Nuclear Energy

French nuclear company Framatome has been selected by Spanish operator Centrales Nucleares Almaraz-Trillo (CNAT) for the long-term supply of high thermal performance (HTP) fuel assemblies and related services to Unit 1 of the Trillo nuclear power station in Spain.

The contract covers a total of nine fuel assembly deliveries and related services from 2026-2035. The contract can be extended beyond 2035 should the lifetime of the Trillo nuclear power plant be extended.

HTP denotes a fuel assembly design in which a specific Framatome-developed spacer grid is a major component. HTP fuel assemblies have been loaded into 45 reactors across the globe.

Framatome, owned by EDF and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, is the original equipment manufacturer of the plant and has been supplying fuel assemblies, engineering, and field services since its startup in 1988.

Trillo-1, a 1,003-MW pressurised water reactor unit in Guadalajara province, central Spain, began commercial operation in August 1988.

Its current licence expires in November 2024, but CNAT submitted a renewal application to the government last year for operation until 2034.

Power utility EDF has begun a major overhaul of the Sizewell B nuclear power station in southeast England with work set to cost £75m (€65m, $71m) and take around two months.

During the outage teams at Sizewell B – which is due to close in 2035, but could operate until 2055 – will carry out work that includes replacing a high-pressure rotor and three low pressure rotors in one of the station's turbine generators and replacing about a third of the fuel assemblies in the reactor.

EDF said workers will carry out detailed inspections of reactor systems and examine high pressure pipework across the reactor system.

Every 18 months teams at Sizewell B take the site’s nuclear reactor offline for refuelling and other works designed to improve the efficiency of the plant’s operations. During the outage EDF will bring in more than 1,000 extra staff to perform more than 12,000 tasks.

The reactor, which every year generates enough zero-carbon electricity to meet the needs of more than 2.5 million homes, was taken offline on 11 October.

Sizewell B is a 1,198 MW pressurised water reactor unit that began commercial operation in September 1995.

EDF acquired the UK nuclear fleet, which has nine units in operation at five sites, in 2009 and, since then, has invested around £1.2bn in Sizewell B to maintain reliability.

Sizewell B is due to generate electricity until 2035, but EDF is considering plans to keep it operational until 2055.

The company said there is no immediate need to make a final investment decision on long-term operation.

“As well as finalising the technical case, we are seeking greater cost certainty and confidence in the long-term commercial case to enable a final investment decision when ready,” a statement said.

EDF has said there is an “obvious case” for extending the life of Sizewell B, but it needs a government framework to enable it to make a decision.

The CA20 module - measuring 20.6 metres in length, 14.2 metres in width and with a height of 21 metres - has been hoisted into place at the second unit of the Lianjiang nuclear power plant in China's Guangdong province.

The cuboid-shaped CA20 module - weighing just over 1000 tonnes - consists of 32 wall modules and 39 floor modules. It will comprise plant and equipment for used fuel storage, transmission, the heat exchanger and waste collection, among other things.

Installation of the module means that construction continues to progress at the two CAP1000 units planned as the initial phase of the plant, which will eventually house six such reactors.

The construction of the first two 1250 MWe CAP1000 reactors - the Chinese version of the Westinghouse AP1000 - at the Lianjiang site was approved by China's State Council in September 2022. Excavation works for the units began in the same month, with the pouring of first concrete for the foundation of unit 1 completed at the end of September last year. First concrete for unit 2 was poured on 26 April this year. Lianjiang unit 1 is expected to be completed and put into operation in 2028, with unit 2 following in 2029.

Once all six CAP1000 units at the site are completed, the annual power generation will be about 70.2 TWh, which will reduce standard coal consumption by over 20 million tonnes, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by over 52 million tonnes, sulphur dioxide by about 171,000 tonnes and nitrogen oxides by about 149,000 tonnes.

State Power Investment Corp (SPIC) says the Lianjiang plant will be the first nuclear power project in China to adopt seawater secondary circulation cooling technology as well as the first to use a super-large cooling tower.

Slovak power utility Slovenske Elektrarne and its partners have received a US government grant of $5m (€4.5m) to support the selection of the best site for the construction of small modular reactors (SMRs) in the European country

The award is part of the US government-funded programme aiming to finance activities that will help countries to decide on, and prepare for SMR programmes.

It follows on from a separate US government scheme, Project Phoenix, which awarded $2m last year to fund feasibility studies into the potential for SMRs in Slovakia on the sites of former coal-fired power plants.

The grant will go towards consulting services around the technical and regulatory requirements for SMRs, cooperation with universities and nuclear facilities and strategies for the deployment of SMRs.

Slovenske Elektrarne said: “After the selection of the most suitable location… it will be necessary to carry out in-depth surveys on the site, which will ensure a clear and continuous path in the implementation of the SMR plan.”

Slovenske Elektrarne chairman and general manager Branislav Strycek said the demand for electricity in Slovakia will grow.

“Small modular reactors are not intended to replace our existing nuclear resources, which cover most of the consumption in Slovakia safely, reliably and without direct CO2 emissions,” he said.

“SMRs are intended to complement the energy mix for the country’s energy self-sufficiency in the future.

“The grant we received through international competition is great news. It gives us the opportunity to accelerate project preparations that are important for the success of our energy transformation.”

Earlier this year Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Fico said the Slovak government was set to approve the development of an additional large-scale 1,200 MW nuclear power unit.

Slovakia has five commercial nuclear reactor units – three at Mochovce in southwest Slovakia and two at Bohunice in the west of the country – all of the Russia-designed VVER-440 pressurised water reactor type.

The country’s latest unit, Mochovce-3, completed commissioning at the end of 2023. An identical unit, Mochovce-4, remains under construction.

The fleet has been generating about 59% of the country’s electricity. Mochovce-3 will bring the share of nuclear in the country’s electricity generation to about 65%, putting it second behind only France.

Small modular reactors offer a promising solution to the energy challenges in the data centre sector and power from advanced nuclear technologies could revolutionise the energy landscape - but educating decision makers is critical to advancing their deployment, according to a white paper from global industrial technology company Schneider Electric.

Data centres are central to driving the electrification and digitisation of the global economy, and have been the primary instruments of the increased adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), authors Marcin Wegrzyn and Steven Carlini say in Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Suitability for Data Centers. However, they are impacting energy demand in unprecedented ways.

Data centres are "singularly focused on reducing their own carbon footprint", looking at multiple paths forward including increasing use of renewable energy and the introduction of efficient cooling technologies. But consistent power availability is becoming a serious concern, and sourcing local power is a challenge, with power purchase agreements (PPA) that were initially designed to drive adoption of renewables falling short of closing the gap between demand and availability.

"The sector needs alternatives. Nuclear can fill the gap," the paper says.

As the demand for energy-efficient, reliable and sustainable power solutions for data centres continues to grow, small modular reactors (SMRs) "continue to emerge as a promising alternative to current constraints", the paper says, offering a "compelling mix of lower capital costs, shorter deployment times and significant environmental benefits". They offer the potential for reliable, low-carbon energy supply to data centres, with the potential for enhanced operational safety and improved energy resiliency compared to renewable alternatives, while their scalable design and advanced risk mitigation protocols may offer reduced environmental impacts. However, it notes, SMRs "are still unproven at scale".

The paper sets out a list of considerations would-be adopters of SMRs for data centres should bear in mind when determining whether the technology would meet the needs of their project. These include, amongst other things: power needs, including prime and back-up power; availability options including regulatory restrictions; safety, siting and security assessments; time to deployment including regulatory approvals and construction; and environmental and sustainability considerations.

