inaugural test run. The closed-loop test system will allow for continuous monitoring and analysis of chloride-based molten salt reactor technology and instruments before the construction of the Southern Company/TerraPower Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment. MCRE—an experimental fast-spectrum molten salt research reactor—will be built at INL’s repurposed Zero Power Physics Reactor, which has been renamed LOTUS (Laboratory for Operation and Testing in the United States).
A Disa HPSA test unit used in a study in the Navajo Nation. (Photo: Disa Technologies)
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received a license application from Disa Technologies to use high-pressure slurry ablation (HPSA) technology for remediating abandoned uranium mine waste at inactive mining sites. Disa’s headquarters in are Casper, Wyo.
Duke Energy's Oconee nuclear power plant. (Photo: Duke Energy)
All three units at the Duke Energy’s Oconee nuclear power plant in South Carolina are now licensed to operate for an additional 20 years.
Southern Nuclear and Westinghouse C-suite executives John Williams, Dan Lipman, and Margaret Cosentino spoke during the Congressional AP1000 Fly-In in Washington D.C. (Source: Westinghouse)
Dozens of Westinghouse employees and supply chain partners descended on Washington, D.C., last week to build legislative support for new nuclear projects.
Concept art showing Type One Energy’s Infinity One prototype stellarator inside TVA’s Bull Run fossil plant. (Photo/Image: Business Wire)
Fusion startup Type One Energy has announced the publication of a baseline physics design basis for its proposed Infinity Two stellarator fusion pilot power plant. The design basis was published in a series of seven papers in a special issue of the Journal of Plasma Physics. According to the company, the design basis realistically considers for the first time the relationship between competing requirements for plasma performance, power plant startup, construction logistics, reliability, and economics utilizing actual power plant operating experience.
Xe-100 Dow Seadrift concept art. (Image: X-energy)
Dow and X-energy announced today that they have submitted a construction permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a proposed advanced nuclear project in Seadrift, Texas. The project could begin construction later this decade, but only if Dow confirms “the ability to deliver the project while achieving its financial return targets.”
Illustration showing how radially oriented honeycomb structures can be used within a container to provide strength, sound insulation, or thermal insulation. The structure includes multiple radially aligned layers of a shaped strip. (Image: SRNL)
Savannah River National Laboratory said it has received a patent for its radially oriented honeycomb structures. The technology offers a solution to the deformation of cylindrical honeycomb structures when they are formed from flat panels, providing a way to create structures with greater wall thickness than traditional methods.
Detailed view of the Lego CROCUS reactor (as seen with Lego Studio software), with the vessel open to reveal the core structure. (Image: Vincent Lamirand)
For many of us, the height of our accomplishments with Lego blocks might have been constructing little square houses as children. For others, these versatile building blocks are a medium for creating complex models of sophisticated machinery—models that have practical and educational applications. One such individual is ANS member Vincent Lamirand, a reactor physicist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Laboratory for Reactor Physics and Systems Behavior (LRS) in Switzerland.
NuScale E2 Center work stations at RPI ready for student use. (Photo: RPI)
The opening of an Energy Exploration (E2) Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., was announced by NuScale Power Corporation on March 24. The training center will provide students from RPI’s School of Engineering an opportunity to gain a firsthand understanding of advanced nuclear technology and the role it will play in the global energy transition, as well as of the features and functionality of NuScale’s small modular reactor technology.
Learn more about NuScale E2 Centers here.
Students from South Carolina State University and Claflin University listen to Tristan Downey about the legacy control panels found in the Savannah River Site's L Area. (Photo: DOE)
A group of students recently visited the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, near Aiken, S.C., to get a close look at L Area, a facility the DOE considers critical to nuclear materials management and nonproliferation missions at the site.
Representatives of First Light Fusion stand outside Sandia’s Z Pulsed Power Facility. (Photo: First Light Fusion)
First Light Fusion announced last week that it has set a new record for the highest quartz pressure achieved on Sandia National Laboratories’ Z machine using its amplifier technology to achieve an output pressure of 3.67 terapascal (TPa)—roughly doubling the pressure the company reached in its first experiment on the machine one year ago.
Meanwhile, Russian-backed media report Ukraine is responsible for ZNPP strikes
Energoatom’s Zaporizhzhia plant, in southeastern Ukraine, as it appeared in a photo posted to the DOE website in June 2021. (Photo: Energoatom)
Amid recent ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine, President Donald Trump suggested the U.S. should take control of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants for long-term security, the Associated Press reported.
“American ownership of those plants could be the best protection for that infrastructure,” Trump suggested, according to a later statement.
