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round up
POLICY ROSATOM EXPECTS TO get back the money spent on the Hanhikivi-1 NPP project in Finland, Rosatom Director General Alexei Likhachev said. In early May, Finland’s Fennovoima terminated the contract for the construction of a single-unit NPP with a Russian-designed VVER-1200.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF Energy (DOE) has awarded more than $61 million for 74 nuclear energy projects across the country. The projects will support nuclear technology development, infrastructure improvements, and career opportunities at more than 40 US universities.
SAFETY AND SECURITY JAPAN’S HIGHEST COURT has dismissed claims that the government should pay damages in cases involving some 3,700 people seriously affected by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster triggered by the March earthquake and tsunami. This effectively absolves the state of any responsibility for the crisis.
THE IAEA HAS conducted more than 3,000 in-field verification activities and spent more than 14,500 days in the field in 2021, according to the Safeguards Statement for 2021. This represents a return to the pre-pandemic trend of increasing verification effort every year.
A MEETING OF the Norwegian-Russian Commission on Nuclear Safety has decided that Norway will put funding for cooperation with Russia on hold. Norway froze all payments to projects about nuclear safety cooperation following Russia’s military action in Ukraine.
COMPANY NEWS FINNISH COMPANY FENNOVOIMA said it will significantly reduce its operations after it cancelled plans to build the Hanhikivi NPP. Staff terminations, which will be implemented during 2022, will reduce the number of employees from 356 to less than 10 by the beginning of 2023.
START-UP NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY company Newcleo announced the closure of its €300m equity raise, which gathered interest in excess of the available amount. It was completed in two months. Newcleo said around two thirds of existing investors from the initial €100m funding round in 2021 chose to invest further.
US-BASED NUSCALE Power announced that it will make a strategic shift from product development to product delivery by establishing the new VOYGR Services and Delivery (VSD) business unit.
V of ČEZ in ÚJV Řež from the current 52.46% to 69.85%. ČEZ is executing the complex transaction in cooperation with investment bank WOOD & Company, which will hold the shares until the transaction is approved by the antitrust authorities. “This approach will ensure that Škoda JS will cease to be endangered by sanctions immediately after signing of the transactions, while in normal circumstances this would happen only after ČEZ has received the approval from the antitrust authorities to take over the company,” ČEZ said. Škoda JS has supplied capital units, equipment and service for NPPs, research reactors, and used nuclear fuel storage facilities in Central and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, France, Germany, USA, Austria, Finland, Belgium, PRC, Armenia, and other countries. Škoda JS has manufactured and delivered 21 complete VVER 440 nuclear reactors and three VVER 1000 reactors.
Italy
Sogin dismantles Bosco Marengo fuel plant Italy’s Sogin, the public company responsible for decommissioning former NPPs and the management of radioactive waste, said dismantling of the former nuclear fabrication plant in Bosco Marengo, the Piedmont site in which nuclear fuel was manufactured, has been completed. “It is the first Italian plant in which Sogin has completed the dismantling activities provided for in Phase 1, reaching the so-called brown field state-milestone, achieved through a significant acceleration in 2021 of about 16% of decommissioning activities,” the company said. “This goal has made it possible to remove the radiological constraints and to declassify the areas and buildings where in the past the nuclear fuel elements were manufactured, which are once again usable as conventional environments.” Sogin noted. The main activities involved the
decontamination and dismantling of the production line for fuel elements, the focus of the plant during its operation. The auxiliary systems such as the ventilation system, the material decontamination tank and the liquid effluent treatment and drainage system were dismantled. In addition, in recent years all solid and liquid radioactive waste has been treated and reduced in volume. Future activities will focus on maintaining
safety, the management of radioactive waste and the conclusion of characterisation and reclamation works at part of the “buffer zone” of the site. A small amount of low-level radioactive waste – several tens of kgs – comprising inert materials such as plastic, iron, concrete, wood, oil drums, etc were buried in the past during the operation of the plant. After the appropriate checks, this material will be removed and disposed of in landfill. Once the National Repository is established,
the radioactive waste will be removed and the temporary repository dismantled. The site will
10 | July 2022 |
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then be brought back to a green field state without radiological constraints that will make possible its reuse for other activities. Sogin has offered some buildings of the
Bosco Marengo plant, together with others of the decommissioned NPPs of Caorso (Piacenza) and Garigliano (Caserta), to house works of art in the event of natural disasters, as part of a project to protect the artistic heritage promoted by the Ministry of Culture and included in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.
Russia More small reactors planned for Yakutia Russia’s Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) has signed an agreement of intent with Rosatom to build a 10MWe small NPP (ASMM) with a SHELF-M reactor in Yakutia by 2030. Commissioning of the pilot ASMM is scheduled for 2030. The parties plan to develop and approve a road map for the implementation of the project later this year. The SHELF-M reactor is being developed by the NA Dollezhal Scientific Research and Design Institute of Power Engineering (Nikiet). The Luch Scientific Production Association in Podolsk is developing fuel for the reactor and in May supplied a batch of samples of fibre uranium-niobium fuel elements (fuel rods) of various modifications for reactor testing at the Research Institute of Atomic Reactors (NIIAR) in Dimitrovgrad. The planned ASMM will supply power to settlements and industrial enterprises located in remote areas with practically no energy or transport infrastructure. One ASMM project is already underway in
Yakutia for a plant based on the latest RITM- 200N reactor. Commissioning of the plant in the village of Ust-Kuyga in the Ust-Yansky district of Yakutia is scheduled for 2028.
Finland Olkiluoto trials 3D-printed fuel assembly components During the latest refuelling outage at unit 2 of Finland’s Olkiluoto NPP, two fuel assemblies fitted with 3D-printed foreign strainers were introduced into the reactor, plant owner- operator Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) said in a statement. These are the first officially approved
3D-printed fuel components to be introduced at a nuclear power plant. The StrongHold AM guest strainers, printed with 3D technology, are manufactured by Westinghouse Electric Sweden. The StrongHold AM filters are fully
manufactured using 3D printing techniques and offer enhanced capture features to prevent debris from entering the fuel assembly and potentially damaging the cladding, which could cause unplanned and expensive outages. “This is an important milestone in our efforts to improve the reliability of boiling water reactor fuel by leveraging advances in manufacturing technology,” said Dr Carina Önneby from Westinghouse, EMEA’s Director of Fuel Supply. U
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