Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. Your RadWaste Monitor reporter headed up to his Bethlehem, Pa., field office and only just now found out about the upcoming arctic wind chill. Before we head off into the freezing weekend, though, here are some other stories we were tracking from across the civilian nuclear power space this week.
Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk this week touted the Department of Energy’s efforts to preserve the U.S. nuclear fleet during prepared remarks to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
DOE’s civil nuclear credits program “helps preserve our existing zero-emission nuclear power fleet and save thousands of high-paying jobs across the country,” Turk told the Senate panel in prepared testimony during a hearing Thursday. As an example, the deputy secretary pointed to the agency’s first award under the program — a roughly $1.1 billion bailout to California’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant announced in November.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources chair Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) has been an avid supporter of the nation’s civilian nuclear power fleet. The senator has said that the federal government should do “everything humanly possible” to prevent premature reactor closures.
There is a new face on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this session. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) joined the panel.
Hawley, the ninth Senate Republican on the panel, steps up after past members Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) departed. Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Sen. John Barrasso welcomed Hawley to the panel in a statement Wednesday, calling him “a leader in the effort to unleash American energy.”
Hawley in 2022 was a vocal opponent of Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff’s nomination to the Department of Energy. The senator in May called Huff a “radical leftist” in a Tweet and voted against her confirmation. Hawley also accused Huff of “storming” the Wisconsin state capitol building during a 2011 protest. He told RadWaste Monitor in May that he didn’t know whether she had broken any laws.
GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy last week announced that it had signed a contract with a Canadian utility company to deploy the first commercial small modular reactor in North America.
The contract, signed between GE Hitachi, nuclear services company SNC Lavalin and Ontario Power Generation (OPG), includes “design, engineering licensing support, construction, testing, training and commissioning” for one of GE Hitachi’s BWRX-300 small modular reactors (SMRs) at OPG’s Darlington New Nuclear Project Site in Bowmanville, Ontario, the company said in a press release dated Jan. 27.
According to GE Hitachi, this commercial contract is the first such agreement for a “grid-scale SMR” in North America. Company president and CEO Jay Wileman called the contract “an important milestone,” and said that it “solidifies our position as the leading SMR technology provider.”
