Happy Friday and happy Earth Day, nuke-watchers. Before you head out and enjoy all our little blue marble has to offer, here are some other stories RadWaste Monitor was tracking across the civilian nuclear power space this week.
DOE unveils $1.6 million for help on nuclear power community outreach
Awardees under a funding opportunity announced this week by the Department of Energy would help the agency build partnerships with local communities exploring nuclear power.
The Office of Nuclear Energy is offering around $1.6 million in funding to “work with local energy communities, educational entities, and other constituencies to accomplish the shared mission of utilizing nuclear energy to advance energy, environmental, and economic initiatives,” the agency said in a statement dated Thursday. The cash would be divided up into 11 separate awards and be given out over a three-year period, DOE said.
Awardees would focus on building bridges between DOE and communities in a couple of key areas, the statement said. These include developing “resources and educational materials” for energy communities, partnering with energy justice organizations, conducting workforce development and supporting international nuclear education.
Applications are due by July 20, DOE said.
NNSA nonproliferation office consulting preparations for nuclear power in Mideast, Africa, Asia
With an eye toward exposing national security blindspots in nations considering nuclear power, the National Nuclear Security Administration is talking to people in Turkey, Africa and southeast Asia, an agency official told a National Academies panel Tuesday.
“There are some countries in Africa, Turkey is one of the countries that’s currently looking at developing a nuclear program that we’re working with, and there’s some other countries in southeast Asia, I believe, that are kind of on our focus right now,” Art Atkins, assistant deputy administrator for global material security at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), said in a video presentation to the Academies’ Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board.
NNSA wants to be “part of the broader conversation as it relates to security investments, security preparation, training … and integration of security in planning when it comes to development of those kind of long-term investment plans that countries have to go through” to add nuclear power to their energy mix, Atkins said.
Atkins spoke about NNSA’s work with nuclear-energy-aspirant nations in response to a question from Nuclear and Radiation Studies board member Elanor Melamed, who held Atkins’ post at NNSA until retiring in June 2020 and worked at the agency for years before that.
“I think this work is really important and especially in light of the extensive outreach that Russia has done in this area,” Melamed said. “It needs a counterbalance and we really need to do a lot more counterbalancing.”
SNC-Lavalin awarded South Bruce plant life extension contract
An SNC-Lavalin subsidiary company will provide some engineering services to a Canadian nuclear power plant looking to add three decades to its operational life, according to a press release this week from the company.
Candu Energy was selected by Bruce Power to conduct fuel channel installation tooling at the plant as part of Bruce Nuclear Generating Station’s life extension project, according to the press release dated Tuesday. Candu is already a known quantity at the site — the company designed the plant’s reactor core, the release said.
The refurbishments at Bruce, located in Ontario, are aimed at keeping the plant online for another 30 years.
This announcement comes after SNC-Lavalin announced last week that Candu was teaming up with Canadian advanced reactor company Moltec to advance the development and deployment of advanced nuclear power in the country. The new partnership will endeavor to build a “first of a kind” waste-burning reactor in New Brunswick, Canada, the companies said in a statement.
SNC-Lavalin’s business in the U.S. took a hit in January when Holtec International announced that it had terminated Comprehensive Decommissioning International (CDI), its four-year-old joint venture with the company, for convenience and absorbed its assets. CDI was the primary contractor at some of Holtec’s nuclear decommissioning sites such as Massachusetts’s Pilgrim plant and Palisades in Michigan.
Deep Isolation unveils new spent fuel advocacy campaign
Nuclear waste services company Deep Isolation leant its voice this week to calls for spent fuel solutions in the U.S. with a new advocacy campaign, the company announced in a press release.
Solve Nuclear Waste, which Deep Isolation unveiled in its Tuesday press release, aims to “raise public awareness on the need to, and the benefit of, permanently disposing of nuclear waste,” the company said. Berkeley, Calif.-based Deep Isolation is exploring deep borehole repositories as a possible nuclear waste storage solution.
The campaign is collecting signatures on a “pledge of support” which it plans to use as a “useful talking point to demonstrate to decision makers that there is widespread public support for doing something about this long-standing problem now,” the release said.
According to a “nationally-representative” poll conducted by Solve Nuclear Waste, more than 50% of Americans are concerned about the lack of a permanent spent fuel repository. Three in five respondents would be more likely to support nuclear power if such a solution existed, the poll said, and nearly 70% said that the government needs to take action on the issue.
