China and Kazakhstan have taken a step closer to the supply of Kazakh fuel pellets to Chinese companies. The relevant documents enabling such transactions are between Ulba Metallurgical Plant (UMP), a subsidiary of Kazakh uranium producer KazAtomProm, and CGNPC-URC, a subsidiary of China General Nuclear (CGN). world-nulcear-news.org

Nuclear regulators from Canada and China have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) expressing their commitment to cooperate and exchange nuclear safety regulatory information. world-nulcear-news.org

The Philippines Department of Energy (DOE) said the government needs to get the people’s approval before the controversial Bataan Nuclear Power Plant could be opened. rappler.com

Media reports that the government is finally weighing whether to pull the plug on the Monju fast-breeder reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, due to the massive cost needed to restart the long-dormant facility, should come as no surprise. japantimes.co.jp

 

For the past several years, a group of researchers has been observing a seemingly impossible wood ant colony living in an abandoned nuclear weapons bunker in Templewo, Poland, near the German border. Completely isolated from the outside world, these members of the species Formica polyctena have created an ant society unlike anything we’ve seen before. arstechnica.com

South African power utility Eskom said on Friday it has extended by 30 days the period for interested parties in the Eastern Cape province to comment on its plan to build nuclear plants. reuters.com

At least 15 interest groups have challenged New York’s new “clean energy standard,” which mandates subsidies for nuclear plants and renewable energy, by petitioning the state Public Service Commission to reconsider the policy. syracuse.com

Plans to transport highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Dounreay in Caithness, Scotland to the US emerged late last year. pressandjournal.co.uk

On her first visit to China as Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May will try to reassure Beijing that she wants to strengthen ties despite her delay on a decision over whether to approve a Chinese-backed nuclear power plant in southwestern England. abcnews.go.com

With synchronization of the second unit of the Kudankulam power plant, India’s civil nuclear programme has reached a couple of landmarks: the Kudankulam project+ turned a page on protests and a legal challenge over its safety parameters in the Supreme Court, and India crossed the 6,000MW mark in nuclear power. timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Plans to restart the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan got a major boost Wednesday after a local politician who vehemently opposed the plan declined to run for reelection. dailycaller.com

Around 60 per cent of Jordanians say their knowledge of nuclear energy is insufficient, while 77 per cent believes nuclear energy should be a strategic priority, according to a survey released on Wednesday.   jordantimes.com

 

       I write a lot about the Hinkley Point C project in Britain because it is the biggest and most complex planned nuclear project in the world today. It has economic, social, security, political, diplomatic and technical complications and involves three nations including one which just left the European Union. Today I am going to write about a entrepreneur who claims that he can deliver nuclear power to the United Kingdom for a third the projected cost of the Hinkley Point C project.

       Ian Scott is a retired biochemist who spent twenty five years working for Unilever Plc. a big manufacturer of consumer products. Scott came out of retirement in 2013 to found  Moltex Energy LLP, an energy company. He says that his new reactor design is capable of producing electricity much cheaper than the standard pressurized water reactor of type being planned for the Hinkley Point C project. 

       Scott says that his Stable Salt Reactor (SSR) design can be used to provide stable power to the U.K. grid while burning existing nuclear waste. He needs about thirty million dollars to get his design to first stage regulatory approval from the U.K. nuclear regulation agencies.

       The SSR is based on the worked done at the U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory on molten salt reactors. It does not require a pressurized reactor vessel which will make it much cheaper to build than conventional power reactors. Moltex estimates that a working commercial model of the SSR can provide electricity at a cost of about forty dollars per megawatt-hour as opposed to an estimated cost of almost one hundred and seventy dollars per megawatt-hour for the electricity produced by the reactor design for the Hinkley Point C project.

       A major innovation of the SSR over previous attempts to build a molten salt reactor involve the way in which the fuel is packaged. The fuel for the SSR consists of a mixture of salt, natural uranium and plutonium waste. The mixture is inserted into zirconium clad cylindrical rods which are placed in a bath of molten salt. Convection in the liquid salt bath will carry heat to the turbines. The design will use nuclear materials that have been certified for use in nuclear reactors. The SSRs will have fewer moving parts than conventional power reactors which will lower costs and make maintenance much easier.

