News

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) announced the implementation of its latest chemical decontamination solution for the first time in North America. The solution was successfully utilized to decontaminate and mitigate stress corrosion cracking in portions of a nuclear power plant's recirculation piping.(read more)

A year after the first 16 drums of waste was placed in Asia's first underground repository for low- and intermediate-level waste radioactive waste repository in the Gyeongju Province in South Korea, the country's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy has approved of the repository's second construction phase, which will involve a surface-level facility intended to hold up to 125,000 drums of waste.(read more)

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) said Tuesday that its radiation monitoring systems had been deployed successfully at the first U.S. nuclear power plant scheduled to go operational since 1996.(read more)

Horizon Nuclear Power said Monday that the Wylfa Newydd nuclear power plant project would provide power to consumers at a “fair and acceptable,” price after the Welsh Affairs Committee mandated that the company accept a price below $121.45 per megawatt hour and be competitive with renewable power sources.(read more)

Although financial questions remain, the Utah Court of Appeals has upheld a district court ruling that allows for the possibility of a two-reactor nuclear power plant on the Green River, stating that environmental groups failed to prove water diversion needed for the project would be detrimental to the river's health.(read more)

The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) said Sunday it had signed a deal with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) that will entail sending Korean workers to the United Arab Emirates to run the four-reactor Barakah Nuclear Power Plant once it becomes operational, which is expected to occur with the first unit in May 2017.(read more)

Georgia Power on Monday released its latest video footage of progress at the Plant Vogtle Unit 3 and 4 construction project underway near Waynesboro, Ga.(read more)

The proposal to include zero emission credits (ZEC) as a component of New York's draft clean energy standard has the potential to stave off the early retirement of three nuclear power plants in upstate New York, according to Fitch Ratings, one of the country's three premier credit rating companies.(read more)

The reactor vessel (RV) for the third unit at the Barakah nuclear power plant project has been installed successfully, the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) said Thursday.(read more)

GE Hitachi said Wednesday that a “fuel alliance” between Global Nuclear Fuel (GNF) and TVEL continued to move forward this week as TVEL parent Rosatom hosted a management meeting in Moscow under the TVS-K fuel alliance agreement.(read more)

Nuclear industry powerhouse AREVA said Tuesday that it would continue to analyze a steam generator for the Fessenheim Nuclear Power Plant's Unit 2 reactor after French regulators suspended a test certificate for the component in which steel construction anomalies had been revealed in June.(read more)

Rosatom's nuclear fuel company TVEL said Tuesday that it had developed a new fuel that would double the durability of RITM-200 nuclear reactor cores, which are the type used in the world's largest and most powerful icebreaker.(read more)

Four research centers will join the nation's stable of 32 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) with a collective $40 million in grants from the Department of Energy with the aim of understanding the chemistry of radioactive substances with a focus on nuclear waste clean up efforts.(read more)

British decommissioning and remote handling company James Fisher Nuclear announced Monday that it had been awarded a “high-value” contract from Japanese engineering company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries that involves developing technology to be used at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma, Japan.(read more)

Unit 2 of the Fangchenggang nuclear power plant in western China has been connected to the grid, China General Nuclear said over the weekend.(read more)

The good news from the twelfth annual “Benchmarking Air Emissions of the 100 Largest Electric Power Producers in the United States” report from July 2016 is a decline from 2005 to 2014 in CO2 pollution, which is down 15 percent in the decade with preliminary data suggesting that CO2 emissions declined another 6 percent from 2014 to 2015.(read more)

Entergy Corporation, owner of five operating nuclear reactors in New York, Michigan and Massachusetts, said this week that it was in discussions with Exelon Corporation for the potential sale of the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in Scriba, N.Y., a plant the company has threatened to close due to unfavorable market conditions(read more)

Blue Castle Holdings announced that it is is beginning the contractor selection process for its construction joint venture for the Blue Castle Project, a two-unit nuclear power plant in Green River, Utah, that is slated to use Westinghouse AP1000 designs.(read more)

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has selected Westinghouse Electric Company and its research partners to receive $8 million in awards over the next three years to fund a series of nuclear power research projects. A total of 11 different projects are to receive funding, the company said.(read more)

BWX Technologies Inc. said Tuesday that its subsidiary BWXT Canada Ltd., in Cambridge, Ontario, had been awarded a steam generator design, manufacture and delivery contract valued at approximately $130 million Canadian ($100 million U.S.) from Bruce Power for its Bruce B Unit 6 reactor.(read more)

AZZ Inc. of Fort Worth, Texas, said it had been awarded a contract from Sanmen Nuclear Power Company (SNPC) of China to provide two circuits of 550kV 3, 150 Amp Gas Insulated Line (GIL) for the Sanmen Nuclear Power Plant project in the Zhejiang Province.(read more)

New York's Public Services Commission over the weekend proposed a subsidy for upstate nuclear power plants that would start at about $482 million per year and rise over a 12-year period until it reached $805 million per year.(read more)

U.S.- based small reactor developer NuScale, majority owned by Fluor Engineering, said Friday that it would work with British industrial Sheffield Forgemasters International Limited (SFIL) to create a demonstration reactor vessel head by the end of 2017 that will support small modular reactor development in the United Kingdom.(read more)

Nuclear reactor design and development company Transatomic Power Corporation said this week it had taken an unprecedented step by releasing a technical white paper that provides and in-depth look at the science underlying the its liquid-fueled reactor design.(read more)

Unscheduled trips shut down two U.S. nuclear power reactors this week. The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Station north of Omaha and the Cook Nuclear Plant's Unit 2 were both shut down due to minor incidents.(read more)

