News

Multiple news sources indicate that the Biden administration’s stand on nuclear subsidies has gone from secretive to publicly supportive, although the issue is still considered a liability among some environmental groups.(read more)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said Tuesday it had approved the Dominion Energy Virginia application for an additional 20 years of operation for Surry Power Station Units 1 and 2, located near Surry, Va. These renewed licenses authorize reactor operation from 60 to 80 years.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company this week signed a definitive agreement to acquire Laveer Engineering, a specialized nuclear engineering firm in Ontario, Canada. (read more)

Georgia Power said late April that hot functional testing had begun for Vogtle Unit 3, marking the initiation of a preliminary stress test of primary systems prior to loading the first fuel assemblies into the reactor core.(read more)

New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities has granted the state’s three nuclear power plants a $300 million subsidy designed to keep the plants from closing in the face of lower prices for electricity and the onrush of the climate crisis.(read more)

Japanese news outlet Kyodo reports that three reactors in the country now have gubernatorial approval for restarts beyond the post-Fukushima practice of retiring nuclear plants after 40 years of operation.(read more)

International Atomic Energy Agency inspection teams are in Ukraine this week reviewing design safety of spent nuclear fuel facilities holding material from the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.(read more)

Shipment of major components – two steam generators and the VVER-1200 model reactor vessel – are underway from the Volgodonsk Branch of AEM-Technology to the Republic of Bangladesh for Unit 2 at the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant.(read more)

The loading of the first group of fuel assemblies into unit 6 at China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC)’s Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant in Lianyungang city, East China’s Jiangsu province, began on April 14, CNNC said this week.(read more)

The China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) said that cold pressure testing had been successfully conducted at the Karachi Unit 3 reactor in Pakistan, a milestone that was witnessed by the Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC).(read more)

The case of the core melt localization device or the so-called core catcher has been installed in the design position under the reactor pit of power unit No.4 of Kudankulam NPP which is under construction in India under VVER-1000 Russian design.(read more)

The Japanese government on Tuesday approved a plan for the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), owner of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power disaster site to begin discharging treated water collected from the site into the ocean.(read more)

The first heavy component of the steam turbine set – the rotor of the high and intermediate pressure cylinder (HP and IP cylinder), which weighs above 107 tons and is more than 12 meters long – was delivered to the Akkuyu NPP construction site in Turkey, Russian nuclear industrial Rosatom said on April 6.(read more)

French nuclear services company Framatome said this week it had signed a multimillion-dollar contract with Dominion Energy to support the long-term operation of the company’s nuclear fleet. This contract covers nuclear plant outage and maintenance work, including fleet steam generator services, refuel services, and inspections through 2026.(read more)

The Volgodonsk Branch of Rosatom’s engineering division Atomenergomash announced on Wednesday the shipment of a new type of nuclear vessel, the VVER-TOI pressurized water reactor headed for the first unit of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant—Two.(read more)

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced a $54.4 million contract for the decommissioning of the world’s first nuclear powered merchant ship, the NS Savannah, which was launched in 1959 and never became a commercial success.(read more)

Imagine a smartphone that you never have to recharge, an electric vehicle that never needs to upload more power or batteries with such unlimited power that they can change lives in remote locations.(read more)

A two trillion-dollar infrastructure support bill proposed by the Joe Biden administration unveils the new president’s mindset on nuclear power and calls for ongoing funding for the industry that presents a dramatic political hot potato for political platforms.(read more)

Finnish utility TVO (Teollisuuden Voima Oyuj) said this week that fuel loading for the Olkiluoto Unit 3 nuclear plant had commenced a day after the company received its operating license from regulators.(read more)

Specialists have completed the assembly of the reactor plant of Power Unit 2 of Belarus NPP, Rosatom announced on March 23.(read more)

U.S. and French Nuclear power service companies Lightbridge Corporation and Framatome, said they had brokered an agreement that would allow them to dissolve their 50-50 Enfission joint venture, which they formed in January 2018.(read more)

Georgia Power Company said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on 19 March that the planned November start up of unit 3 at the Vogtle NPP in Georgia could be delayed by at least a month.(read more)

Two court rulings in Japan on Thursday went in different directions concerning the fate of two nuclear power plants. In one ruling, the Hiroshima High Court halted a temporary injunction that had kept Unit 3 of the Ikata Nuclear Power Plant closed down. Separately, the Mito District Court approved of an injunction that will derail operations of Unit 2 at the Tokai Nuclear Power Plant.(read more)

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $18 million in new funding to advance particle accelerator technology, citing its potential in medical, manufacturing and clean energy technologies. In addition, the DOE noted its potential for advancing cybersecurity.(read more)

Southern California Edison (SCE) has announced a strategic plan for moving spent nuclear fuel off of its San Onofre property to a federal repository as a signal to the local community and the federal government that the company has gone as far as it can to meet its responsibilities in long-term waste management.(read more)

