The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has made three recent announcements regarding new developments in the nuclear energy industry:

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted for review the Tennessee Valley Authority’s construction permit application for a BWRX-300 small modular reactor at its Clinch River site in Tennessee. The NRC expects to complete its review by December 2026.

Ontario Power Generation GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy announced May 8 that Ontario authorities have approved construction plans for the first of four BWRX-300 small modular reactors at the Darlington New Nuclear Project site on Lake Ontario, less than 50 miles east of Toronto, Canada. The first new nuclear construction project in Ontario in more than three decades is also the first SMR construction project in North America.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has announced its approval for Ontario Power Generation to construct a General Electric Hitachi BWRX-300 small modular reactor at its Darlington site in Clarington, Ontario.

In February, the Community of Practice (CoP) webinar series, hosted by the American Nuclear Society Standards Board’s Risk-informed, Performance-based Principles and Policies Committee (RP3C), celebrated its fifth anniversary. Like so many online events, these CoPs brought people together at a time when interacting with others became challenging in early 2020. Since the kickoff CoP, which highlighted the impact that systems engineering has on the design of NuScale’s small modular reactor, the last Friday of most months has featured a new speaker leading a discussion on the use of risk-informed, performance-based (RIPB) thinking in the nuclear industry. Providing a venue to convene for people within ANS and those who found their way online by another route, CoPs are an opportunity for the community to receive answers to their burning questions about the subject at hand. With 50–100 active online participants most months, the conversation is always lively, and knowledge flows freely.

The North Carolina Collaboratory, a research funding agency established by the North Carolina General Assembly to partner with academic institutions and government entities, has awarded a grant to North Carolina State University and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) for research into small modular reactors. The funded research project, “Academic Boiling Water–Small Modular Reactor (BW-SMR) Simulator for Research, Development, and Educational Purposes,” focuses on the development of a digital-based simulator for GEH’s BWRX-300, a Gen III+ light water SMR.

Ontario Power Generation announced this week new contracts with BWXT Canada worth more than C$1 billion ($695.4 million) for projects at the Pickering and Darlington nuclear power plants.

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH)—the nuclear business unit of Massachusetts-based GE Vernova in partnership with Japan’s Hitachi—has announced that it is forming a group of qualified supply chain companies to advance the manufacture, commercialization, and international deployment of its BWRX-300 small modular reactor. The company stated that it is forming the group to help ensure “a reliable, cost-effective and innovative” process for getting its SMR commercialized and deployed around the world.

BWX Technologies announced today plans to expand and add advanced manufacturing equipment to its manufacturing plant in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada.

A $36.3 million USD ($50M CAD) expansion will increase the plant’s size by 25 percent—to 280,000 square feet—and another $21.7 million USD ($30M CAD) will be spent on new equipment to increase and accelerate its output of large nuclear components. The investment will increase capacity and create more than 200 long-term jobs for skilled workers, engineers, and support staff, according to the company.

The United Kingdom’s Future Nuclear Enabling Fund (FNEF) awarded £33.6 million (about U.S.$42.8 million) to GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy last week.

The move comes as part of the FNEF’s support for growing the Britain’s generation of 24 GW of nuclear by 2050. The country currently produces around 9,100 megawatts per year.

Wesoff

According to an admittedly informal and unscientific survey of people from online “nuclear affinity groups” conducted by Eric Wesoff, the editorial director for clean energy newsroom Canary Media, there is no consensus regarding when the next nuclear power plant will come on line in the United States. Wesoff recently reported that upon polling his nuclear-connected network on LinkedIn, X, and Reddit, he found that “the responses were all over the map.”

Nuclear renaissance? Wesoff was prompted to try his survey about the expected date for the next nuclear plant because “conditions are perfect for the American nuclear renaissance.” He cited strong support for the nuclear industry from the Department of Energy as well as from public opinion polls and online “influencers.” He thought therefore that he would find confident predictions for when the next new U.S. reactor would go on line. Instead, he found uncertainty and varied responses.

Designs for high-tech products, and the start-ups that offer them, will always outnumber the commercial successes. Ditto: many more power plants are proposed than actually get built, no matter what the technology.

This is an axiom of free-market economies, but in early November 2023 it became painfully obvious in the advanced reactor field. NuScale Power, the only advanced reactor that has made it through the licensing gauntlet, acknowledged that the consortium of utilities that was its intended launch customer had failed to put together a feasible package.

Another calendar year has passed. Before heading too far into 2024, let’s look back at what happened in 2023 in the nuclear community. In today's post, compiled from Nuclear News and Nuclear Newswire are what we feel are the top nuclear news stories from January through March 2023.

Stay tuned for the top stories from the rest of the past year.

Dennis Henneke

The BWRX-300 is the 10th generation of boiling water reactor designed by GE Hitachi and has a number of evolutionary features. We learned from the design of the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR), the BWRX-300’s predecessor, that implementation of a plant design that utilizes passive safety features can result in a relatively large containment. From the inception of the BWRX-300, our goal was simplification of the design and the reduction in overall size of the “safety footprint,” which includes both containment and the safety-related--component plant areas. The design team was empowered to consider any and all simplification efforts, which were evaluated by the GEH team. One key to implementing this goal—design of a plant that can be licensed anywhere in the world—is the use of a probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) that helps ensure the resulting plant risk is low.

On the margins of the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, UAE, this week, Barakah nuclear plant owner Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) signed its first commercial uranium fuel supply contract with Kazatomprom, in addition to memorandums of understanding with two U.S.-based advanced reactor developers—TerraPower and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH).

At the World Nuclear Exhibition in Paris this week, Ontario Power Generation announced contracts with Canadian, French, and U.S. companies to ensure a fuel supply for the first of four GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy BWRX-300 small modular reactors planned for deployment at OPG’s Darlington nuclear power plant.

Dustin Duncan, Saskatchewan’s minister responsible for SaskPower (from left), and Todd Smith, Ontario’s minister of energy, at the master services agreement announcement in Regina, Saskatchewan. (Photo: OPG)

Ontario Power Generation and its Laurentis Energy Partners (LEP) subsidiary have announced details of a master services agreement with SaskPower to further Saskatchewan’s plans for small modular reactor deployment.

The agreement, announced on November 20, runs for up to five years and serves as a foundation for a long-term strategic partnership to streamline SMR development in the province. LEP is tasked in the agreement with program management, licensing, and operational readiness activities.

In response to Ontario’s ambitious nuclear development plans—including the plan by Ontario Power Generation to construct four small modular reactors at its Darlington nuclear site—Celeros Flow Technology has committed to expanding its Burlington, Ontario, facility to make it the first Ontario-based manufacturer of nuclear-qualified pumps, OPG announced last week.

A team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency recently concluded an eight-day mission to Estonia, finding that the Baltic state has developed a comprehensive assessment of its nuclear infrastructure development needs, enabling the government to make an informed decision on whether to pursue a nuclear power program.

This past January, Wilmington, N.C.–based GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Canadian firms Ontario Power Generation, SNC-Lavalin, and Aecon signed a contract for the deployment of the American firm’s BWRX-300 small modular reactor at OPG’s Darlington nuclear plant in Clarington, Ontario.