News

AREVA NP announced Friday it had signed a contract with Entergy Nuclear to conduct scheduled inspections of the reactor pressure vessel internals at Unit 1 of the Arkansas Nuclear One (ANO) power plant in Russellville, Ark.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday that its Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) had scheduled a March 15 hearing to hear oral arguments concerning a petition related to a license amendment for the Vogtle Units 3 and 4 reactors that are currently under construction near Waynesboro, Ga.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company said Thursday that it would study manufacturing and supply options in Britain for development of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) with help from the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Center (Nuclear AMRC), an industrial group with ties to the world of academics.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass., was operating safely in a report that said the plant's owner Entergy was correcting longstanding issues that had landed the plant in the NRC's column 4 safety status.(read more)

At just 5 percent of full transmission, the Takahama Unit 4 reactor in the Fukui Prefecture in Japan automatically shut down Monday, just three days after its restart due to an undetermined glitch in the vicinity of a transformer, Japanese media reported.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said Monday it had launched a special investigation into two recent events at the Perry Nuclear Plant involving a manual shut down on Feb. 8 and a temporary loss of power on Feb. 11, while the reactor was shut down.(read more)

Kurion, Inc. said Monday that it had completed construction and acceptance testing of its prototype Modular Detritiation System and has initiated the system’s mission, which is to push the technology for additional performance through various experiments.(read more)

Four days after signing a nuclear power plant parts replacement agreement with Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP), Westinghouse Electric Company announced it had been selected by ČEZ, a.s. in the Czech Republic to supply six Lead Test Assemblies (LTAs) for the Temelín nuclear power station. (read more)

Competitive Power Ventures out of Maryland has proposed building a $1 billion gas-fired power plant just a few miles south of Exelon's Dresden Generating Station in northern Illinois. "There's something in it for everyone," says the director of an economic development council, although Exelon, Exelon employees and climate change experts might disagree.(read more)

Three former Tokyo Electric Power Company executives are to be indicted Monday for “professional negligence” that contributed to injuries and deaths associated with the March 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, Japanese media reported Friday.(read more)

French nuclear giant AREVA continued to struggle in 2015, losing $2.2 billion in the year, compared to $5.2 billion in 2014. But the company touted progress on its turnaround plans Friday in its annual report, include the planned sale of radiation monitoring industrial Canberra and reactor and propulsion business AREVA TA.(read more)

Canadian nuclear plant developer Terrestrial Energy said Friday that it had submitted its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) design to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for Phase I of its pre-licensing Vendor Design Review. The process could eventually lead to a green light for the company's IMSR reactor design.(read more)

San Diego-based General Atomics (GA) said Thursday that it would acquire defense and aerospace contractor Miltec Corporation from Ducommun Incorporated under terms that were not announced. In addition, the company said it had been awarded numerous contracts from nuclear power plants with boiling water reactors for installation of hardened containment vent and radiation monitoring systems. (read more)

Ratepayers in Florida are challenging Duke Energy and Florida Power & Light in a class action suit that alleges they were illegally forced to pay $2 billion in nuclear power plant construction costs for abandoned reactors projects that were never completed.(read more)

A loose bolt in the piping system at the Takahama Unit 4 reactor in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, will not delay the planned restart of the power plant, which is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 26, the Kansai Electric Power Company said Tuesday.(read more)

A chemical oceanographer University of Victoria, Jay Cullen, said that the 2015 study of salmon off the coast of British Columbia, Canada, found no traces of cesium-134 the radionuclide that could have been attributed to the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which suffered from three reactor meltdowns due to a tsunami event that flooded back up power systems.(read more)

Preliminary notices of violations (PNOVs) have been issued to Los Alamos National Security (LANS) and to Nuclear Waste Partnership, LLC (NWP), for violations of worker safety and health codes “and nuclear safety requirements” that pertain to 2014 incidents at the department's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico. (read more)

Canada's Environment Minister Catherine McKenna has told the Ontario Power Generation that their plan to build a nuclear waste repository underground on the shores of Lake Huron will require further study.(read more)

The Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar Unit 2 near Spring City, Tenn., has not yet begun its commercial operating life, but it does have a contract for refueling and inspections, Westinghouse Electric Company announced late last week.(read more)

With work 60 percent complete across the Vogtle Units 3 and 4,Georgia Power said Thursday that the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) has verified and approved $148 million in costs submitted by the company through the 13th Vogtle Construction Monitoring (VCM) Report.(read more)

Swedish nuclear power plant Oskarhamn Unit 1 will be closed in June 2017, the plants operator OKG AB said, choosing a closure date that is early within the parameters of last year's announcement. In October 2015, OKG said that the plant would close between 2017 and 2019 due a negative market environment.(read more)

Bruce Power, operator of the largest North American nuclear power plant on the shares of Lake Huron, has released a timely video launching its innovative, robotic BRIMS fuel channel inspection and maintenance system.(read more)

The Tennessee Valley Authority said Wednesday that would accept public comment for a month on the possible sale of its 1,600-acre construction site near Hollywood, Ala., which includes two partially-built Babcock and Wilcox pressurized light water reactor facilities.(read more)

Wisconsin's state Senate has approved of a bill that would pave the way for new nuclear power plants in the state, as long as Gov. Scott Walker signs it.(read more)

