Nuclear News

The main construction phase for Unit 3 at Egypt’s El Dabaa nuclear power plant project has begun, Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation Rosatom announced last week.

On December 20, 1951, researchers used energy produced by Experimental Breeder Reactor-I near Arco, Idaho, to illuminate four 200-watt lightbulbs. Since then, utilities have built commercial nuclear power plants in the United States almost exclusively to generate electricity. This has worked well alongside other power generation and transmission infrastructure—large oil- and coal-fired, natural gas turbine or hydroelectric plants, and a relatively simple electrical grid designed to deliver reliable power.

Humanity is now embarking on an epic and complex energy transformation across the grid, industry, and transportation. Renewables like wind and solar are contributing an increasing share of carbon-free electricity to the grid, but that contribution is variable and hard to predict—sometimes those sources produce more electricity than the grid needs, and sometimes less.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

This month’s Nuclear News takes a look at nuclear’s reliability as an energy source, along with its contributions to the overall resiliency of our electricity grid. Capacity factors in the U.S. remain at an all-time high, and nuclear’s strength in maintaining a functional electricity distribution system in times of stress, whether by storm or war, is gaining public acceptance and appreciation.

Earlier this spring, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission hosted its first in-person Regulatory Information Conference (RIC) since the onset of COVID. Though well organized and informative, it was easy to sense the frustration of attendees—over things like the stringency of the NRC’s proposed Part 53 regulatory framework for advanced reactors and the perceived lack of preparedness for the coming onslaught of license applications. There was a general sense, as one friend put it, that the commission is “wrapped around the axle of administrative procedures and precedents.”

At a virtual press conference this morning, Westinghouse Electric Company president and chief executive officer Patrick Fragman announced the launch of the AP300 small modular reactor, a 300-MWe, 900-MWth single-loop pressurized water reactor based on the company’s larger AP1000 unit. Fragman was joined at the conference by David Durham, president of energy systems for Westinghouse, and Rita Baranwal, the firm’s chief technology officer. The company also released a short video introducing the AP300 on YouTube.

Two South Korean financial institutions—the Korea Trade Insurance Corporation (K-Sure) and the Export-Import Bank of Korea (KEXIM)—have signed pacts with Holtec International and Hyundai Engineering & Construction (a Hyundai Motor Group subsidiary) to provide support to Holtec’s SMR-160 projects around the world, the American firm announced on May 2.

Here is a recap of industry happenings over the past month:

ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE

Site selected for Xe-100 SMR deployment

Dow and X-energy have announced that the first commercial deployment of X-energy’s Xe-100 advanced small modular reactor will be at one of Dow’s sites on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Previously, Energy Northwest’s Columbia nuclear power plant in Washington state was the expected location for deployment. Energy Northwest has said it still hopes to deploy an Xe-100 SMR before 2030.

X-energy also announced that it is building a regional fleet management, monitoring, and training facility called the Plant Support Center–East in Frederick, Md., to support the deployment of its SMRs.

Georgia Power has announced another key milestone for the Vogtle nuclear expansion project near Waynesboro, Ga.—the completion of hot functional testing at Unit 4. This achievement marks another significant step toward commercial operation for the Generation III+ AP1000 reactor, which is projected to enter service late in the fourth quarter 2023 or in the first quarter 2024.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Department of Safeguards recently qualified Savannah River National Laboratory to produce microparticle reference materials that can be used to evaluate measurement quality in support of the Network of Analytical Laboratories (NWAL) and the IAEA’s verification mission. SRNL announced the development on April 25.

Framatome is prepared to manufacture a novel molybdenum-uranium (U-Mo) fuel to extend the life and safe operation of the Forschungsreaktor München II (FRM II) research reactor in Germany. A new fuel supply—one that uses uranium enriched to less than 20 percent U-235—means the FRM II can continue to supply neutrons to industry and the scientific community. The fuel is “Europe’s low-enriched fuel with the highest density ever realized for research reactor operations,” according to Framatome’s April 27 announcement.

Attracting more than 2,000 attendees, the 2023 Waste Management Symposia was held February 26–March 2 in Phoenix, Ariz. For many, this year’s conference was a return to business as usual, with a packed exhibit hall and well-­attended technical sessions, as the upheaval brought about by the pandemic that began three years earlier seemed a thing of the past. Not that those who gathered in Phoenix threw any caution to the unseasonably cold and rainy winds that descended across Arizona this year.

Richard Meserve, who for more than two years chaired the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Consensus Committee on Laying the Foundation for New and Advanced Nuclear Reactors in the United States, introduced its 300-page report on April 27 during a public briefing.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) will offer an estimated $24.5 million to minority-serving institutions to help foster a sustainable and diverse science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce pipeline within the office.

Steven Arndt
president@ans.org

In our daily lives, most of us take for granted that electricity will be available. We pull up to our garages in our cars and push the garage door opener and it works. Our refrigerators stay cold. Our houses stay warm. Our lights come on when we flip the switch. But reliable electricity doesn’t happen by accident. One of the most important parts of our industrial infrastructure, a reliable electric grid is achieved through deliberate design that uses a mix of sources that can achieve reliability, low cost, and other specific attributes like low environmental impact. Maintaining a reliable electric grid requires planning, analysis, and understanding of what is happening in the world. Many of the traditional grid reliability standards no longer recognize the reality of today’s constrained electric grids, nor do they account for fuel supply, weather, or the high penetration of renewables.

The engineering company Jacobs announced last week that it has been awarded a four-year contract to design and engineer remotely operated tools for the ITER fusion project in southern France. The contract, which includes a possible two-year extension, covers work on up to 25 diagnostic ports and systems used for operating and sustaining the ITER experimental machine, which is currently under construction.

Forty years ago, Nuclear News published an analysis of U.S. nuclear plant operations over the three years that followed the Three Mile Island-2 accident in 1979, scrutinizing capacity factors as a measure of how well a reactor was performing compared to its potential. The purpose: “To call attention to the units that have had the best results, and to explore the question: What have the personnel at these top units been doing right?”

The North Carolina Senate on April 26 unanimously (48–0) endorsed a measure that, if signed into law, would open the door to new nuclear development in the state—both fission and fusion.

The Promote Clean Energy bill (S.B. 678)—introduced just this month and now with the state’s House for consideration—replaces the term “renewable energy” in statutory language with “clean energy” and adds nuclear to the new term’s definition.

NuScale Power and TerraPower both signed agreements earlier this week with South Korean entities to support development of the American firms’ respective reactor technologies.

Abilene Christian University’s Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing (NEXT) Lab continues to make progress toward building a molten salt research reactor (MSRR) on the university’s campus. NEXT Lab submitted an application for a construction permit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last August, and in November the agency announced it had docketed the application—the first for a new research reactor in more than 30 years.

Denmark-based Seaborg Technologies, developer of the compact molten salt reactor (CMSR), has teamed with two South Korean firms—shipbuilder Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) and nuclear plant owner and operator Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP)—to form a consortium for the development of floating nuclear plants featuring the CMSR. The consortium agreement was signed in Seoul on April 20.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy released an updated version of its consent-based siting process on April 25. The DOE will use the process to engage with willing communities to site one or more consolidated interim storage facilities for commercial spent nuclear fuel, reducing the number of locations where spent fuel is stored and easing the burden on U.S. taxpayers.