Aalo and Idaho Falls Power reach agreement on potential microreactor siting

September 18, 2024, 12:04PMNuclear News
(Image: City of Idaho Falls)

Microreactor developer Aalo Atomics municipal electric utility Idaho Falls Power have developed a memorandum of understanding that could lead to the siting of seven sodium-cooled microreactors and a power purchase agreement for Idaho Falls.

Growing the future nuclear energy workforce in the Volunteer State

September 13, 2024, 4:46PMNuclear NewsMark Alewine

The Volunteer State’s governor and representatives have made clear their intention to position Tennessee at the forefront of a nuclear energy growth surge over the next several years. They’re making the financial investment to back up this commitment, pledging $50 million to recruit the innovative and invest in the existing nuclear companies in the state.

In an interview with advocacy group Nuclear Matters, Gov. Bill Lee expressed his excitement and optimism for Tennessee’s nuclear future.

“Tennessee is one of the fastest growing states in the country,” he said. “Because of that, we have people and companies moving here and we need to have a dependable, reliable energy source.”

HALEU without hyperbole: ANS speaks up for science and transparent risk assessment

September 11, 2024, 3:05PMNuclear News

The American Nuclear Society recently issued an open letter in support of a science-based approach to the regulation of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuels for commercial nuclear energy, voicing member concerns about hyperbole in a recent article published in Science, which advocated for restrictions on the use of HALEU despite decades of effective safeguards and security. This is not the first time ANS has stepped in to present the measured opinion of its membership on the value and appropriate regulation of HALEU.

What role can university research reactors play in a nuclear energy resurgence?

September 11, 2024, 7:00AMNuclear NewsCorey Hines

Corey Hines

Current and future decarbonization goals necessitate robust and reliable energy generation solutions with high capacity factors to serve as baseload sources of clean energy. Next-generation advanced reactor and small modular reactor designs have driven new technology, training regimes, and new reactor design and implementation of solutions associated with new design concepts and scale.

Research and teaching institutions like Washington State University are responding to help meet the needs of future nuclear research and development and fill in workforce gaps by preparing the next generation of workers in nuclear science and engineering. Domestic university research reactors provide an unparalleled teaching and training tool and are an R&D force multiplier for enhanced nuclear skillset development and training. Investing in research reactors and the important mission they serve benefits nuclear research both domestically and globally. Research reactors offer low-cost, safe, real-world job training and provide the experimentation platforms necessary to advance and meet demands of ongoing and future work in the nuclear sector that transcends traditional nuclear R&D.

DOE awards $17 million to answer critical questions with HALEU data

September 4, 2024, 12:00PMNuclear News

The Department of Energy awarded $17 million on August 30 for 16 experiment and analysis projects expected to yield criticality data that will assist the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in licensing and regulating high-assay low-enriched uranium and the fuel infrastructure—including packaging and transportation containers—required to demonstrate and deploy HALEU-fueled advanced nuclear reactors. Project teams include six national laboratories taking lead roles in partnership with other labs, universities, and multiple industry partners.

PR: American Nuclear Society challenges recent claims on HALEU fuel in Science magazine

September 3, 2024, 7:04AMPress Releases

Washington, D.C. — In an open letter to Science magazine, the American Nuclear Society (ANS), a professional nuclear science and technology society representing over 10,000 members worldwide, expressed its membership’s skepticism toward claims made in a recent article that advocated high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel should be reclassified by the United States and restricted from commercial use in powering advanced reactor designs. The ANS emphasized the importance of a balanced, science-based discussion, and scrutinized the unscientific and hyperbolic nature of the arguments presented in the article.

“We acknowledge the importance of this discussion and the necessity of continually evaluating the proliferation risks associated with nuclear materials,” wrote ANS President Lisa Marshall in the letter. “However, after extensive technical review of the article by members and officers of the ANS Fuel Cycle and Waste Management Division and the ANS Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division, we remain unconvinced of the positions advocated by the authors.”

