Horizon Nuclear Power is in talks with the U.K. government to revitalize plans to build the Wylfa Newydd nuclear power plant in northwestern Wales, the Financial Times reported last week.
The American Nuclear Society has formed a Task Force on Public Investment in Nuclear Research and Development to assess the R&D needs of the U.S. nuclear technology enterprise and the federal investment required to meet those needs. The task force will identify the overarching objectives of U.S. nuclear R&D and identify specific metrics that can be used to evaluate progress toward those objectives.
With the Democratic Convention now under way, it is good to remember that all the leading climate scientists say that we cannot address climate change without significant nuclear power, Jim Conca noted in his opinion column on the Forbes blog site. Supporting nuclear power - or not - is a clear signal about how serious a candidate is about climate change and supporting science over mere activism, Conca said.
Finnish energy company Fortum Power and Heat Oy has initiated an environmental impact assessment procedure for the two reactors at its Loviisa nuclear power plant with the aim of operating the units for 20 years beyond their current license expiration dates of 2027 (for Unit 1) and 2030 (for Unit 2).
The Department of Energy approved the start of operations at the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) at the Savannah River Site (SRS), authorizing hot (radioactive) operations to begin at the facility, the agency announced on August 17.
The approval comes five months ahead of the current baseline completion date of January 31, 2021. Parsons Corporation, which designed and built the first-of-a-kind facility, will operate it for one year.
“This is a considerable achievement for EM's (Environmental Management) cleanup program and will drive significant progress in treating the tank waste at SRS in the next decade,” said William “Ike” White, senior advisor for the EM to the Under Secretary for Science.
An article recently published on the IEEE Energywise blog heralds “Spacecraft of the Future,” which could be powered by lattice confinement fusion. While lattice confinement fusion is not a new concept and is definitely not ready for practical applications, it has been detected within metal samples by NASA researchers at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, using an electron accelerator–driven experimental process.
Pompeo
Morawiecki
While the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement grabbed more attention, it was not the only U.S.-Poland pact inked in Warsaw last week. The two countries also initialed a draft bilateral agreement to cooperate in the development of Poland’s civil nuclear power program, according to the State Department. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on August 15 to discuss the partnership, in addition to other matters including the improvement of regional energy and infrastructure through the Three Seas Initiative, the department said.
The National Commission on Grid Resilience (NCGR) has released a report recommending a series of actions to better address threats to the bulk power system in the United States. While noting that “substantial progress has been made in a short time” toward improving grid resilience, the report declares that “more needs to be done, and in record time.”
The Department of Energy announced on August 14 that $5.1 million would go to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to develop modular-in-chamber electron beam welding capabilities to support reactor pressure vessel welding for NuScale Power’s small modular reactor design. The project has a total value of nearly $6.5 million, of which the DOE will provide about $5.1 million.
The Department of Energy established the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2010 as a national collaboration of government, academia, and industry to help the nuclear industry extend the life of the current reactor fleet and develop more efficient next-generation reactors. On August 13, ORNL issued a news release and video to celebrate the achievements of CASL, which concluded its mission in June.
PPPL physicists Raffi Nazikian (left) and Qiming Hu, with a figure from their research. Photo: PPPL/Elle Starkman
Stars contain their plasma with the force of gravity, but here on earth, plasma in fusion tokamaks must be magnetically confined. That confinement is tenuous, because tokamaks are subject to edge localized modes (ELM)—intense bursts of heat and particles that must be controlled to prevent instabilities and damage to the fusion reactor.
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and at General Atomics (GA) recently published a paper in Physical Review Letters explaining this tokamak restriction and a potential path to overcome it. They have developed a new model for ELM suppression in the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, which is operated by GA for the DOE. PPPL physicists Qiming Hu and Raffi Nazikian are the lead authors of the paper, which was announced on August 10 by PPPL.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has studied issues and has written many new relevant documents to prepare for potential application submissions for non-LWRs.
A cutaway view of EBR-1
Over the past several years there has been renewed interest in the development and licensing of advanced reactors that will be very different from the light-water reactors that are currently used to generate electricity in the United States. For example, some advanced reactors will use gas, liquid metal, or molten salt as a coolant, some will have a fast neutron spectrum, and some will be much smaller in size than current generation LWRs. The many possible applications for these reactors include electricity production, process heat, research and testing, isotope generation, and space applications.
