Robert P. Martin and Thomas E. Roberts have been appointed to four-year terms on the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced on July 20.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Ghana Nuclear Regulatory Authority reaffirmed last week its shared commitment to continue cooperation on nuclear safety and regulation for the African nation.

Human factors engineering and risk analysis are part of every instrumentation and control upgrade and new reactor plan—from design and licensing to implementation and operation—and applications continue to evolve.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has made public an unclassified version of its annual report to Congress on the results of its security inspection activities in 2022.

Take note! Registration closes today for the U.S. Department of Energy Conference for Newcomers: Understanding Exports of Advanced Reactor Technologies, scheduled for July 26–27 at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill.

Contact Mercedes Trent (mercedes.trent@nnsa.doe.gov) to sign up for the conference. Additional information will follow upon registration.

The future of nuclear power and nuclear science will be informed by the past. But how did “the future” look six decades ago? We’ll check back on the predictions of ANS members in 1965 before assessing the investments in technology, workforce, and licensing needed now.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is issuing for public comment draft guidance on the use of decommissioning trust funds for the disposal of major radioactive components from nuclear power plants that are still in operation.

Ten years ago this month, on June 7, 2013, Southern California Edison (SCE) communicated the decision to permanently shutter the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS). The decision set in motion the decommissioning of a plant that had provided steady baseload power for the region since 1968 during a period of tremendous growth in the western United States. In the end, issues presented by the planned replacement steam generators that were intended to support future plant operations proved too large of a hurdle, and the plant was forced to retire.

Holtec International has said its patented HI-LIFT crane technology, being installed at the Indian Point-3 nuclear power plant, will speed the defueling of the spent nuclear fuel pool and avoid millions in excess decommissioning costs.

Photo: University of Maryland Radiation Facilities

This year, the nuclear power industry is seeing a renewed mandate to innovate and supply carbon-free energy for a range of applications. These new reactor designs feature new fuel forms, expanded thermodynamic ranges, and different operational paradigms. The trend toward smaller designs is anticipated to dramatically reduce siting requirements and enable applications of nuclear heat more customizable to commercial use. This has many vendors and operators imagining creative ways to optimize reactor economics in an unpredictable energy market.

The existing U.S. nuclear fleet has benefited from experience and research generated in research and test reactors around the country. As our industry reinvests in innovation, it will once again turn to many of the same reactors. Those reactors—and the groups such as the National Organization of Test, Research, and Training Reactors (TRTR) that formed to support them—have their own history of innovation.

Analysis and Measurement Services Corporation (AMS) has been awarded $500,000 from the Department of Energy for a yearlong project to develop an industry blueprint that should reduce outage times and maintenance costs at nuclear power plants. The project is set to start later this year.

To help plan and prepare for new technologies involving artificial intelligence, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has released its Artificial Intelligence Strategic Plan (NUREG-2261) for fiscal years 2023–2027.

The NRC said that it expects license applications that include the use of AI technologies to be submitted to the agency for review and approval within the next few years. The strategic plan is meant to help ensure that NRC staff are prepared to review and evaluate such applications.

In the foreword, the NRC Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research director Raymond Furstenau introduces the strategic plan, writing, “We recognize that interest in AI is growing rapidly in both the public and private sectors. As such, I think [it] is important to lay the groundwork needed to ensure the safe and secure use of AI in NRC-regulated activities.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a license to Holtec International to construct and operate a consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) for spent nuclear fuel in southeastern New Mexico. Holtec is proposing building the facility, called the HI-STORE CISF, between the cities of Carlsbad and Hobbs in Lea County on land provided by the Eddy Lea Energy Alliance (ELEA).

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is issuing a request for information (RFI) aimed at understanding the current state-of-art radiological survey methods used to comply with decommissioning and license termination requirements. According to the commission, the information will help its staff better understand trends in radiological survey instrumentation and data analysis, including those used to survey both surface and subsurface residual radioactivity.

Richard Meserve, who for more than two years chaired the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) Consensus Committee on Laying the Foundation for New and Advanced Nuclear Reactors in the United States, introduced its 300-page report on April 27 during a public briefing.

Abilene Christian University’s Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing (NEXT) Lab continues to make progress toward building a molten salt research reactor (MSRR) on the university’s campus. NEXT Lab submitted an application for a construction permit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last August, and in November the agency announced it had docketed the application—the first for a new research reactor in more than 30 years.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that an agency licensing board will hold oral arguments in a challenge to Pacific Gas and Electric’s application to renew its license for the Diablo Canyon independent spent fuel storage installation in California.

The arguments, which will be open to the public, will be heard by an NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board on May 24 beginning at 1 p.m. eastern time.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced on April 14 that it will regulate fusion energy systems using a framework based on the agency’s 10 CFR Part 30 process for licensing byproduct material facilities—such as particle accelerators—rather than 10 CFR Parts 50 and 52, which are used to license utilization facilities like fission power reactors. The commission’s decision means that future fusion energy facilities could be regulated by Agreement States acting with guidance from the NRC.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it is considering new guidance on the use of decommissioning trust funds for the disposal of major radioactive components from still operating nuclear power plants. A draft guidance document is to be issued for public comment in late May, NRC staff said during a public online meeting on April 13.

Nuclear energy was the focus of a recent NPR 1A podcast episode, hosted by journalist Jenn White, who welcomed guests to discuss the role of nuclear energy in the future of the United States. The guests—Joe Dominguez, chief executive officer of Constellation Energy; Samantha Gross, director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution; and Edwin Lyman, director of Nuclear Power Safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists—participated in the episode, titled “Where Does Nuclear Energy Fit in a Carbon-Free Future?”