Nuclear Street - Nuclear Power Plant News, Jobs, and Careers

The national nuclear power regulator in France, Autorite de Surete Nucleaire (ASN) has opened a public review of an order that would force utility giant EDF to review records involving any of the components in active nuclear power plants that were fabricated at the Le Creusot forge, which is owned by Areva.

Amec Foster Wheeler said Friday that joint venture OneAIM had been awarded a $188 million, four-year contract to provide facility support, along with partner Inferserve, for the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria in northwest England.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday it had approved Tennessee Valley Authority’s request for a 14.3 percent increase in the generating capacity of Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, Units 1, 2 and 3.

Georgia Power announced Wednesday that the first steam generator has been placed at the Vogtle nuclear expansion project near Waynesboro, Georgia.

The restart of units 3 and 4 at Kyushu Electirc Power Company's Genkai nuclear generating station is being postponed from this coming fall to later in the winter, possibly until early 2018, the company said.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued a follow up confirmatory order to Westinghouse Electric Company that seeks to address ongoing concerns associated with the May 2016 discovery of a build up of uranium bearing material in a scrubber system at the Columbia Fuel Fabricating Facility in South Carolina.

For the first time since 2012, processed and treated transuranic waste is leaving Oak Ridge’s Transuranic Waste Processing Center for permanent disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico, the program's Office of Environmental Management said.

A report from the Energy Futures Initiative, headed by former Energy Department Secretary Ernest Moniz, calls for greater support for nuclear power based on the premise that a strong commercial nuclear power sector is needed to ensure safety of material that has enormous potential for harm if it fell into the wrong hands.

The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (Enec) in Abu Dhabi announced Monday that the fourth reactor vessel steam generators have been installed at the four-unit nuclear power plant that will be a first for the country and the region.

BWX Technologies, Inc., said Monday that that its subsidiary BWXT Canada Ltd. (BWXT) has been awarded a $48CA million amendment to its existing steam generator purchase agreement from Bruce Power. The amendment reflects the addition of steam drums to Bruce Power’s steam generator agreement with BWXT Canada previously announced July 2016.

The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that a review of Japan's Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Station by an international team of experts recommended more work should continue on safety improvements at the plant, but that many of the recommendations and suggestions made in a 2015 review had been addressed.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that it had approved new steps in the process of reviewing Yucca Mountain site, Nevada, as a potential site for a national repository for high level nuclear waste, reopening the process that could resolve the critical and long-standing issue for the nuclear power industry: What to do with the build up of spent nuclear fuel.

The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog group, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said this week that the growth potential for nuclear power remains high, taking the long view, even though global expansion “is projected to slow down in coming years.”

The sale of state-owned Santee Cooper is one of the options South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is considering in an effort to revive the suspended two-reactor expansion project at the Virgil C. Summer nuclear power plant, media reports indicate.

In an effort to keep the Nuclear Waste Fund intact, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) this week filed a legal brief in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to block Texas from being awarded restitution and disgorgement from the Nuclear Waste Fund based on the government's long delays in setting up a national repository for spent nuclear fuel.

GE Power Services, a division of GE Power headquartered in Baden, Switzerland, has signed a 12-year agreement with Daya Bay Nuclear Power Operations and Management Co. of Shenzhen, China, for the provision of services to steam turbines, generators and auxiliary systems at its Daya Bay, Ling Ao and Ling Dong nuclear power plants

Wisconsin company SHINE Medical Technologies said it had begun construction of Building One at its new Janesville, Wis., campus that will be used to produce the medical isotope molybdenum-99 that is critical in imaging to detect such conditions as cancer and heart disease.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday, Southern Co. said that it would cost an additional $1 billion to $1.7 billion to complete construction of two new AP1000 Westinghouse-designed reactors at the Vogtle expansion project in Waynesboro, G

Virginia-based BWX Technologies announced Thursday that its subsidiary BWXT Nuclear Energy Inc. had been awarded an $18.8 million contract from NASA to initiate conceptual designs for a nuclear thermal propulsion reactor. The aim of the project, the company said, was to support “a possible future manned mission to Mars.” That would be a 54.6 million kilometer journey – 33.9 million miles.

The early June radiation exposure accident at the Oarai Research and Development Center in the Ibaraki Prefecture in Japan involving five workers has been designated a level 2 accident by the country's Nuclear Regulation Authority. Using the international scale for accidents, the incident is on the low end of the 1-7 scale of accident intensity with 7 being the most severe accidents and 1 being the least severe.

When you throw a stone in a pond, there's a ripple effect. But if your project is large enough, when you stop throwing rocks in the pond, there is also a ripple effect. Such is the case with the decision by South Carolina Electric and Gas Company and partner Santee Cooper to stop construction of two new Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear reactors at the V.C. Summer nuclear power plant in Jenkinsville, S.C.

The Spanish government said Tuesday that it would close the Santa Maria de Garona power plant, which, as the country's oldest nuclear power plant, was commissioned in 1971 and has been idled since July 2013. The apparent reason for the closure is the lack of political will to return the plant to active service.

Westinghouse Electric Company Chief Executive Officer Jose Emeterio Gutiérrez.said the company was “extremely disappointed” at the decision by Santee Cooper and the South Carolina Electric and Gas Company to back away from its commitments to the V.C. Summer power plant expansion project, which was to deploy two AP1000 reactors designed by Westinghouse.

The China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) said Monday that it had connected the fourth unit at the Fuqing nuclear power plant to the grid. According to the World Nuclear Association, the new reactor, a 1087 MWe CPR-1000 model, is China's 37th power plant in operation.

The plummeting price of natural gas, a lack of political will power, the nation's – indeed, the globe's – romance with renewable power sources and the improved light bulb were among the culprits that rose up against the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station's expansion project which came to a sudden end on Monday. SCANA subsidiary South Carolina Electric & Gas was the holdout in the decision, but folded...