To prepare for potential non-LWR application submittals, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has studied the issues and written many new relevant documents. In addition, there is a long history of the NRC regulating non-LWRs that might be useful to study to help in addressing new submittals. To some extent, this has been chronicled in general histories of the NRC. Our objective herein is to describe the NRC’s history specifically with the licensing of non-LWRs and to explain some of the most salient regulatory and licensing issues.
This year’s Utility Working Conference Virtual Summit, held on August 11, had a dynamic opening plenary and a packed roster of informative sessions. Following is a recap of a 4:00 p.m. (EDT) session that took place.
Don't miss Newswire's coverage of the opening plenary and the sessions at 12:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. (EDT).
Shaping a regulatory framework to support future innovation
Session organizers Amir Afzali and Brandon Chisholm of Southern Company crafted a session titled “Advanced Reactors: Innovation in Nuclear Technology Needs Agile, Efficient, and Predictable Regulatory Framework” in the Regulatory Relations track of the UWC Virtual Summit. The panel discussion was focused on how to enable innovation in a regulated industry to support advanced reactor deployments within 10 years. “The right regulatory framework can enable innovation, and right-sizing the regulatory requirements incentivizes innovation,” Chisholm said during his opening comments.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has scheduled four webinars in late August and early September to present its draft environmental findings and receive comments on Holtec International’s proposed consolidated spent nuclear fuel storage facility in New Mexico. Webinars were previously held on June 23 and July 9.
As published in the August 13 Federal Register, the public comment webinars will be held on August 20 from 6–9 p.m., August 25 from 2–5 p.m., August 26 from 6–9 p.m., and September 2 from 11 a.m.–2 p.m. All times are Eastern. Information for the webinars is posted on the NRC’s Public Meetings webpage.
The Flamanville nuclear plant. Photo: EDF
The French nuclear safety authority, Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN), has released an International Atomic Energy Agency report on a pre-operational safety review team (pre-OSART) mission conducted in 2019 at the Flamanville nuclear plant to review the safety status of its Unit 3 EPR reactor, currently under construction.
According to the report, the pre-OSART mission at Flamanville-3 reviewed the following areas: leadership and management for safety, training and qualification, operations, maintenance, technical support, operating experience feedback, radiation protection, chemistry, emergency preparedness and response, accident management, human-technology-organization interaction, and commissioning. The review was performed by a team from Canada, Finland, Germany, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the United States, along with IAEA staff members and observers from Russia and South Korea.
This year’s Utility Working Conference Virtual Summit, held on August 11, had a dynamic opening plenary and a packed roster of informative sessions. Following are recaps of some of the 2:00 p.m. (EDT) sessions that took place.
Don't miss Newswire's coverage of the opening plenary and the sessions at 12:00 pm.
This year’s Utility Working Conference, held on August 11, had a dynamic opening plenary and a packed roster of informative sessions. Following are recaps of some of the 12:00 p.m. (EDT) sessions that took place.
You can read about the UWC's opening plenary here.
Look for more meeting recaps later today.
Overall findings of a survey of Nuclear Regulatory Commission personnel indicate that while the NRC maintains a few strengths compared to external benchmarks, results have declined since 2015 in a number of areas, according to a recent report from the NRC’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG).
The survey was conducted in February 2020 by Willis Towers Watson, a global risk-management, insurance brokerage, and advisory firm that has partnered with the OIG for more than 20 years to assess the NRC’s safety culture and climate, as well as other aspects of employee experience.
Bowing to current COVID-19 realities but buoyed by the success of June’s virtual Annual Meeting, ANS event planners returned to the virtual realm for this year’s Utility Working Conference. Originally scheduled for August 9–12 at Marco Island, Fla., the condensed event was held Wednesday, August 11, wherever registrants’ computer devices happened to be located.
In addition to 26 educational sessions and workshops, UWC 2020 featured an opening plenary session titled “Achieving Transformational Change: A leadership discussion,” moderated by Bob Coward, MPR Associates principal officer and ANS past president (2017–2018). Plenary panelists included representatives from three utilities—Arizona Public Service (APS), Exelon, and Xcel Energy—plus the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In addition to coverage of the opening plenary further below, Newswire also covered other UWC sessions from the day, which are available for reading here:
The opening plenary coverage starts directly below:
Craig Piercy
Originally published in the August 2020 issue of Nuclear News.
Dear reader:
Let’s face it. The U.S. nuclear manufacturing and supply chain is not what it once was. In the 1960s and ’70s, America was the dominant player in the global nuclear industry. Under the auspices of Atoms for Peace, U.S. companies successfully provided reactor systems and associated services to countries across the world and held significant sway over the course of future nuclear development in the international arena. America was at the top of its nuclear game.