"SMR technology has matured, and their safety and reliability claims have data centre operators intrigued," the paper concludes. "While there is much excitement for the technology, it must be proven before regulators allow for mass deployments." It goes on to note that "the industry is in the process of establishing an optimised deployment model allowing for effective adoption of modular technology in the data centre industry."

"Where modular reactors can work best is in concert with renewable resources as a complementary generation technology for green power. Additionally, and it goes without saying, every new technology requires a thorough vetting. In this case, an SMR evaluation would also include a security and risk assessment, as dictated by the data centre operator and its partners to address any local and national concerns," it adds.

The data centre industry "will need to consider higher upfront costs" for nuclear but it is the "most realistic path" to meeting sustainability commitments, the paper says. "Safe and resilient reactors deployed onsite or as grid infrastructure may be a remedy to power shortages if regulatory and manufacturing regimes become standardised across geographies."

Earlier this year, SMR developer Terrestrial Energy signed an agreement with Schneider to collaborate on developing zero-carbon energy solutions for industrial facilities and large data centres based on Terrestrial's Integral Molten Salt Reactor.

Six companies have been awarded contracts worth a minimum of USD2 million each to provide deconversion services, a critical part of the supply chain for high-assay low-enriched uranium.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded contracts to BWXT, Centrus, Framatome, GE Vernova, Orano and Westinghouse. The contracts will last for up to 10 years, with up to USD800 million available in total for these services, subject to the availability of appropriations, and will create "strong competition" allowing DOE to select the best fit for future work, it said.

High-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) is uranium enriched to between 5% and 20% uranium-235. It will be used in the advanced nuclear fuel required for most of the next-generation reactor designs currently under development. But the USA does not have the commercial HALEU enrichment and deconversion services to support the deployment of advanced reactors, which DOE says are essential to meeting its greenhouse gas reduction and climate goals.

The DOE is pursuing several pathways to secure a domestic supply of HALEU: The Energy Act of 2020 directed the establishment of the HALEU Availability Program to ensure access to HALEU for civilian domestic research, development, demonstration, and commercial use.

Deconversion involves transforming the gaseous uranium hexafluoride which has undergone enrichment into oxide or metal forms that are fabricated into fuel for advanced reactors, and is a critical part of the HALEU supply chain.

Building a strong, reliable domestic nuclear fuel supply chain will help the USA reach its climate goals while also protecting the environment and creating good-paying, high-quality jobs, Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk said. "Today's announcement underscores the Biden-Harris Administration's continued commitment to strengthening our energy and national security by our eliminating America's reliance on Russian uranium for civil nuclear power," he added. Russia and China are the only countries that currently have the infrastructure to produce HALEU at scale.

Orano said its team brings together the capabilities and experience of its affiliates, led by Orano Federal Services with teaming partners including Fluor, Spectra Tech, Shine Technologies and others. "Our team of expert companies represents the full range of capabilities needed for success and certainty of project delivery, plus the benefits from our strong relationships with community partners. With the US goal of tripling nuclear energy by 2050, we need this active focus on developing a secure domestic fuel supply for all reactors," Orano USA CEO Jean-Luc Palayer said.

The HALEU acquired through these contracts will be used to support reactors such as TerraPower's Natrium reactor and X-energy's Xe-100, which are being developed through DOEs Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. DOE said it also plans to award contracts for enrichment services to support the full breadth of the HALEU supply chain.

The US Inflation Reduction Act - signed into law in 2022 - included a USD700 million support package to support the development of a domestic HALEU supply chain, and the US Administration's 2025 budget request submitted to Congress in March this year included USD188 million to secure a near-term supply of HALEU.

Slovakia has been awarded a grant from the USA's Nuclear Expediting the Energy Transition (NEXT) project for help in selecting a site for the construction of small modular reactors in the country.

The award is part of the US government-funded programme aiming to finance activities that will help countries to decide on, and prepare for small modular reactor (SMR) programmes. This grant follows on from a separate US government scheme - Project Phoenix - which awarded USD2 million last year to fund feasibility studies into the potential for SMRs in Slovakia on the sites of former coal-fired power plants.

The NEXT programme was announced by the Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry at the Three Seas Initiative Summit in Bucharest, Romania in September 2023. It provides technical assistance to eligible partner countries and "aims to provide technical support to partner countries that are exploring emerging clean nuclear energy technologies in a manner that makes them more affordable and accessible while adhering from the outset to the highest standards of nuclear security, safety, and nonproliferation".

Slovakia's Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Denisa Saková described being selected for the grant as a "great and significant success", saying: "Nuclear and nuclear energy are the most important topics in the energy sector, because they will significantly help us to decarbonise our industry, contribute to climate goals, but especially to ensure Slovakia's energy security and independence."

Slovenské elektrární CEO Branislav Strýček said: "The demand for electricity will grow. Small modular reactors are not intended to replace our existing nuclear sources, which safely, reliably and without direct CO2 emissions cover the majority of consumption in Slovakia. SMRs are supposed to be a supplement to the energy mix for the energy self-sufficiency of the country in the future. The grant we won in international competition is great news. It gives us opportunities to accelerate the preparation of projects that are important for the success of our energy transformation."

The joint bid included the economy ministry, nuclear operater Slovenské elektrární, the Slovak Technical University, the Office for Nuclear Supervision, the Slovak Electricity and Transmission System, engineering company VUJE and US Steel Košice.

The range of activities supported by the grant includes consulting services around the technical and regulatory requirements for SMRs, cooperation with universities and nuclear facilities. Slovenské elektrární said: "After the selection of the most suitable location ... it will be necessary to carry out in-depth surveys on the site, which will ensure a clear and continuous path in the implementation of the SMR plan. All partners in this process want to achieve a level of knowledge that will help them support the country's goals in building SMRs, establishing academic partnerships, technical advice, and visits to specific US facilities."

Nuclear power in Slovakia

Slovakia currently has five nuclear reactors - three at Mochovce and two at Bohunice - generating half of its electricity, and it has one more at Mochovce under construction. Both plants are operated by Slovenské elektrární.

In February last year Jadrová Energetická Spoločnosť Slovenska (JESS) submitted a request to the Slovak Nuclear Regulatory Authority (ÚJD) for a siting permit for a new nuclear power plant near the existing Bohunice plant in Jaslovské Bohunice, a small village in the west of the Slovak Republic. JESS - a joint venture between Slovak state-owned radioactive waste management company JAVYS (51%) and Czech utility ČEZ (49%) - was formed in December 2009 to build and operate a new nuclear power plant at Bohunice.

JESS is responsible for the preparation of the New Nuclear Resource Project (NJZ) and, "as part of the activities of the pre-preparation stage and in accordance with the approved Business Plan for the NJZ Project for the period 2022-2025, processed the necessary documentation for the written application for a permit for the location of a nuclear facility". At the time of submitting the siting permit application JESS said it planned to apply for a construction licence for the plant at the end of 2025 with construction work scheduled to start in 2031.

After four years of research, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power has completed the development of a digital twin of the Man-Machine Interface System for the control room and instrumentation & control system of the APR1400 reactor. It expects this to "greatly contribute to the reliability and safety of nuclear power generation".

KHNP completed the construction of its Innovative MMIS Centre at the KHNP Central Research Institute in Daejeon, South Korea. It is equipped with Man-Machine Interface System (MMIS) digital twin virtualisation facilities. The company said this centre "is expected to contribute as an advance base for the MMIS digital twin simulator included in the Czech new nuclear power plant construction project, for which KHNP has been selected as the preferred bidder".

