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Three More Nuclear Plant Owners Will Demonstrate Hydrogen Production

September 12, 2019

The post Three More Nuclear Plant Owners Will Demonstrate Hydrogen Production appeared first on POWER Magazine.

FirstEnergy Solutions (FES), Xcel Energy, and Arizona Public Service (APS) will demonstrate hydrogen production at three nuclear plants they own starting in 2020 and 2021. The projects, selected as part of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Nuclear Energy’s Advanced Reactor Development Project funding pathway, aim to improve long-term competitiveness of the nuclear sector as more cheap natural gas and renewable power resources flood power markets.

Funded by the DOE, the demonstrations will take place at FES’ Davis-Besse plant in Ohio, APS’ Palo Verde plant in Arizona, and an Xcel nuclear plant in Minnesota.

The three utility awards, which the DOE announced on Sept. 10 as part of the sixth round of funding under the December 2017-issued U.S. Industry Opportunities for Advanced Nuclear Technology Development funding opportunity announcement (FOA), follow a similar selection of a first-of-its-kind project spearheaded by Exelon at a still-to-be determined existing nuclear site in an organized power market under the DOE’s H2@Scale concept.…

Southern Nuclear Adds New Power Plant Simulators

August 19, 2019

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GSE Systems said it has delivered and commissioned three additional full-scope simulators for Southern Nuclear’s new Operations Training Centers. The simulators are for the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Plant, and the Joseph M. Farley Nuclear Plant.

Simulators provide efficient hands-on learning for power plant operators. While power plants of any type can benefit from simulators, nuclear plants perhaps gain the most value, as missteps on a live reactor plant can result in grave consequences. Simulators generally operate on personal computers and are provided for a broad audience of technical and non-technical professionals, students, and instructors.

GSE said Southern Nuclear’s additional simulators will add flexible scheduling and increased capacity that can drive operator performance. The simulators will also offer more availability to each plant’s engineering and maintenance staff, who find the simulators useful for virtually commissioning plant changes, validating plant procedures, management certification, and a variety of other training activities. Furthermore, the simulators are said to have been upgraded with some of the latest technology, including GSE’s new OpenSim 7.0 simulator operating system and enhanced containment modeling program and its PSA-HD program to train operators on beyond-design-basis events.…

DOE Speeds Up Development of Experimental Fast Reactor, Sustain Flagging U.S. Nuclear Sector

August 9, 2019

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The Department of Energy (DOE) officially launched development of its Versatile Test Reactor (VTR), a fast reactor that will foster experiments with much higher neutron energy and flux compared to the nation’s existing 35 research reactors to develop advanced nuclear fuel for future nuclear power plants in the U.S. The facility, it says, is necessary to keep the nation technologically competitive with China and Russia.

The agency on Aug. 5 published a Notice of Intent in the Federal Register announcing it would develop an environmental impact statement (EIS) to study impacts of building the novel experimental reactor. The DOE will accept public comment on what the draft EIS should include until Sept. 4, and it plans to issue a draft EIS analysis within “the next several months” for public comment.

On Monday, the DOE also announced that it is considering two locations for the VTR: Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in eastern Idaho, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in eastern Tennessee. Two sites, INL and the Savannah River site in South Carolina, are also under consideration for the fabrication of the fuel needed to run the VTR.…

Worried About Climate Change? Save Nuclear Plants [PODCAST]

July 27, 2019

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Nuclear power advocates suggest there are many benefits associated with nuclear energy. They point to high-paying jobs; billions of dollars in economic activity for plant-hosting communities; and secure, reliable, baseload electricity. But the most-important benefit of nuclear power may be that it emits no greenhouse gases, and therefore does not contribute to climate change.

According to Nuclear Matters, a national coalition that works to inform the public and policymakers about the benefits of nuclear energy, nuclear power is playing an essential role in the U.S.’s clean energy future. The group says nuclear power accounted for more than 55% of the country’s clean energy generation in 2018, and phasing out nuclear energy would create devastating environmental impacts for the world.

Carol Browner, former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator and former energy and climate change senior advisor to President Obama, was a guest on The POWER Podcast. Browner, who currently serves on the Nuclear Matters Advocacy Council, said, “Air pollution is a major burden to human health, and electricity generation is a major source of air pollution.…

TEPCO Says It Will Decommission Second Fukushima Nuclear Plant

July 25, 2019

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Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) on July 24 said it will decommission its Fukushima Daini nuclear station. The plant is located just south of the larger Fukushima Daiichi plant, site of a meltdown in March 2011 after an earthquake and tsunami heavily damaged the Daiichi facility.

The four reactors at Daini automatically shut down after the earthquake, reaching cold shutdown two days later. The reactors have not operated since.

Permanent closure of the Daini units would mean 21 reactors in Japan are scheduled for decommissioning. There were 54 operating reactors in the country prior to the 2011 disaster.

Nuclear power provided about 30% of Japan’s power prior to the earthquake. The country idled all its reactors in the wake of the meltdown, and only eight have been restarted, though several are continuing with a relicensing process required due to the country’s new operating standards after Fukushima.

Japan has relied on imported liquefied natural gas and thermal generation from imported coal to replace the lost nuclear generation since 2011.…

Judge: TVA Deal for Bellefonte Nuclear Plant Stays in Place

May 17, 2019

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A federal judge this week ruled the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) must continue to honor an agreement to sell the unfinished Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant to a real estate developer who has said he would complete construction of the long-idled project.

U.S. District Court Judge Liles C. Burke, in a 17-page opinion issued after a hearing this week in Huntsville, Alabama, declined to dismiss a lawsuit brought by developer Franklin Haney, who sued TVA in November 2018 for breach of contract after TVA said it could not complete the sale of the Bellefonte site and its assets to Haney’s Nuclear Development LLC.

Haney in 2016 was the winning bidder in an auction for Bellefonte, agreeing to pay $ 111 million for the twin-reactor nuclear plant. He sued TVA last year after the federally owned utility said it needed approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to authorize the sale.

TVA at the 2016 auction said the winning bidder would have two years to complete the purchase.…