Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Finland’s Lappeenranta University of Technology to consider the deployment of a Micro-Modular Reactor (MMR) in Lappeenranta. The USNC has also signed an MoU with Canadian privately held investment firm Portland Holdings Investco Limited to promote the MMR in the Middle East, North Africa and the Caribbean regions.
     Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) plans to deploy an MMR as a research and test reactors at or near its campus in the city. The reactor will be used as a training, research, and demonstration facility. It will be connected to the local district heating network of Lappeenrannan Energia, to provide carbon-free district heating to the university and surrounding area.
      The MMR research and test reactor will test new nuclear technologies to decarbonize energy production, microgrid integration, and help train the future workforce through hands-on experience with a next-generation high-temperature gas cooled microreactor.
      Juhani Hyvärinen is a professor of nuclear engineering at LUT. He said, “The safety and design of the micro-modular reactor makes partnering with Ultra Safe Nuclear the ideal choice for LUT and for Finland as we work toward decarbonized municipal and industrial heat supply and a carbon-neutral world.”
     Francesco Venneri is a USNC founder and CEO. He said, “The work LUT is doing in transitioning to a carbon-neutral world is important, and the micro-modular reactor is the perfect research and training facility to advance their knowledge and experience – especially when it comes to decarbonizing district heating systems.”
     The USNC’s MMR is a fifteen megawatt thermal energy and five megawatts electrical energy gas-cooler reactor, drawing on operational experience from reactor developed by China, Germany, Japan and the U.S. It consists of two plants. The first plant is the nuclear plant that generates heat, The second plant is adjacent to the first and it converts heat into electricity or provides process heat for industrial applications. The USNC system is designed to be simple with minimal operation and maintenance requirements. There will be no on-site fuel storage, handling or processing. The MMR uses TRISO fuel in prismatic graphite blocks and has a sealed transportable core.
     The MMR is at an advanced licensing stage with the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s Chalk River Laboratories campus in Ontario. The project is a collaboration between the USNC and Ontario Power Generation through the jointly-owned Global First Power Limited Partnership.
     The project at LUT joins the growing list of global training, test and research MMR projects at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the U.S. and at McMasters University in Canada.
     The USNC is based in Seattle, Washington. It has also signed an MoU with Burlington, Ontario-based Portland Holdings. Under the terms of the MoU, Portland, its affiliates, and related entities will invest up to three hundred and fifty million dollars in the USNC. They intend to bring MMR technology solutions to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the Caribbean regions.
     Michael Lee-Chin is the Portland Holdings President and Chairman. He said, “Our investment in Ultra Safe Nuclear will also contribute to significant milestones in the advancement of the MMR initial deployment sites at Chalk River, Canada, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the United States. This partnership represents our commitment to investing in innovative solutions and addressing humankind’s most unmet need – climate change.”
     Venneri added “We are seeing high and growing interest in our Fully Ceramic Micro-Encapsulated fueled, micro reactor solutions for a number of carbon-free power and heat applications. Partnering with global financial leader Portland will give USNC a tremendous boost to meet this market demand worldwide. Portland’s corporate vision ‘Doing Well by Doing Good’ is well aligned with our mission to foster growth and sustainable economic benefits for the United States, Canada, and countless countries across the globe.”

Iran says nuclear deal still ‘on the table’ al-monitor.com

Tobin and Golden call for conversation on nuclear energy Imfm.ie

NuScale completes standard plant design world-nuclear-news.org

West plotting to assassinate Putin and risks triggering nuclear war, claims Kremlin mirror.co.uk

Ambient office = 136 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 89 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 88 nanosieverts per hour

Red bell peppe from Central Market = 108 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 130 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 116 nanosieverts per hour

