May, 2011

The Oconee Nuclear Station located on Lake Keowee near Seneca, South Carolina, will be the first of 104 US reactors to go digital. Oconee's new system will be implemented at Reactor 1 during this refueling outage and is part of a $2 billion upgrade effort by Duke Energy .

Mitsubishi Nuclear Energy Systems announced today that it has plans to open an engineering center in Charlotte and create 135 high-paying jobs over the next five years. Mitsubishi plans to invest about $4.1 million in the project over the next several years. Mitsubishi’s investment is targeting the new nuclear build market.

Recent days have seen another critical pump failure and two workers likely exceed their dose limits at the severely damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan. Tokyo Electric Power Co. learned Saturday that a faulty electric circuit caused a makeshift seawater pump cooling unit 5 to stop working. While the reactor was not operating during the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, the subsequent station...

Germany's governing coalition formalized its decision to end nuclear power in the country Monday with a proposal to phase out six reactors by 2022 and keep offline several others shut down following the Fukushima Daiichi crisis. Chancellor Angela Merkel had signaled such a move was coming in the weeks since she reversed her support for relicensing the country's oldest plants...

Although the injection helped cool the damaged reactor, the Japanese government has recently taken Tokyo Electric Power Co. to task for reporting that it paused seawater injection into unit 1 at Fukushima Daiichi when in fact it had not. The controversy involves an earlier report made by TEPCO that it suspended critical seawater injections into the reactor core of unit 1 for 55 minutes...

Facing harsh scrutiny in the week since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission raised questions about the application for its new AP1000 reactor design, Westinghouse issued a firmly worded statement Thursday addressing what it called “sensationalized” interpretations of NRC's actions. "The AP1000 nuclear energy plant is a highly robust and safe plant that has undergone...

Westinghouse Electric Company has developed an emergency fuel pool cooling system (EFPCS) to keep spent nuclear fuel cool in emergency situations, including the loss of all plant power. The system consists of a permanently installed “primary” cooling loop located inside the reactor building or spent fuel pool (SFP) building, and a mobile “secondary” cooling loop.

Global Nuclear Fuel-Americas (GNF-A) has announced it has received a $300 million dollar contract from Baltimore, Md.-based Constellation Energy Nuclear Group, LLC (CENG) to supply fuel and associated engineering reload licensing services to the utility’s Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station in central New York. Global Nuclear Fuel (GNF) is a joint venture of General Electric, Toshiba Corporation...

A building converted to hold tons of contaminated water at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant may be leaking. On Wednesday plant owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. said water levels in the former waste storage building at the plant had dropped about 5 cm over the course of 20 hours. Crews have been pumping in irradiated water from the basements of reactor units at the plant flooded...

The Swiss government announced Wednesday that it will cancel reactor projects and gradually phase out existing plants, making it the second European country after Germany to constrain its nuclear industry in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi crisis in Japan. The New York Times and other international media reported that the Swiss cabinet will halt approvals for new nuclear plants...

More details have emerged from a report to Japanese regulators on the chain of events at Fukushima Daiichi following the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The report Tokyo Electric Power Co. submitted to the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency Monday showed that operators followed manual procedures during the station blackout, but those procedures included the temporary...

As Entergy turns to the courts in its effort to relicense the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, Green Mountain Power Co. has announced a 23-year contract with the Seabrook plant in neighboring New Hampshire. Green Mountain officials quoted by the Associated Press Tuesday said they decided to buy power from NextEra Energy's Seabrook nuclear plant because of uncertainty surrounding...

SMR, LLC, a subsidiary of Holtec International, has awarded a contract to the Shaw Group Inc. to provide phase one engineering support services for a new 140-megawatt small modular nuclear power reactor, the Holtec Inherently Safe Modular Underground Reactor (HI-SMUR). Shaw will develop the conceptual design of the balance of plant and support systems to advance the HI-SMUR toward eventual commercial...

After gauges repaired last week revealed that fuel in Fukushima Daiichi's unit 1 reactor had melted completely and settled at the bottom of its pressure vessel, Tokyo Electric Power Co. announced today that the damage inside units 2 and 3 may be just as extensive. Earlier estimates placed the amount of damaged fuel in those reactors at 35 percent and 30 percent, respectively....

The head of the International Energy Agency said Germany's plans to abandon nuclear power should consider the consequences to Europe’s tightly interconnected power market. Absent a joint decision on nuclear power among European nations, IEA director Nobuo Tanaka told Financial Times Germany, “sustainability and supply security are sacrificed in the whole of Europe...

A makeshift storage area for contaminated water at Japan's badly damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant will reach capacity in the next week, Japanese media reported Monday. Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials told reporters that a building converted to store 10,000 tons of irradiated water contained 8,700 tons of water as of Monday morning, Japan time. At the current transfer...

In the three weeks since a string of tornadoes swept across much of the South, the Tennessee Valley Authority has made progress in repairing its power distribution network – enough so that it brought unit 1 of the Browns Ferry nuclear plant back online Friday. Unit 1 is the first Browns Ferry reactor back online since the tornadoes damaged several of the lines that provide power...

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s efforts to confirm its review of Westinghouse’s amended AP1000 reactor design have resulted in the uncovering of additional technical issues. The NRC will always place its commitment to public safety and a transparent process before any other considerations; Westinghouse must resolve the issues before we can consider finalizing NRC certification of the...

Pictures of the Tsunami wave coming ashore at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on March 11, 2011. Place: The slope at the eastern side of Radioactive Solid Waste Storage Facility (The east side of Unit5 taken from the southern side of the unit)

TEPCO released a series of pictures of the tsunami that hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on March 11, 2011. Place: North side of Radiation Waste Treatment Facility taken from the 4th floor.

On May 19, 2011, an arbitral tribunal of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ruled on the modalities of Siemens’ exit from the nuclear power joint venture Areva NP. According to the tribunal’s ruling, Siemens had not fully met its contractual obligations toward its former joint venture partner Areva S.A. Consequently Siemens will have to pay Areva €648 million plus interest...

Nuclear energy is a clean, cost-effective and reliable source of baseload power, said Westinghouse President and CEO Dr. Aris S. Candris Westinghouse Electric Company President and CEO Dr. Aris S. Candris addressed the company's 15,000 global employees and delivered a message of optimism for the nuclear energy industry. One of the primary topics of the address was the March 11 earthquake...

TEPCO released these photos of the first floor inspections, inside the reactor building of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 2 (taken on May 18th, 2011).

On May 4, 2011 UniPure airlifted three oil water separators to the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Each UniPure SPC-250 Slant Plate Coalescer processes up to 250 gallons per minute. The units are being used to remove floating debris, suspended solids, oils and grease from the contaminated water. This first treatment step will allow the downstream processes removing the radioactive...

TEPCO has released a comprehensive video (13 minutes) that shows damage from the tsunami and the ongoing work activities to decontaminate and stabilize the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. On May 12, TEPCO announced that Fukushima Daiichi Unit 1 is in a state of core “meltdown” because the majority of the fuel rods in the core had melted and fallen to the bottom of the reactor...