News

Britain's Office For Nuclear Regulation (ONR) said that French producer EDF Energy Nuclear Generation would keep the Huntington B Unit 3 reactor off line while studying the long-term safety implications brought on by the presence of new keyway root cracks in the reactor core.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company today announced that it will collaborate in the development of its EnCore Fuel, the revolutionary accident-tolerant fuel (ATF) design, with ENUSA Industrias Avanzadas (ENUSA) through a Frame Cooperation Agreement (FCA).(read more)

Chugging along at an average speed of 3.5 knots, the world's only floating nuclear power plant, Akademik Lomonosov, made it to the northern Russian port of Murmansk on May 17 after a three-week tow from St. Petersburg, where the 144-meters long ship was constructed, Rosatom said.(read more)

Chugoku Electric Power Company has applied to local city and prefecture governments for permission to apply for pre-start up inspections at Shimane 3, which is nearing completion.(read more)

Global Nuclear Fuel (GNF) said Tuesday it had been awarded a long-term contract by Entergy Nuclear to continue to fuel its boiling water reactors.(read more)

The mixed-oxide fuel fabrication project at the Savannah River site in South Carolina has been officially canceled vis a vis a letter to Congress from Energy Secretary Rick Perry, reports indicate.The reaction from South Carolina has been vehement and swift.(read more)

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy said Monday that Dominion Energy has agreed to help fund efforts to bring the BWRX-300 small nuclear reactor to market.(read more)

Renewable energy could hit the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona with a fatal body blow, plant officials have said.(read more)

An International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) team conducting a safety review of the Republic of Congo's preparedness for a restart to its research reactor said that the country needed to upgrade safety protocol, training and technical infrastructure to meet global standards.(read more)

At the 2018 AtomExpo in Sochi, Russia, the head of Nigeria's Atomic Energy Commission (Nigatom) Simon Pesco Mallam said that Nigeria would have its first nuclear power plant up and running by the mid-2020s.(read more)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Thursday that it had completed a three-year, $48.4 million project to revamp its Safeguards information technology system to be more effective in its work to ensure the peaceful uses of nuclear technology.(read more)

The Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) has selected Orano TN for the final offload of more than 900 used fuel assemblies contained in the pool of its Fort Calhoun nuclear power station in Nebraska, Orano announced Thursday.(read more)

Sweden's Oskarshamn Unit 2, which was shuttered in December 2016, has entered the segmentation phase of dismantling, as of May 14, according to reports.(read more)

A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance says that 24 out of 60 nuclear power plants in the United States will be unable to cover operating costs over the next three years and that more plants are likely to close.(read more)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that a Pre-SALTO (Safety Aspects of Long Term Operations) team had completed a review mission of the Unit 1 reactor at the Angra Nuclear Power Plant in Brazil, noting that the plant operator had made progress in the field of managing an aging power plant and securing a safe future for continued operations.(read more)

--Press Release--L3 MAPPS announced today that it has won a contract from ENGIE Electrabel to upgrade the Tihange Unit 1 full scope operator training simulator. (read more)

Maryland-based GSE Systems Inc. said Tuesday it had received two contracts from Chinese customers to commence in the second quarter of 2018 that have a total value that exceeds $4 million. The projects will continue over the next two years, the company said.(read more)

Uganda has taken another step forward in its pursuit of nuclear power for domestic generation, signing a Memorandum of Understanding with the China National Nuclear Corporation that will promote the use of radioactivity for civil projects involving agriculture, medicine and manufacturing.(read more)

More than 700 specially manufactured tubes for the steam generators associated with the so-called CAREM project in Argentina – the Central Argentina de Elementos Modulares project – have been delivered to the construction site near the Atucha Nuclear Power Plant, CONUAR announced last week. (read more)

Georgia Power on Thursday said that workers had placed the four main step-up transformers inside the Unit 4 transformer bays in the latest announcement of construction milestones at the Vogtle nuclear expansion near Waynesboro, Georgia.(read more)

The British government has informed Hitachi Ltd that it would guarantee the loans required to build two new reactors at the Wylfa Newydd site in Wales, Japanese media are reporting, although no official announcement has been made.(read more)

Unit 4 at the Ohi nuclear power plant in central Japan will be reactivated Wednesday with expectations that the reactor will return to commercial operations in early June, Kansai Electric Power said on Tuesday.(read more)

Maryland-based Centrus Energy Corp. said this week that it is expanding its supply arrangements with French-based Orano Cycle (formerly Areva NC), a global nuclear fuel cycle company.(read more)

Virginia-based BWX Technologies said Tuesday that the company had developed an innovative patent-pending neutron capture process that is expected to be market-competitive and enable North American concerns to begin supplying the market with molybdenum-99 critical to many medical procedures.(read more)

The first concrete pour for the generation 3+ VVER reactor at the Kursk-II project in western Russia began on April 29, Rosatom said.(read more)