The MMIS digital twin for the APR1400 is characterised by implementing the safety and non-safety system controllers of nuclear power plants identical to actual equipment through full virtualisation, which KHNP says is more advanced than existing object-based twins.

"Using this newly developed technology, performing simulation of all processes from power plant construction to operation becomes possible," KHNP said. "In the power plant construction phase, design verification can be performed, and in the operation phase, it can be of a great help in performing root cause analysis when events such as failures occur.

"For example, when utilising the MMIS digital twin, various scenarios possible in a power plant can be simulated to test various control systems, and problem-solving ability and maintenance efficiency can be improved through smart engineering functions, real-time monitoring of controllers, and data analysis functions."

KHNP Research Institute Director Ho-cheol Shin said: "Our Korean MMIS digital twin for APR1400 will further enhance the safety of nuclear power plants, and it is expected to also further increase our export competitiveness."

South Korea has four operational APR1400 units - Saeul units 1 and 2 (formerly Shin Kori 3 and 4) and Shin Hanul units 1 and 2. Two further APR1400s are under construction as Saeul units 3 and 4. Construction permits for APR1400 units at Shin Hanul units 3 and 4 were granted last month.

Four APR1400 units have also been built at the Barakah nuclear power plant in the UAE, which are all now in commercial operation.

Four companies have been chosen as awardees under an $800m (€730m) US Department of Energy (DOE) contract to provide high-assay low-enriched uranium (Haleu) deconversion services for advanced nuclear power reactors.

According to a notice published by the DOE, the four companies are Nuclear Fuel Services, Global Nuclear Fuel-Americas, American Centrifuge Operating and Framatome.

In November 2023, the DOE issued a solicitation for the potential 10-year contract to deconvert Haleu to produce fuels for advanced reactors.

Each awardee will receive a minimum guarantee of $2m and conduct deconversion and storage services at locations within the continental US.

The work could involve deconverting uranium hexafluoride gas to a metal and oxide that will be transported and stored until there is a need for it to be manufactured into fuel for advanced nuclear reactors.

Framatome said in a statement that the DOE contract is to provide deconversion services for Haleu production for new domestic capacity “in support of the mission of nuclear energy”.

It said deconversion services include the design, licensing and construction of production facilities and the production of oxide and metal Haleu product.

Haleu is enriched uranium with the concentration of fissile isotope U-235 above 10% and below 20% of the total mass.

Since the standard enrichments for the current US light-water reactor nuclear fleet are below 5%, Haleu is an essential component for the future of advancing nuclear technology in the US and around the world, Framatome said.

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) has agreed to cooperate with Hydrogen Technology Platform (HYTEP) on the development and exchange of information on the production of hydrogen, including through the use of nuclear technology.

According to the MoU - signed during the Korea-Czech Industry & Energy Technology Cooperation Forum in Prague on 20 September - KHNP and HYTEP will strengthen their competitiveness in the global clean hydrogen market by actively cooperating in the following areas: nuclear clean hydrogen technology development and business cooperation, technology development and business support in other hydrogen fields (including fuel cells); and improvement of hydrogen policy and regulations and information exchange (such as forums and seminars).

In particular, with the common goal of global clean energy transition, the partners agreed to closely cooperate in building clean hydrogen infrastructure and developing hydrogen technology in Europe.

KHNP said it plans to "fully enter the European clean hydrogen business based on its technological capabilities and business capacities accumulated in Korea".

"This cooperation will be an opportunity for our country to gain global competitiveness in the clean hydrogen industry," said Young-gon Kong, head of KHNP's H2 & Smart Business Department. "Based on the hydrogen-related technology and passion we have built up in Korea, we will do our best to achieve the best results in the European market in cooperation with Czechia."

HYTEP was initiated in 2006 by the Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade aimed at creating a tool to support mutual awareness of bodies active in the area of hydrogen technologies and to coordinate activities related to the development of these applications.

Most hydrogen today is made by steam reforming of natural gas or coal gasification, both with carbon dioxide emissions. Future demand will be mainly for zero-carbon hydrogen. Plans for increased hydrogen production are essentially based on electrolysis using electricity from intermittent renewable sources. Off-peak capacity of conventional nuclear reactors or other power plants can also be used. In future, a major possibility for zero-carbon hydrogen production is decomposition of water by direct use of heat from nuclear energy, using a thermochemical process enabled by high-temperature reactors.

Lotus Resources says it can reopen the Kayelekera uranium mine in Malawi in 8-10 months - much quicker than its previous 15 month estimate. It is now targeting production in the third quarter of 2025.

The accelerated restart plan, which follows the completion of a Front-end Engineering and Design (FEED) programme, targets production of 19.3 million pounds U3O8 over a 10-year mine life. Lotus is now moving into detailed engineering and onsite works for Kayelekera’s restart.

The accelerated restart is made possible by taking a phased approach to both the completion of on-site infrastructure and to restart capital, and is derisked by 11 million pounds U3O8 of historical uranium production, with USD200 million already invested into the plant and operations and existing stockpiles to support the ramp-up of the operation.

The company's board has already approved long lead item orders, mobilisation of mobile equipment and construction crews and early works. It has been able to proceed with the restart using AUD34 million (USD23 million) of existing cash funding (as of 30 June). In parallel with this, it is also continuing to assess an "optimal funding mix" of funding from debt, prepayment sources, commodity finance, strategic and cornerstone funding sources, and expects restart, post production and working capital to come from a mix of these sources, as well as from the cashflow from operations.

CEO Greg Bittar said the FEED process has provided the foundation for Lotus to optimise and accelerate its restart plans, taking advantage of the existing plant and infrastructure. "By sequencing the capital spend and targeting the critical restart items we reduce the amount of initial restart capital, which allows us to turn the plant on much earlier than previously contemplated. This not only provides us with increased funding flexibility but critically allows us to be a producer next year and take advantage of the strong customer demand we are seeing by moving into production as soon as possible," he said.

"By decoupling the restart timetable from the long lead items which are not on the operational critical path, principally the connection to the power grid and acid plant rebuild, we are able to start the plant well ahead of the original DFS schedule of 15 months."

Those capital items remain in the plan, but "we don’t need to wait for those, or have the timetable to restart dependent on those, items," Bittar added. "The plan was always to have full back up diesel power generation, as the site was originally operated by, and we can use this power while the grid connection is completed. Trucked-in sulphuric acid can be used until the acid plant is commissioned."

Kayelekera is 85% owned by Australian company Lotus, which acquired it from Paladin Energy in 2020. It produced around 11 million pounds U3O8 between 2009 and 2014, when it was placed on care and maintenance, and has total resources of 51.1 million pounds including 4.8 million pounds of inferred resources at the Livingstonia deposit. Lotus announced inaugural mineral resources for the deposit, which is a potential satellite operation to Kayelekera, in June 2022.

The first canister has been packed successfully with test elements simulating actual fuel in the ongoing trial run of final disposal at the Onkalo used nuclear fuel repository, Finnish waste management company Posiva has announced.

At the repository, used fuel will be placed in the bedrock, at a depth of about 430 metres. The disposal system consists of a tightly sealed iron-copper canister, a bentonite buffer enclosing the canister, a tunnel backfilling material made of swellable clay, the seal structures of the tunnels and premises, and the enclosing rock.

Posiva announced in late August the start of a trial run - expected to take several months - of the operation of the final disposal facility, albeit still without the used fuel. Four cannisters are to be deposited in holes which are eight metres deep and located in a 70-metres long final disposal tunnel. The final disposal tunnel will then be filled with bentonite clay and sealed with a concrete plug. The trial run also covers the retrieval of a damaged cannister back above ground. Posiva noted that the equipment and systems of the final disposal facility will be tested together for the first time in accordance with planned processes during the trial run stage.

