News

Westinghouse Electric Company and its eight European consortium partners today announced the successful completion of an EU funded project targeted at diversifying the nuclear fuel supply to VVER-440 reactors in Europe.(read more)

BWX Technologies, Inc. said Monday that its subsidiary BWXT Nuclear Energy Canada Inc. had signed a $168 million, five-year contract extension to manufacture fuel for Ontario Power Generation’s (OPG) Darlington and Pickering nuclear generating stations. The deal extends BWXT NEC’s current fuel manufacturing arrangement with OPG to the end of 2023.(read more)

A government panel in Japan has weighed in on the underground ice wall that forms a 1-mile perimeter surrounding the destroyed Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors and buildings, calling the wall's ability to stop water from seeping into the area only partly successful.(read more)

Georgia Power on Thursday announced the latest construction milestone at the Vogtle nuclear expansion near Waynesboro, Georgia, calling attention to a 13-plus hour continuous concrete placement for the Unit 4 "turbine tabletop."(read more)

A review of Hotec International’s proposed interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, slated for New Mexico, could be completed by mid-summer of 2020, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said(read more)

Operators at the Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Plant in Alabama on Sunday safely returned Unit 1 to service following a planned refueling and maintenance outage that began Feb. 4 at 9:28 p.m., local time. The novelty of the occasion, however, involved the fuel used for the restart. In collaboration with Global Nuclear Fuel, Southern Nuclear said in a press statement, Plant Hatch installed accident tolerant fuel test assemblies developed by the U.S. Department of Energy.(read more)

The sale of the shuttered Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vt., could result in an accelerated schedule for decommissioning for the 620-MW plant that shut down at the end of 2014 after 42 years of operations.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission mailed 99 assessments to 99 operating nuclear power plants this week summing up their safety and security performances for 2017.(read more)

Countries without a nuclear reactor are accessing research reactors through the power of the internet and a new agreement signed in Vienna will allow students from Kenya, Tanzania, Tunisia and South Africa to gain access to the research reactor in Morocco, despite the lack of a reactor of their own, the International Atomic Energy Agency said.(read more)

The Public Services Enterprise Group and Exelon, owners of the Salem nuclear power plant in New Jersey, filed notice with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday that gives notice to the state that capital investment in the two-reactor plant will cease without a guarantee of financial assistance from taxpayers.(read more)

A quality control issue involving welds for the secondary cooling system threatens to disrupt the completion schedule of the EPR reactor in Flamanville, France, according to media reports.(read more)

Georgia Power has filed its latest Vogtle Construction Monitoring Report with the state's Public Service Commission, its 18th, which designates completion of the plant's two-reactor extension project, citing November 2021 and November 2022 as the completion date for the two new Westinghouse designed AP1000 reactors.(read more)

A government finance oversight office in Britain, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), has issued a harshly critical report of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) that also condemns the government for its role in a contract bidding process that involved decommissioning work at 12 sites in Britain.(read more)

Scotland-based Wood Group has secured a framework agreement to provide technical assistance for a project to build a new nuclear power station slated for Bradwell in Essex in the UK, the company said Tuesday.(read more)

A British-made lightweight drone that self-navigates with the use of lasers will be deployed for exploratory runs at the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Generating Station, flying in an environment in which GPS signals cannot be used, the British government said.(read more)

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is headed to London at the end of the week with a delegation charged with working towards a 123 agreement with Saudi Arabia that spells out cooperation on domestic nuclear power while prohibiting work towards a nuclear military.(read more)

BWX Technologies, Inc. said Monday that the U.S. Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program has exercised contract options with subsidiary BWXT Nuclear Operations Group, Inc. totaling approximately $492 million for the manufacture of naval nuclear reactor components.(read more)

Russian nuclear build corporation Rosatom said this week that the Unit 1 at the Leningrad nuclear power plant expansion project – known as Leningrad Phase II – has successfully completed tests required at the minimum level of controlled power “in preparation for start-up this spring.” As such, higher power testing was underway.(read more)

The International Atomic Energy Agency reached a compliance milestone this week, noting on its website that, for the 200th time a review team had been sent out to inspect a nuclear power plant to judges its safety and security.(read more)

Austria has once again filed a lawsuit to block another euro block country from building a nuclear power plant, filing a suit Thursday with the European Court of Justice to try to derail Hungary's expansion goals for the Paks nuclear plant, Hungary's only nuclear power plant.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company said Thursday it had signed a Cooperation Agreement for lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) technology development with the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA) and Ansaldo Nucleare.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that there were no safety concerns connected with the incidents, but they have proposed a civil penalty of $145,000 against Southern Nuclear Operating Company for procedural violations that occurred at Plant Vogtle during a three-month period in 2016.(read more)

US Nuclear Corp. said this week that it is exploring opportunities to expand its presence in the Chinese market, an effort recently highlighted by the head of the company's trip to Beijing in January.(read more)

BWX Technologies said Tuesday that that its subsidiary BWXT Canada Ltd. (BWXT Canada) had been awarded contracts valued at approximately CA$30 million from Bruce Power to design and supply 13 critical heat exchangers as part of Bruce Power’s asset management program.(read more)

A study conducted by the Nuclear Energy Institute has found that the Cooper Nuclear Station, located in the southeast corner of Nebraska, generates $112 million per year in economic benefits to the region...(read more)