Unit 3 at the Hunterston B nuclear power plant in North Ayrshire, Scotland, will remain offline following the discover of cracks in several graphite bricks in the reactor core during a routine inspection, EDF Energy, the plant's operator, said.(read more)

IHS Markit, a London-based research firm, warned in a report released Thursday that severe grid stress, plus dire environmental and financial consequences will result from the economic closures of five of the 19 nuclear plants contributing to the PJM Interconnection Energy Market, the world's largest wholesale electricity market that serves all or part of 13 Mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C.(read more)

NASA and the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced Wednesday that a new nuclear reactor power system capable of providing power for crews or unmanned stations on the Moon, Mars and beyond had been successfully demonstrated.(read more)

--Press Release--The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has completed the first and most intensive phase of review for NuScale Power’s design certification application (DCA). (read more)

A major backer of Turkey's second nuclear power plant project, Japanese trading house Itochu, has backed out of the project due to rising costs, according to the Nikkei news service.(read more)

A small water leak in the emergency cooling system that posed “no security problems,” according to Belgium's nuclear power regulator, has caused an unexpected shut down of the Doel Unit 1 reactor.(read more)

The Department of Energy (DOE) has announced an cost-share research and development grant cycle of $60 million that will go to 13 projects for advanced nuclear technologies.(read more)

The Russian-built floating nuclear power plant called the Academik Lomonosov has left its home port in the territory of Baltiyskiy Zavod in St. Petersburg on its way to the northern base in Chulkotka, where it will resume its commercial operations.(read more)

The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency said Monday it had assisted in the removal of 27 highly radioactive sources from five South American countries in what was the largest agency effort of its kind to date.(read more)

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has completed the first and most intensive phase of review for NuScale Power’s design certification application (DCA), the company announced Monday.(read more)

France's Framatome (formerly AREVA NP) will deliver 10 reloads of fuel assemblies to the Swedish nuclear power reactors Forsmark 3 and Ringhals 3 and 4, operated by Vattenfall, the company said. The contracts, which run from 2021 to 2024, include additional options for two reloads for each reactor after 2024.(read more)

A U.S. Department of Energy spokesman said that not one, but four the 55-gallon drums of radioactive waste had been found ruptured or leaking in early April at a storage facility on the 890-square mile property of the Idaho National Laboratory.(read more)

A review team from the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency completed an operational safety review of Unit 3 of the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant on April 25, concluding that management was committed to safety improvements for long-term operations of the plant.(read more)

Denmark's Molten Salt Reactor developer Seaborg Technologies announced, via its Facebook page, that it had received an investment valued at “several millions” of Danish kroner from a Silicon Valley investment firm called PreSeed Ventures.(read more)

Infrastructure capacity in the nuclear power-considering African country of Niger, a major uranium ore producer, is strong, according to an advanced International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) review team that recently completed an eight-day mission to the country.(read more)

Robotics experts at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have developed an autonomous uranium detector that is expected to greatly speed up inspection of the pipes in plants or processing facilities...(read more)

Robotics experts at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh have developed an autonomous uranium detector that is expected to greatly speed up inspection of the pipes in plants or processing facilities in their decommissioning phases.(read more)

China State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation (SNPTC) and CNNC Sanmen Nuclear Power Company Limited (SMNPC) announced Wednesday that the world’s first unit of AP1000 nuclear power plant located in Sanmen, Zhejiang Province, China, has received the fuel load permit from China’s National Nuclear Safety Administration (NNSA) and has commenced initial fuel loading.(read more)

Georgia Power released its first quarter progress video clip Tuesday behind the power of numbers, noting that the latest estimates on rate impact for consumers based on the Plant Vogtle construction project was substantially lower than previous estimates. (read more)

U.S. space agency NASA said that it had scheduled a major media event to discuss “demonstration of new space exploration power system,” in what is known as the Kilopower project, which involves the use of a fission power source for deep space and planet exploration.(read more)

In its monthly newsletter in April, Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) said that the Olkiluoto NPP Unit 3 remained on track for a commercial start in May 2019 and that fuel loading was set for sometime this fall.(read more)

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), Canada’s premier nuclear science and technology organization on Thursday invited “small modular reactor (SMR) project proponents” to join in the evaluation process for the eventual construction of a SMR at an agency-managed site.(read more)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the team of experts sent to review safety and security at Ghana’s research reactor gave the operator high marks, noting "a high commitment to safety following the conversion of the reactor core to use low enriched uranium (LEU) as fuel instead of high enriched uranium (HEU."(read more)

Exelon on Friday responded to the media coverage from earlier this week concerning remarks a company official made at the U.S. Energy Association's annual meeting in Washington about the future of nuclear power in the United States. (read more)

U.S.-based Caterpillar said Thursday that Forsmarks Kraftgrupp AB has selected its Zeppelin Power Systems to supply six Cat 3500 Series industrial diesel engines for an emergency cooling system at its Forsmark nuclear power plant in Sweden.(read more)