News

Canadian conglomerate Bruce Power said Thursday it had entered into an agreement with Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) that will have the companies continuing to work together on areas of nuclear safety, operational performance and execution of large projects such as refurbishment. The agreement...(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday granted permission for DTE Energy in Michigan to add another nuclear reactor to the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station in the Frenchtown Charter Township in Michigan on the shores of Lake Erie. The facility, operated by DTE Energy Electric Company...(read more)

Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee took Environment Protection Agency head Gina McCarthy to task Wednesday on the Clean Power Plan that he said fails to recognize the effort and financial investment in nuclear power that is part of his state's efforts to produce clean energy. At a...(read more)

Authorities in Ukraine say the forest fires burning in the vicinity of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant are under control, but news from Group of Seven nations concerning the site of the April 26, 1986 nuclear power plant disaster was even more positive, as the world powers declared they had secured...(read more)

SCANA Corporation subsidiary SCE&G invites you to tour first quarter progress at the V.C. Summer Units 2 and 3 build in Jenkinsville, S.C. with a four and a half minute video that features some of heaviest lifts required for the project. First quarter progress in 2015 featured the arrival of major...(read more)

Burying nuclear waste in very deep drilled holes that go below the reach of water that could return to the surface of the Earth could be given a test run in the United States in 2016, according to the University of Sheffield’s Engineering Department. In an article posted on the British university's...(read more)

Sweden's state-owned energy company Vattenfall said Tuesday that it would close two of its oldest nuclear reactors, Ringhals 1 and 2, seven years ahead of schedule due to economic reasons. Vattenfall said that with the closures would be the loss of 1,000 jobs. In a first quarter earnings statement...(read more)

The Perry nuclear power plant, 35 miles north of Cleveland, Ohio, has been restarted with the new fuel type that operators expect will mean mean fewer rod replacements in future refueling outages. By Monday morning, the plant was up to 96 percent power, local media reported. During the refueling shutdown...(read more)

The head of Areva's Front End business group Olivier Wantz said a fuel contract signed Friday with Ukraine's state-run nuclear power company Energoatom was a sign of progress and confidence. “The contract demonstrates our capacity to win the confidence of new customers,” Wantz said...(read more)

New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez has written Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz praising a 1,000-acre site in the southeastern portion of the state as a potential location for an interim storage facility for spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants. In a letter dated April 10, the governor painted...(read more)

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) said this week it had delivered its 500th Ultra Control Rod Blade, which was sent to the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, MA as part of a multi-blade shipment. The company has taken close to six years to accomplish the milestone. It delivered the first Ultra...(read more)

The Economy, Trade and Industry ministry in Japan is setting a target of 20 percent to 22 percent of the country's electricity generation to come from nuclear power plants by 2030, a draft of the government proposal says, according to media reports. The target is a significant decline from the...(read more)

-Press Release- San Diego, California – Diakont, along with strategic partner Structural Integrity Associates, Inc., was presented the 2015 MP Corrosion Innovation of the Year Award for RODIS Robotic ILI with SIPECTM dynamic pulsed eddy current technology. SIPEC inspects the integrity of pipelines...(read more)

Two of Japan's 48 offline nuclear power plants were granted court permission for restarts, as the Kagoshima district court in southwest Japan refused to grant an injunction on behalf of local citizens who claimed the reactors were unsafe. The decision handed down Wednesday is an abrupt reversal...(read more)

Nuclear Energy Institute senior vice president for governmental affairs Alex Flint said he was pleased that the U.S. House of Representatives' Appropriations Committee had proposed a bump of 2.5 percent to nuclear energy programs for fiscal 2016 from the current budget year. The key budget committee...(read more)

Georgia Power, in an attempt to keep the public abreast of progress at the Vogtle Unit 3 and 4 construction site, has released its first quarter time-line video showing the massive project's accomplishments in February. Despite unpredictable winter weather, says the film's host Joe Washington...(read more)