      TerraPower’s demonstration of an advanced reactor will be delayed by at least two years because the only source for the fuel it burns is Russia. The Ukraine war has stopped the trade in such materials. TerraPower is planning to construct its first reactor in the frontier-era coal town of Kemmerer, Wyoming. They had hoped to finish the demonstration reactor by 2028.
      Chris Levesque is the CEO of TerraPower. He said, “In February 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused the only commercial source of HALEU fuel to no longer be a viable part of the supply chain for TerraPower, as well as for others in our industry. Given the lack of fuel availability now, and that there has been no construction started on new fuel enrichment facilities, TerraPower is anticipating a minimum of a two-year delay to being able to bring the Natrium reactor into operation.”
     The TerraPower advanced nuclear plant design is called Natrium. It will be smaller than conventional nuclear power reactors. It is estimated to cost four billion dollars. Half of that money will come from the Department of Energy (DoE). It will offer three hundred and forty-five megawatts of power. The reactor will have the potential to expand its capacity to five hundred megawatts. That is estimated to be about half the energy required to power a mid-sized city.
     However, the plant will depend on high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). The existing nuclear reactor fleet in the U.S. burns uranium-235 fuel enriched to five percent. HALEU is enriched between five percent and twenty percent.
     The U.S. does not have the enrichment capacity to supply commercial amounts of HALEU fuel. TerraPower had “assumed the use of HALEU from Russia for our first core load.”
     Since Russia invaded Ukraine last February it has become clear that Russia could no longer be a reliable trading Partner. TerraPower, the DoE and other stakeholders have been looking for alternative sources of HALEU fuel. They are also pressuring lawmakers to approve two billion dollars to support HALEU production, according to Levesque.
     Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, a Republican, thinks that this situation is a “wake up call” for the U.S. In a written statement, Barrasso said, “Instead of relying on our adversaries like Russia for uranium, the United States must produce its own supply of advanced nuclear fuel.”
     Barrasso sent a letter to the Senate Energy Committee Chairman Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) requesting that they hold a hearing about the availability of HALEU. Barrasso also sent a letter to Jennifer Granholm, the Secretary of Energy urging the U.S. to move faster to secure a source of HALEU.
     The DoE has “sufficient stockpiles of excess and previously used uranium to meet TerraPower’s needs,” however it has “yet to process sufficient amounts of this excess uranium into HALEU,” Barrasso said in his letter to Granholm. “At this point, no single pathway will likely be sufficient to meet TerraPower’s schedule.”
     Currently, 800 engineers are working to complete the plant’s design. TerraPower expects the project will employ as many as two thousand workers to build the plant in the mid-2020s. TerraPower has raised over eight hundred and thirty million dollars in private funding in 2022. The U.S. Congress has appropriated one billion six hundred million dollars for construction of the plant.

Turkey starts discussions with US to buy small nuclear reactors power-technology.com

Holidays, mild weather and Swedish nuclear plant lower electricity price news.err.ee

Boost to Russian marine reactor manufacturing world-nuclear-news.org

Ukraine calls on world to sanction Russia’s nuclear industry Ukrinform.net

Ambient office = 137 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 119 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 128 nanosieverts per hour

Kalara lettuce from Central Market = 88 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 114 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Rising costs should be eased by the tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act according to Colbert. The new law allows new reactor owners to claim a twenty-five dollars per megawatt hour production tax credit for a plant’s first ten years of operation. Another option is a thirty percent investment tax credit on plants that begin operations in 2025 of later. There are other credits being offered for plants that meet labor, location, or domestic sourcing goals.
     NuScale informed an investor conference last month that federal tax incentives could reduce construction costs of its reactor by as much as fifty percent, if located at a shutdown U.S. coal plant site.
     Colbert said that “The IRS has issued dozens of circulars asking for input” on the tax provisions for new nuclear plants. “The devil is in the details. It’s going to take a while for [UAMPS members] to digest what it all means. But we think it will be hugely beneficial.”
     In order to keep the UAMPS project on track, developers will not only have to keep existing utility sponsors. They will also have to sign up new sponsors. Twenty-seven of UAMPS fifty member utilities are sponsors of the project. They have agreed to buy one hundred and sixteen megawatts of power. However, Webb said that the entire four hundred and sixty-two megawatts of capacity must be fully subscribed for the project to go forward.
      Mason Baker is the CEO of UAMPS. Last month, he said, “We’re going to have to see measured improvement off the current subscription to keep moving forward with the project. We’re very actively doing that.”
     NuScale said that it is also in discussions for projects elsewhere in the U.S. as well as in Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Jordan, Poland, Romania and Ukraine.
     KGHM is a large copper and silver producer in Poland. In February of this year, they agreed to work with NuScale toward deployment of a NuScale reactor as early as 2029. However, the company also lost a potential U.S. customer recently when Washington state’s Grant County Public Utility District decided to instead consider a SMR from X-energy based in Rockville, Maryland.
     NuScale will also need to gain design approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a new SMR design. Its fifty-megawatt design was approved by the NRC two years ago. It will be replaced by a seventy-seven megawatt SMR that it plans to use for the UAMPS and other projects.
    Diane Hughes is the NuScale vice president for marketing and communication. She said that the company remains on track to submit the new design application this month. However, NRC staff has raised concerns about the design. They wrote a letter to NuScale that its proposed module raised “several challenging and/or significant issues.” The letter is a response to a draft application NuScale submitted to the NRC seeking feedback on its final application. The letter includes eighteen pages of questions and concerns. NRC staff say that NuScale’s draft application is missing information needed to determine whether the design provides “reasonable assurance of public health and safety.”
     Edwin Lyman is the director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He said that the issues raised by the NRC “will take substantial analytical work to fix.” Lyman went on to say that “Although NuScale claims that it is still on track to submit the application by Dec. 31, it is hard to see how that can happen unless the company does a rush job — which will only lead to more revisions and delays down the road. NuScale should take all the time necessary to do a comprehensive and accurate rewrite of the application instead of trying to stick to an arbitrary timeline.”

