The Byron nuclear plant is scheduled to close this September. Photo: Exelon

Amid all the talk of last week’s winter storm and the resultant grid debacle in Texas, Exelon on Monday issued a press release informing customers of just how reliably its Illinois nuclear power plants have been operating this winter.

The release might also be seen as a message to state lawmakers, who have yet to produce any legislation to aid the utility’s financially challenged nuclear facilities—of which two, Byron and Dresden, have been slated for retirement later this year, given the (so-far) absence of such legislation.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is seeking public comment on a proposed rule that would amend the licensing, inspection, special projects, and annual fees charged to the agency’s applicants and licensees for fiscal year 2021.

Published in the February 22 Federal Register, the proposed fee rule reflects a total NRC budget authority of $844.4 million, a drop of $11.2 million from FY 2020.

The amendments are mandated by the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA), the nuclear industry–backed legislation signed into law by President Trump in January 2019 (NN, Feb. 2019, p. 17). NEIMA requires the NRC to recover approximately 100 percent of its total budget authority in FY 2021, except for specific excluded activities. (Previously, the requirement was approximately 90 percent.) In addition, NEIMA established a new cap for annual fees for operating reactors and included requirements to improve the accuracy of invoice for service fees.

This high-resolution still image is from a video taken by several cameras as NASA’s Perseverance rover touched down on Mars on February 18. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Perseverance rover, which successfully landed on Mars on February 18, is powered in part by the first plutonium produced at Department of Energy laboratories in more than 30 years. The radioactive decay of Pu-238 provides heat to radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) like the one onboard Perseverance and would also be used by the Dynamic Radioisotope Power System, currently under development, which is expected to provide three times the power of RTGs.

Idaho National Laboratory is scaling up the production of Pu-238 to help meet NASA’s production goal of 1.5 kg per year by 2026, the DOE announced on February 17.

Magwood

Peters

ANS Fellows William D. Magwood IV and Mark T. Peters have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Magwood, an ANS member since 1983, is the secretary general for the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency. He was elected for “leadership and contributions to research programs that drive innovation in global nuclear energy enterprises.”

Peters, an ANS member since 2007 and the executive vice president for Laboratory Operations at Battelle, was elected “for leadership and contributions in advancing U.S. nuclear energy capabilities and infrastructure.”

The black star represents the epicenter of the February 13 earthquake. Image: USGS

There has been no off-site impact from the February 13 earthquake that struck off the east coast of Japan near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) reported on February 19. The earthquake, however, has caused a water leakage from two of the site's primary containment vessels (PCVs).

A nuclear alert order was issued by the plant about 20 minutes after the earthquake, and the water treatment and transfer facilities were shut down. Inspections after the event revealed no anomalies and the nuclear alert order was rescinded on February 14.

The nuclear plant in Fukushima Prefecture in northeastern Japan is now undergoing decommissioning.

A new survey exploring the attitudes of Canadians toward climate change and their expectations and level of support for government intervention to tackle the issue finds that 86 percent believe that Canada should invest in clean technologies, including renewables and nuclear energy.

The survey, conducted by research and strategy firm Abacus Data between January 29 and February 3, was commissioned by the Canadian Nuclear Association (CNA).

CNA says: “It’s clear there is strong support for the government to implement a mix of solutions to address the [climate change] challenge, including investing in renewables and clean nuclear technologies,” stated John Gorman, CNA president and chief executive officer, in a February 18 press release. “We continue to see that the more understanding Canadians have, the more they support zero-emissions nuclear technologies to help reach our net zero 2050 goal. This includes investment in small modular reactors, which Canadians believe bring value to replace carbon-based fuels with clean electricity, decarbonize high-emissions industries, and transition remote communities away from reliance on diesel.”

Bulgaria’s Kozloduy nuclear plant

Portland, Ore.–based NuScale Power has signed a memorandum of understanding with Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant–New Build Plc (KNPP-NB) to discuss the possible deployment of NuScale’s small modular reactor technology at Bulgaria’s Kozloduy site. KNPP-NB was established in 2012 to commission new nuclear power capacity at Kozloduy.

Specifics: Under the MOU, NuScale will support KNPP-NB as it analyzes the suitability of NuScale’s SMRs for Kozloduy, located in northwest Bulgaria. The analysis will include the development of a project time line “with milestone deliverables for a feasibility study” and a project-specific cost estimate, as well as engineering, planning, licensing, and other activities, according to a February 17 NuScale press release.