       The SSR will function at atmospheric pressure. This will eliminate the possibility of accidents such as Chernobyl and Fukushima which were highly pressurized. If a fuel rod ruptured, its contents would be diluted by the molten salt bath. The resulting mess would require work to clean up but would not pose a major threat to the environment and public health.

      The constituents of the SSR fuel will be taken from existing stockpiles of nuclear and industrial materials. Eventually, when the stockpiles are used up, the SSRs could be run on thorium as a fuel. Thorium is cheap and widely available. The SSR can also store excess energy produced by renewable energy sources.

       While the SSR does have innovative features such as the zirconium clad fuel rods, molten salt reactors are the subject of research and development in other nations such as China. Terrestrial Energy is working on molten salt reactors in Canada. Time will tell whether the molten salt reactor is a better and cheaper choice for nuclear energy than conventional pressurized water reactor designs.

 

People and Power investigates whether India is about to escalate its nuclear arms race with rivals Pakistan and China. aljazeera.com

Philippine Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi described the three-day international conference on the prospects of nuclear power in the Asia Pacific Region that culminated on Thursday  as a crash course on “Nuclear 101.” newsinfo.inquirer.net

The news follows last week’s ratification by the Turkish parliament of the Sino-Turkish Agreement for Cooperation in Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy. sputniknews.com

Theresa May is expected to come under pressure from China at the G20 summit over her decision to review the proposed Hinkley nuclear plant, after the issue was raised by Beijing in a meeting with the British energy minister. theguardian.com

 

 

       Dominion Generation operates the North Anna Generation Station (NAGS) which is located in Louisa County in eastern Virginia. NAGS is majority owned by Dominion Virginia Power Corporation and by the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative with a much smaller share. There are two Westinghouse pressurized water reactors at the station which together produce almost two gigawatts of power. The two reactors went online around 1980.

       The owners of the NAGS are currently proceeding with the lengthy process of licensing and constructing a third reactor at the site. They applied to the NRC for an Early Site Permit in 2003 and received it in 2007. On the day that the ESP was issued, Dominion applied for a construction and operating permit for a 1.520 gigawatt GE-Hitachi  Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) designated as North Anna 3.

        In 2008, there was public backlash against Dominion over its plans to add an additional reactor at the NAGS. Six members of the Peoples Alliance For Clean Energy were arrested for trespass at the NAGS

        Unfortunately, by 2009, Dominion was unable to reach an agreement with GE-Hitachi and they put out a request for bids from other vendors. In 2010, they settled on a 1.700 gigawatt Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ (MHI) Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor (APWR) specifically designed for the U.S. market. 

         In late 2010, Dominion announced that it was going to wait until the expected permit came through in 2013 before making a final decision on a vendor. When the permit did arrive in 2013, Dominion announced that it was going to go ahead and build the original ESBWR from GE-Hitachi. This required the amendment of the application and a new approval from the NRC was expected in 2015.

         In 2015, the Attorney General of Virginia said that the project should be abandoned because of the high cost that would be imposed on the consumers. The estimated price of the project had swelled to almost twenty billion dollars. This would make North Anna 3 the most expensive nuclear power reactor ever constructed in the U.S. It was estimated that it would increase the electric bills of the ratepayers by as much as twenty six percent.

         Dominion claims that North Anna 3 would help with mandated climate change mitigation but critics point out that alternative sustainable energy sources could accomplish the same goals at a much lower cost.

        A “Petition For A Declaratory Judgement” has just been filed by the non-profit Virginia Citizens Consumer Council (VCCC) against Dominion citing concerns about the actions of Dominion and the cost of the project. The petitioners claim that Dominion has violated state law because they failed to get approval for North Anna 3 from the Virginia State Corporation Commission before spending funds on planning and preliminary construction.

       Critics of the project say that North Anna 3 is unnecessary, too costly and a safety threat for the area. In 2011, there was a 5.8 magnitude earthquake near the plant. The existing two reactors were subjected to twice the seismic stress that they had been designed for. Building another reactor near an active fault is just a bad idea.

North Anna Generation Station: