News

Despite the severe economic impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the start up and construction schedule for the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant in the United Arab Emirates is continuing unabated, the head of the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation said.(read more)

On April 30, the Unit 1 nuclear reactor marked 624 consecutive days of steady operation, setting a new record for its post-2012 return to operation production life. It bested Unit 8 by one day.(read more)

New Orleans-based energy generator Entergy Corp. has closed down the Indian Point Two reactor, as of 30 April, bringing to an end the productive life of the reactor that began commercial operations in 1974 and served the New York City/Westchester County region for 45 years.(read more)

Students and professionals in the nuclear power field are taking on learning opportunities while being housebound during the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced this week. (read more)

SNC-Lavalin Group subsidiary Atkins Group said it had been appointed to independently assess the software for the reactor protection system which will monitor the two nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point C (HPC).(read more)

Nuclear fuel technology company Lightbridge Corporation has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the primary goal of designing an experiment for irradiation of Lightbridge metallic fuel material samples at the Advanced Test Reactor at the Idaho International Laboratory.(read more)

Nuclear industry service giant Framatome, primarily owned by French utility EDF, has announced a multimillion-euro contract to modernize the crane instrumentation and control (I&C) systems at the research neutron source Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (FRM II), which is operated by the Technical University of Munich.(read more)

Relaxed work standards at U.S. nuclear power plants due to the coronavirus pandemic has provoked concern among some environmental groups, while plant owners say that maintaining the safety of personnel is the focus of the changes, a Bloomberg News report says.(read more)

Russia’s Ministry of Construction Glavgosexpertiza has favorably reviewed the coastal infrastructure designs related to the Akademik Lomonosov, the floating nuclear power plant that went into operation in December 2019 in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug mining region.(read more)

With the Vogtle Units 3 & 4 project 84 percent completed Georgia Power confirmed it is trimming its workforce back by 2,000 workers in part due to virus-related absenteeism at a worksite with more than 9,000 workers on site.(read more)

Dallas-based consultancy Jacobs Engineering said this week it had been awarded several fusion-related contracts, with an estimated combined value of more than $25 million, by Fusion for Energy (F4E), ITER Organization and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA). (read more)

With the coronavirus pandemic crippling economies around the globe, French utility EDF said this week it had lowered its forecast for the year concerning its expected output from the company’s nuclear plants.(read more)

British nuclear engineering consulting companhy Ansaldo Nuclear has unveiled its Machine Retrieval System, a remotely controlled robotic device that will retrieve, verify, seal and pack 860 metric tons of radioactive ion exchange resins and various sludges at the Caorso Nuclear Power Plant in Italy.(read more)

VTT Technical Research Center of Finland has awarded a contract to Finnish utility Fortum for decommissioning services for the Finnish Reactor 1 (FiR1), a 250 kW reactor that has not been operating since June 2015.(read more)

US-based nuclear industry ancillary support company UniTech said in a statement that it would continue to operate through the corona virus pandemic to ensure safety of personnel in the country’s nuclear power plants.(read more)

Mannheim, Germany-based industrial service company Bilfinger said Wednesday it had landed a contract to design two core melt stabilization systems in the new Hinklley Point C nuclear power station under construction in Somerset, England.(read more)

As the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease spreads, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), is offering its support and expertise to help countries use real time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (real time RT-PCR), one of the most accurate laboratory methods for detecting, tracking, and studying the coronavirus.(read more)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it was dispatching a preliminary batch of equipment to more than 40 countries to enable them to use a nuclear-derived technique to rapidly detect the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.(read more)

The global coronavirus pandemic is affecting the nuclear power plant, impacting both decommissioning and daily operations at various locations.(read more)

Swedish multi-national power company Vattenfall said it would be working with the Estonian development company Fermi Energia for the possible development of a small modular reactor (SMR) project in Estonia.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company announced Monday that it has signed a nuclear fuel and related services contract extension with American Electric Power (AEP) for its two pressurized water reactor units at the D.C. Cook Nuclear Plant in Bridgman, Michigan.(read more)

Russia’s state-owned nuclear company Rosatom is seeking to extend its options with small, factory assembled nuclear power plants following the success with the small reactors deployed in northern Russia for icebreakers and local electricity generation.(read more)

Oklo Inc. of Sunnyvale, California, has submitted its application for a mini-reactor to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the company has confirmed.(read more)

Alexey Likhachev, Director General of ROSATOM met with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed in the People's Republic of Bangladesh. During the meeting, the Parties discussed issues of bilateral cooperation while development and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. (read more)

Unit 2 at the Ontario Power Generation's Darlington Nuclear Generating station is ready to return to commercial service after a three-year refurbishment program, the company said.(read more)

BWX Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: BWXT) announced Wednesday that its BWXT Nuclear Operations Group, Inc. subsidiary has been awarded a contract from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to manufacture TRISO nuclear fuel to support the continued development of the Transformational Challenge Reactor (TCR).(read more)

Two more U.S. nuclear power plants, Peach Bottom Units 2 and 3, have been allowed license extensions that will allow them to operate up to 80 years, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which granted the license extensions on March 6.(read more)

The U.S. Defense Department has awarded contracts to three companies to participate in an engineering competition for related contracts to build micro-mobile nuclear reactors, the Defense News reported.(read more)

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), Canada’s premier nuclear science and technology organization, announced Wednesday that it had developed an Action Plan under its existing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), a nuclear services technology provider owned and operated by the Government of the United Kingdom (UK).(read more)

Nuclear service giant Rosenergoatom said that it would transition the 6th power block of the Novovoronezh Nuclear Power Plant -- featuring a VVER-1200 reactor -- to switch to an extended, 18-month fuel cycle.(read more)

The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) said Tuesday that the first fuel loading at the new Barakah Unit 1 power plant had been safely completed. With the milestone done, the United Arab Emirate "has officially become a peaceful nuclear energy operating nation," a first for the Middle East, said ENEC.(read more)

The legacy of the Fessenheim nuclear power plant in northeastern France is coming to a close with the first of the plant’s two units shutting down on 22 February. The plant’s owner, EDF, said the reactor, after 42 years of service, was shut down at 2 a.m. with the plant also disconnected from the electricity grid.(read more)

French nuclear services giant Framatome celebrated the opening of its new engineering research and operations center and the expansion of Intercontrole, a subsidiary that specializes in automated non-destructive testing, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony this week, the company said.(read more)

The U.S. Idaho National Laboratory said it would supply a Californian micro-reactor developer, Oklo, with used uranium fuel to assist with the development of the company’s 1.5MWe fission-based generator.(read more)

A contract awarded by Hinkley Point C to industrial engineering firm Bilfinger will trigger investment and new jobs for UK manufacturing on Humberside, French utility EDF said on Tuesday.(read more)

The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC), and its subsidiary Nawah Energy Company (Nawah), announced Tuesday that an extensive operational readiness assessment performed by an international team of nuclear industry experts from the Atlanta Center of the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) has concluded that Unit 1 of the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant in Abu Dhabi is ready to start up(read more)

According to Russia’s Cosmonautics News, fungus samples taken from the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster site are in for a long ride. Some samples of the fungus, said Nuclear Engineering International, will be taken into outer space for a trip to the International Space Station, where it will be the subject of some zero-gravity experiments.(read more)

Britain's Office of Nuclear Regulation has completed Step 3 of the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) of the UK HPR1000 design, and taken the decision to progress to Step 4 of the GDA, the agency said.(read more)

French nuclear power service company said it had been awarded the contract to dismantle two stainless steel interim storage pools at the Marcoule site in south-east France in a deal worth several million euros.(read more)

Russian nuclear power giant Rosatom said this week that Egyptian technicians had arrived at the Kursk II Nuclear Power Station to begin training that will be applied to Egypt's new El Dabaa NPP.(read more)

The country’s 80,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel, stored now in 35 states at 121 sites, will not be headed to Yucca Mountain after all, President Trump said in a tweet this week.(read more)

Canadian engineering giant SNC-Lavalin said Tuesday it had been awarded four contracts by Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co., Ltd, to conduct assessments and computer code upgrades at the Wolsong site in Korea.(read more)

The first of the 33 transports scheduled for the transfer of about 5,600 drums, containing resin and radioactive sludge, started from the Caroso nuclear power plant (Piacenza) at the Bohunice plant in Slovakia for their treatment and conditioning.(read more)

Japanese manufacturers have completed construction of the first 360-metric ton D-shaped toroidal field coil for the ITER Tokamak project in France. The massive field coil will be shipped from the port of Kobe to France on an ocean voyage expected to take eight weeks, starting in early March.(read more)

The top technical officer for Britain’s engineering giant Rolls-Royce said this week that the company would focus on small modular reactors, which he expected would be operational in the UK within nine years.(read more)

The Kursk NPP-2 evaporative cooling tower will become the tallest one in Russia, with its height being 179 meters -- a bit taller than 587 feet, the plant said on Monday.(read more)

The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (EM)said that renovations are underway to prepare a facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to process a high-dose portion of the on-site uranium-233 inventory, enabling to convert the material into a disposal-ready form.(read more)

The Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (Tepco) has confirmed that coolant is leaking from the pipes that maintain the underground ice wall at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant disaster site.(read more)

Orano TN has completed the transfer of 296 used nuclear fuel assemblies from a U.S. reactor’s wet storage pool to the onsite dry storage Independent Spent Fuel Storage Facility (ISFSI) using eight NUHOMS EOS 37PTH heat-tolerant canisters to securely store the used fuel in eight EOS Horizontal Storage Modules (HSM), the company said.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company said this week that it had signed a contract with Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in Bulgaria to migrate the current Ovation platform-based information and control (I&C) systems at the plant's units 5&6.(read more)