ANS Nuclear Cafe

Barabaschi

Capping a session in Paris, the ITER Council has unanimously selected Pietro Barabaschi as the new director-general of the ITER Organization. The Italian-born Barabaschi, who has been involved in nuclear fusion research for some 30 years, was chosen to lead the massive international fusion project following an intensive recruitment effort necessitated by the death of Bernard Bigot, the previous director general, in May. Since Bigot’s death, Eisuke Tada has been serving in the role in an interim capacity. Barabaschi will take office in October.

F4E leader: Barabaschi has been the head of the Broader Approach Programme and Delivery with Fusion for Energy (F4E) since 2008. F4E is the EU organization responsible for Europe’s contribution to ITER. In this position, he has been managing the department that oversees three projects stemming from the Broader Approach agreement between the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and the government of Japan: the JT-60SA tokamak, the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility/Engineering Validation and Engineering Design Activities linear accelerator, and the International Fusion Energy Research Centre . Barabaschi has also been acting director of F4E.

As citizens of the United Kingdom and others around the world mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth II, many have reflected on how the world has changed during the seven decades of the queen’s reign—the same decades that saw the rise of civilian nuclear power.

Calder Hall was already under construction at the Sellafield site in West Cumbria when Princess Elizabeth became queen in 1953. Queen Elizabeth traveled to the site in October 1956 and declared, in a televised ceremony, that “It is with pride that I now open Calder Hall, Britain’s first atomic power station.” Watch the fanfare in a historical clip uploaded to YouTube by Sellafield Ltd below.

In an essay titled “How the Fed will Strangle New Nukes,” published this week by American Thinker, nuclear engineer and writer Joseph Somsel warns that despite current expectations of a nuclear construction boom, “As in the late 1970s, rising interest rates will put the kibosh on new nukes.” Somsel therefore urges the financing and building of new nuclear facilities right now, before ongoing inflation and increasingly high interest rates “kill a lot of the plans” for new nuclear power plants.

Research with the Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) has revealed new insights into short-range correlations—the brief pairings of nucleons (protons with neutrons, protons with protons, or neutrons with neutrons) in the nuclei of atoms. The study, published in Nature, used precision measurements to determine that short-range correlations differ depending on the density of the nucleus, that is, how many nucleons it contains.

Max Carbon

Join the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Department of Engineering Physics as it honors its founding chair at the upcoming Max Carbon Legacy Celebration. The on-campus event will take place on Friday, October 14, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. CDT at Union South, Varsity Hall 3, 1308 W. Dayton St. in Madison.

What it’s about: In addition to paying tribute to the legacy of the late Professor Emeritus Carbon, who established UW-Madison’s nuclear engineering program more than 60 years ago, the event will honor a number of retiring faculty members. Memories, stories, and photos of Professor Carbon will be shared by attendees.

An upcoming event organized by North American Young Generation in Nuclear will focus on the ways Pittsburghers are contributing to innovations that will help nuclear energy meet the challenges of the clean energy transition. “Pittsburgh Builds the Future of Nuclear Power,” sponsored by Rizzo International, Westinghouse, Curtiss-Wright, SSM Industries, and Ansys, will be held at The Westin Pittsburgh on Thursday, September 22, from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. EDT.

Register now. The event is free, but space is limited, and registration is required. Visit the Eventbrite page to complete your registration.

Core Power, MIT Energy Initiative, and Idaho National Laboratory have secured research funding from the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) to conduct a three-year study into the development of offshore floating nuclear power generation. This collaborative research effort is among the 74 nuclear research and infrastructure projects that were awarded more than $61 million by the DOE in June.

The research reactor known as SATER (Subcritical Assembly for Training, Education, and Research), housed in at the Philippine Research Reactor-1 building at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City, has become operational. As recently reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the core of SATER was loaded with 44 fuel rods, bringing the Philippines its first operational nuclear reactor in 34 years. Through this event, the country has moved a big step closer to meeting the government’s goal of adding nuclear power to its energy resources. The reactor is expected to become fully operational by 2023.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) has published Nuclear Energy as a Keystone Clean Energy Resource, a white paper that examines the role of nuclear power in providing carbon-free energy in the United States. The 57-page paper, prepared by Energy Ventures Analysis, includes a review of considerations for regulators to boost nuclear power’s contribution to the decarbonization energy transition.

A key point made in the paper is that reaching ambitious state and national decarbonization goals will require expansion of the nuclear energy resource base. Despite this, a number of barriers stand in the way of nuclear fleet expansion. Moreover, existing nuclear power plants must continue to deal with challenges, such as those from economic pressures, planned reactor retirements, regulatory issues, and competition with other energy industries.

