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OPERATION BELGIUM’S FEDERAL AGENCY for Nuclear Control has provisionally approved life extension for Tihange 3 and Doel 4 if this is necessary to ensure energy security. The reactors are due to close by 2025.


FINLAND’S MINISTRY OF Economic Affairs and Employment has released its informed conclusion on the environmental impact assessment report of Fortum Power’s Loviisa nuclear plant.


COMPANY NEWS CYCLIFE, THE EDF subsidiary in charge of international dismantling and radioactive waste management services is acquiring complementary engineering capabilities provided by Aquila Nuclear Engineering Ltd from Calder Group.


NAWAH ENERGY COMPANY has signed an agreement with France’s CERAP SA to provide technical services to support refuelling outages and online operations at the Barakah nuclear plant in the UAE.


JAPAN ATOMIC ENERGY Agency, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd and Mitsubishi FBR Systems Co Ltd have been signed a Memorandum of Understanding on development of sodium-cooled fast reactor technology with Terrapower.


SPAIN’S TECNATOM SAID the Norwegian Institute of Energy Technology has awarded it a contract for the development and supply of a simulator based on SMR technology.


NUCLEAR FUEL RUSSIA’S BN-800 FAST neutron reactor at Beloyarsk 4 will completely switch to mixed plutonium-uranium oxide (mox) fuel in the summer 2022.


UKRAINE SAYS IT will take Westinghouse about two years to be ready to cover the country’s fuel needs for its 13 VVER-1000 reactors. “With respect to our VVER-1000 units, seven of them are already supplied with Westinghouse fuel, and six by Russian fuel,” said Energoatom head Petr Kotin.


THE US DEPARTMENT of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy has agreed to a nine-year contract with TRIGA International to secure new fuel elements for half of the USA’s university-operated research reactors. The first batch of fuel is expected to be delivered by 2023.


KANSAI ELECTRIC POWER has returned 40 unused fuel assemblies from Mihama 2 in Japan to the Westinghouse Springfields nuclear fuel fabrication facility in the UK.


Above: JET Torus Photo credit: UKAEA


Record energy output results announced in February are the ‘clearest demonstration in a quarter of a century’ of the potential for fusion energy to deliver safe and sustainable low-carbon energy according to researchers at the EUROfusion consortium working on the Joint European Torus tokamak device. The most successful run to date released 59MJ of sustained fusion energy, beating the previous record of 21.7MJ set at the same facility in 1997. In its record-breaking experiment, JET produced the total of 59MJ of heat energy over a five second period, the duration of the experiment, averaging 11MW. JET, which is co-funded by the European


Commission, is the largest and most powerful operational tokamak in the world and resides at the UK Atomic Energy Authority site in


Argentina


CNNC inks EPC contract for Atucha 3 Nucleoeléctrica Argentina and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) have signed an Engineering, Supply and Construction (EPC) contract for development of a 1200MWe HPR1000 reactor at the Atucha 3 nuclear power plant.


The contract was signed by José Luis Antúnez,


director of Nucleoeléctrica Argentina and CNNC president Yu Jianfeng during a virtual event that was also attended by diplomatic representatives of both countries. The Atucha 3 project is part of cooperation


agreements between the two countries, including the one signed in February 2015 for cooperation on the construction of a pressurised water reactor in Argentina. Argentina’s National Atomic Energy


Commission (CNEA) said the project is part of the country’s nuclear action plan agreed in June 2021, which involves an investment of more than $8 billion. According to the planned schedule,


construction works for Atucha 3 will begin at the end of 2022 and the project will require the creation of more than 7000 jobs and involve around 40% domestic suppliers.


6 | March 2022 | www.neimagazine.com


JET achieves fusion energy record


Oxford, UK. The new result comes from a dedicated experimental campaign designed by EUROfusion to test over two decades’ worth of advances in fusion and optimally prepare for the start of the international ITER project. The record and the scientific data from these


crucial experiments are a major boost for the ITER fusion research project based in the south of France. Supported by seven members – China, the European Union, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the USA – ITER aims to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy. Bernard Bigot, director general of ITER, said:


“A sustained pulse of deuterium-tritium fusion at this power level ... delivers a resounding confirmation to all of those involved in the global fusion quest. For the ITER Project, the JET results are a strong confidence builder that we are on the right track as we move forward toward demonstrating full fusion power.” Tony Donné, EUROfusion programme


manager, said: “The record, and more importantly the things we’ve learned about fusion under these conditions and how it fully confirms our predictions, show that we are on the right path to a future world of fusion energy. If we can maintain fusion for five seconds, we can do it for five minutes and then five hours as we scale up operations in future machines.” ■


The single-unit HPR1000 pressurised water


reactor at Atucha 3 will use enriched uranium fuel and will have an initial operating life of 60 years. It will be Argentina’s fourth reactor, and the country’s first pressurised water reactor. Nucleoeléctrica Argentina, which is majority state owned, currently operates Atucha 1 (367MWe), Atucha 2 (745MWe) and Embalse (683MWe), all PHWRs, which generate some 5% of Argentina’s electricity. Meanwhile, Argentine President Alberto


Fernandez has said the Argentine authorities are also ready to resume negotiations on the possibility of building a nuclear power plant with the participation of Russia, after Argentina reached an agreement on debt settlement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He was speaking to Tass on 1 February before a planned visit to Moscow prior to his trip to China. In December 2021, on the sidelines of the


G20 summit, an agreement was signed on a Russian-Argentinean strategic partnership in the field of the peaceful use of atomic energy. Among the main areas of cooperation envisaged by the document is the development of various models for implementation of projects for the construction of large and small nuclear power plants in Argentina. U


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