The first two encapsulations were carried out using only weights. In this third trial, elements looking like actual fuel were packed inside the canister.

The used nuclear fuel is placed in the final disposal canister made of copper and spheroidal graphite cast iron. This takes place in the fuel handling cell which features concrete walls that are about 1.3 metres thick. After all the fuel assemblies have been placed in the canister, it is filled with Argon and closed tightly with the inner steel lid. The fuel assemblies are not disassembled. The weight of one fuel assembly is about a quarter of a tonne.

The topmost copper lid of the canister is sealed by friction stir welding in the welding chamber and the leak-tightness of the joint is verified by means of visual as well as eddy current and ultrasound inspections. Posiva said the sealing joint produced by the selected friction stir welding method has an integrity comparable to that of the canister mantle.

The first three canisters have also undergone the welding and machining processes successfully in the trial run.

The trial run now proceeds to the packing and sealing of the fourth canister.

The encapsulation plant is connected to the underground final disposal repository with a canister lift which transports the canisters down to the underground reception station on the final disposal level at a depth of 430 metres. There they are transferred into the deposition tunnels with the transfer and installation vehicle.

Posiva has applied for an operating licence for the repository for a period from March 2024 to the end of 2070. The government will make the final decision on its application, but a positive opinion by Finland's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) is required beforehand. The regulator began its review in May 2022 after concluding Posiva had provided sufficient material. The ministry had requested STUK's opinion on the application by the end of 2023. However, in January this year, STUK requested the deadline for its opinion on Posiva's operating licence application be extended until the end of 2024.

The US and the UK have fabricated test capsules made up of advanced metal alloys and graphite and are now aiming to evaluate their potential use in future advanced nuclear power reactors.

The capsules will undergo irradiation testing later this year at Idaho National Laboratory (INL).

The US Department of Energy said the UK research team assembled eight capsules at the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s Culham campus in Oxfordshire after the experimental design was finalised at INL.

The capsules are comprised of 578 samples of structural materials including advanced steel and various forms of graphite.

Researchers hope to understand how each sample responds to neutron irradiation and high temperatures to evaluate their potential use in advanced reactors, including high-temperature gas cooled reactors which are being developed and deployed by both countries.

The capsules have been shipped to the US and will be loaded into INL’s Advanced Test Reactor, which is the world’s highest power test reactor, and will be exposed to temperatures up to 750 to mimic the conditions in an advanced reactor.

The capsules will then be disassembled at INL’s hot fuel examination facility so that the research teams can analyse how the materials performed.

The materials will later be available to the public for further examination through the NSUF’s Material Library – an open archive of over 9,000 irradiated nuclear fuel and materials samples.

NSUF is the only designated nuclear energy user facility in the US. It offers a consortium of state-of-the-art irradiation, post-irradiation testing facilities, and high-performance computing that can be used to support nuclear energy research and development.

The project was part of a larger effort between the two countries to share facilities to advance civilian nuclear energy technologies.

Processing plant equipment that is beginning to arrive at the Dasa mine site has been shipped via Nigeria, but Global Atomic is hopeful that border restrictions between Niger and Benin will soon be resolved.

More than 1200 metres of mine development have now been completed, and some 10,000 tonnes of development ore has been brought to the surface. The mineralised material is being segrated into low, medium and high-grade stockpiles, which will be used for plant commissioning, targeted for late 2025. The ramp to the ore body has been fully paved and the next phase of underground development is now under way. The mine's ventilation system is being expanded to support further mine development, with the boring of a main fresh air raise now more than 90% complete.

Earthworks for the acid plant are nearing completion, and the plant equipment is beginning to arrive at site, having been shipped via Nigeria. The company has shared a video of the final major components of the acid plant, manufactured in India, being prepared for shipment.

With some 450 employees and contractors now on site, the camp at Dasa is being expanded in phases as the workforce grows. The mine development team operates under the SOMIDA banner: SOMIDA (Société Minière de DASA SA) is a partnership between the Republic of Niger and Global Atomic Corporation. The workforce is expected to reach 900 during the height of construction next year.

Global Atomic President and CEO Stephen Roman said the project was making "excellent" progress. "Recent high-level inter-government discussions about the re-opening of the Niger/Benin border have been positive and we are hopeful for a near-term resolution," he said. "In addition, as the Niger Government is keen on supporting new projects in the country, a committee with representatives from several key government ministries is being formed to expedite the resolution of any outstanding issues that may arise relating to mining, finance, transportation and labour within Niger."

He added that, while attending the World Nuclear Association Symposium in London in September, "we held successful update meetings with numerous utilities from across the globe which resulted in the initiation of several active contract discussions for Yellowcake supply from the Dasa Project".

Debt financing discussions with a US development bank are progressing with confirmation of the approval schedule expected in October 2024, with the bank voicing its "intention to approve a debt facility for USD295 million". Global Atomic says this will cover 60% of the planned project costs. The company is also in discussions with parties regarding potential joint venture investment and other financing solutions, it said.

Dasa is scheduled to achieve commercial production in early 2026 and is currently projected to produce 68.1 million pounds U3O8 (26,194 tU) over a 23-year period, based on a throughput of 1,000 tonnes per day. The processing plant has been designed to handle up to 1,200 tonnes per day, and an updated mine plan with higher production rates is scheduled for completion during the current quarter.

Earlier this year the government of Niger - which has undergone a change of leadership since a coup d'etat in July 2023 - withdrew GoviEx Uranium's mining rights for the Madouela uranium project and Orano's operating permit for its Imouraren uranium mine.

South Korea’s KHNP (Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power) has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Philippine government to conduct a feasibility study on the long-inactive Bataan nuclear power station, the Yonhap news agency reported.

Yonhap said that under the new agreement, KHNP will evaluate the plant’s economic viability, safety, and other factors to determine whether it can be safely revived.

The agreement follows a summit in Manila between South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol and Philippine president Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.

The Philippines has a nuclear station at Bataan, north of the capital Manila in Luzon, but it has never operated and has been mothballed.

The 621-MW Westinghouse light-water reactor unit at Bataan was completed in 1984, but never fuelled or commissioned. It was mothballed due to safety concerns in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and issues regarding corruption under the government of Marcos’s late dictator father, Marcos Sr.

The Philippines is exploring nuclear energy options to address growing power demands, including potentially bringing the Bataan plant online.

In November 2023, the Philippines took a significant step towards becoming a nuclear power nation with the signing of a 123 Agreement with Washington that will give it access to US material and equipment.

Marcos Jr has been bullish on nuclear since his election as president in 2022, saying “this is the right time” to reexamine the country’s approach and policy towards using nuclear energy.

In early 2024, the Philippine Department of Energy (DOE) unveiled plans to establish a nuclear energy programme coordinating committee with the goal of achieving a 2,400-megawatt nuclear power capacity by 2032.

A study conducted by Russia’s Rosatom in 2017 during the administration of Marcos’ predecessor Rodrigo Duterte had found the rehabilitation of Bataan would cost $3bn-$4 bn (€2.7bn - €3.6bn).

Voters in Kazakhstan backed the construction of a nuclear power station in the Central Asian country in a referendum held on Sunday 6 October, data by the Central Election Commission has shown.

According to the commission, 71% of participants voted in favour of the project, while 26% voted against. Voter turnout in the nation of 19 million people was about 64% (63.66%), the data showed.

