NRC

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on May 6 released a final environmental impact statement (EIS) supplement for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a court-obligated finding that may revive the comatose project. The final supplement evaluates the potential environmental impacts on groundwater and other impacts associated with the discharge of contaminated groundwater from the […]

Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) anticipates extending Salem Nuclear Generating Station’s Unit 1 refueling outage, which began on April 14, so it can inspect, repair, and replace damaged baffle bolts within the plant’s reactor vessel, according to information presented in the company’s first quarter earnings announcement. A PSEG spokesperson told POWER that visual inspections at […]

Duke Energy’s request to increase the generating capacity of Unit 1 at its Catawba Nuclear Station by 1.7% by more precisely measuring feedwater flow has been approved by federal regulators. Staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) found on May 4 that Duke Energy could safely increase the reactor’s output “primarily through more accurate means […]

Wisconsin’s Senate has voted to lift a longstanding ban on building new nuclear plants unless a federal site exists to store the waste and it can be shown to benefit ratepayers. The Senate voted 23–9 for Senate Bill 384, with several Democrats joining Republicans in voting for the measure. The bill now heads to the […]

Entergy Corp.—owner and operator of the Indian Point nuclear power plant located in Buchanan, N.Y.—announced on February 6 that it had discovered elevated levels of tritium in samples from three of its groundwater monitoring wells at the facility. The samples were taken as part of the plants ongoing comprehensive groundwater-monitoring program. Although the company said […]

There is perhaps no industry in the U.S. experiencing a greater range of fortunes than nuclear power. Across much of the country, nuclear plants that must compete in deregulated markets are often economically

The historic winter storm that buried the Eastern U.S. in snow over the weekend shut the lights off for more than a million customers from Arkansas to Massachusetts as it downed power lines and hampered operations at some power plants. According to the Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, at one […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said on January 27 that it had approved the applications for license renewal submitted by Exelon Corp. for Units 1 and 2 of the Braidwood Generating Station in Braceville, Ill. Braidwood, the state’s largest nuclear plant, was originally built by Commonwealth Edison. The two-unit plant operates two Westinghouse pressurized water […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has granted preemption authority to nuclear facilities in New York and California, allowing plant security forces to possess and use certain firearms and related devices despite local, state, or federal laws and regulations restricting their use. The action follows years of review. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 gave the […]

  Dominion subsidiary Dominion Virginia Power on Nov. 6 became the first U.S utility to notify the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of its intent to file a second license renewal application for one of its nuclear plants. Dominion intends to seek a 20-year extension for the two-unit, 1,676-MW Surry Power Station in Virginia. The announcement […]

For the first time in nearly 20 years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued an operating license for a new nuclear power plant. The 40-year license was issued to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for the long-overdue Watts Bar Unit 2 reactor on Oct. 22. The Watts Bar plant is located about 10 miles […]

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) and DTE Energy announced plans to explore advancing the detailed design of the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR). According to GEH, the ESBWR is the world’s safest approved nuclear reactor design based on core damage frequency. The reactor has advanced passive safety systems, and is designed to cool itself […]

The nation’s nuclear fleet has performed impressively through the first eight months of 2015. Plant outages averaged less than 3% of total U.S. nuclear capacity during the all-important peak summer season this year—from June through August. The result is far better than even the lowest range of data from any of the past five years. […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced on Sept. 21 that it has begun a special inspection at the Callaway nuclear plant in Fulton, Mo., to investigate the failure of three of four control valves that regulate water flow to the plant’s steam generators. The review follows a reactor trip that occurred on August 11. According […]

Some members of the U.S. House of Representatives feel the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) needs to appropriately align its budget and staffing levels with the organization’s workload. That message was delivered to the agency’s commissioners during the Subcommittee on Energy and Power and the Subcommittee on Environment and the Economy joint oversight hearing held on […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has dropped a study begun in 2010 to determine cancer risks in populations near U.S. nuclear power facilities. Continuing the work was “impractical, given the significant amount of time and resources needed and the agency’s current budget constraints,” the regulatory body said. The study that was being conducted by the […]

Ameren Missouri has dropped plans to build a second nuclear unit at its Callaway Energy Center, citing shaky economics in the context of cheaper renewables, low demand, and other factors for its decision. “While we continue to believe nuclear power must be an important clean energy source for our company and country, as evidenced by […]

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) inspectors reported that the Tennessee Valley Authority’s performance during a recent assessment conducted at Watts Bar Unit 2 indicated that the plant is ready to startup and conduct power operations. The news was conveyed at a public meeting hosted by the NRC on July 27 in Athens, Tenn., to review results […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) released details from its security inspection program for commercial nuclear power reactors and Category I fuel cycle facilities, finding only one “failure to protect designated target set components effectively” during the 23 NRC-evaluated force-on-force (FOF) exercises conducted in 2014. Although not perfect, the marks are far better than inspection results […]

Southern Co. announced on June 16 that construction has been completed on a new FLEX dome—a structure built to house emergency equipment needed to respond to an extreme external event—at its Vogtle nuclear plant. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is requiring U.S. nuclear plants to build protected structures like the FLEX dome in response to […]

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will soon issue DTE Electric a combined license (COL) to build and operate an Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) at its existing Fermi 2 site in Michigan.  The federal regulator announced on April 30 that it found the staff’s review adequate to make the necessary regulatory safety and environmental […]

When many older plants were built, steel and cast iron piping were common materials used underground. Although these materials have proven to have long, useful lives, improvements in plastics offer additional alternatives today. An understanding of best practices for inspecting and servicing buried piping will help you keep systems operating as designed.  Most, if not […]

The chairman and ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) presented conflicting progress reports on the status of Fukushima task force recommendations during a committee oversight hearing held on April 15. “You haven’t done really anything since Fukushima, as far as I can tell,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), […]

Staff at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) should expeditiously complete and implement cybersecurity rulemaking for nuclear fuel-cycle facilities, the regulatory agency’s commissioners have ordered.  In a March 24 agency memorandum to Mark Satorius, NRC executive director for operations, the commission disapproved the one option, which was the staff’s recommendation, to issue a security order to […]

The balance in the Zion Nuclear Power Plant decommissioning trust fund was about 30% lower at the end of 2014 than it was the previous year according to a report filed by ZionSolutions with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on March 30. The Report on Status of Decommissioning Funding for Shutdown Reactors—due annually—indicated that there was […]

More than six and a half years after the Department of Energy (DOE) submitted its license application seeking authorization to build a geologic repository, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff published the final two volumes of the safety evaluation report (SER) on the Yucca Mountain site. Released on Jan. 29, Volume 2 covers repository safety before […]

In the third part of a long-awaited safety evaluation report (SER) for the stalled Yucca Mountain permanent nuclear waste repository released today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) says the Department of Energy (DOE) fails to meet necessary requirements relating to ownership of land and water rights.  Volume 4 (Administrative and Programmatic Requirements) of the five-part […]

Although the official title of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on Dec. 3 was “[Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s] Implementation of the Fukushima Near-T­erm Task Force Recommendations and other Actions to Enhance and Maintain Nuclear Safety,” much of the testimony focused on possible seismic problems in and around the Diablo Canyon nuclear power […]

William D. Magwood, IV, formerly head of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy and commissioner at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and current director-general of the Organisation

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s recent “waste confidence” ruling, which declares storage of spent fuel at reactor sites safe indefinitely, could fundamentally undercut the decades-long U.S. policy of seeking an off-site, permanent burial site for high-level nuclear waste. A five-decades-old goal of the U.S. nuclear power industry, its regulators, and the Department of Energy (DOE)—permanent, off-site […]