The Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant’s Unit 3 reactor, the newest nuclear reactor in the country, started delivering electricity to the grid in Georgia, Georgia Power announced this week.
Unit 3 in Waynesboro, Ga., started generating electricity in April. It is the first reactor project to become operational under the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Part 52 licensing regulations. Vogtle Unit 4 was scheduled to come online late in 2023 or early in 2024, Georgia power has said. Southern Nuclear Operating Company operates the plant. Bechtel was the lead construction contractor on the project and took over the role from Fluor in 2017. The plant uses Westinghouse reactors.
The Carbon Free Power Project, a company essentially controlled by the state of Utah’s energy agency, this week submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to begin construction of six NuScale small modular reactors at the Idaho National Laboratory.
Early construction should start in 2025, the company wrote in a press release. The reactor is intended to provide electricity to parts of Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. Potential plant operator Xcel Energy is the management and operations support contractor for the project, which is financed with a $1.4 billion cost-share agreement with the Department of Energy.
Chugoku Electric Power Company wants to build an interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel in Kaminoseki Town in western Japan and has asked local officials there for permission to conduct a study, the Japanese public broadcaster NHK World reported this week.
The power company also plans to build a new nuclear reactor in Kaminoseki, NHK World reported.
A 10-day International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) mission to Lithuania wrapped up last week and the U.N. agency said the Baltic nation’s search for a deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel and other high-level waste appeared safe.
The IAEA’s Integrated Review Service for Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Management, Decommissioning and Remediation team, or ARTEMIS, also recommended ways for Lithuania to improve its siting process, the agency wrote in a press release.
The Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission subpoenaed FirstEnergy Corp., Akron, Ohio, in connection with the 2019 bribery scandal that sent a former speaker of the Ohio house to prison this year, the company disclosed this week in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In connection with a federal deferred prosecution arrangement announced by the Department of Justice in 2021, FirstEnergy has already paid a $230 million fine for its involvement in the scandal. As part of the agreement, FirstEnergy announced it paid millions of dollars in bribes to state lawmakers in exchange for subsidies for the financially struggling Besse-Davis and Perry reactors in Ohio.