Kazakhstan’s government announced the exact date for the referendum in early September 2024, although a referendum proposal had been circulated for a few years.

Local media said voters were presented with a straightforward question in the referendum – "Do you agree with the construction of a nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan?” – requiring a simple yes-or-no response.

Kazakh president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said earlier this year that economic development will be impossible without a stable energy supply and he had instructed officials to begin work on plans for the construction of a nuclear power station.

The site being considered for new nuclear is near Ulken village in the Almaty Region, 330 km northwest of the city of Almaty on the shores of Lake Balkhash in southeastern Kazakhstan.

The site, however, is not final and “is subject to change”, an official at the National Nuclear Centre of Kazakhstan told NucNet last year.

Ulken was established in the 1980s to house workers for a planned hydroelectric power plant. That project was unfinished when the Soviet Union collapsed and high-rise apartments are the only completed constructions from the period.

Kazakhstan is the world’s largest uranium producer, but has no commercial nuclear power plant. It has four operational research reactors that are used for fuels and materials testing.

Plans to deploy large-scale nuclear power during the Soviet era were dropped due to the availability of other energy options, although the country operated a single fast neutron reactor at the Caspian Sea site of Aktau between 1972 and 1999.

According to the International Energy Agency, Kazakhstan is a significant producer of coal, crude oil and natural gas, and a major energy exporter. While coal dominates the country’s energy mix, renewable sources of energy are a small but growing share of Kazakhstan’s electricity generation.

In 2023, Kazakhstan’s energy minister said the country had received offers from France, China, South Korea and Russia to build its first nuclear power station.

Earlier reports have also said that Astana is looking at deploying large-scale reactor technology for its first nuclear station.

The decommissioning process for the Fukushima Daiichi site and surroundings is scheduled to be completed by 2051. It will require many innovations, and careful planning. Here are some of the details outlined at an event at the International Atomic Energy Agency's General Conference in Vienna.

What happened?

On 11 March 2011 a major earthquake struck Japan. It was followed by a 15-metre tsunami which disabled the power supply and cooling of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and all three cores largely melted in the first three days. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from the area as a precaution because of radioactive releases in the wake of the accident. After two weeks, the three reactors were stable and official ‘cold shutdown condition’ was announced in mid-December. According to World Nuclear Association, there have been no deaths or cases of radiation sickness from the nuclear accident but there have been 2313 disaster-related deaths among evacuees from Fukushima prefecture, which are in addition to the 19,500 killed by the earthquake and tsunami. Since the accident, work has been taking place to safely decommission the reactors and the surrounding areas, with large areas of the evacuated areas now back open for people to live in. The air dose rate is now similar, or lower, than major cities, the Japan-hosted event Reconstruction and Decommissioning in Fukushima heard.

It has meant that the evacuation area which covered 81,000 people's homes in August 2013 had been cut to 7000 people's homes by April this year and the intention is to lift all the evacuation areas "even if it will take many years to do so".

The decommissioning process so far

The decommissioning of any nuclear power plant is a long process, so it is no surprise that the timescales for decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi plant are lengthy, with the completion currently scheduled to take place up to 40 years after cold shutdown - so by 2051. The different phases in the decommissioning roadmap start with the post-accident period to achieving cold shutdown in 2011, and then a two-year period to November 2013 when the start of fuel removal began. The third, and final phase, began in September with the start of trial fuel debris removal in unit 2.

Fuel removal

The situation in each reactor is different. Fuel removal from used fuel pools was completed for unit 4 in December 2014 and for unit 3 in 2021. The aim is to start fuel removal from unit 2 this year and for unit 1 from 2027/28.

There is also the extremely complicated task of removing the fuel debris from the reactors, with a fair amount of uncertainty about the distribution in each of the reactors.

A trial process began last month, trying to remove fuel debris in unit 2, using a long narrow grabber tool.

The plan is to sample granular fuel debris weighing 3 grams or less by lowering an end effector (gripper) with a camera mounted on it, to the bottom. Before the start of the process in September, the telescopic-arm-type equipment was tested in mock up facilities set up by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) in Naraha.

Yasutaka Denda, from Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), explained that a few kilograms a day would be collected - but the process would also provide important information about how the accident progressed, as well as information about the location of the fuel debris.

Larger scale fuel debris removal

Kosuke Ono, Executive Director, Head of the Decommissioning Strategy Office, Nuclear Damage Compensation and Decommissioning Facilitation Corporation (NDF) explained the options in the selection process for methods to further expand the scale of fuel debris retrieval “that will determine the success or failure to complete longterm decommissioning”.

The government, NDF and Tepco are all involved in the process. Full-scale fuel debris retrieval starts with unit 3 and he said the “property and distribution of fuel debris greatly varied depending on the accident progression” - and comprised a likely mix of fuel rods still in their original form, fallen gravel-like fuel pellets, melted and resolidified metal/ceramic materials and fission products stuck in narrow parts.

He said there were three methods considered - the partial submersion method.

He said that this was the easiest method to understand, but stressed that it would need a lot of planning and would need remote operation of equipment.

The second option was the submersion method. He described this method as "like making a big bathtub and sinking the reactor building into it - water is a very effective radiation shield and this method may be faster than the partial submersion method". However there was no engineering confirmation about whether it was possible to build such a huge structure and what would happen if there were leaks, so this option has not been selected - although a method using water as a radiation shield could be required if the partial submersion method does not work.

The third option considered was the filling and solidification method. This method uses mortar/cement - this has been the least studied and there are on-going studies of which material could be used.

He said that more information was needed about the situation inside the reactors, but the recommendation at this stage has been to start design studies and research and development utilising the partial submission method. Micro-drones and endoscopic investigations would be used to build up a picture of inside the reactor vessels.

There would need to be a new cover on unit 3 for retrieval to ensure no release of radioactive material during the process and a new building constructed to store the fuel debris. There would also need to be a number of nearby buildings demolished, which would themselves take a long time, to ensure the highest standards of safety.

A further round of public explanatory sessions is planned to be held in Fukushima Prefecture in November and December to outline the fuel debris retrieval methods and how it would work.

Among the technological innovations that will be needed, will be a way to investigate the inside of the reactor pressure vessel - how to drill a hole so as to be able to see inside and to improve the environment inside.

Off-site environmental remediation

Yoshitomo Mori, from Japan’s Environment Ministry, said that by March 2018, 100 municipalities in 8 prefectures had had full scale decontamination completed. He said that since 2014, when it started as a small-scale pilot project, approximately 13.76 million cubic metres of soil and waste had been removed and transported to the Interim Storage Facility.

The Interim Storage Facility was built to manage and store removed soil and waste arising from decontamination, until final disposal outside Fukushima Prefecture, which is stipulated in Japanese law to be completed within 30 years (by March 2045). The facility occupies about 1600 hectares.

He stressed the importance of recycling the removed soil, which was equivalent to the volume of 11 Tokyo Domes (the baseball stadium). This scale, he said, showed the need for some form of volume reduction. About 75% of the soil has relatively low radioactivity and is to be recycled in lower levels in public works projects. There are a number of different demonstration projects taking place.

There have also been pot plants placed in national ministries using recycled soil as part of the efforts to build public understanding of its safety. Studies have been taking place on selecting technology, and a site, for final disposal, and from 2025 they will “proceed to processes for studies and coordination related to the selection of a final disposal site”.

