NEWS |


round up


COMPANY NEWS A NEW NUCLEAR transport organisation has been launched in the UK. Nuclear Transport Solutions (NTS) is part of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority group and operates Direct Rail Services and Pacific Nuclear Transport Ltd.


THE POLISH STATE treasury has taken full ownership of PGE EJ1, the company charged with managing the country’s planned first nuclear power station, for about €114m.


KAZATOMPROM HAS SIGNED a Sale and Purchase Agreement for the sale of a 49% share of its Ortalyk subsidiary to a subsidiary of China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGNPC).


CANADA-BASED BROOKFIELD Business Partners is exploring options including the sale of a minority stake in Westinghouse Electric Co, Reuters reported. The sale could value Westinghouse at $10bn including debt, Reuters noted.


US-BASED NUSCALE Power has finalised an investment and strategic partnership agreement with JGC Holdings Corporation comprising leading EPC contractors headquartered in Japan. JGC HD will provide a $40 million cash investment in NuScale Power and partner with Fluor to deploy NuScale power plants.


FUEL CYCLE US-BASED BWX Technologies has been awarded US Naval Nuclear Propulsion Programme contracts totalling approximately $2.2 billion for the manufacture of naval nuclear reactor components and fuel.


CAMECO PLANS TO restart production at its Cigar Lake uranium mine in northern Saskatchewan, which was temporarily suspended in December 2020.


TRIGA INTERNATIONAL HAS completed a major renovation project at its fuel fabrication facility in Romans, France.


ONTARIO POWER GENERATION’S Centre for Canadian Nuclear Sustainability has joined forces with Moltex Energy in a project aimed at recycling used fuel from Candu reactors. CCNS will provide CAD1 million ($795,000) in funding for the project.


THE STATE NUCLEAR Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine has issued an operating licence for the ISF-2 dry used nuclear fuel storage facility constructed by Holtec International at Chernobyl.


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United Kingdom Cavendish wins funding for waste sorting system UK-based Cavendish Nuclear, a wholly owned subsidiary of Babcock International Group, has won early-stage funding for its new OptiSORT system. The funding forms phase 1 of a two-part competition by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), in partnership with Innovate UK, to fund ideas that will lead to cheaper, safer and faster ways of sorting and segregating radioactive waste. At the heart of the project is a technology


package that will integrate sensors and real- time decision making, using machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms. OptiSORT aims to improve productivity by


introducing autonomous operation in remote sorting and segregation projects such as the Berkeley Active Waste Vaults Retrieval Programme. Along with Bristol Robotics, the OptiSORT partnership includes Clifton Photonics Ltd., Imitec Ltd, Fraunhofer Centre for Applied Photonics, Structure Vision Ltd. and Acrovision Ltd. Burnett added: OptiSORT is a significant technological leap forward and has the potential to transform the speed and efficiency at which we can decommission complex redundant nuclear facilities.” Cavendish Nuclear has an initial £60,000


($83,600) of funding for a three-month technical research and development feasibility study. In late May the consortia will compete to take the concept to the next stage, which will involve developing and demonstrating a full-scale prototype in a non-radioactive environment.


United States Marvel Project seeks to accelerate microreactor deployment To help accelerate the deployment of microreactors, The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Nuclear Energy is building one of its own to help researchers and end users understand how microreactors can integrate with other technologies. The Microreactor Applications Research Validation and EvaLuation project (Marvel) streamlines R&D for industry partners and will provide a dedicated location for them to quickly test, develop, and demonstrate their technologies. DOE plans to have Marvel operating within three years. The Marvel design is a liquid-metal cooled


microreactor with Stirling engines that will produce 100kW of electricity using small amounts of high-assay, low-enriched uranium from available research materials. Its design is primarily based on existing technology and it will be built quickly using off-the-shelf components. It will be built inside the Transient Reactor Test facility at INL. By providing prompt, small-scale demonstrations, Marvel will offer experimental capabilities that are not currently available at DOE’s national laboratories. The test bed will perform R&D on the fundamental features, operations, and behaviours of microreactor


8 | May 2021 | www.neimagazine.com


technologies and help companies to demonstrate their designs. The Marvel test platform is a collaborative


effort between the DOE Microreactor Programme and the National Reactor Innovation Centre.


United Kingdom Atkins to design fusion energy research centre SNC-Lavalin’s Atkins arm has been appointed by the UK Atomic Energy Authority to help design a centre for researching tritium for use in fusion energy.


The Hydrogen-3 Advanced Technology (H3AT)


facility will be built at Culham Science Centre in Oxfordshire and will support ongoing work at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) under construction in the South of France. Research will include how to process, store and recycle tritium. Atkins — and supply chain partners including


Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, Ansaldo Nuclear, and FlexProcess — will deliver the preliminary and detailed design of the H3AT tritium recycling loop, comprising storage beds, a distribution system, impurity processing system, and systems to detritiate water and air. The H3AT facility will provide access to scientists and researchers to inform tritium processes post-ITER fusion programmes including the DEMOnstration Power Plant and UKAEA’s Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP). Atkins recently won two contracts on the


STEP programme. It is also architect engineer for ITER as part of the Engage consortium. Meanwhile, UKAEA said it has completed a


pilot project, the ‘Fusion Innovation Challenge’. Working with five companies it set out a series of challenges and invited companies to submit their approaches using original ideas or successful tech- or engineering-led solutions adapted from other fields. The initial £350,000 ($486,434) scheme saw 11 contracts on eight topics awarded to Atkins, Frazer-Nash Consultancy, IDOM, Jacobs, and M5Tec.


Russia Russia to begin serial production of fuel for Western PWRs Russia’s Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrate Plant (NCCP, part of Rosatom’s Fuel Company TVEL) intends to establish a facility for the commercial production of TVS-Kvadrat fuel for nuclear power plants of western design, said Vladimir Rozhdestvensky, adviser to TVEL’s president. TVS-Kvadrat (square fuel assembly) fuel development was coordinated by OKBM Afrikantov. Its geometry differs from Russian fuel assemblies, which are hexagonal in cross section. Materials and design were developed by the AA Bochvar Russian Research Institute of Inorganic Materials. The Leipunsky Institute of Physics and Power Engineering in Obninsk and the Kurchatov Institute were also involved, as well as NCCP and Chepetsk Mechanical Plant. U


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