Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. Before we head off into the weekend, here are some other stories RadWaste Monitor was tracking from across the civilian nuclear power space this week.
Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff was in Toronto this week at an international nuclear energy conference where she made the case for building new nuclear generation in the U.S., according to social media.
“We’ve built 95 gigawatts of nuclear between 1970-1990,” Huff said during an address to the Generation IV conference, according to a Wednesday Tweet from the Office of Nuclear Energy. “Surely we can do better in the next two decades, and we must do better to ensure our nation’s economic, environmental, and energy security priorities.
Huff’s comments come as the Department of Energy is taking steps to keep the country’s aging reactor fleet online. DOE is currently accepting applications for a second round of its roughly $6 billion civil nuclear credits program, aimed at bailing out nuclear facilities expected to close in the near future.
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm celebrated the Department of Energy’s 45th birthday this week alongside First Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, according to a Tweet from the agency chief.
DOE “has changed the world,” Granholm said in a Tweet Tuesday that included an image of her and Emhoff sitting inside a replica Shelby Cobra 427 muscle car, 3-D printed by the agency’s Advanced Manufacturing Office. “I can’t wait to see it drive us to a clean energy future,” she said.
Among its responsibilities, DOE, which began operations in October 1977 under then-President Jimmy Carter, oversees the U.S. nuclear power fleet. The agency also manages a network of national laboratories that conduct nuclear power research and is currently working on a federal solution for nuclear waste disposal.
The governor of Virginia said this week that he hopes to deploy an advanced nuclear reactor in the state within the next decade, The Associated Press reported.
In an energy plan laid out Monday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), among other things, proposed expanding nuclear power in Virginia and siting a small modular reactor in the state’s southwest. Youngkin also proposed building out the Old Dominion’s nuclear research capacity.
The Department of Energy is currently reviewing a slate of 10 proposed advanced reactor projects under its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. Among those is Holtec International’s SMR-160 design, a small modular reactor that the company has said could be sited at a former nuclear power plant or other generation facility.