SNC-Lavalin Group has become a Founding Member of the Nuclear Innovation Institute (NII), the industry group said this week.(read more)

Call it a dress rehearsal. On March 7, technicians began loading dummy fuel assemblies (DFA) into the reactor of power unit No.2 of Belarus NPP, said nuclear industrial Rosatom, the General Designer and the General Contractor for the project.(read more)

A ceremony in Buyukeceli, Turkey on March 10 commemorated the construction start of Unit 3 construction at the site of the first Turkish nuclear power plant Akkuyu.(read more)

--Press Release--Tioga Pipe, Inc. is pleased to announce that Bill Kotcher has been promoted to President of the Company. Bill joined Tioga in 2016 in the role of Chief Operating Officer. He also serves on the Board of Directors of Mackson Nuclear, an affiliated Tioga Company.(read more)

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories announced this week the development of a real-time off-gas monitoring system designed for nuclear plant operators that can inform them faster about when to task items like treating or scrubbing such by-products as iodine gas.(read more)

Russian nuclear fuel company TVEL FUEL (a subsidiary of Rosatom) said Tuesday that its Bochvar Institute research facility had developed fuel rod design based on nitride uranium-plutonium fuel (MNUP-fuel) for the BREST-OD-300 fast neutron reactor.(read more)

The Tokyo Electric Power Company said that two years of work have culminated in the complete removal of nuclear fuel from Unit 3 at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.(read more)

It was just over a year ago, Bruce Power said Wednesday, that the curtain was raised on its Major Component Replacement Project with the start of its Unit 6 refurbishment.(read more)

Unit 4 of the Beloyarsk NPP with the BN-800 reactor has resumed operations after its recent refueling, which was the first time the reactor has been refueled with only assemblies loaded with MOX, uranium-plutonium fuel, making another substantial step towards operating the reactor with only MOX fuel.(read more)

A U.S. patent was awarded to Czech research teams that developed a polycrystalline-diamond coating that is intended to reduce corrosion and, by doing so, extend the life of fuel rods in nuclear power plants during standard and emergency circumstances.(read more)

U.S. modular power plant developer NuScale Power said this week it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Bulgaria’s Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant - New Build Plc (KNPP-NB) to consider deploying NuScale’s innovative small modular reactor (SMR) technology at the Kozloduy power plant location.(read more)

Using nuclear propulsion technologies to support a human mission to Mars in 2039 will require NASA to pursue an "aggressive and urgent technology development program," according to a new report released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.(read more)

Russian’s nuclear supervisor Rostechnadzor announced that its chairman, Alexey Aleshin, on February 10, signed a license for Siberian Chemical Combine to construct the world’s first experimental demonstration power plant with a lead-cooled fast neutron reactor.(read more)

Westinghouse Electric Company and Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant signed a VVER-1000 nuclear fuel licensing contract for the Kozloduy power plant in Bulgaria, the U.S. company announced.(read more)

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has given a green light to a 1.6 percent reactor capacity increase for Duke Energy Carolinas' three Oconee reactors located near Seneca, South Carolina.(read more)

Nuclear supplier and service firm Framatome said this week it had signed a contract to upgrade a component of the instrumentation and control (I&C) system for the two units of Exelon’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant on the western shores of Chesapeake Bay.(read more)

--Press Release--WizNucleus and Energy Northwest (EN) are bringing together years of technology and development expertise to create a cyber security software application to yield regulatory requirement efficiencies for nuclear energy facilities and other critical infrastructure.(read more)

With confirmation from the Fukushima Prefecture in Japan – site of the 2011, post-earthquake nuclear power plant disaster – the International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations said in early February that advances in drone technology showed viable promises for post-accident mapping and monitoring.(read more)

French nuclear service business Framatome said in early February that its GAIA Enhanced Accident Tolerant Fuel (EATF) technology recently completed its first 18-month fuel cycle at a nuclear power plant in the United States.(read more)

Unit 5 of China's Fuqing Nuclear Power Plant, the world's first demonstration project to adopt China's indigenous Generation III nuclear power technology Hualong One, also known as HPR1000, was put into commercial operation, China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) announced on January 30.(read more)

After deliveries to more than 25 regions across Europe, our Advanced Doped Pellet Technology doped pellets are one step closer to U.S. commercialization, Westinghouse announced this week.(read more)

French utility EDF announced Wednesday that the price tag for Hinkley Point C under construction in Somerset, England, had risen by about $605 million and the completion date for Unit 1 had been pushed back to June 2026.(read more)

It took less than a day in office for President Joe Biden to reverse the previous administration's stand on the Paris climate change accord and revoke the federal permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline.(read more)

The first power unit of Belarus NPP of the newest III+ generation with VVER-1200 reactor was brought to 100 percent rated power level on January 12, Rosatom announced.(read more)

The Darlington Refurbishment Project has completed a significant milestone with the successful separation of the Unit 3 reactor and its systems from the three remaining operating units at Darlington Nuclear Generating Station.(read more)