A Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power has started commercial operations of the new Vogtle Unit 4 nuclear reactor in Waynesboro, Ga., the company announced in a Monday press release.
The new reactor can generate enough electricity to power about 500,000 homes and businesses, Southern said in the release.
Bechtel, which is also a Department of Energy weapons complex contractor, served as the engineering, procurement, and construction company for the new Vogtle unit, it said in its own press release.
The Department of Energy is starting to evaluate proposals for solar power projects at the Savannah River Site, the top site’s federal nuclear cleanup manager told the South Carolina governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council Monday.
The deadline for requests for qualifications for solar power at Savannah River was Friday, April 26, Michael Budney, who leads the DOE Office of Environmental Management field office, told the advisory council. A second information day is planned May 23 on other types of carbon-free power, Budney said.
DOE is concentrating on solar power, a source of carbon-free electricity that can be designed, licensed and built relatively quickly, in the first tranche of its Cleanup to Clean Power Program at Savannah River, Budney said. The May information day will focus on technologies that require a longer development lead time, Budney said. The initial solicitation for Savannah River clean-power projects was issued in March.
Workers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have shipped the old reactor vessel from the Low Intensity Test Reactor, also known as Building 3005, to Utah for disposal, the agency said Tuesday.
Crews loaded the 37,600-pound, 30-foot-long vessel onto a truck last week and shipped it to Clive, Utah, for final disposition, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management said in a Tuesday press release. A DOE spokesperson confirmed to Exchange Monitor the vessel was sent to the EnergySolutions site in Clive.
DOE’s Amentum-led United Cleanup Oak Ridge finished tearing down the reactor, which was built in 1949 and ran until 1968, last September. The pit from which the vessel was removed has been backfilled, according to DOE.
Pierre Oneid, formerly with Holtec International, joined EnergySolutions as vice president of business development, the Salt Lake City company said this week.
“Pierre’s focus will be to support the development of our new offerings in the nuclear services arena,” Ken Robuck, president and CEO of EnergySolutions, said in a press release announcing the hire.
At Holtec, where as recently as March he was listed on the company’s website as a member of its executive committee, Oneid had been senior vice president of domestic nuclear programs. He has also worked for the Shaw Group and Stone & Webster Engineering Corp., EnergySolutions said. EnergySolutions has been growing its business lines lately. In the nuclear services business, that includes the 2023 acquisition of the former Williams Industrial Services Group, Atlanta, which EnergySolutions bought out of bankruptcy.
A year after construction started, an off-site research center for the Savannah River National Laboratory, “looks like a building now” and should open in 2025, a Department of Energy manager in South Carolina said Monday.
The Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative, the new 60,000-square-foot building at the University of South Carolina-Aiken should be occupied “a year from now,” said Mike Budney, who heads the DOE Office of Environmental Management at the Savannah River Site. Budney addressed a meeting of the Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council.
The modern facility, about 20 miles from the Savannah River Site, will provide DOE with an “innovation hub” site to easily collaborate with outside entities without getting them badged to go inside the DOE fence, agency officials have said. The $50-million Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative is being built by an affiliate of North Wind Group. North Wind last week posted an overview of the facility, saying it is 60% complete.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Science has issued a $1.9-million stopgap contract to a small local company for security work at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, according to a procurement notice published last week.
Golden Services of Kingston, Tenn., has been awarded a bridge contract until a follow-on contract is issued for “physical security and badging,” according to the System for Award Management notice posted online Thursday April 25. No further details were provided in the notice.
The Golden Services website says the business, which has an Oak Ridge office, is a veteran-owned organization that can provide clients with armed or unarmed guards, cyber security and emergency management. Golden Services has previously done work for DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The Department of Energy prime has issued Cementation, a mine development company, a $15-million contract to renovate a big underground salt bin at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a DOE spokesperson said Monday.
DOE announced last week prime contractor Salado Isolation Mining Contractors, a Bechtel business, retained underground mine developer Cementation to refurbish the underground salt storage bin, referred to as a salt pocket, at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
The work should start this summer and be completed by year end, DOE said. The steel-framed bin holds mined salt before it is raised to the surface. The salt is mined to make way for emplacement of containers of defense-related transuranic waste.
A Navy veteran who served as a captain on the U.S.S. Nautilus nuclear submarine turned 100 recently, a newspaper in Washington state reported Sunday.
Frank Fogarty, who turned 100 on April 24, told the Spokane, Wash. Spokesman-Review of joining the Nautilus crew in the 1950s. In the article, Fogerty recalled meeting Adm. Hyman Rickover, regarded as the father of the nuclear Navy.
