Nuclear News

Kinzinger

With a note of desperation, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.) yesterday wrote a letter to President Biden and several top administration officials, asking them to consider the use of emergency powers to keep two Illinois nuclear power plants, Byron and Dresden, in operation, at least until state or federal laws are enacted to ensure their financial viability.

On June 16, the plants’ owner and operator, Exelon Generation, filed a deactivation notice for the two Byron units with grid operator PJM Interconnection. The requested deactivation dates for Byron-1 and -2 are September 14 and 16, respectively.

Exelon announced in August of last year that it would close the economically challenged Byron and Dresden facilities in the fall of 2021 without some form of state aid to provide compensation for their clean power.

A coalition of power companies and labor unions has filed a petition with the New York Public Service Commission (PSC), calling for a new program or tier under the state’s clean energy standard to encourage the development of zero-emission dispatchable energy systems.

Companies, universities, and national laboratories across the United States are working together to develop and demonstrate advanced nuclear technologies. To deploy those technologies on a global scale and maximize U.S. efforts to combat climate change, technology developers eyeing the export market must navigate rules and recommendations designed to ensure that international safeguards, security, and nonproliferation standards are met. Understanding and, where appropriate, integrating these standards early in the development process is crucial for streamlining export and technology deployment.

Benjamin

A federal grand jury has indicted a former Westinghouse Electric Company executive for allegedly concealing information regarding progress (or, more accurately, lack of progress) on the now defunct multibillion-dollar expansion project at the Summer nuclear plant.

Jeffrey A. Benjamin, who served as Westinghouse’s senior vice president for new plants and major products during the effort to build two AP1000 reactors at the Jenkinsville, S.C., facility, has been charged with 16 felony counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, and causing a publicly traded company to keep a false record, according to an August 18 news release from the U.S. States Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina. The charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years and a $5 million fine.

The lack of a specialized laboratory at Argonne National Laboratory’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) has slowed efforts to study irradiated materials at the facility. Things will change soon, however, with the addition of the new Activated Materials Laboratory that is planned to be built and operational by 2024.

Exelon Generation has received a grant from the Department of Energy to explore the potential benefits of on-site hydrogen production and has chosen its Nine Mile Point nuclear power plant as the demonstration site, the company announced on Wednesday. (In 2019, Exelon received a conditional commitment from the DOE to co-fund a hydrogen electrolyzer demonstration at a nuclear plant.) Located in Scriba, N.Y., Nine Mile Point consists of two boiling water reactors—the 620-MWe Unit 1 and the 1,287-MWe Unit 2.

At the box office or streaming at home, it’s fear, not truth, that sells. The laws of physics are swept aside, apocalypse is inevitable, and superpowered heroes wait until the last possible second to save the universe. It can make for great entertainment, but in the real world we need to stick with science over science fiction and be wowed by engineering, not special effects.

The truth is, science and innovation are incredible in their own right. From communications and machine learning to space travel and medical advances, technology is evolving in hyperdrive to solve real problems. With climate change and global warming here on earth, we don’t have to go looking for trouble in a galaxy far, far away.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have completed the first collaborative project under a two-year-old memorandum of cooperation (MOC) aimed at enhancing technical reviews of advanced reactor and small modular reactor technologies, the CNSC announced earlier this week.

The project, a 23-page joint report from the regulators on a white paper submitted last July by X-energy regarding reactor pressure vessel (RPV) construction code specifications for the company’s Xe-100 SMR, was released to the public on August 6. The Xe-100 is an 80-MWe unit that can be scaled into a “four-pack” 320-MWe power plant, according to X-energy.

Weinberg

Alvin M. Weinberg, a founder, Fellow, and fifth president (1959–1960) of the American Nuclear Society, was a Manhattan Project physicist who studied at the University of Chicago before building a celebrated career in Oak Ridge, Tenn., where he influenced the development of peaceful uses of nuclear energy in the United States. Weinberg’s personal files tell the story of his decades of work in Oak Ridge from the 1940s to the 1980s, and the Alvin Weinberg Archive Project was created to digitize the archive, ensuring that it would be accessible to researchers and the public.

A place in time: Weinberg arrived in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in 1945, and soon became head of the Physics Division of Clinton Laboratories. In 1948, the laboratory was renamed Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Weinberg was appointed director of research, a role he held until 1955, when he was named laboratory director. In 1974, Weinberg moved 17 file cabinets from ORNL to Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU), where he founded the Institute for Energy Analysis (IEA) and served as its director until his retirement in 1985. Under Weinberg’s guidance, the IEA studied atmospheric carbon dioxide and its effect on global warming, as well as alternative energy sources.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will consider in its rulemaking process issues raised in an August 2018 petition from the Nuclear Energy Institute regarding notification requirements for nonemergency events, according to a notice published in the August 12 Federal Register. The NRC docketed the petition in November 2018 and received public input on it through February 4, 2019.

