Fig. 1. Median capacity factor of all reactors. The median DER net capacity factor of the 92 reactors included in this survey for the three-year period 2022–2024 is 90.96 percent. The 92 reactors in this survey are being compared with 94 reactors in 2019–2021 (when Indian Point-3 and Palisades were also included); 98 in 2016–2018; 99 in 2013–2015. There were 104 reactors in the five three-year periods prior to that. There were 53 reactors in the database in 1980–1982, and in the five subsequent periods there were 60, 77, 97, 102, and 103.
Nuclear generation has inertia. Massive spinning turbines keep electricity flowing during grid disturbances. But nuclear generation also has a kind of inertia that isn’t governed by the laws of motion.
Starting—and then finishing—a power reactor construction project requires significant upfront effort and money, but once built a reactor can run for decades. Capacity factors of U.S. reactors have remained near 90 percent since the turn of the century, but it took more than a decade of improvements to reach that steady state. The payoff for nuclear investments is long-term and reliable.
A 1960s Electrolux vacuum cleaner was discovered in Sellafield’s Pile Fuel Cladding Silo. (Photo: Sellafield Ltd.)
A 1960s Electrolux vacuum cleaner was among the more unusual items workers removed from one of the world’s oldest nuclear waste stores at the United Kingdom’s Sellafield nuclear site.
INL’s Hot Fuel Examination Facility. (Photo: INL)
An agreement signed by the state of Idaho and the U.S. Department of Energy will open the way for a single cask of high-burnup spent nuclear fuel to be shipped from Dominion Energy’s North Anna nuclear power plant in Virgina to Idaho National Laboratory for research purposes.
On his recent trip to Washington, D.C., IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi (right) met with Energy Secretary Chris Wright. (Photo: IAEA/D. Candano)
International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Mariano Grossi recently traveled to Washington, D.C., for the first time since Trump took office in January. In his three-day visit to the capital, Grossi spoke with key nuclear leaders from around the world and in the federal government, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair David Wright, on topics including nuclear power, safety, security, funding, and nonproliferation.
Workers with UCOR perform sampling and deactivation tasks in the basement of Beta-1 at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge. (Photo: DOE)
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management said that crews with the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) and its cleanup contractor UCOR are preparing to demolish another deteriorating Manhattan Project–era building at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Artist’s impression of NASA’s Dragonfly approaching a landing site on Saturn’s moon Titan. Essentially a flying chemistry lab, along with cameras and other science instrumentation, Dragonfly will travel between dozens of landing sites on Titan’s surface to investigate the chemical origins of life. (Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)
Curiosity landed on Mars sporting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) in 2012, and a second NASA rover, Perseverance, landed in 2021. Both are still rolling across the red planet in the name of science. Another exploratory craft with a similar plutonium-238–fueled RTG but a very different mission—to fly between multiple test sites on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon—recently got one step closer to deployment.
On April 25, NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) announced that the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s icy moon passed its critical design review. “Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and test plans are all approved, and the mission can now turn its attention to the construction of the spacecraft itself,” according to NASA.
Idaho National Laboratory’s Idaho Falls campus. (Photo: INL)
Idaho National Laboratory is looking for a sponsor to invest $5 million–$10 million in a privately funded innovation incubator to support seed-stage start-ups working in nuclear energy, integrated energy systems, cybersecurity, or advanced materials. For their investment, the sponsor gets access to what INL calls “a turnkey source of cutting-edge American innovation.” Not only are technologies supported by the program “substantially de-risked” by going through technical review and development at a national laboratory, but the arrangement “adds credibility, goodwill, and visibility to the private sector sponsor’s investments,” according to INL.
Plastic pollution from overseas washes up on San Cristobal Island, part of the Galapagos Islands archipelago, in 2019. (Photo: F. Oberhaensli/IAEA)
The International Atomic Energy Agency announced that its Nuclear Technology for Controlling Plastic Pollution (NUTEC Plastics) initiative has partnered with Ecuador’s Oceanographic Institute of the Navy (INOCAR) and Polytechnic School of the Coast (ESPOL) to build microplastic monitoring and analytical capacity to address the growing threat of marine microplastic pollution in the Galapagos Islands.
ANS President Lisa Marshall presented Illinois Tech vice provost for research Jeff Terry with the Armour Research Foundation Research Reactor’s Nuclear Historic Landmark plaque at the April 23 ceremony.
The American Nuclear Society presented the Illinois Institute of Technology with a plaque last week to officially designate the Armour Research Foundation Reactor a Nuclear Historic Landmark, following the Society’s decision to confer the status onto the reactor in September 2024.
Here is a recap of industry happenings from the recent past: