Nuclear

Crippled by financial setbacks stemming from the half-built AP1000 reactor projects in Georgia and South Carolina, Westinghouse Electric Co., a company with a storied legacy symbolic of American nuclear power, has taken the desperate step of filing for bankruptcy protection. While owners of the two nuclear construction projects are monitoring the situation, the development could […]

A Japanese high court has lifted an injunction barring operation of the Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture, marking a victory for Kansai Electric Power Co. The Osaka High Court on March 28 lifted the injunction in response to Kansai’s appeal of a March 2016 decision by the Otsu District Court. The lower court’s […]

PJM Interconnection’s independent market monitor is joining the pushback—spearheaded by a trade group and several generators that operate in competitive wholesale markets—against an Illinois law that props up financially distressed nuclear plants with subsidies. Monitoring Analytics on March 16 filed a motion with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to intervene […]

Several U.S. states have passed, or are mulling, programs that expand state aid to financially distressed nuclear reactors in a bid to keep them open for economic and environmental reasons. Generators that operate in competitive wholesale markets are perturbed by these measures, which they say amount to nuclear “bailouts.” —Sonal Patel, associate editor (@POWERmagazine, @sonalcpatel) […]

In a ruling that stunned the nation, a district court in Japan awarded damages to 62 plaintiffs who lived near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant before the 2011 disaster, finding that plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) and the Japanese government were aware of risks to the plant and could have taken measures […]

The Trump administration released a blueprint of its proposed 2018 budget on March 16, likely setting off a major battle with Congress. The budget proposal, “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again” makes major cuts in non-defense discretionary spending over 2017. While funding for the Department of Defense is boosted $52.3 billion, […]

Texas has filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop the Department of Energy (DOE) from spending tax dollars on consent-based siting activity, and to force the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and other relevant federal agencies to complete licensing proceedings for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste permanent repository. The lawsuit filed with the U.S. Court […]

Maria Korsnick, president and CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), told POWER on March 9 that the U.S. nuclear industry is optimistic this Congress will work to resolve the nation’s long drawn out spent fuel predicament. Speaking at CERAweek by IHS Markit last week, Korsnick said that optimism was based on Republican domination of […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has accepted NuScale Power’s small modular reactor (SMR) design certification application and will provide a design review schedule soon. The NRC’s acceptance marks a major milestone for the first SMR design to ever attempt obtaining U.S. certification. NuScale, in which Fluor Corp. is a majority investor, submitted its application on […]

An arbitration panel of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has awarded Southern California Edison (SCE) $125 million in its dispute with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) over the failed replacement of four steam generators at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), a fiasco that ultimately led to the plant’s premature retirement. Victory for MHI The […]

Six years after the Fukushima disaster prompted an electricity crisis in Japan and sent tremors throughout the world’s nuclear power sector, Japan is determined to continue its reliance on nuclear for nearly a fifth of its power needs in the long term. Nuclear will make up 20% to 22% of Japan’s power mix by 2030, […]

The epic recovery from the 2011 accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, already predicted to take decades and cost at least $35 billion, is encountering delays as a series of robot probes have failed due to encountering more difficult conditions than expected, plant owner Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) said this month. TEPCO’s head of […]

A long-term energy strategy unveiled by leaders of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in early January suggests that the federation on the Arabian Peninsula will increasingly rely on renewables to power its soaring economic growth. The UAE’s energy strategy was unveiled by Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is prime minister of […]

Construction of four AP1000 units—the first new nuclear reactors in the U.S. in decades—is moving along at Vogtle 3 and 4 in Georgia and at the V.C. Summer nuclear power plant in South Carolina. In January, Westinghouse, which is spearheading construction of the units, marked a key milestone as it placed the first steam generator […]

Full operation of CGN Power’s Taishan nuclear power plant, an $8.7 billion effort to construct two EPR reactors in Guangdong province, China, has been pushed back six months, the company said in an announcement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange February 20. Completion of Taishan Unit 1 had been expected in the first half of […]

