Nuclear News

Some two weeks after its creation, the Ohio House Select Committee on Energy Policy and Oversight held its first hearing on September 10 to consider a potential repeal of the Ohio Clean Air Program Act (H.B. 6).

H.B. 6 is the sweeping energy law that includes subsidies for the state’s two nuclear power plants, Davis-Besse and Perry, and that is currently at the center of an alleged $61-million corruption scheme aimed at guaranteeing its passage.

Newly elected Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp (R., Dist. 4)—who replaced Rep. Larry Householder (R., Dist. 72) as speaker following the latter’s July 21 arrest as the scheme’s alleged ringleader—announced the committee’s creation in late August. Cupp stated that its goal is “repealing House Bill 6 and replacing it with thoughtful legislation Ohioans can have confidence in.”

The committee’s initial hearing, however, focused only on efforts to immediately repeal the measure. Proponents of two repeal bills—one backed by Republicans (H.B. 746) and one by Democrats (H.B. 738)—argued their positions, with some displaying greater rhetorical gifts than others.

Radiation has benefited mankind in many ways, including its use as an energy source and an indispensable tool in medicine. Since the turn of the 20th century, society has sought ways to harness its potential, while at the same time recognizing that radiological exposures need to be carefully controlled. Out of these efforts, and the work of many dedicated professionals, the principles of justification, optimization, and limitation have emerged as guiding concepts.

Justification means that the use of radiation, from any radiation source, must do more good than harm. The concept of optimization calls for the use of radiation at a level that is as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA). Dose constraints, or limitation, are meant to assist in reaching optimization and protection against harm by setting recommended numerical levels of radiation exposure from a particular source or sources. Together, these three principles form the bedrock of the international radiation protection system that drives decision-­making and supports societal confidence that radiation is being used in a responsible manner.

Unit 5 at the Tianwan nuclear plant. Photo: CNNC

Unit 5 at the Tianwan nuclear power plant completed its full-power continuous operation assessment on September 8, meeting the conditions for commercial operation, China National Nuclear Corporation reported. The domestically designed ACPR-1000 pressurized water reactor will become CNNC’s 22nd reactor to provide power to China’s electric grid, raising the CNNC fleet’s installed capacity from 19.112 million kilowatts to 20.230 million, according to the company.

Tianwan-5 construction officially commenced on December 27, 2015, with the pouring of safety-related concrete. China’s National Nuclear Safety Administration issued a 40-year operating license for the unit on July 7 of this year, and two days later CNNC announced that first fuel loading had been completed. The reactor achieved initial criticality on July 27 and connected to the grid on August 8. Once commercial operation of the unit has begun, Tianwan will boast five operating reactors.

Ontario’s Darlington nuclear power plant. Photo: OPG

The latest phase of the Darlington nuclear power plant’s refurbishment project began last week with the start of the defueling of Unit 3, according to Ontario Power Generation (OPG). Originally scheduled to begin in May this year, Unit 3’s refurbishment was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Located in Clarington, Ontario, Canada, the Darlington plant houses four 878-MWe CANDU pressurized heavy-water reactors, all of which entered commercial operation in the early 1990s. The 10-year refurbishment project—which was 10 years in the planning—commenced in earnest in October 2016, when Unit 2 was taken off line (NN, Dec. 2016, pg. 45). The refurbished Unit 2 was returned to service in early June, and in late July Unit 3 was shut down and disconnected from the grid in preparation for its refurbishment.

China is on track to overtake the United States in nuclear power capacity by 2026, according to GlobalData, a U.K.-based research and analytics company.

More than 160 GW of nuclear capacity will likely be added globally between 2020 and 2030, some 66 percent of which is anticipated to take place in China, India, and Russia, the company reported on September 9. China alone is set to account for more than 50 percent (83 GW) of the new capacity, followed by India with 8.9 percent (14.5 GW) and Russia with 6.4 percent (10.5 GW). GlobalData also projects that during the same period, more than 76 GW of nuclear capacity will be retired.