The petition requested that the NRC amend 10 CFR 50.72, “Immediate Notification for Operating Nuclear Power Reactors,” by removing its nonemergency notification requirements. Currently, 50.72 requires licensees to notify the NRC one, four, or eight hours after the occurrence of a nonemergency event, depending on its nature.

NuScale Power has signed a memorandum of understanding with Xcel Energy to explore the feasibility of the utility’s serving as a plant operator at NuScale plants, the Portland, Ore.-based small modular reactor developer announced earlier this week.

Xcel owns and, through subsidiary Northern States Power Company, operates Minnesota’s two nuclear plants, Monticello and Prairie Island. The Monticello facility houses one 671-MWe boiling water reactor, while Prairie Island has twin 550-MWe pressurized water reactors.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is celebrating the yield from an experiment at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) of more than 1.3 megajoules of energy—eight times more than the yield from experiments conducted this spring and 25 times more than NIF’s 2018 record yield.

The Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) was founded in Garching, Germany, in 1960, the same year that its Wendelstein 1a stellarator began operation. Wendelstein 7-X is now operating at IPP’s site in Greifswald, Germany, and one of the objectives the device was designed to achieve has recently been confirmed, IPP announced on August 12. Analysis by IPP scientists shows that the twisted magnetic coils of the device successfully control plasma energy losses, indicating that stellarator fusion devices could be suitable for power plants, according to a detailed analysis of experimental results published on August 11 in Nature.

Florida Power and Light Company, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy, has filed a subsequent license renewal application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the two-unit St. Lucie nuclear power plant, seeking a second 20-year renewal of the reactors’ operating licenses.

If there’s one thing Steven Nesbit enjoys in life, it’s the challenge brought on by change. Whether that means growing up as a self-­described “Marine brat” and moving five times before junior high school or transitioning in his professional career from the engineering side of the nuclear industry to the spent fuel and policy-­driven side, Nesbit welcomes change. “I don’t mind turning the crank for a while, but I like to learn new things, and the best way to do that is to do new things.”

In the latest step toward its recently stated goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, Newark, N.J.–based Public Service Enterprise Group, owner of the Hope Creek and Salem nuclear plants, has entered into an agreement to sell its 6,750-MW fossil generating portfolio to newly formed subsidiaries of ArcLight Energy Partners Fund VII—a fund controlled by ArcLight Capital Partners. (ArcLight Capital is a Boston-based private equity firm, founded in 2001 and focused on energy infrastructure investments.) The $1.92 billion deal, announced by PSEG on August 12, is expected to be completed late in the fourth quarter of 2021 or the first quarter of 2022.

I still clearly remember a day in 2005. I was sitting at my desk when my boss at the time, Roosevelt Groves (then supply director of operations at Exelon), called me into his office with a select group and announced that we needed to figure out this “parts issue thing.”

Why was this “thing” such a pressing issue that it required an impromptu meeting? It was because manufacturing defects were having a significant impact on Exelon’s reliability. And this problem was well out of our direct control.

Last week, Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.) and Mike Doyle (D., Pa.) introduced legislation that would establish a financial credit program for economically challenged nuclear power plants and would authorize funding for “nuclear closure communities.”

The Preserving Existing Nuclear Energy Generation Act (H.R. 4960) is the House companion to certain provisions in a Senate proposal that was reported favorably by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on July 14 and was subsequently included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan package that the Senate passed earlier this week via a 69–30 vote.

Luria.

Newhouse.

Reps. Dan Newhouse (R., Wash.) and Elaine Luria (D., Va.) late last month introduced legislation to establish a long-term nuclear power purchase agreement program that would direct the secretary of energy to enter into one or more agreements to purchase nuclear power from reactors licensed after January 2020. Dubbed the Nuclear Power Purchase Agreements Act, the bill would also require the secretary to enter into one national security–related nuclear power purchase agreement prior to 2026 to provide reliable and resilient power in “remote off-grid” and emergency scenarios.

The Department of Energy has issued a request for information (RFI), inviting public comment on topics related to the establishment of its Uranium Reserve Program to support U.S. fuel cycle capabilities. Notice of the RFI was published in the August 11 Federal Register, with a deadline of September 10 for submitting comments.