Experts needed for National Academies workshop on new nuclear investments

August 22, 2024, 7:17AMNuclear News

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) is forming an ad hoc committee to hold a two-day workshop titled “Pathways for New Nuclear Development” and is open to recommendations from the public through August 30. NASEM is seeking five or six volunteer experts to discuss the “real and perceived risks of new nuclear projects and their projected timelines” as committee members and is also looking for potential speakers, participants, and peer reviewers for any publications that could be produced following the workshop.

Modeling physical security can help lower costs for nuclear power plants

August 19, 2024, 7:00AMNuclear NewsCory Hatch
The MASS-DEF framework with prevention actions and timelines modeled in EMRALD software interacting with force-on-force (FoF) simulation and thermal hydraulics models. The risk-informed modeling in the MASS-DEF framework integrates physical security effectiveness analysis with safety measures, such as time to core damage. (Graphic: INL)

Today’s nuclear power plants are the nation’s largest source of carbon-free energy, but they come with high operating and maintenance costs.

Competition from other sources, especially natural gas, coupled with low electricity prices, has resulted in the closure of some plants in the last decade due to economic reasons.

One way to alleviate these economic pressures is to reduce the cost of operating nuclear power plants, including the costs associated with physical security.

Argonne’s NSTF: Active testing of passive cooling

August 15, 2024, 9:37AMNuclear News
Matthew Jasica is a member of a small team conducting large-scale experimental testing of reactors and their components at the NSTF. (Photo: Argonne)

A facility at Argonne National Laboratory has been simulating nuclear reactor cooling systems under a wide range of conditions since the 1980s. Its latest task, described by Argonne in an August 13 news release, is testing the performance of passive safety systems for new reactor designs.

Designed as a half-scale model of a real reactor system, Argonne’s Natural Convection Shutdown Heat Removal Test Facility (NSTF) is used for large-scale experimental testing of the performance of passive safety systems, which are designed to remove decay heat using natural forces including gravity and heat convection. Those tests yield benchmarking data qualified to the level of National Quality Assurance-1 (NQA-1) that is shared with vendors and regulators to validate computational models and guide licensing of new reactors and components.

Custom equipment lets ORNL scale up molten salt investigations

August 8, 2024, 9:30AMNuclear News
A glass test cell that was fabricated to visualize noble gas behavior in a stagnant molten salt column. (Photo: ORNL)

Transparency is one advantage of certain molten salts that could serve as both a coolant and fuel carrier in an advanced reactor. For scientists studying molten salt chemistry and behavior at the laboratory scale, it helps if the test vessel is transparent too. Now, Oak Ridge National Laboratory has created a custom glass test cell with a 1-liter capacity to observe how gases move within a column of molten salt, the Department of Energy announced August 5.

Making AI fit for purpose: DOE-led applications in energy and nuclear research

August 5, 2024, 12:00PMNuclear News
The ALCF AI Testbed includes the AI systems represented in this collage: Cerebras, Graphcore, Groq, and SambaNova. (Image: Argonne National Laboratory)

Generative artificial intelligence paired with advanced diagnostic tools could detect potential problems in nuclear power plants and deliver a straightforward explanation to operators in real time. That’s the premise of research out of the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, and just one example of the DOE’s increasing exploration of AI applications in nuclear science and technology research. Training and restraining novel AI systems take expertise and data, and the DOE has access to both. According to a flurry of reports and announcements in recent months, the DOE is setting out its plans to ensure the United States can use AI to its advantage to enhance energy security and national security.

The U.S. and U.K. are both investing in HALEU. How do the programs compare?

August 1, 2024, 9:30AMNuclear News
Urenco’s Capenhurst enrichment site in the U.K. (Photo: Urenco)

A plan to build up a high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel cycle in the United Kingdom to support the deployment of advanced reactors is still in place after the Labour party was voted to power on July 4, bringing 14 years of conservative government to an end. A competitive solicitation for grant funding to build a commercial-scale HALEU deconversion facility opened days before the election, and the support of the new government was confirmed by a set of updates on July 19. But what does the U.K. HALEU program entail, and how does it differ from the U.S. HALEU Availability Program?

