Nuclear

Starting development work on a new nuclear plant in Iowa is "premature," given the uncertainty of carbon regulation and extensive regulatory review for new nuclear reactor designs, Des Moines–based MidAmerican Energy Co. said on Tuesday after it completed its nuclear feasibility study.

Ningde 1, the first of four Chinese-designed CPR-1000 pressurized water reactors being built at a site in Fujian Province, began commercial operation this April after a 58-month construction period.

As the book title Too Dumb to Meter: Follies, Fiascoes, Dead Ends, and Duds on the U.S. Road to Atomic Energy implies, nuclear power has traveled a rough road. In this POWER exclusive, we present the 22nd and 23rd chapters, “The Jimmy, Ron, and Mo Show” and “Screw Nevada and Nevada Will Screw You,” the last two chapters of the “Waste Is a Terrible Thing to Mind” section.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on Tuesday called for a federal investigation to determine whether Southern California Edison (SCE) intentionally misled regulators regarding the installation of faulty steam generators at the beleaguered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

A three-judge panel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC’s) Atomic Safety Licensing Board (ASLB) on Tuesday ruled that Southern California Edison (SCE) cannot restart Unit 2 of its shuttered San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) until the NRC holds a formal license amendment proceeding with full public participation.

Westinghouse and China’s State Nuclear Power Technology Corp. (SNPTC) have teamed to further develop a supply chain within China for power plant equipment and components to be used in global AP1000 nuclear power plants.

In an apparent legal victory for developers of new nuclear power plants in the U.S., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied complaints from environmental groups that federal approval of Southern Co.’s two new reactors under construction in Georgia did not address lessons learned from the Fukushima accident.

Duke Energy said on May 2 that it told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) it plans to suspend its application for two proposed new nuclear units on its Harris site near New Hill in Wake County, North Carolina.

Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Itochu Corp., along with France’s GDF Suez, will build a 4,800-MW nuclear power plant at an estimated cost of $22 billion under an agreement signed May 3.

The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) said on May 6 that the continuing shutdown of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) heightens reliability concerns for areas of Southern California this summer.

A bipartisan group of senators last week asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to vet just how feasible the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is, and how its costs could affect other U.S. fusion programs.

Dominion on Tuesday permanently shuttered its 556-MW Kewanee nuclear plant located about 40 miles southeast of Green Bay, Wis. The 40-year-old Westinghouse pressurized water reactor generated 148 million MWh over its lifetime.

The bad luck for Southern California Edison’s (SCE’s) crippled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) continued this week. The local ABC affiliate in San Diego reported on April 30 that it had been given a photo of a makeshift repair to the water box in Unit 3  by a plant employee.

A bipartisan group of senators have introduced legislation that would effectively shift responsibility for the disposition of spent fuel from U.S. nuclear power plants from the Department of Energy (DOE) to a new agency created solely to deal with nuclear waste issues.

Dominion subsidiary Virginia Power may choose to use a GE-Hitachi Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) instead of a Mitsubishi Nuclear Energy Services (MNES) Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor (APWR) for a third nuclear unit proposed at its North Anna site in Virginia, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing on Friday.

An informational notice recently issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) cautions nuclear power plant operators to look out for moisture degradation of structures and components used to store spent nuclear fuel in dry casks.

Edison International said that without a restart of Unit 2 at its San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), it could decide by the end of the year to retire both units at the California nuclear plant. The units with a combined generating capacity of 2,350 MW have been offline since early 2012, the result of unexpected erosion and tube leaks in their steam generators. Costs tied to the shutdown now total around $553 million, including $109 million spent on inspections and repairs and $444 million for replacement power.

Drought is a serious vulnerability for the power sector, witnesses testified at a full committee hearing held last week in the Senate to assess the impacts of drought on the power and water sectors. Members of the panel invited by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources offered a number of possible solutions for federal agencies and power companies that could mitigate adverse effects from drought.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) ruled that a partnership between NRG Energy and Japan’s Toshiba Corp. to build two new ABWR reactors at the South Texas Project (STP) outside Bay City, Texas, through the holding company Nuclear Innovation North America (NINA) continues to be dominated by foreign control. Until NINA can come up with a different corporate ownership structure, the NRC said it could not approve the project’s combined construction and operation license (COL).

Christofer Mowry, president of Babcock & Wilcox mPower Inc. and CEO of Generation mPower LLC, a joint company of Babcock & Wilcox and Bechtel to design and build the mPower small modular reactor that won a competition for a Department of Energy cooperative funding agreement, discusses the machine and the market.

Mexico’s Federal Electrical Commission needed a safe way to train new operators at its Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Veracruz, so it developed a stand-alone process simulator that allows trainees to practice a wide variety of plant operations and responses to incidents without putting the plant itself at risk.

As the book title Too Dumb to Meter: Follies, Fiascoes, Dead Ends, and Duds on the U.S. Road to Atomic Energy implies, nuclear power has traveled a rough road. In this POWER exclusive, we present the 20th and 21st chapters, “Out of Sight and Mind” and “Holey Kansas,” the first two chapters of the “Waste Is a Terrible Thing to Mind” section.

In the U.S., where construction of new nuclear reactors has stalled for three decades, two separate nuclear projects completed placement of basemat structural concrete for new AP1000 reactors a few days apart this March. SCANA Corp.’s South Carolina Electric & Gas Co. (SCE&G) marked the milestone on March 11 (Figure 2), completing concrete placement of the nuclear island basemat for its V.C. Summer Unit 2 in Fairfield, S.C., while Southern Co.’s Georgia Power completed placement for a nuclear island at its Vogtle Unit 3 nuclear expansion site near Waynesboro, Ga., on March 14 (Figure 3).

By the end of 2013, one year ahead of its goal, the province of Ontario will be virtually coal-free—a first for a North American jurisdiction. How did the most populous part of Canada go from 25% to 0% coal-fired generation in just a decade, and what does this phaseout mean for the rest of the world?

Germany has chosen to transform its energy system within a few decades—an ambition that has evoked equal admiration and confusion. Has Europe’s largest economy embarked on a rational path to an energy future that will make it the bellwether for global acceptance of renewables, or will the complex array of current challenges encumber its grand transformation?

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has issued a License to Prepare Site for Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington station expansion. This is the first of a series of licenses required to prepare, construct, and operate new nuclear reactors and the first of its kind issued in Canada in over a quarter-century.

Historic low prices for natural gas and slow demand recovery are the principal barriers to new nuclear power construction in the U.S. Small modular reactors (SMRs) may break through those barriers, but only if installed cost targets are met.

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., April 29, 2013 – Last week, a bipartisan group of Senators, all of them mired in a failed paradigm, proposed a solution to the nation’s long-festering problem of what to do with what comes out of the back end of nuclear power plants. It’s nasty stuff, that’s for sure. But […]

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week voted 21-1 to approve the nomination of Dr. Ernest Moniz to be Secretary of Energy. Moniz, a physicist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is expected to win full Senate approval this week—with some minor hurdles.

By David Wagman Denver, April 23, 2013 — Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NRA) is expected to release this July regulations for restarting the nation’s fleet of nuclear generating stations. Much of that capacity shut down following the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. Those nuclear closures threw domestic Japanese and global energy markets into turmoil as […]