The Environmental Protection Agency has awarded three contracts for cleanup efforts at more than 50 abandoned uranium mine sites in and around the Navajo Nation in the southwestern United States. The Navaho Area Abandoned Mine Remedial Construction and Services Contracts, worth up to $220 million over the next five years, were awarded to the Red Rock Remediation Joint Venture, Environmental Quality Management, and Arrowhead Contracting, the agency announced on February 11.

According to the EPA, the cleanup work is slated to begin later this year, following the completion of assessments in coordination with the Navajo Nation EPA, the tribe’s environmental agency. The sites are in New Mexico’s Grants Mining District and 10 Navajo Nation chapters. The companies selected have experience working on hazardous waste sites across the country, including cleaning up other abandoned mine sites in the Southwest, the EPA said.

NextEra Energy will be allowed to revise the emergency preparedness plan for its Duane Arnold nuclear power plant to reflect the plant’s decommissioning status, having been granted exemptions from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s emergency preparedness and planning requirements, the agency announced on February 17. A single-unit boiling water reactor plant located in Palo, Iowa, approximately eight miles northwest of Cedar Rapids, Duane Arnold was shut down in August 2020 after a derecho damaged the plant’s cooling towers.

The NRC regularly issues exemptions from its licensing requirements to nuclear power plants that are transitioning to decommissioning, where the risk of an off-site radiological release is significantly lower, and the types of possible accidents significantly fewer, than at an operating reactor.

Once NextEra implements the exemptions, state and local governments can rely on comprehensive emergency management (“all hazard”) planning for off-site emergency response should an event occur at Duane Arnold. As a result, there will not be a 10-mile emergency planning zone as currently identified in Duane Arnold’s license. The plant will maintain an on-site emergency plan and response capabilities, including the continued notification of state government officials in the event of an emergency declaration.

Members of the Perseverance rover team in Mission Control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory react after receiving confirmation of a successful landing. Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls

NASA mission control and space science fans around the world celebrated the safe landing of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover on February 18 after a journey of 203 days and 293 million miles. Landing on Mars is difficult—only about 50 percent of all previous Mars landing attempts have succeeded—and a successful landing for Perseverance, the fifth rover that NASA has sent to Mars, was not assured. Confirmation of the successful touchdown was announced at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., at 3:55 p.m. EST.

“This landing is one of those pivotal moments for NASA, the United States, and space exploration globally—when we know we are on the cusp of discovery and sharpening our pencils, so to speak, to rewrite the textbooks,” said acting NASA administrator Steve Jurczyk. “The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission embodies our nation’s spirit of persevering even in the most challenging of situations, inspiring, and advancing science and exploration. The mission itself personifies the human ideal of persevering toward the future and will help us prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.”

Only radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) can provide the long-lasting, compact power source that Perseverance needs to carry out its long-term exploratory mission. Perseverance carries an RTG powered by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238 that was supplied by the Department of Energy. ANS president Mary Lou Dunzik-Gougar and CEO and executive director Craig Piercy congratulated NASA after the successful landing, acknowledging the critical contributions of the DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Maybe everything really is bigger in Texas, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. The brutal winter storm that hit much of the country earlier this week struck the Lone Star State with particular severity, leaving the power grid in shambles and millions of Texas residents without power, in many instances for days. On Tuesday, at the height of the power crisis, more than 4.4 million utility customers were without access to electricity, according to poweroutage.us.

Gates

Bill Gates is making the media rounds to promote his new book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, which was released on Tuesday. Along the way, he’s been touting nuclear energy as part of his master plan for battling climate change.

60 Minutes: Gates kicked off the week with an appearance on 60 Minutes on Sunday. During the nearly 15-minute segment with correspondent Anderson Cooper, Gates discussed TerraPower, the company he founded in 2006 that is dedicated to nuclear innovation. “Nuclear power can be done in a way that none of those failures of the past would recur, because just the physics of how it's built,” Gates said, referring to TerraPower’s Natrium reactor. “I admit, convincing people of that will be almost as hard as actually building it. But since it may be necessary to avoid climate change, we shouldn't give up.”

Coordinated federal and private industry investments made now could yield an operational fusion pilot plant in the 2035–2040 time frame, according to Bringing Fusion to the U.S. Grid, a consensus study report released February 17 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).

Developed at the request of the Department of Energy, the report builds on the work of the 2019 Final Report of the Committee on a Strategic Plan for U.S. Burning Plasma Research, and it identifies key goals, innovations, and investments needed to develop a U.S. fusion pilot plant that can serve as a model for producing electricity at the lowest possible capital cost.

