Nuclear News

NuScale Power Corporation has opened another Energy Exploration (E2) Center—this one at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. Just last month, a NuScale E2 Center opened at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, S.C. The newest E2 at George Mason is the company’s 11th center.

Gierszewski

In late 2024, Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization announced the selection of a site in northwestern Ontario for its deep geological repository for the country’s used nuclear fuel.

This is a major step in a plan that was first laid out in 2010. From the beginning, the plan had been clear that any selected site must be technically safe, must be accessible for fuel transportation, and must have informed and willing host communities.

By 2020, potential sites had been narrowed from an initial set of 22 communities that had indicated interest in learning more down to two specific sites.

My primary involvement was on the technical safety side. We wanted to know that we could safely build and operate the repository at the chosen site.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting a special inspection at Constellation’s Quad Cities nuclear plant to review two events caused by battery issues. Neither event had any impact on public health or plant workers.

Hu

Argonne National Laboratory has added a new twist to digital twin technology for research into nuclear energy. According to Rui Hu, a principal nuclear engineer at Argonne, “Our digital twin technology introduces a significant step toward understanding and managing advanced nuclear reactors, enabling us to predict and respond to changes with the required speed and accuracy.”

The research of Hu and his colleagues, “Development of Whole System Digital Twins for Advanced Reactors: Leveraging Graph Neural Networks and SAM Simulations,” was published in the American Nuclear Society journal Nuclear Technology.

Virtual representation: A digital twin technology is an accurate virtual representation of a complex system. It is updated with real-time data from sensors applied to the physical system, such as a nuclear reactor.

The Bonneville Power Administration recently approved a $700 million extended uprate project for Energy Northwest to increase its nuclear plant electrical output by 186 MW by 2031.

Europe’s largest nuclear power plant has just one remaining power line for essential nuclear safety and security functions, compared with its original 10 functional lines before the military conflict with Russia, warned Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Uranium futures rose to $71.90 per pound on June 2, according to online analysis firm Trading Economics. That price was near its highest level since early February—in contrast to an 18-month low in prices reached in mid-March.

Meta is teaming up with Constellation to buy nuclear power from an Illinois plant over the next 20 years in a power purchase agreement that helps support the goals of both companies.

Ontario Power Generation has awarded a $450 million execution contract to Candu Energy, an AtkinsRéalis company, for the first of four planned small modular reactors at the Darlington New Nuclear Project in Clarington, Ontario, Canada.

One of the privileges of being president of the American Nuclear Society is awarding Presidential Citations to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding effort in some manner for the benefit of ANS or the nuclear community at large. Citations are conferred twice each year, at the Annual and Winter Meetings.

ANS President Lisa Marshall has named this season’s recipients, who will receive recognition at the upcoming Annual Conference in Chicago during the Special Session on Tuesday, June 17.

Oklo cofounder and CEO Jacob DeWitte and KHNP CEO Joo-ho Whang following the virtual signing of an MOU. (Source: Oklo)

Oklo announced last week that it hopes to expand development and global deployment of its advanced nuclear technology through a new partnership with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power.

The memorandum of understanding includes plans for the companies to advance standard design development and global deployment of Oklo’s planned Aurora Powerhouse, a microreactor that would generate 15 MW and be scalable to 50 MWe. Oklo said each unit can operate for 10 years or longer before refueling.

Oklo and KHNP plan to cooperate on early-stage project development, including manufacturability assessments and planning of major equipment, supply chain development for balance-of-plant systems, and constructability assessments and planning.

NuScale earned approval for its “larger” US460 77-MWe small modular reactor plant design, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced last week.

The standard design approval (SDA) is a determination by NRC staff that a reactor design meets the agency’s applicable design requirements, and companies can reference it when applying for a license to build and operate the reactor—but it does not ensure license approval from the commission.

The use of nuclear fission power and its role in impacting climate change is hotly debated. Fission advocates argue that short-term solutions would involve the rapid deployment of Gen III+ nuclear reactors, like Vogtle-3 and -4, while long-term climate change impact would rely on the creation and implementation of Gen IV reactors, “inherently safe” reactors that use passive laws of physics and chemistry rather than active controls such as valves and pumps to operate safely. While Gen IV reactors vary in many ways, one thing unites nearly all of them: the use of exotic, high-temperature coolants. These fluids, like molten salts and liquid metals, can enable reactor engineers to design much safer nuclear reactors—ultimately because the boiling point of each fluid is extremely high. Fluids that remain liquid over large temperature ranges can provide good heat transfer through many demanding conditions, all with minimal pressurization. Although the most apparent use for these fluids is advanced fission power, they have the potential to be applied to other power generation sources such as fusion, thermal storage, solar, or high-temperature process heat.^1–3

The Palisades nulear power plant received a final “clean bill” of environmental assessment impact from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission today.

The findings of the NRC staff's EA showed no significant environmental impact for the Covert, Mich., plant, which plans to restart after operations were halted three years ago this month due to economic hardships in the energy market.

Here is a recap of industry happenings from the recent past:

ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE

DOD selects companies for its installations microreactor program

The Department of Defense has selected eight technology companies as being eligible to seek funding for developing microreactor technologies as part of the DOD’s Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations program. That program seeks to “design, license, build, and operate one or more microreactor nuclear power plants on military installations . . . to support global operations across land, air, sea, space, and cyberspace.” The selected companies are Antares Nuclear, BWXT Advanced Technologies, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, Kairos Power, Oklo, Radiant Industries, Westinghouse Government Services, and X-energy. Specific objectives of the DOD program are to “field a decentralized scalable microreactor system capable of producing enough electrical power to meet 100 percent of all critical loads” and to “utilize the civil regulatory pathways of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stimulate commercial nuclear microreactor technology development and the associated supply chains in the U.S.”

The owners of the two-unit Hatch nuclear power plant are hoping to operate the facility for up to 80 years. Southern Nuclear submitted its application this month to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a subsequent license renewal for the dual-unit plant in Baxley, Ga.

The SLR seeks to extend the operating licenses of both boiling water reactors at Hatch from 60 to 80 years. The NRC approved the plant’s first 20-year license renewal in January 2002, which extended Unit 1’s license through August 6, 2034, and Unit 2’s through June 13, 2038.

The fabrication of gloveboxes is underway for the plutonium pit production mission at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C.

“Gloveboxes will be a key component of pit production operations within the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility [SRPPF],” said Dennis Carr, president and CEO of Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS), the management and operating contractor for the site. “The early procurement and fabrication of these gloveboxes is critical to delivering completion of this project for the National Nuclear Security Administration by the early 2030s.”

Ensuring energy resilience for our nation is on the minds of leaders and citizens alike. Advances in nuclear power technologies are increasing needs within the nuclear industry supply chain. Savannah River National Laboratory’s decades of experience in nuclear materials processing makes the lab uniquely qualified to meet the current and future challenges of the nuclear fuel cycle.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has amended Ontario Power Generation’s power reactor operating license for Darlington nuclear power plant to authorize the production of the medical radioisotopes lutetium-177 and yttrium-90.

The new Great Lakes Fusion Energy Alliance wants to build a fusion energy engineering consortium in the Great Lakes region to expand the Midwestern momentum behind fusion energy development and commercialization. The ultimate goal is to build fusion energy power plants in the region, but first the nascent organization is looking to invite other stakeholders into its alliance of universities, fusion companies, and supply chain and government partners. Together, they plan to “accelerate commercialization, expand the workforce, grow the supply chain, and make fusion more economically viable and sustainable as a global center of excellence.”