The United States and South Korea have reached a bilateral agreement on nuclear power that extends the Asian nation's ability to enrich uranium for nuclear power and to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. On another trade front, President Barack Obama on Tuesday submitted a letter to Congress that seeks...(read more)

French utility giant Elecricite de France (EDF) said Monday that it would continue with construction at the Flamanville 3 EPR reactor in western Normandy while it waited for results of tests that would determine the soundness of the steel used in pressure vessel components. French nuclear regulator...(read more)

Canadian Nuclear Association President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. John Barrett said that the industry association supported Ontario's move to a cap and trade carbon pricing system that the province said is in development. Details are being worked out regarding a cap and trade system that...(read more)

A federal judge in San Diego on Friday referred the complaints over a cost-management plan involving the closure of the San Onofre nuclear power plant to state courts, but otherwise held to an earlier agreement that utility customer would pay $3.3 billion of the decommissioning costs of the plant. ...(read more)

A second flexible robot sent inside the No. 1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in Japan has been abandoned due to radiation damage to its cameras, TEPCO said Monday. The second robot measured radiation levels and temperatures and filmed the interior for the company tasked with...(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the transfer of the operating licenses for Susquehanna Steam Electric Station's Unit 1 and 2, taking PPL Corporation a step closer to combining its electricity generation with RJS Power Holdings LLC, a division of international energy generation holding...(read more)

[UPDATED] A court in Japan ruled Tuesday that new, post-Fukushima Daiichi safety standards for nuclear power plants were not stringent enough to guarantee public safety and granted an injunction that blocks, for now, the restart of the country's nuclear power plants. The ruling specifically blocked...(read more)

A shape-changing robot designed to inspect the inside of the containment vessels of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan stalled and was abandoned as it made its first inspection of the plant's Unit 1 reactor on Friday. The robot, which was developed by Hitachi-GE Nuclear...(read more)

French nuclear power plant builder Areva has signed a pre-engineering agreement with India's Nuclear Power Corporation that conforms with construction targets set by the government to have Indian companies involved in the construction of the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Plant project. The deal was signed...(read more)

South Korean conglomerate Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction said Thursday the company was celebrating the delivery of nuclear reactors designated for the United Arab Emirates' future generating station in Barakah. The company toasted the event with a ceremony at the Doosan Chanwon manufacturing...(read more)

The French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) said that the tests used to detect high-carbon flaws in the reactor vessel head and reactor vessel bottom of the Flamanville 3 nuclear reactor project in Normandy, France, were not performed on components shipped and installed at the two-reactor build in Taishan...(read more)

Heads of state from Russia and Vietnam agreed to further cooperation on nuclear power plant projects in Vietnam, which has set its sights on having 13 reactors in commercial operation by 2030. After meetings in Hanoi this week, Prime Ministers Nguyen Tan Dung of Vietnam and Dmitry Medvedev of Russia...(read more)

Duke Energy Progress has discovered a hairline fracture in the reactor head at the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant, Unit 1, in New Hill, NC, the company revealed in a regulatory filing. Duke says the quarter-inch crack near a nozzle that penetrates the reactor head, poses no threat to safety or to...(read more)

French nuclear power giant Areva has found a high-carbon anomaly in the steel used for portions of the reactor vessel head and reactor vessel bottom at the Flamanville 3 project in Normandy, France, the French regulator, the Authority of Nuclear Safety (ASN) said Tuesday. Areva is constructing the...(read more)

Wood Hole Oceanographic Institution researcher Ken Buesseler said trace amounts of Cesium-134 and Cesium-137 from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster had been found on the shoreline of British Columbia, Canada, for the first time in February. The isotopes were discovered in samples...(read more)

Restarting progress on the Jaitapur nuclear power plant in India will be high on the list of discussion points between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande, according to media reports. Modi's first trip to Europe as prime minister includes a stop in France...(read more)

An economic report sponsored by the government of Wales in Britain presented some big numbers for the region to consider, and the economic minister Edwina Hart called the $20.87 billion build under consideration a “once in a generation [economic] opportunity” The report released Monday...(read more)