Financially hemorrhaging in 2016 due to uneconomic power plants in its fleet, FirstEnergy Corp. said it may exit the competitive generation business by mid-2018, and shutter its nuclear plants in Ohio, even though it will back legislation to subsidize nuclear power. In a fourth quarter earnings call on February 22, officials from the Akron, Ohio–based […]

A group of power companies have filed a federal lawsuit against the State of Illinois, challenging a recently enacted law that creates subsidies for Exelon’s uneconomic nuclear power plants. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed on February 14 in the Northern District of Illinois are the Electric Power Supply Association (EPSA), Dynegy, Eastern Generation, NRG […]

An explosion at EDF Energy’s Flamanville nuclear power station in France has been controlled, the utility said. The blast, which rocked Unit 1 at the nuclear plant on France’s northern coast at around 9:45 a.m. local time on February 9, stemmed from a fire originating from a fan located under the generator, EDF Energy said […]

What do we know as of February 1 about key Trump appointees responsible for administering White House policies affecting the power generation industry? Not much. As the Trump administration settles in, how his teams at energy and environment agencies will implement his policy agenda remains unclear, as does his agenda. At the end of January, […]

A superconducting tokamak at the National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) in South Korea has achieved a world record of more than 70 seconds in high-performance plasma operation. Researchers hailed the achievement as a “huge step forward for the realization of fusion power.” According to NFRI, researchers used a fully non-inductive operation mode—a “high poloidal beta […]

Uranium oxide, the basic fuel for nuclear power plants, has recently sold at prices not seen in the past 13 years. In fact, the price is less than the cost of production in many cases. That could be a problem, because little is being done to increase the fuel supply, even though the world is […]

The board of French utility EDF has approved a compensation package for the closure of France’s oldest nuclear reactor, the 39-year-old Fessenheim nuclear plant, but it delayed making a final decision on the closure until after the presidential election this spring. Closure of the 1,800-MW Fessenheim plant in northeastern France, near the German border, has […]

A crane boom collapsed under heavy winds at the Takahama nuclear power plant in Japan, landing on the Unit 2 reactor building and fuel handling building at around 9:50 p.m. local time on January 20. Plant operator, Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO), reported that no injuries and no adverse environmental effects resulted from the accident. […]

As part of its ongoing drive to exit competitive power markets, FirstEnergy Corp. said on January 23 that it has agreed to sell four natural gas–fired power plants in Pennsylvania and its competitive share of a pumped-storage hydroelectric plant in Virginia to private equity firm LS Power Equity Partners III. FirstEnergy announced last year that […]

The Trump administration will scrap executive actions to curb U.S. carbon pollution from power plants and other climate measures outlined in the Obama administration’s landmark Climate Action Plan, according to an “energy plan” published by President Donald Trump’s White House minutes after he was inaugurated January 20. Under the White House’s plan, the Trump administration […]

As France’s grid operator Réseau de Transport d’Électricité (RTE) warned the public that they need to start taking measures to conserve energy as temperatures plummet or face rolling blackouts, the nation’s nuclear watchdog, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN), has given the go-ahead to restart all but three of the 12 nuclear reactors that have […]

Although AREVA recently disclosed that 17 U.S. nuclear power plant units have installed components that were forged at the Le Creusot facility in France—a forge that has been under scrutiny due to questionable quality assurance documentation and carbon segregation irregularities in some parts manufactured at the site—the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) does not consider the […]

Non-utility generators urge FERC to overturn state actions in New York and Illinois that the generators claim distort FERC’s wholesale electricity markets.

NuScale will submit the nation’s first application for design certification of a small modular reactor (SMR) to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Thursday. The Corvallis, Ore.–based company, which is majority owned by the Fluor Corp., has been developing its light-water reactor nuclear technology for more than 15 years. Development of the NuScale power module […]