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round up
NEW BUILD THE KOREA ATOMIC Energy Research Institute (KAERI) said first concrete has been poured for its Kijang Research Reactor the Radiology Science Industrial Complex in Gijang-gun, Busan. A ceremony was attended by about 150 people from construction companies Daewoo E&C, Hyundai E&C and GS E&C, as well as the construction project management team.
CHINA’S SHANGHAI NUCLEAR Engineering Research & Design Institute (SNERDI) says the largest and heaviest module has been installed at unit 4 of the Sanmen NPP in Zhejiang province. The CA20 module is 20.5 metres long, 14.1 metres wide and 20.9 metres high.
BRAZIL’S NUCLEAR UTILITY Eletronuclear said in a statement that it is committed to reversing the suspension of work at unit 3 of the Angra NPP. It is seeking a constructive dialogue with the city of Angra dos Reis to clarify the issues and to find a solution that allows the resumption of construction at the site.
UNITS 5&6 OF China National Nuclear Cooperation’s (CNNC’s) Fuqing NPP in Fujian province, the world’s first two units of the Hualong One demonstration project, have passed their final acceptance, CNNC said. The project was completed in March when Fuqing 6 began commercial operation.
ASSEMBLY HAS BEGUN of the prototype main circulation pump for the Brest- OD-300 fast reactor under construction at Russia’s Siberian Chemical Combine (SCC) in Seversk. The Brest fast neutron reactor is part of the pilot demonstration power complex (ODEK) facility which SCC has been responsible for implementing since 2011 as part of the Breakthrough (Proryv) project intended to demonstrate closed fuel cycle technology.
GEORGIA POWER HAS announced completion of hot functional testing for Unit 4 at the US Vogtle nuclear expansion project near Waynesboro. This marks a significant step towards operations said Georgia Power “Unit 4 is projected to enter service in late fourth quarter 2023 or the first quarter 2024.”
South Korea and USA boost co-operation
Above: South Korea and the USA have signed agreements to boost bilateral cooperation on nuclear power
South Korea and the USA have signed 23 business agreements to boost bilateral cooperation on advanced industries and energy during a business partnership event in Washington. The agreements, mostly memoranda of
understanding (MOUs), included 10 which involve high-tech industries and 13 related to clean energy sectors. They covered nuclear power and small modular reactors (SMRs) in particular. According to the MOUs, companies, research
institutes, and public institutions will promote cooperation through joint research, human resource exchange, product development, and certification standards. Doosan Enerbility and Korea’s Export-Import
Bank (Kexim) agreed to co-operate with US NuScale Power. The agreement aims to foster cooperation in marketing, strengthening local supply chains and export financing assistance for SMRs. Separately, SK Innovation and SK agreed to pursue joint projects with KHNP with respect to US TerraPower’s natrium reactor based on sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) technology. The “4th Generation SMR Business Strategic Cooperation Agreement” envisages collaboration in the demonstration and commercialisation of Natrium. SK and SK Innovation jointly invested $250m in TerraPower in August 2022 . The new agreement secures an opportunity for SK to participate in TerraPower’s SMR project and pioneer deployment opportunities. TerraPower says it aims to accelerate the
commercialisation of the Natrium technology through this agreement. The company is building a 345 MWe demonstration SMR in Wyoming, with a target completion date of 2030, and the US Department of Energy (DOE) is supporting this project with approximately $2bn under the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. At a signing ceremony, TerraPower President Chris Levesque said these partnerships “are critical for the first Natrium reactor and the many additional facilities we plan to construct in the US and globally”.
Commenting on all the agreements, Korean Industry Minister Lee Chang-yang said: “The Korea-US alliance has gone beyond the traditional military and security alliance to become a technology alliance. We hope these agreements will create big achievements and the Korean government will actively support corporate activities.” Subsequently, the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI) released a report calling on South Korea and the US to strengthen cooperation in the nuclear power export market, which is currently dominated by Russia and China. FKI’s “Korea-US Nuclear Power Civilian Cooperation Plan” said that, after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, leading NPP exporters such as South Korea, Japan, and Germany adopted nuclear phase-out policies, allowing Russia and China to become new powerhouses in the global nuclear power plant export market. The US sees this as a serious security
threat and is preparing a strategy to restore competitiveness in the nuclear power industry by proposing related legislation, the report adds. In particular, SMRs are seen as the key to restoring competitiveness in the nuclear power industry. In 2022, the US launched its Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) programme, led by the US State Department, to support the introduction of SMRs in countries seeking to build new NPPs. The report noted that South Korea should consider developing a programme to complement FIRST. It remains to be seen whether this increased
Korean-US co-operation in the nuclear market will help to resolve the on-going legal dispute between US-based Westinghouse and Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP). The South Korean government had formalised its support for FIRST at the US-South Korea summit in 2022, after which Japan developed its Winning an Edge Through Cooperation in Advanced Nuclear (WECAN) programme as part of FIRST. ■
www.neimagazine.com | June 2023 | 7
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