British parliament ministers in a late-session action approved a law that would effectively take the decision of where to store nuclear waste out of the hands of local governments. The location of nuclear power repositories can now be decided by the secretary of state for energy, the Guardian reported...(read more)

China and Russia are about to renew their vows on nuclear power, an anonymous source said over the weekend. The two countries are discussing a new round of agreements on nuclear power, the source said. A year ago, Russia and China signed a memorandum of understanding that led to deals, including...(read more)

After four years of consecutive losses, including a $5.4 billion loss in 2014, talks of re-organizing or selling parts or all of French nuclear giant Areva are stirring back and forth headlines this week. In the latest turns, Arva Chief Executive Officer Phiippe Knoche told union representatives Wednesday...(read more)

Perry Nuclear Power Station operator FirstEnergy can go ahead with plans to use the hotter GNF2 fuel made by Global Nuclear Fuel, federal regulators said. In a letter dated 27 March 2015, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the fuel which has already been adopted by most reactors similar to...(read more)

French nuclear giant Electricite de France said Wednesday that it would cut 400 jobs at the Hinkley Point C construction site until it gets a clear indication that financing for the project is secured. To date, about 650 workers at the site in Somerset, England, have worked on preparatory activities...(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a preliminary decision that say Entergy Nuclear Operations is in a strong enough financial position to continue operations at the James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in New York and the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts, according to a media...(read more)

A national poll found that 54 percent of respondents believe an independent agency run by a corporate-style board of directors would do a better job of managing the storage of nuclear waste than a federal regulator. The national survey, conducted by Quest Global Research for Bisconti Research from...(read more)

[UPDATED] Portland, Oregon, based NuScale Power LLC said Tuesday that it had completed fabrication and assembly of a full-scale, upper module mockup of a small modular reactor, which is named the the NuScale Power ModuleTM or NPM. The mockup includes "top assembly of the NuScale Power Module...(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is planning on dropping the investigation of Southern California Edison involving potential irregularities that may have contributed to problems that lead to the closure of the San Onofre nuclear power station. The plant closed in January 2012 due to the discovery...(read more)

Officials at GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy in Castle Hayne, N.C., got out the scissors Monday to open up the new GE under-vessel simulation training center with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The $520,000 training center includes a full-scale, realistic mock up of under-vessel conditions experienced in maintenance...(read more)

How do you move a 1.4 million-pound steam generator from the port of Charleston, S.C. to the V.C. Summer construction site? The answer, says Westinghouse Nuclear, is you first plan for the move meticulously. In fact, the plans for moving the massive generator approximately 141 miles inland to the...(read more)

Support for nuclear power has drifted lower since a peak of 62 percent in 2010, sliding to 51 percent, poll taker Gallup said Monday. Poll takers indicated the percentage opposed to nuclear power held steady from 2013 to 2015 at 43 percent. But opposition is in the vicinity of its 20-year peak of...(read more)

Japan's nuclear fleet was shaken this week by the nation's regulator endorsing reports that said the Tsuruga nuclear station's No. 2 reactor in the Fukui Prefecture and the Higashidori nuclear plant in the Aomori Prefecture were both sitting on geological fault lines. The fault line under...(read more)

Bulgaria’s Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova said Thursday that the state's new central-right government had extended an offer to Toshiba Corporation's Westinghouse Electric Company to purchase 49 percent of the seventh reactor for the Kozlodui nuclear power plant. The deals already...(read more)

Several people contacted by the Inspector General's Office of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said they had been contacted in connection to an investigation as to whether the NRC colluded with Pacific Gas & Electric to downplay concerns that the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant could be unsafe...(read more)

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said this week that the the government would begin a consent-based process this year for the purpose of siting two nuclear waste repositories, one for high level defense radioactive waste and one for one for spent fuel originating from commercial operations. Moniz...(read more)

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy on Tuesday unveiled a new control rod uncoupling tool developed with Exelon Generation that can be operated remotely to increase efficiency and safety for nuclear technicians. The tool “remotely disconnects – uncouples – control rods … from their...(read more)