Mexico’s Laguna Verde nuclear power plant. Photo: HFStudios

Mexico’s Ministry of Energy (SENER) announced on July 17 that it has approved the renewal of the operating license for Unit 1 at Laguna Verde, the country’s only nuclear power plant.

Laguna Verde is located on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, in the state of Veracruz. Unit 1 is a General Electric–supplied 777-MWe BWR-5 boiling water reactor that began commercial operation 30 years ago this month. Its near-twin Unit 2, rated at 775 MWe, first came on line in April 1995.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has extended the deadline for comments on its “Proposed Rule for Emergency Preparedness for Small Modular Reactors and Other New Technologies” to allow more time for members of the public and other stakeholders to develop and submit their comments. The proposed rule and associated draft regulatory guide apply to non-light-water reactors and certain nonpower facilities, and were originally published in the Federal Register on May 12 with a deadline of July 27. The new deadline is September 25.

Uranium producers around the world have suffered through years of record low uranium prices. In 2019 the United States recorded its lowest total uranium production—174,000 lb U3O8—since the U.S. Energy Information Administration began collecting data in 1949, according to the agency’s Today in Energy analysis of July 17.

U.S. uranium producers asked the federal government to come to their aid in January 2018, and President Donald Trump created the U.S. Nuclear Fuel Working Group (NFWG) in July 2019. While the NFWG issued a report in April 2020 recommending support for the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle, uranium producers are in a waiting game once again as the U.S. House of Representatives works on Fiscal Year 2021 appropriations legislation.

Technicians at the Leningrad II-2 plant, where fuel loading recently took place. Photo: Rosenergoatom

The first of 163 nuclear fuel assemblies has been loaded into Leningrad II-2, marking the beginning of the Generation III+ unit’s physical startup, Rosenergoatom announced on July 19.

The electric power division of Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned atomic energy corporation, Rosenergoatom is the operator of all of Russia’s nuclear power plants. The fuel for Leningrad II-2, a 1,085-MWe VVER-1200 pressurized water reactor, was manufactured at the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant, part of Rosatom subsidiary TVEL.

UK EPR Design Centre, Bristol, England. Image: EDF Energy

EDF Energy has opened a new engineering design facility in Bristol, England, to support the next phase of construction at the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset, the company announced on July 14. The UK EPR Design Centre at Aztec West brings together nuclear designers and engineers from EDF and British engineering partners and suppliers, including Framatome UK, Atkins, Jacobs, Assystem, Anotech, and Vulcain, the announcement said.

This article first appeared in the May 2020 issue of Nuclear News.

Nuclear News reached out to leaders in the nuclear community to ask them for their views on the capacity benefits that come from nuclear. We received wide-ranging responses, from how capacity factors provide examples of the excellence of nuclear professionals, to the work being done at universities to continually improve capacity factors, to the importance of adding the word “inherent” to the conversation because forms of energy are different from one another and so inherent capacity factor is a critical piece of understanding.

If you have your own thoughts about capacity factor, please let Nuclear News know. If we collect enough comments, it may result in a Part 2 of this article in the future.

Thirty-two companies and other entities, including trade unions and nuclear supply chain businesses, have formed a consortium to urge the U.K. government to greenlight Sizewell C, the proposed nuclear new–build project at the Sizewell site in Suffolk, according to a July 14 announcement by EDF Energy.

The sixth and most recent installment in the ANS Young Members Group (YMG) Spotlight on National Labs webinar series explored nuclear science and engineering at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on July 16.

The UAE’s Barakah nuclear power plant. Photo: ENEC

The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) has completed construction of Unit 2 at the Barakah nuclear plant, the company announced on July 14. The plant, the Arab world’s first such facility, is located in the Al Dhafra region of Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates’ capital city.

Hot functional testing of the unit had been completed in August 2018, followed by structural integrity testing and integrated leak rate testing in March last year.

With construction complete, the unit has now been officially turned over to Nawah Energy Company, ENEC’s operating and maintenance subsidiary. According to the announcement, the focus at Barakah-2 now shifts to completing the operational readiness preparations, regulatory inspections, and international assessments required for obtaining an operating license from the Federal Authority for Nuclear Regulation, the UAE’s nuclear regulator.

A team from Arizona Public Service’s (APS) Palo Verde nuclear plant, in Wintersburg, Ariz., has won the Nuclear Energy Institute’s “Best of the Best” Top Innovative Practice (TIP) Award for developing in-house software applications that use machine learning to automate such time-consuming tasks as screening reports or searching maintenance logs. The award was announced July 9 during NEI’s first-ever virtual TIP Awards presentation.

Around the world in the mid-March time frame, conditions were changing rapidly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as was everyone’s understanding of it. For nuclear power plants, the pandemic meant dealing with new government regulations and restrictions that were put in place. “U.S.-based support of international clients was especially challenging,” said Mike Little, president and principal officer of Reston, Va.–based Dominion Engineering Inc. (DEI). “With border closures going into effect, we were not only focusing on the health and safety of our workers abroad, but also making sure they would be able to return home. Providing remote subject matter expertise from the U.S. through our international service partners was critical to successful job execution during this time.”

The Department of Energy on July 16 issued a request for information (RFI) for the operation of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. The DOE's Office of Environmental Management is currently in the acquisition planning phase to offer a new contract to provide services at WIPP. The RFI solicits input, through capability statements, from contractors that have the capabilities necessary to meet the major elements of scope for the upcoming competitive procurement process.

Nuclear Engineering International reported this week on a new study for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) program. The 90-page study, “Cost and Performance Requirements for Flexible Advanced Nuclear Plants in Future US Power Markets,” finds that advanced reactors that cost less than $3,000/kW will create the most value for plant owners. The work was funded by ARPA-E’s Modeling-Enhanced Innovations Trailblazing Nuclear Energy Reinvigoration (MEITNER) program.

Unit 1 of Canada’s four-unit Darlington nuclear power plant, located in Clarington, Ontario, set a North American record on July 9 with 895 consecutive days of operation, according to Ontario Power Generation (OPG), the plant’s owner and operator.

The previous record of 894 days was held by Pickering-7, also part of OPG’s nuclear fleet. The reactors at the Darlington and Pickering plants are CANDU pressurized heavy-water reactors. Darlington-1, an 878-MWe PHWR, has been on line since January 26, 2018.

Closed vessel testing has been completed at Vogtle-3 at the Georgia Power site near Waynesboro, Ga., the company announced on July 14. The completion of the milestone prepares Unit 3 for cold hydro testing, which is required ahead of initial fuel load.

Vogtle-3 and -4 are the first new nuclear power reactors built in the United States in the past three decades. The new units will be powered by AP1000 reactors.

All energy sources, including small modular reactors, are being considered to meet Puerto Rico’s energy needs, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Peter J. Brown said on July 15 during the second day of PR-Grid Virtual, a three-day online conference on Puerto Rico’s energy grid. Brown’s comments were quickly circulated on Twitter by people who are already working to make nuclear power a reality for Puerto Rico, including members of the Nuclear Alternative Project (NAP), a non-profit organization of Puerto Rican engineers in the nuclear industry.

On July 16, 1945, the research and development efforts of the nation’s once-secret Manhattan Project were realized when the detonation of the world’s first atomic device occurred in Alamogordo, N.M., more than 200 miles south of Los Alamos, in what was code-named the Trinity Test—a name inspired by the poems of John Donne.

On the 75th anniversary of this landmark event, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) is highlighting the cleanup, long-term management, and historical significance of the Manhattan Project sites—Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford, Wash.—that were conceived, built, and operated in secrecy as they supported weapons development during World War II.

Craig Piercy

Originally published in the July 2020 issue of Nuclear News.

Dear reader:

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the new Nuclear News! What you are seeing is truly the product of a team effort, led by our Director of Publications John Fabian and veteran Editor-in-Chief Rick Mi­chal, to fundamentally reimagine the way we bring you news and insights from the wide world of nu­clear science and technology. Nuclear News has always been the flagship publication of the American Nuclear Society, but in recent decades our visual format has gotten a little, well . . . long in the tooth.

Mary Lou Dunzik-Gougar

Originally published in the July 2020 issue of Nuclear News.

It’s my first column as ANS president and I’m limited to 400 words? Well, it turns out you can say a lot with a little. Take, for example, “Shelter in place,” and “Say their names.” These phrases have been at the forefront of our consciousness in recent months, and each invokes a host of emotions and mental images. What should the ANS catchphrase be? “Into the Nuclear Future”? “Just Nuke It”? “Nuclear, it keeps going . . . and going . . . and going . . . ”? How about, “Nuclear: The choice of a new generation”?

The nuclear community’s reaction to last month’s proposal from the International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to eliminate its legacy prohibition on financing international nuclear energy projects was unsurprisingly positive (see here and here). On the negative side of things, however, was the reaction from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt) and Edward Markey (D., Mass.), expressed in a July 10 letter to the DFC.