“The U.S. fusion community has been a pioneer of fusion research since its inception and now has the opportunity to bring fusion to the marketplace,” said Richard Hawryluk, associate director for fusion at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and chair of the NASEM Committee on the Key Goals and Innovations Needed for a U.S. Fusion Pilot Plant, which produced the report.

Aerial view of Angra 3 nuclear reactor construction site in 2017. Source: Agency Brazil

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published on February 16 an article questioning the logic of completing construction on Brazil’s long-dormant Angra-3 nuclear power plant.

The Brazilian government in 2019 decided to resume construction of Angra-3, after 35 years on hold. The article, Brazil’s Angra 3 nuclear reactor: A political undertaking, not a common good, states that “the work was supposed to restart last year, with the reactor entering commercial service by late 2026, but COVID-19 and the quest for private partners to invest in the project have pushed back the schedule.”

The American Nuclear Society recommended that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) consider recognizing the reliability and resiliency benefits that carbon-free nuclear electricity generation provides to the bulk power system. ANS President Mary Lou Dunzik-Gougar and Executive Director/CEO Craig Piercy submitted these comments in a letter during a FERC meeting on Thursday morning.

This is the fourth in a four-part series spotlighting the candidates for the upcoming 2021 ANS national election. Seven leadership positions are on the ballot.

Today we feature statements from the nominees for the Young Member director position, which was approved by the ANS Board of Directors in September.

The nominees are Benjamin A. Holtzman, of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an ANS member since 2007, and Catherine M. Prat, of Westinghouse Electric Company, an ANS member since 2011.

Ballots will be sent electronically on February 22 and must be submitted by 4 p.m. (ET) on Tuesday, April 6.

A Montana Senate committee last week passed a joint resolution calling for the creation of a legislative panel to study the feasibility of replacing the coal-fired units at the state’s Colstrip power plant with advanced small modular reactors.

Two of Colstrip’s four coal boilers were permanently closed in January 2020, and most energy-sector observers expect the remaining two units to be retired within the next few years, given coal’s declining prospects in states such as Washington, which has passed legislation banning utilities from using coal power after 2025.

The resolution, known as SJ3, also calls on the panel to evaluate current Montana regulations that need revision in order to enable the construction and operation of advanced nuclear reactors. The study would need to be concluded before September 15, 2022.

This is the third in a four-part series spotlighting the candidates for the upcoming 2021 ANS national election. Seven leadership positions are on the ballot.

Today we feature statements from the nominees for the U.S. director at-large positions. There are 10 candidates for four open spots on the ANS Board of Directors. The nominees are Harsh Desai, Nuclear Energy Institute; Julie G. Ezold, Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Jess C. Gehin, Idaho National Laboratory; Kathryn D. Huff, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Jeffrey C. King, Colorado School of Mines; Stephen P. LaMont, Los Alamos National Laboratory; Jean-Francois Lucchini, Los Alamos National Laboratory; John M. Mahoney, High Expectations International; Jessika V. Rojas, Virginia Commonwealth University; and Tracy E. Stover Jr., Savannah River Nuclear Solutions.

Ballots will be sent electronically on February 22 and must be submitted by 4 p.m. (ET) on Tuesday, April 6.

A subcontractor has been selected to continue making modifications to a Hanford facility to transfer nearly 2,000 highly radioactive capsules to safer interim dry storage.

Central Plateau Cleanup Company, the Department of Energy’s prime cleanup contractor for the Central Plateau area of the Hanford Site, near Richland, Wash., recently awarded a $9.5 million construction subcontract to Apollo Mechanical Contractors. Apollo will continue work on the site’s Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility (WESF), where nearly 2,000 highly radioactive capsules containing cesium and strontium are stored underwater.

Apollo will modify the WESF and install equipment needed to transfer the radioactive capsules from a water-filled basin to safer interim dry storage. In the 1970s, to reduce the temperature of the waste inside Hanford’s waste tanks, cesium and strontium were removed from the tanks and moved to the WESF. The DOE expects that the transfer of the capsules to dry storage will be completed by 2025.

“While the 1,936 cesium and strontium capsules are currently in safe storage, WESF is an aging facility,” said Gary Pyles, project manager for the DOE’s Richland Operations Office. “Moving the capsules will enable the planned deactivation of WESF and will reduce the risk and significantly reduce the annual costs for storing the capsules.”