EDF Energy said Tuesday that it would extend the operating life of four reactors in Britain for up to seven years. The plants, including Heysham 1 and Haysham 2 in Lancashire, northwest England, Hartlepool in Teeside in the northeast and Torness in East Lotian, Scotland, generate electricity used in about a quarter of the homes in Britain, according to EDF.(read more)

For the first time, technicians at the LaSalle County Generating Statoin in Marseilles, Illinois, are using a 360-degree virtual reality camera to assist with outage services preparation, which is superseding...(read more)

A South Australia government royal commission study into economic opportunities provided by nuclear energy recommended the state forgo nuclear power for its residents, but claimed that building a nuclear waste repository to serve the international community could be enormously profitable.(read more)

In a report issued late last week, the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) warns that closure of the R.E. Ginna and the James A. FizPatrick nuclear power plants, representing 614 MW and 882 MW, respectively, would create an energy deficit for the state when coupled with closure of two coal-fired and two gas turbine plants.(read more)

The Kansai Electric Power Company and Japan Atomic Power Company have submitted plans to Japanese regulators for dismantling three nuclear reactors that are deemed feasible for upgrades to meet post-Fukushima Daiichi standards, but are also deemed too costly to do so(read more)

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) on Friday said it would not pursue building two additional reactors at the Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in Northeast Alabama that has already got two mothballed reactor projects on site.(read more)

Irving, Texas-based Fluor Corporation said Thursday that it had been awarded a $1.4 billion, five year contract from the U.S. Department of Energy focused on the cleanup mission at the so-called Idaho Site under the Idaho Cleanup Project.(read more)

French nuclear industry giant AREVA NP announced this week delivery of the first boiling water reactor Atrium 10xM fuel assemblies in the United States equipped with its third generation Fuelguard (3GFG) debris filter.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's budget proposal for the fiscal year 2017 continues to reflect the diminishing role of the U.S. nuclear power industry, which requires a smaller agency to regulate it.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday granted permission to principle partner NRG Energy to construct two new nuclear power plants 90 miles southwest of Houston, Texas, although finances for the project appear to be worlds away.(read more)

Tepco, the operator of the crippled Japanese nuclear power station Fukushima Daiichi said Tuesday that it had completed installation of the facilities required for creating a wall of frozen soil to the depth of 35 meters (about 115 feet) below the damaged plant, which is needed to stem the flow of water moving into radioactive areas.(read more)

The Obama Administration's new budget advocates only enough funding for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility near Aiken, South Carolina, to allow the multi-billion dollar project quietly die, according to a New York Times report.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday that it had begun a special inspection at the River Bend Station nuclear power plant to look into circumstances surrounding an unplanned reactor shutdown that occurred on Jan. 9.(read more)

Chinese physicists announced over the weekend that their Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) reached 49.999 million degrees Celsius and kept that up for a solid 102 seconds in a recent experiment.(read more)

The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it would investigate the Indian Point Nuclear Generating Station this week after the plant's operator, Entergy Nuclear Operations disclosed Friday that three of its testing wells on the grounds of the plant had experienced spikes in radiation levels.(read more)

In a move that could open up India as a major market for the U.S. nuclear power industry, India presented its instrument of ratification Thursday of the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC) for Nuclear Damage with international regulators in Vienna.(read more)

FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company has contracted GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy for outage services for the Perry Nuclear Power Plant 35 miles northeast of Cleveland, Ohio. FirstEnergy, meanwhile, is thinking football in anticipation of a 30-second ad to be aired Super Bowl Sunday that tells the story of a youth football team's new facility in Cleveland.(read more)

German scientists on Wednesday, with a ceremonial assist from Chancellor Angela Merkel, produced hydrogen plasma for the first time using the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, the largest device of its kind, taking a significant step forward in early testing of the more than $1.3 billion machine that took 20 years to build.(read more)

French energy and waste management conglomerate Veolia said Thursday that it had agreed in principle to purchase U.S. nuclear waste processing innovator Kurion, a California-based company, for $350 million (cash free).(read more)

Georgia Power said Tuesday it had placed eight new shield building panels for Unit 3 at the Vogtle nuclear plant. The placement of the new shield building panels, demonstrated in a highlight clip, follows the placement of the initial six panels for Unit 3 in August 2015.(read more)

Southern Company announced shifts in its executive leadership on Tuesday, naming Joseph “Buzz” Miller as the new president and chief executive officer of Southern Power, effective March 7.(read more)

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) on Monday announced the successful completion of its first services outage at a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) facility.(read more)

Kansai Electric Power has restarted the Unit 3 reactor at the Takahama Nuclear Power Plant in Japan's Fukui Prefecture on Japan's west coast, about 160 miles southwest of Tokyo.(read more)

AREVA said that it had completed production validation testing of a new component asset management process known as ultra-high-pressure cavitation peening that is meant to prevent stress corrosion cracking in nuclear reactor components.(read more)

The former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board in India, A Gopalakrishnan, said troubles with the Russian-designed Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant are the result of a effort to create a “make-in-India” plant with technology that was unfamiliar to Indian engineers.(read more)

British media are reporting on tentative signs of activity at the Hinkley Point C construction site that may indicate a step in the right direction concerning French energy giant EDF making a decisive commitment to the project that is estimated at $26 billion.(read more)