Water management - the ALPs treated water

The highest profile issue in the past few years relating to Fukushima has been the issue of the contaminated water - in part used to cool melted nuclear fuel - treated by the Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS), which removes most of the radioactive contamination, with the exception of tritium. This treated water is currently stored in tanks on site. Japan announced in April 2021 it planned to discharge ALPS-treated water into the sea over a period of about 30 years. It started to discharge the water on 24 August last year and has completed the release of eight batches, a total of 62,400 cubic metres of water, with the ninth release beginning at the end of September.

The process has been overseen and is monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose Department of Nuclear Safety and Security's Director, Gustavo Caruso, gave a presentation outlining the work the agency had been doing, and said that the IAEA had concluded ahead of the first release that "the discharge of the ALPs treated water, as currently planned by Japan, will have a negligible impact on people and the environment" and was "consistent with relevant international safety standards". He said that IAEA measurements had confirmed the water release was safe and would continue to corroborate the Japanese data relating to the ALPS treated water discharge, and would continue to carry out independent tests to "help build confidence in Japan and beyond". Read more here on the IAEA's guide to ALPS treated water discharge.

Reconstruction is under way

So what about the future? With large areas of the previously evacuated area now decontaminated and open for people and businesses to move to, or return to, initiatives have begun to encourage them to do so, with a plan for "creative reconstruction: not simply reconstruction". The aim is to develop and build on specialist expertise and industries in areas such as robots, drones and decommissioning, as well as agriculture and the environment and research and development.

Moltex Energy Canada says new research demonstrates "the unique capability" of its Stable Salt Reactor - Wasteburner (SSR-W) to consume used nuclear fuel, supporting its ongoing development of a reactor that can "significantly reduce nuclear waste while producing clean energy".

The company said the peer-reviewed paper "highlights that the SSR-W - developed by teams in New Brunswick, Ontario, the UK, and the USA - can consume the vast majority of transuranic (TRU) elements present in used fuel bundles from Canada's Candu reactors".

It added: "These transuranic elements, which are created during the fission process, are radioactive for thousands of years. Unlike traditional reactors that accumulate these elements over time, the SSR-W is designed to consume them as fuel, presenting an innovative approach to reducing nuclear waste."

The paper presents results from modelling of this fuel cycle and demonstrates that with repeated fuel recycling an equilibrium can be reached where the concentration of all actinides is reduced during burnup in the reactor and actinide burning can continue indefinitely. The combination of this actinide burning in the reactor and the separation of most fission products in the recycling process results in a large reduction in waste volume, radiotoxicity and heat generation. The flexibility of the fuel cycle is also demonstrated, enabled by the recycling process, online refuelling and a fuel salt chemistry that allows variation of the conversion ratio.

The research concludes that an SSR-W fast spectrum molten salt reactor with a thermal power of 1200 MW eliminates 425 kg of actinides on an annual basis, or about 25 metric tonnes over its lifetime, with a fuel salt composition and isotopic vector that evolves to reach an equilibrium. At this point, the required top-up of TRUs from freshly recycled Candu fuel is constant and corresponds to the amount of TRU transmuted. The equilibrium is also visible with the isotopic vector of the discharged fuel, in which the proportion of plutonium-239 is significantly reduced compared with used Candu fuel.

In addition, the end-of-life core load could itself be recycled and used as start-of-life core load for a new SSR-W, therefore fully closing the nuclear fuel cycle.

"The SSR-W was specifically engineered to efficiently reuse and consume recycled nuclear waste," said Moltex CEO Rory O'Sullivan. "This breakthrough research, the result of years of collaboration, clearly demonstrates that ability."

He added: "Our fuel source is already sitting in stockpiles at nuclear sites around the country. This means we can tap into these resources to produce clean power for years to come."

Moltex is developing three unique technologies: the SSR-W that uses recycled nuclear waste as fuel; a WAste To Stable Salt (WATSS) process for recycling nuclear waste to produce SSR-W fuel; and GridReserve thermal energy storage tanks, enabling the SSR-W to act as a peaking plant.

The company plans to deploy the first WATSS unit at the Point Lepreau site in New Brunswick, where it also plans to deploy the first SSR-W by the early 2030s. NB Power's existing Candu reactor at Point Lepreau is expected to retire around 2040.

Maritime classification society the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) has launched what it says is the industry's first comprehensive rules for floating nuclear power plants.

ABS said the Requirements for Nuclear Power Systems for Marine and Offshore Applications has been developed "for classification requirements specific to design, construction, and survey of vessels fitted with nuclear power systems whose generated power is transferred or distributed to onboard industrial or adjacent facilities. Nuclear power service vessels are intended to operate nuclear power plant systems while temporarily or permanently stationed. This document is not applicable where nuclear power is used for propulsion or auxiliary services on self-propelled vessels".

"Uniquely, the requirements allow designers to consider any type of reactor technology and propose a framework for nuclear regulators to collaborate with flag administrations (the national authority with whom the vessel is registered) and ABS for complete regulatory oversight and license," ABS said.

ABS noted that it is the responsibility of nuclear regulators to license the reactor and applicable nuclear safety structures, systems and components. "These requirements and any use thereof does not replace the review, certification, licence, or other approval of Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) technology by a nuclear regulator."

The classification requirements were launched during a forum held at ABS's world headquarters in Texas for nuclear industry leaders held jointly by ABS and Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The event saw presentations on the latest reactor technologies from leading companies and publication of a detailed study from ABS and Herbert Engineering modelling the design, operation and emissions of a floating nuclear power plant. It was followed by workshops with offshore industry leaders to explore their requirements and understand operational challenges floating nuclear power plant technology will have to overcome.

"We demonstrated today that nuclear's potential in the maritime domain is so much more than a reactor on a ship," said ABS Chairman and CEO Christopher Wiernicki. "Nuclear energy can link energy demands across the electric, industrial and shipping transportation sectors to optimise energy generation and use, maintain grid reliability and support decarbonisation of shipping and industry. Not to mention its vast potential for the production of clean fuels such as e-ammonia and e-hydrogen.

"It is clear that nuclear energy has the potential to be a disruptor for the maritime industry. This is why we are proud to produce the first comprehensive rule set for the industry as an important step forward for the adoption of the technology."

Brad Tomer, COO of the National Reactor Innovation Center headquartered at INL, added: "This is an exciting time for nuclear energy. Idaho National Laboratory is growing and working with industry partners like ABS to test and demonstrate advanced reactor technologies. Collaboration and discussions like these will be critical as we move forward in delivering the low-carbon, affordable and reliable power that nuclear energy provides."

ABS is a maritime classification society: an organisation responsible for establishing the minimum technical standards and requirements for maritime safety and environmental protection and ensuring their consistent application. Established in 1862, the organisation describes itself as a global leader in providing classification services for marine and offshore assets, with a mission to serve the public interest as well as its members and clients by promoting the security of life and property and preserving the natural environment. The organisation's history with maritime nuclear energy sources dates back to 1959, when the NS Savannah - the first merchant ship powered by a nuclear reactor - was approved under ABS Rules.

ABS said it is "playing a leading role in helping government and industry work towards the adoption of advanced nuclear technology in commercial maritime, including key research with the US Department of Energy (DOE) and multiple new technology qualification and approval-in-principle projects with industry."

The DOE has awarded ABS a contract to research barriers to the adoption of advanced nuclear propulsion on commercial vessels. The DOE has also contracted ABS to support research into thermal-electric integration of a nuclear propulsion system on a commercial vessel being carried out by the University of Texas.

IsoEnergy is to acquire Anfield Energy - owner of the licensed and permitted Shootaring Canyon uranium mill in Utah - while Western Uranium & Vanadium Corp has agreed to purchase the Pinon Ridge Corporation, whose Colorado site has previously been licensed for a uranium mill.