Prototype SMR safety system completed world-nuclear-news.org

Nuclear weapons not soldiers are Britain’s best investment telegraph.co.uk

Iran Threatens To ‘raze Tel Aviv’ And Destroy Dimona If Israel Strikes Its Nuclear Sites republicworld.com

Western policy of containing Russia could cause clash of nuclear powers English.news.cn

Ambient office = 114 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 102 nanosieverts per hour

Jalapeno pepper from Central Market = 176 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 103 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     One of the leading developers of small nuclear reactors in the U.S. is facing rising costs for a key project. This situation is potentially jeopardizing its future in a low-carbon power grid.
     NuScale Power Corporation and Utah Associated Municipal Power System (UAMPS) are planning to start operation of the first of six small modular reactors (SMRs) in 2029. NuScale is the leader in a global competition to construct a new generation of SMRs that could provide a base of steady power to complement wind and solar energy on a zero-carbon grid. This project hopes to show that SMRs with factory-built components can avoid the huge cost overruns that have doomed the prospects of conventional reactors in the U.S.
     Unfortunately, NuScale’s first SMR now faces much higher construction cost estimates. This has been caused by inflation and higher interest rates. If projected costs rise above fifty-eight dollars per megawatt-hour, it would trigger a make or break vote on the project as early as next month from the project’s anchor customers.
     LaVarr Webb is a UAMPS spokesperson. He said that analysts are getting bids from vendors for construction and “counting every nut and bolt.” Webb would not speculate about the size of the increase. However, he said, “we do know it will go up substantially.”
     This development comes as another advanced nuclear reactor proposal from TerraPower for a demonstration prototype in Wyoming will likely be delayed for at least two years because of lack of access to highly enriched fuel in Russia. The delay prompted a letter from Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo) to Senate Energy and Natural Resources Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) requesting that an oversight hearing on this issue be held in the Senate.
     UAMPS is a Salt Lake City-based group of fifty municipal utilities in six Western States. Along with NuScale, they are developing the reactor project. The U.S. Department of Energy has established a cost sharing grant of up to one billion four hundred million dollars. The organization members can leave the project if costs go above fifty-eight dollars per megawatt.
     At this time, UAMPS does not intend to exit, according to Webb. Unless and until its members say otherwise. Each of its utilities will make separate decisions on buying the project’s electricity. If many of the utilities ultimately opt out, the project could fail. In order to go forward, there must be buyers for all of the SMR’s electricity.
     About seventy developers in the U.S. and six other countries are also working on SMRs. However, NuScale is the only developer whose design has been approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NuScale plans to build six reactors in Idaho. The entire project could deliver four hundred and sixty-two megawatts in 2030 if all regulatory approvals come through and construction schedules are met.
     However, NuScale has seen costs of construction materials skyrocket since the project was first greenlighted in 2020. The cost of fabricated steel plate has increased by fifty six percent. Carbon steel piping is a primary component of nuclear plants. The cost of piping is ninety percent higher. The reactor components constitute about one-third of the plant’s expected total costs.
           Interest rates have risen sharply to their highest level in fourteen years. Chris Colbert is the CFO of NuScale. He said, “All that has impacted the cost of the plant. We’re all trying to figure out what to do with it.”
     Those rising costs are also impacting NuScale’s competitors in the wind and solar industry. Webb said, “We’re seeing cost increases for all forms of generation. Our member participants feel like they need baseload, dispatchable, always-available energy to back up renewable power.”
Please read Part 2 next