Centrus on Track to Produce HALEU Nuclear Fuel Material by Early 2022
The post Centrus on Track to Produce HALEU Nuclear Fuel Material by Early 2022 appeared first on POWER Magazine.
Centrus Energy, a firm under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to demonstrate production of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) with domestic technology, says it expects to begin producing the advanced nuclear fuel material by June 2022 at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio.
Centrus President and CEO Daniel Poneman said on March 23 that the company has kept construction of a cascade of 16 AC100M centrifuges on track despite the pandemic. The facility is being built and licensed under $ 115 million, cost-shared contract with the DOE that runs through May 2022. If completed as planned, Centrus expects its Piketon, Ohio, facility will “become the first plant in the nation licensed to produce HALEU, with enrichment levels up to a U-235 concentration just below 20%.”
The Urgency for HALEU
As POWER has reported, HALEU—a nuclear fuel material that is enriched to a higher degree (of between 5% and 20%) in the fissile isotope U-235—is not commercially available in the U.S.…
GE Turbines Will Power 1.2-GW Malaysian Plant
The post GE Turbines Will Power 1.2-GW Malaysian Plant appeared first on POWER Magazine.
General Electric (GE) will provide two of the company’s 9HA.01 gas turbines along with other equipment and services to a new power plant in Malaysia. The company on March 24 announced it secured an order from a consortium of three groups, including Mitsubishi Corp., that is serving as the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) lead for the project.
The 1.2-GW Pulau Indah Power Plant is sited in Selangor, Malaysia. The two-block combined cycle plant will feature a modular configuration, according to GE. It also will include an STF-D650 steam turbine, a W88 generator, and a once-through heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). GE said the “HRSG technology is a key enabler in advanced water-steam cycles delivering higher combined cycle efficiency, while GE’s 9HA is the company’s flagship and most efficient 50 Hz gas turbine.”
BP Details Plan for UK’s Largest Hydrogen Project
The post BP Details Plan for UK’s Largest Hydrogen Project appeared first on POWER Magazine.
The global market for hydrogen development has taken another step forward, as oil and gas major BP announced it is studying development of what it said would be the UK’s largest blue hydrogen production facility.
BP on March 18 said the project, which would be sited on England’s northeast coast, is part of a plan to make the region a hydrogen production hub. The company initially is looking at a project that could grow to 1 GW of production capacity by 2030, at a plant that could produce about 260,000 metric tons of hydrogen annually when fully operational.
The announcement came one day after the UK government announced $ 238 million in funding for nine projects in five industrial areas. The projects would be part of the country’s decarbonization strategy, and would be focused on blue hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS).
BP’s plan comes on the heels of Enegix Energy’s March 1 announcement that it plans to build what the company said would be the world’s largest green hydrogen plant, a facility in northeast Brazil that could produce more than 600 million kilograms, or about 1.32 billion pounds, of the fuel per year.…