Kairos’s Hermes 2 passes NRC safety review

July 23, 2024, 9:30AMNuclear News
The former site of the K-33 gaseous diffusion enrichment plant in Oak Ridge’s East Tennessee Technology Park is the future site of Hermes and Hermes 2. (Photo: Kairos Power)

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has completed its final safety evaluation for Kairos Power’s application to build its Hermes 2 molten salt–cooled reactor test facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., the agency announced July 22. Earlier, and independently, the NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) reviewed safety-related aspects of the Kairos application and provided its review to the Commission on July 17. The evaluation concluded that there are no safety aspects that would preclude issuing a construction permit for the facility, but that can’t happen until the NRC staff issues its final environmental assessment later this summer and the Commission assesses the staff’s work (under newly streamlined procedures for mandatory hearings) this fall before voting on whether to authorize a construction permit.

Oklo completes end-to-end demonstration of advanced fuel recycling

July 18, 2024, 7:10AMRadwaste Solutions
Engineers in Argonne’s Chemical and Fuel Cycle Technologies Division. (Photo: Argonne National Laboratory)

Oklo Inc. announced that it has completed the first end-to-end demonstration of its advanced fuel recycling process as part of an ongoing $5 million project in collaboration with Argonne and Idaho National Laboratories. Oklo’s goal: scaling up its fuel recycling capabilities to deploy a commercial-scale recycling facility that would increase advanced reactor fuel supplies and enhance fuel cost effectiveness for its planned sodium fast reactors.

UMich research IDs coal plants with peak potential for a nuclear transition

July 15, 2024, 9:31AMNuclear News
The color-coded scatterplot shows the feasibility of coal-to-nuclear transitions at smaller coal plants (1,000 MWe or less) across the United States, plotted by latitude and longitude. Red and warm colors represent the high feasibility. (Image: Muhammad Rafiul Abdussami, Fastest Path to Zero, University of Michigan)

Comprehensive analysis of 245 operational coal power plants in the United States by a team of researchers at the University of Michigan has scored each site’s advanced reactor hosting feasibility using a broad array of attributes, including socioeconomic factors, safety considerations, proximity to populations, existing nuclear facilities, and transportation networks. The results could help policymakers and utilities make decisions about deploying nuclear reactors at sites with existing transmission lines and a ready workforce.

From the pages of Nuclear News: Industry update July 2024

July 11, 2024, 3:00PMNuclear News

Here is a recap of industry happenings from the recent past:

ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE

Radiant purchases nuclear-grade graphite for its microreactor

Microreactor startup Radiant Industries and Amsted Graphite Materials, the largest American-­owned synthetic graphite producer, have reached an agreement to collaborate on reducing U.S. reliance on foreign sources of nuclear-grade graphite. The collaboration began with Radiant placing a purchase order with Amsted for its Kaleidos microreactor, a 1-MW high-temperature, gas-cooled portable microreactor that has a graphite core and uses TRISO fuel.

“Whole-of-government” approach suggested for U.S. nuclear to compete with China

July 1, 2024, 3:00PMANS Nuclear Cafe
Nuclear power plants in operation or under construction as of May 2024. (Source: IAEA)

The recent article “How Innovative Is China in Nuclear Power?” published by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) describes how China has become the world’s leading proponent of nuclear energy. The reason, the article maintains, is because its nuclear industry has been “supported by a whole-of-government strategy that provides extensive financing and systemic coordination.”

ACU and Natura expect molten salt research reactor construction permit this fall

June 26, 2024, 12:01PMNuclear News
Concept art of ACU’s NEXT Lab. (Image: ACU)

Natura Resources, which is supporting the construction of a molten salt research reactor on the campus of Texas’s Abilene Christian University, announced in mid-June that it expects the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete its safety assessment and issue a permit for the nonpower test reactor in September.