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has redirected about $10 million from the International Atomic Energy Agency’s low-enriched uranium fuel bank to efforts supporting the peaceful uses of nuclear technology and to fight cancer.

Kishida

Having already declared last month his government’s intention to return to service as many as nine idled power reactors in order to ensure stable supplies of energy this winter, Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida yesterday called for additional restarts and endorsed the development and construction of next-generation nuclear plants, according to reports from various news outlets, including Nikkei Asia, the Washington Examiner, and the Los Angeles Times.

Kishida made the comments at the second meeting of Japan’s GX (Green Transformation) Implementation Council, a new group tasked with helping the country achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

Lee Chang-yang

A multi-ministry task force has been established by the government of South Korea to promote the export of nuclear power development projects. The task force, led by minister of trade, industry, and energy Lee Chang-yang, includes nine ministries, such as national defense; economy and finance; foreign affairs; and land, infrastructure, and transport. It also includes a number of private-sector companies and public institutions— Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, Export-Import Bank of Korea, and Korea Electric Power Corporation among them.

Diplomatic offices: The Korean task force plans to establish diplomatic offices in several countries in order to perform its mission effectively, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Poland, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa.

Construction of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s new Nuclear Security Training and Demonstration Centre (NSTDC) is nearing completion in the town of Seibersdorf, Austria, near the capital city of Vienna. The IAEA expects construction to be finished by the end of the year, allowing for the facility to open and be operational by late 2023.

Ed McGinnis, the chief executive officer of nuclear innovation startup Curio, is looking to solve the nuclear waste problem. In a profile published by CNBC, McGinnis says that nuclear waste is “a huge, huge unresolved problem representing pretty much the largest ball and chain on the ankle of the U.S. nuclear energy sector [which is] trying to transition itself for the next generation of reactors.” Curio, which has developed its NuCycle technology for chemically processing nuclear waste, is hoping to “rebrand nuclear as a means of unlocking the full potential of human ingenuity and aspiration,” according to the company’s website.

In the ongoing quest to mitigate the effects of climate change, new technology can create new solutions. Even today, however, coal is still a main source of power around the globe, often out of necessity. Many coal-burning plants have already been converted for gas or biomass, but these measures alone are not nearly enough to meet net-zero carbon goals. There is a better solution, however: repowering coal plants with nuclear technology—specifically, Generation IV reactors.

The Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing (NEXT) Laboratory at Abilene Christian University in Texas submitted a construction permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its molten salt research reactor (MSRR) on August 15. According to ACU, the move represents the first application for a new U.S. research reactor of any kind in more than 30 years, as well as the first-ever university application for an advanced research reactor.

A new “24/7 emission-free energy compliance product” is now being used by Energy Harbor to meet the needs of customers who must validate that the energy they consume throughout the day is free of carbon emissions. The power company, based in Akron, Ohio, plans to use the product to provide the emission-free energy credits (EFECs) for its Beaver Valley nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania and the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear plants in Ohio—potentially more than 32 million credits every year.

The Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) has unveiled the fiscal year 2023 draft version of its Consolidated Innovative Nuclear Research (CINR) program with a series of recent webinars. The new CINR program is dramatically different from that of previous years, incorporating many suggestions that had been offered by the nuclear community through the request-for-information process.

Ninety-one percent of residents living near U.S. nuclear power plants have a favorable impression of those plants, according to Bisconti Research’s ninth biennial survey. In addition, 88 percent of those residents have positive opinions of nuclear energy in general, and 78 percent would support the addition of a new reactor at their neighboring plant—a number that increases to 86 percent if the new reactor is a small modular reactor.

Bement

The new Understanding Tomorrow’s Nuclear Energy lecture series, sponsored by Purdue University and Duke Energy, premieres on August 30. The first scheduled speaker, Arden L. Bement Jr., professor emeritus of nuclear engineering at Purdue, will deliver a talk titled “Clean Nuclear Energy: Past, Present, and Future.”

Register now. Participants can attend the event, from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. EDT, either in person or virtually. The presentation will be delivered in the Stewart Center Fowler Hall on Purdue’s campus in West Lafayette, Ind. Advance registration is required for this free lecture.

What’s it about: The series will feature community leaders speaking on the feasibility of using advanced nuclear technologies to meet the long-term zero-carbon energy goals of the West Lafayette campus. It is designed to appeal to everyone, from nuclear industry experts to community residents with a general interest in the topic.