IsoEnergy and Anfield announced on 2 October that IsoEnergy will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Anfield by way of a court-approved plan of arrangement, in a transaction which is expected to complete in the fourth quarter of this year subject to satisfaction of the conditions. The "implied fully-diluted in the-money equity value" of the transaction is about CAD126.8 million (USD93.6 million), the companies said.

The companies said their combined portfolio of permitted past-producing mines and development projects in the western USA is expected "to provide for substantial increased uranium production potential in the short, medium and long term". Combined current mineral resources of 17.0 million pounds U3O8 (6539 tU) in the measured and indicated category, 10.6 million pounds in the inferred category, and historical mineral resources of 152.0 million pounds U3O8 (measured and indicated) and 40.4 million pounds (inferred) will make the proforma company "among the largest" in the USA, with operational synergies between projects in Utah and Colorado as well as a "robust pipeline" of development and exploration-stage projects in tier-one uranium jurisdictions, including in Canada’s Athabasca Basin.

Shootaring Canyon is one of only three licensed and permitted conventional uranium mills in the USA. The mill has been on standby since 1982, but earlier this year Anfield submitted a production reactivation plan - including an application to increase its licensed capacity from 1 million to 3 million pounds U3O8 - to the State of Utah's Department of Environmental Quality, targeting a potential restart for 2026. Existing toll-milling agreements with Energy Fuels at the White Mesa Mill provide additional processing flexibility for current IsoEnergy mines, the company noted.

Western eyes second mill at Pinon Ridge

Western Uranium & Vanadium Corp said its acquisition of 100% of the shares of the Pinon Ridge Corporation (PRC) through a binding stock purchase agreement is part of its plans for developing and licensing one or more uranium and vanadium processing facilities to process production from its resource properties in Colorado and Utah.

The PRC property, which includes historic uranium production sites and exploration projects, has been previously licensed for a uranium mill and Western said the acquisition is part of its plans for developing and licensing "one or more uranium and vanadium processing facilities" to process the output from its resources in Colorado and Utah. This multiple site approach will optimise transportation and processing costs, it says, and notes that the Colorado site is about 25 miles its flagship Sunday Mine Complex.

Former owner Energy Fuels had planned to build a 500 tonnes per day mill at Pinon Ridge, receiving a licence from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) in 2011. However, Energy Fuels subsequently acquired the operational White Mesa mill, and in 2014 it sold Pinon Ridge to a private investor group led by Baobab Asset Management and former Energy Fuels president George Glasier. Glasier is now the president, CEO and a director of Western. As Glasier and his wife now own 50% of the shares of PRC, with another director of Western indirectly owning 3%, the negotiations and approval of the agreement to acquire PRC has been overseen by an independent committee comprised of directors "who are not considered to have an interest in the transaction".

The issuance of the mill's radioactive materials licence was challenged by several environmental groups and in 2018, the CDPHE decided to revoke the licence rather than hold further hearings on the issue.

The preliminary engineering design that has now been developed by Precision Systems Engineering for Western's proposed Utah mill may be utilised at both proposed sites, the company said. The proposed mill will include a kinetic separation circuit to separate mineralised rock from waste rock in a pre-milling process.

The Salt Production Facility at the company's new Manufacturing Development Campus near Albuquerque will produce high-purity, molten salt coolant for its advanced reactors.

Kairos Power’s fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor technology (KP-FHR) is cooled by a chemically stable mixture of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride salts known as Flibe. The Salt Production Facility will employ a proprietary chemical process to produce large quantities of high-purity Flibe enriched in Lithium-7 that will meet the stringent specifications to be used inside a reactor, the company said. The first-of-a-kind plant will enable future process optimisation and establish the competency to scale up reactor-grade Flibe production for the commercial fleet, it added.

In line with Kairos's iterative approach to development, the new facility will build on the lessons learned from the Molten Salt Purification Plant (MSPP) where the company, in partnership with Materion Corporation, produced 14 tonnes of unenriched Flibe for the company's non-nuclear Engineering Testing Unit-1 (ETU-1). The MSPP, in Elmore, Ohio, was itself the first plant ever built to produce Flibe at an industrial scale. ETU-1 completed more than 2000 hours of pumped salt operations before entering decommissioning earlier this year.

The Salt Production Facility is receiving support from the City of Albuquerque and the State of New Mexico via economic incentives approved in September, and will also use funding from the US Department of Energy's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program in addition to the "substantial" private investment. It is expected that construction and operation of the facility will create 20-30 full-time jobs. The project’s general contractor is TIC-The Industrial Company, a subsidiary of Kiewit Corporation.

At the same time as the ground-breaking for the Salt Production Facility, Kairos also held a dedication ceremony for its Manufacturing Development Campus, part of which is being built on the site of a former solar panel factory. The campus will host facilities for advanced reactor component manufacturing, U-stamped pressure vessel production, modular reactor construction, fuel fabrication process development, large-scale, non-nuclear testing and more.

"The facilities we are building in Albuquerque will play a pivotal role in deploying Kairos Power's clean energy technology with robust safety at an affordable cost," Kairos Power Chief Technology Officer and co-founder Ed Blandford said. "With the addition of molten salt coolant production, Kairos Power's Manufacturing Development Campus will soon have all the capabilities we need to deliver the Hermes demonstration reactor and establish a credible path to scale up production for the commercial fleet."

Kairos began site preparation work for Hermes, a demonstration version of the KP-FHR, at Oak Ridge, Tennessee in July. The unit is scheduled to be operational in 2026, with a two-unit electricity-producing plant to follow.

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) announced it has completed preliminary development of four individual performance models in support of its SiGA silicon carbide composite nuclear fuel cladding technology.

GA-EMS is near completion of a 30-month contract with the US Department of Energy (DOE) to deliver individual models for nuclear-grade SiGA materials to form the basis of a future digital twin. This is a modelling and simulation capability intended to help accelerate the process of nuclear fuel qualification and licensing for current and next generation reactor materials.

SiGA is a silicon carbide (SiC) composite material which, because of its hardness and ability to withstand extremely high temperatures, has been used for industrial purposes for decades. It now forms the basis for the development of nuclear reactor fuel rods that can survive temperatures far beyond that of current materials, such as zirconium alloy.

GA-EMS said the four individual physics-informed models it has developed capture the complex mechanical response of SiGA cladding while exposed to irradiation. A multi-scale modelling approach was taken where each individual model covers a different length scale – from a mechanism-based microscale model to a reactor system level model. In future work, these individual models will be combined into one integrated model called a digital twin.

"A digital twin is a virtual representation of a physical object or system - in this case our SiGA cladding nuclear fuel system," said GA-EMS President Scott Forney. "When complete, this digital twin will allow us to predict SiGA performance within a nuclear reactor core, reducing fuel development and testing costs and reducing the time it will take to get regulatory approval for this revolutionary technology, without sacrificing safety."

"We have been able to expedite development and verification of the individual models by leveraging the expertise at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory," said Christina Back, vice president of GA-EMS Nuclear Technologies and Materials. "Our work integrally involves dedicated laboratory testing as we develop each performance model. We look forward to continuing to the next phase to bring these individual models together and incorporate them into a greater digital twin framework. Utilisation of the framework to apply the separate effects models appropriately will bring a new level of sophistication and accuracy to efficiently predict fuel performance."