Congressional legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives approved of funds for a Versatile Neutron Source, allotting almost $2 billion for a new facility expected to be operational by 2025.(read more)

French nuclear power operator EDF said that revenue dropped 2.2 percent in 2017, while core earnings fell 16.3 percent, blaming the declines on lower production brought about by reactor outages. This year, a rebound is expected, said the head of the company.(read more)

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH), Global Nuclear Fuel, Holtec International and SMR Inventec, LLC (SMR, LLC), today announced a collaboration to advance the SMR‐160, a single loop, 160 MWe pressurized light water reactor based on existing light water technologies, calling the agreement a “procompetitive collaboration.”(read more)

Armenia announced a refurbishment project for its one commercial nuclear reactor, which the deputy minister of Energy, Infrastructures and Natural Resources Hayk Harutyunyan said would increase the power of the reactor by 10 percent.(read more)

One of the country's most prominent energy experts, Dr. Ernest Moniz, the former United States Secretary of Energy, a nuclear physicist by profession, will join the board of Southern Company, contingent on a stockholder vote, and will serve as an independent director effective March 1, the company announced this week.(read more)

Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada and both of the state's U.S. senators, Dean Heller, a Republican and Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, issued statements this week in opposition to the Trump administration's proposal to restart the licensing process for the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.(read more)

Global Nuclear Fuel (GNF) said this week it had shipped lead test assemblies of its IronClad and ARMOR accident tolerant fuel solutions to Southern Nuclear Operating Company for plant installation early...(read more)

--Press Release--L3 MAPPS announced today that it has won a contract from Bruce Power to deliver three Digital Control Computers (DCCs), replacing the existing Bruce A Unit 2 system with all-new hardware. (read more)

Nuclear power developers Georgia Power joined with the president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Nuclear Energy Institute this week in praising members of Congress for voting to approve new legislation that would extend the deadline for construction projects to receive a critical nuclear production tax credit.(read more)

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) said late last week it would not seek a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) rehearing on the Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) joint proposal decision. Subsequently, in accepting the CPUC’s ruling to retire DCPP, the company said with its joint partners it would withdraw its license renewal application at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company said Monday it has been awarded a 10-year integrated outage services contract by Xcel Energy for its fleet of nuclear plants in Minnesota.(read more)

Another court in Tokyo has arrived at a split decision concerning liability in the case of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi Nuclear Generating Station disaster of 2011.(read more)

Two bills have been introduced in the U.S. Senate that would likely make decommissioning nuclear power plants more expensive and possibly more arduous.(read more)

A significant consotium of Turkish companies know as the Cengiz-Kolin-Kalyon group announced Wednesday that they would back out of a preliminary agreement with Russian engineering and construction giant...(read more)

Cyclife, an EDF Group subsidiary, and SOGIN, the Italian public company in charge of decommissioning and waste management, have signed an agreement to the tune of 28 million Euros for the treatment of 1 800 tons of metal waste produced during the decommissioning of three nuclear power plants in Italy (Trino, Garigliano and Latina).(read more)

Russian engineering and construction giant Rosatom announced that the Unit 1 of Generation III+ VVER-1200 reactor at Leningrad Phase II was brought up to the minimum controlled power (MCP) Tuesday.(read more)

Ten years in the making, the first 500-year steel containers designed for nuclear waste specifically for the Cumbria Sellafield decommissioning project in Britain are now coming off the assembly line, The Whitehaven News reported.(read more)

The Millstone nuclear generating plant in the state of Connecticut is potentially “viable” from an economic point of view through 2035, two state agencies reported, but it would, among other negative factors, cost $5.5 billion to replace the two units of the plant with other low-carbon power sources(read more)

A new report released by the U.S. Department of Energy, authored by Seth Kirshenberg and Hilary Jackler of the law firm Kutak Rock, addresses the need for clean, reliable power specifically at how the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) could meet its needs at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.(read more)

Exelon Generation on Friday announced that it would shut down the Oyster Creek Generating Station in New Jersey in October of this year, sending the 49-year-old nuclear plant into retirement 11 years before its license was set to expire in April 2029 and one year ahead of its previously announced closure date.(read more)

Canada-based BWX Technologies, Inc., said Friday that its subsidiary BWXT Nuclear Energy Canada Inc. (BWXT NEC) has been awarded a CA$18.6 million, four-year contract to manufacture zircaloy-4 seamless tubes for Societatea Nationala Nuclearelectrica SA (SNN), which operates the Cernavoda Nuclear Power Plant in Romania.(read more)

Three Westinghouse-designed AP1000 reactors are on track for completion and initial operations in 2018 with the announcement this week that Unit 2 at the Sanmen nuclear power plant had completed its hot testing, a preliminary step towards loading fuel into the reactor.(read more)

The Environmental Protection Agency announced the release of funds designated to clean up the West Lake landfill site near St. Louis, Mo., that was used as a dumping site for nuclear waste during the Cold War era.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan has approved the restart of a research reactor, making it the first government facility research reactor to pass new safety standards, Japanese media reports.(read more)

Customers have come out the winners in two deals announced this week by owners of nuclear power plants, including Georgia Power and Southern California Edison, owners of Plant Vogtle and San Onofre, respectively.(read more)