The NSTX-U “umbrella.” Photo: Elle Starkman/ PPPL Office of Communications

The Department of Energy on September 8 announced funding for research at the National Spherical Tokamak Experiment Upgrade (NSTX-U), an Office of Science user facility at the DOE’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J.

Total planned funding is $17 million for the NSTX-U work over five years in duration. As much as $6 million in fiscal year 2020 dollars and out-year funding could be available this year, contingent on congressional appropriations and satisfactory progress.

The initiative will support experiments, data analysis, and computer modeling and simulation of plasma behavior. A major focus will be on the start of laying the scientific groundwork for a next-generation facility through better understanding of the behavior of plasmas in spherical tokamaks, the DOE said.

Fuel loading begins at Fuqing-5. Photo: CNNC

The loading of 177 fuel assemblies into the reactor core of Unit 5 at the Fuqing nuclear power plant began on September 4, following the issuance of the unit’s operating license from China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) announced on September 8. Construction of the reactor began in May 2015.

Unit 5 will be the first of the Hualong One reactors to enter commercial operation, expected later this year if all goes according to plan. Also known as the HPR1000, the Hualong One is a 1,000-MWe Generation III pressurized water reactor, indigenous to China. Unit 5’s twin HPR1000 at Fuqing, Unit 6, is scheduled to start contributing power to the grid next year.

Located in China’s Fujian Province, Fuqing also houses four 1,000-MWe CPR-1000 PWRs, with commercial start dates of November 2014, October 2015, October 2016, and September 2017, respectively.

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) on September 3 announced a research collaboration agreement with Kairos Power. Funded through CNL’s Canadian Nuclear Research Initiative (CNRI), the agreement includes research and engineering for technologies to separate, analyze, and store the tritium that would be created during the operation of Kairos Power’s proposed fluoride-salt–cooled small modular reactor.

North Anna nuclear power plant. Photo: Dominion Energy

Dominion Energy has filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to renew the North Anna nuclear power plant’s reactor operating licenses for additional 20-year terms, the Richmond, Va.–based utility announced on September 4. The NRC received the application on August 24.

North Anna, located in Mineral, Va., is home to twin 973-MWe three-loop Westinghouse pressurized water reactors. The filing makes the plant the second nuclear facility in the state to seek subsequent license renewal, after Dominion's filing in 2018 of a similar application to renew the licenses of its two Surry units—twin 874-MWe reactors. The NRC is currently reviewing that application.

(Following its April 2020 meeting, the NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards issued a report recommending approval of the Surry SLR applications [NN, June 2020, p. 15].)

According to Dominion, the North Anna and Surry units produce 31 percent of the electricity for the company’s 2.5 million customers and 95 percent of the carbon-free electricity in Virginia.

Full-scale mockup of the upper third of the NuScale Power Module. Photo: NuScale

With a design that has just emerged from a rigorous safety evaluation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and a customer—Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS)—getting ready to prepare a combined license (COL) application, what is next for Oregon-based NuScale Power and for near-term small modular reactor prospects in the United States? As milestones are reached, many want to know.

NuScale plans to supply twelve 60-MWe modules for a 720-MWe plant—called the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) by UAMPS—to be sited at Idaho National Laboratory. A smaller, 50-MWe module version of NuScale’s design recently became the first SMR to receive a final safety evaluation report (FSER) from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“The NRC design approval represents a significant de-risking factor for the CFPP,” said UAMPS spokesperson LaVarr Webb. The project is “making steady progress,” Webb said, adding that “UAMPS General Manager and CEO Doug Hunter has said it is much more important to do the project right than to do it fast.”

Despite high-profile calls to repeal the scandal-tainted Ohio Clean Air Program Act (H.B. 6) and recent legislation crafted toward that end in both the Ohio House and Senate (66 of 99 House members have reportedly co-sponsored Democratic or Republican bills to repeal H.B. 6), the policy behind the measure continues to garner support.

As reported here on August 26, the six commissioners from Ohio’s Lake and Ottawa counties—home to Davis-Besse and Perry, the two nuclear plants saved from early closure by H.B. 6—have made clear their opposition to an immediate repeal of the act.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) has begun a new webinar series, with the first entry titled “What’s new in low-dose radiation.” The July 22 event kicked off the Gilbert W. Beebe Webinar Series—an extension of the Beebe Symposium, which was established in 2002 to honor the scientific achievements of the late Gilbert Beebe, NAS staff member and designer/implementer of epidemiologic studies of populations exposed to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as the Chernobyl accident.

Duke Energy Progress and Duke Energy Carolinas have filed their 2020 Integrated Resource Plans (IRPs) with state regulators, parent company Duke Energy announced September 1.

The plans outline a range of options to achieve varying levels of carbon reduction, including, for the first time, potential pathways to achieve up to 70 percent carbon-emission reduction through policy and technology advancements.

Aggressive carbon-reduction targets are attainable, the company said, with investments in solar, wind, and energy storage, as well as with advanced nuclear, offshore wind, and other technologies “as they become available.” (Last September, Duke Energy declared its intention to seek subsequent license renewal for the 11 reactors it operates in six nuclear plants in the Carolinas [NN, Oct. 2019, p. 9].)

The Department of Energy announced on September 2 that it has issued $29 million in funding for 14 projects as part of its Galvanizing Advances in Market-aligned fusion for an Overabundance of Watts (GAMOW) program, which is jointly sponsored by the department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) and the Office of Science–Fusion Energy Sciences (SC-FES).

According to the DOE, GAMOW teams will work to close multiple fusion-specific technological gaps that will be needed to connect a net-energy-gain “fusion core,” once it is ready, to a deployable, commercially attractive fusion system.

South Carolina’s state-owned utility Santee Cooper and Westinghouse Electric Company have finalized the terms of a settlement for determining ownership of equipment associated with the Summer plant’s abandoned nuclear new-build project. The settlement agreement gives Santee Cooper full ownership of, and the ability to immediately begin marketing, all nonnuclear equipment, the utility announced on August 31.

The Nuclear Industry Association (NIA), the trade group for the United Kingdom’s civil nuclear industry, unveiled a new report yesterday that sets out a framework for cutting the cost of building new nuclear power plants in Britain.

The 27-page report, Nuclear Sector Deal: Nuclear New Build Cost Reduction, is available online.

An artist’s rendering of Natrium. Image: TerraPower

The Natrium reactor and energy system architecture, recently introduced by TerraPower and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH), offers baseload electricity output from a 345-MWe sodium fast reactor with the load-following flexibility of molten salt thermal storage. Stored heat can be used to boost the system’s output to 500 MWe for more than five and a half hours when needed, according to TerraPower. A company representative told Nuclear News that the company expects a commercial Natrium plant to cost $1 billion or less.

Rosatom officials and plant staff celebrate in the control room at Leningrad II-2 as the unit achieves first criticality. Photo: Rosatom

Rosenergoatom, the electric power division of Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear power corporation, announced on August 31 that Leningrad II-2 has achieved initial criticality. The unit is one of two Generation III+ VVER-1200 pressurized water reactors at the Leningrad nuclear plant.

Leningrad II-2 is scheduled for commercial start early next year, replacing Leningrad I-2, a 925-MWe RBMK-1000 light-water–cooled graphite-moderated reactor that will permanently cease operation at the end of 2020 after 45 years of service. Fuel loading at Leningrad II-2 began in July.

A special inspection was initiated on August 31 by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point nuclear power plant to review three Unit 3 trips, or unplanned shutdowns, that occurred between August 17 and August 20.

Workers on the fueling machine at Hunterston B. Photo: EDF Energy

EDF Energy has received approval from the United Kingdom’s Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) to restart the Hunterston B power station’s Unit 3 for a limited run, according to August 27 announcements from both the company and the regulator. EDF has permission to operate the unit for up to 16.425 terawatt days (approximately six months of operation), the ONR said.

EDF also announced that Hunterston B—located in North Ayrshire, along the western coast of Scotland—will begin its defueling phase no later than January 7, 2022, more than a year earlier than the expected retirement date of March 2023. The decision, EDF said, was made following a series of executive board and shareholders meetings.