GA-EMS has successfully created silicon carbide nuclear fuel cladding tubes. The company's technology incorporates silicon carbide fibre into its cladding. The combination creates an incredibly tough and durable engineered silicon carbide composite material which can withstand temperatures up to 3800°F (2093°C) - about 500 degrees hotter than the melting point of zirconium alloy.

In July, General Atomics announced it had manufactured the first batch of full-length 12-foot (3.6m) SiGA silicon carbide composite tubes designed for pressurised water reactors. It had previously created 6-inch (15cm) long SiGA rodlets and 3-foot (91cm) cladding samples that meet stringent nuclear power reactor-grade requirements and will undergo irradiation testing at DOE's Idaho National Laboratory.

GA originally developed its SiGA composite for its Energy Multiplier Module (EM2) small modular reactor design. This is a modified version of its Gas-Turbine Modular Helium Reactor (GT-MHR) design.

In February 2020, Framatome and GA agreed to evaluate the feasibility of using SiGA in fuel channel applications through thermomechanical and corrosion testing. The long-term goal is to demonstrate the irradiation of a full-length fuel channel in support of licensing and commercialisation.

Sellafield Ltd will have to pay almost £400,000 after it pleaded guilty to criminal charges over years of cybersecurity failings at Britain’s most hazardous nuclear site.

The state-owned company, operator of the vast nuclear site Cumbria, northwest England, left information that could threaten national security exposed for four years, according to the industry regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), which brought the charges. It was also found that 75% of its computer servers were vulnerable to cyber-attack.

Sellafield Ltd had failed to protect vital nuclear information, Westminster magistrates court in London heard on Wednesday (2 October).

Chief magistrate Paul Goldspring said that after taking into account Sellafield Ltd’s guilty plea and its public funding model, he would fine it £332,500 for cybersecurity breaches and £53,200 for prosecution costs, a total of £385,700.

The offences related to Sellafield Ltd’s management of the security around its information technology systems between 2019 to 2023 and its breaches of the nuclear industry security regulations.

An investigation by the ONR found that Sellafield Ltd failed to meet the standards, procedures and arrangements set out in its own approved plan for cyber security and for protecting sensitive nuclear information.

Regulator Points To ‘Significant Shortfalls’

Significant shortfalls were present for a considerable length of time, said the ONR.

In a written witness statement referred to in an earlier hearing on 8 August Euan Hutton, chief executive of Sellafield Ltd, apologised for failures spanning years.

Hutton said: “I again apologise on behalf of the company for matters which led to these proceedings… I genuinely believe that the issues which led to this prosecution are in the past.”

In June Sellafield Ltd pleaded guilty to three criminal charges brought by the ONR over the IT security breaches.

One of the charges was that it failed in March last year to “ensure that there was adequate protection of sensitive nuclear information on its information technology network”.

The other two charges related to failures to arrange “annual health checks” for its systems.

Sellafield Ltd is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a UK government body set up specifically to deal with the country’s nuclear legacy.

The Sellafield site is one of the largest and most hazardous nuclear facilities in Europe.

It comprises of a range of nuclear facilities, including redundant facilities associated with early defence work, as well as operating facilities associated with the Magnox reprocessing programme, a mixed oxide fuel plant and a range of waste treatment plants.

It began life in the early 1950s making plutonium for nuclear weapons, and later that decade became the location of Calder Hall, the world’s first commercial nuclear power station.

France's Naarea has entered into a strategic partnership with EO Concept to explore the use of Naarea's XAMR molten salt fast neutron microreactor for the production of hydrogen and/or low-carbon electrofuels, particularly for heavy maritime applications.

Naarea said the partnership will also aim to evaluate the necessary conditions for ensuring competitive hydrogen and electrofuel production, while identifying the means of achieving these goals. It added that both partners are particularly interested in "exploring the advantages of high-temperature hydrogen production, made possible by the XAMR".

Naarea - formally established in November 2021 - says its ultra-compact molten salt fast neutron reactor uses "the untapped potential of used radioactive materials, and thorium, unused mining waste". Once it develops the XSMR reactor design, the company intends to target applications in areas such as transportation, agriculture and smart buildings. Naarea says that, because of the compact size of its reactor and because there is no need for it to be grid-connected, the XSMR can "be deployed as close as possible to regions, to match energy demand as closely as possible and allow the control of security of supply, at the service of industries and communities". It expects the first units of XSMR - which can generate 80 MWt/40 MWe - to be produced by 2030.

"We are very excited about collaborating with EO Concept through this strategic partnership," said Naarea founder and CEO Jean-Luc Alexandre. "Together, we share the same vision of a clean energy future, where innovation plays a central role in meeting climate challenges.

"Naarea's XAMR solution represents a breakthrough technology that, combined with Energy Observer's expertise in alternative fuels, will allow us to explore new avenues for producing hydrogen and electrofuels. This partnership embodies our shared ambition of proposing concrete, competitive and environmentally friendly solutions, and to actively contributing to achieving a just and responsible energy transition."

EO Concept - a subsidiary of Energy Observer - was created in 2023 as a research and development firm specialising in naval and port energy systems. EO Concept is developing the Energy Observer 2, a 160-metre-long cargo ship powered by 4.8 MW fuel cell systems using liquid hydrogen. It is designed to be the lowest carbon-emitting cargo ship in the world.

"We are looking forward to this collaboration with Naarea," added EO Concept General Manager Didier Bouix. "Together, we share a mutual commitment to implementing efficient solutions to meet real needs, in particular through energy ecosystems. The production of hydrogen through electrolysis and its liquefaction, in sufficient quantity and at a competitive cost on the target market, is a prerequisite for the deployment of our container ship Energy Observer 2. The XAMR represents a promising medium-term solution to round out the energy mix of tomorrow and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from our modes of transport."

El Salvador, which is embarking on a nuclear energy programme, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Argentina's National Atomic Energy Commission.

The memorandum of understanding was signed by the President of the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA), Germán Guido Lavalle, and the Director of the Agency for the Implementation of the Nuclear Energy Program (OIPEN) of El Salvador, Daniel Alejandro Álvarez.

Guido Lavalle said: "This is undoubtedly a great step in the development of nuclear energy for El Salvador, and we at CNEA are proud to be able to accompany and assist in this very important initial stage, which will undoubtedly bring concrete benefits to Salvadoran society. Our long tradition of training human resources in the Latin American region, through our academic institutes, will be made available once again within the framework of an inter-institutional understanding, with great impact to generate local capacities and strengthen the applications of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes."

The agreement which was among a number of bilateral ones coinciding with the visit to Argentina by El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, includes promoting the exchange of information, scientific and technical visits, expert missions and training opportunities. The country's president announced in March the ambition to adopt nuclear energy.

At last month's IAEA General Conference in Vienna, Alvarez set out El Salvador's ambition to "diversify our energy matrix under three premises: Rely less on external resources, take care of the environment and, last but not least, transform the lives of our people, with affordable energy that allows them to fulfil their goals and dreams ... with the commitment to incorporate nuclear energy into our energy matrix, complying with the highest international standards and in accordance with the treaties that El Salvador has ratified before the International Atomic Energy Agency".

"Our country," he added, "through the peaceful use of nuclear energy, aims to promote and encourage the economic and scientific development of our population, allowing us to guarantee a reliable and sustainable supply of electricity; in addition to achieving, through the implementation of public policies, tangible benefits in areas such as: agriculture, health, industry, environment, among others."

Argentina has a long nuclear energy history. It has three operable reactors - the first of which began operating in 1974 - and one small modular reactor under construction. It has a number of research reactors and the RA-10 multipurpose reactor, a 30 MWt open pool type reactor, is currently under construction.