Horizon Nuclear Power said Thursday it had sighed a deal with The Japan Atomic Power Company and Hitachi calling for co-operation on the proposed Wylfa Newydd Power Station in North Wales.(read more)

Watts Bar Unit 2, the country's newest nuclear reactor, which reached first criticality on May 23, reached 42 percent of full power on Thursday, the highest level to date, as testing continues on power generation and active physics of the new plant.(read more)

Dominion Virginia Power has signed a contract with AREVA TN for provision of 75 NUHOMS EOS dry shielded canisters designed to store used nuclear fuel at two of the company's operating facilities though 2038.(read more)

AREVA NP said this week that the company had employed an innovative maintenance technique for the first time on the reactor vessel closure had at Unit 2 of Exelon's Byron Generating Station in Illinois.(read more)

Nuclear power giant AREVA, as part of their restructuring strategy, announced over the holiday weekend that it had completed the sale of its instrumentation and measurement specialist company Canberra to Mirion Technologies, a global provider of radiation detection, measurement and monitoring products that works primarily with defense and medical industries.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company over the holiday weekend announced that its AP1000 program had achieved another historic milestone with the successful completion of the cold hydrostatic test (CHT) at the Haiyang Unit 1 construction project in the Shandong Province in China.(read more)

Four powerful labor unions in Britain are calling the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant construction project the first major “litmus test” for the country in the wake of its landmark vote last week for the country to quit its membership in the European Union.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC's) annual report concerning security issues at nuclear power plants across the country has been submitted to Congress in its customary two forms, which includes a classified document and a document open to public viewing.(read more)

French utility and nuclear power plant operator EDF and Japanese industrial giant Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) said they had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that forges a cooperative strategic and global relationship in civil nuclear power fields.(read more)

Entergy Chief Nuclear Officer Chris Bakken has announced that Larry Coyle, Indian Point Energy Center site vice president, has been named chief operating officer to work alongside chief operations officers Donna Jacobs and John Ventosa. This team of leaders will be responsible for the strategic direction, support and oversight of Entergy's national fleet of 11 reactors in nine locations.(read more)

Georgia Power said Tuesday that the latest construction milestone at the Vogtle Unit 3 and 4 site near Waynesboro, Ga., had been reached with the placement of the 90-ton CA05 building module for Unit 4.(read more)

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) in California said Tuesday that the State Lands Commission's approval to a lease extension for the Diablo Canyon Power Plant to 2025 was “a critical first step” in pushing forward the agreement reached with labor and environmental groups that would allow the nuclear power plant to operate for the next nine years.(read more)

Unit 1 at the Susquehanna Nuclear Power Plant seven miles north of Berwick, Pa., is back on line after a 21-day outage prompted by discovery of a water leak inside the reactors containment structure, Talen Energy said on Monday.(read more)

Entergy said Monday that workers at the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant near Scriba, N.Y., had identified the source of a lubricant leak that had contaminated the power plant's discharge canal on Sunday, causing a visible sheen to spread across Lake Ontario. The oil “contains no PCBs, is non-radioactive, non-hazardous and has low potential health effects,” the company said, announcing the leak had been stopped.(read more)

Canadian construction giant Aecon Group on Monday announced that an Aecon joint venture has been awarded two nuclear energy contracts by Ontario Power Generation (OPG) valued at $223 million for Aecon's share.(read more)

Holtec International said Friday that its turnkey spent fuel storage facility built for Mexico's national utility, Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE), at the Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant (LVNPP) is nearing completion and should be ready for initial deployment this month.(read more)

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has pegged GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) to research and advance the use of 3D manufacturing systems to build prototype parts for nuclear power plants, the company said.(read more)

Exelon Generations said this week that they had made its intentions to close the Clinton and Quad Cities nuclear stations in 2017 and 2018, respectively, official, informing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its plans to retire the three rectors at the two plants.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company's top executive Danny Roderick is moving up the chain of command at Toshiba, taking the dual-role of president and chief executive officer at the company's Energy Systems and Solutions division, which involves oversight of Toshiba's entire energy portfolio, including Westinghouse.(read more)

A World Nuclear Association (WNA) report, the first annual World Nuclear Performance Report, published on Wednesday, says that the rate of nuclear power construction needs to accelerate significantly in order to meet the climate change goals spelled out in the COP21 accord reached in Paris last year.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a Confirmatory Action Letter documenting actions that Entergy Operations, Inc., officials have agreed to take to address performance issues at Arkansas Nuclear One. The plant is located in Russellville, Ark.(read more)

Florida Power & Light (FPL) said that it had reached an agreement with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection through a detailed Consent Order that finalizes a long-term plan to remove hypersaline water from underneath and near the cooling canal system at the Turkey Point Power Plant 20 miles south of Miami.(read more)

AREVA said Tuesday that its nuclear logistic division AREVA TN, opened a concrete casting facility in North Carolina that is designed to manufacture components for the company's NUHOMS horizontal spent fuel storage modules.(read more)

PG&E announced Tuesday that it would cease with any and all activities intended to extend the operating licenses of the company's two pressurized water reactors at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant (DCPP) beyond their original expiration dates of 2024 and 2025, having reached a joint agreement with labor and environmental groups in California to work towards replacing the plant's generation capacity with renewable power sources.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Authority in Japan said Monday that the Kansai Electric Power Company (Kepco) had been granted the third of three approvals needed to extend the operating life of two reactors over 40 years old, notching a first for the industry in Japan.(read more)