NEWS |
round up
POLICY VIETNAM’S MINISTRY OF Industry and Trade (MIT) has been commissioned to undertake a comprehensive study of nuclear power development across various nations to draw up a proposal for integrating nuclear technology into Vietnam’s energy matrix in the future.
WESTINGHOUSE ELECTRIC COMPANY and Hyundai Engineering & Construction Company have signed a teaming agreement to promote AP1000 technology opportunities in Sweden and Finland. Westinghouse will provide the design and development of its AP1000 technology, and Hyundai will provide engineering and construction services.
TURKISH MINISTER OF Energy, Alparslan Bayraktar, said Türkiye will take action against German company Siemens over problems with the supply of equipment for the Akkuyu NPP. He said there were difficulties with the supply of equipment as a result of political decisions.
BULGARIA’S NATIONAL ASSEMBLY has voted to extend by 180 days the negotiations between the Bulgarian Energy Minister and Ukrainian counterpart on the sale to Ukraine of Russian equipment stored at the cancelled Belene NPP site. During this time, MPs expect to update the market assessment prepared last year and to obtain the necessary approvals from Ukraine’s nuclear utility Energoatom.
INDONESIA WILL ESTABLISH a Nuclear Energy Programme Implementing Organisation (NEPIO) after submitting a statement to the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to the Director General of New-Renewable Energy & Energy Conservation at the Energy & Mineral Resources Ministry, Eniya Listiani Dewi.
BOTH WESTINGHOUSE AND France’s EDF are now challenging the Czech Republic’s decision to select Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) to supply new reactors. Westinghouse Electric Company is already taking legal action against KHNP in a US district court for what it describes as a violation of its intellectual property rights.
FINNISH ENERGY GROUP Helen has established a nuclear energy programme and preparation for construction of a NPP is now beginning in earnest. CEO Olli Sirka believes that Helsinki will have its own NPP before 2035. Helen first talked about small nuclear power a couple of years ago. Now the company has established a core programme signalling that the company is serious about building a NPP to produce district heating and electricity.
8 | October 2024 |
www.neimagazine.com
CAREM SMR stalls again
Construction of Argentina’s CAREM-25 small modular reactor (SMR) has once again been stopped, this time by layoffs of construction workers. Some 153 people were laid off, taking the total number of firings to 470 since the beginning of the year. According to the Buenos Aires Herald, the layoffs were carried out by the three private construction contractors in charge of the project due to lack of sufficient funding from the government. According to construction union
representatives, CAREM’s construction is 85% complete and was set to go online in 2028, before the latest stoppage. In October 2023, Argentina’s National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA – Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica) and Nucleoeléctrica Argentina SA (NA-SA) signed a framework agreement for technical assistance to develop CAREM (Central ARgentina de Elementos Modulares) – Argentina’s first domestically-designed and developed 32 MWe nuclear power unit. As well as relying on passive safety systems, CAREM’s entire primary coolant system is contained within the single self- pressurised vessel and uses free convection to circulate the coolant. Development started in 1980 by CNEA and
technology company INVAP and it was first announced in 1984. Progress slowed in the early 2000s but a 2006 government decree made the CAREM programme a national priority. A second executive order in 2008 made the project directly responsible to the President. Initially, CAREM-25 was expected to start up
in 2017, but this was put back to 2020. Then, in 2019 a contractor stopped work alleging late payment from the government among other delays. Uncertainty continued until the October 2023 agreement. At that time, about 1,400 people were working on the project and there were 160 contracts in force, mostly with Argentine companies.
Russian Federation First experimental fuel for MBIR Specialists from the fuel technology department of the Scientific Research Institute of Atomic Reactors (NIIAR – Nauchno Issledovatelskii Institut Atomnikh Reaktorov) in Dimitrovgrad have produced a pilot batch of fuel elements with vibro-packed uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (mox) fuel for the multi-purpose fast research reactor MBIR (Mnogotselevoi Bistrii Issledovatelskii Reaktor). The work was carried out under the framework of the comprehensive programme ‘Development of equipment, technologies and scientific research in the field of use of atomic energy in the Russian Federation’.
However the election of right-wing Javier
Milei as President in November 2023 ushered in radical economic reforms including cuts in public spending and social unrest. The CAREM project fell victim and the 2028 launch date is now looking uncertain. CNEA recently announced that it had decided to put the building stage on hold and focus on an “engineering revision stage”. CNEA was not assigned a budget for this year and has been using an extension of the 2023 one. In March, the government renewed all state employee contracts for only three months. At that time, CNEA managers called the situation “critical” in an internal document, warning that the budget could last only until May or June. “We were expecting this. We knew the budget
for this year would not be enough to continue with the project,” said Adriana Serquis, former head of the CNEA who left her post in May due to differences with the Milei administration. She is now the director of CNEA’s Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Institute. The decision to lay off experienced workers
also likely affects development of Argentina’s nuclear industry overall. According to Julio González, a construction union leader in Zárate, where the reactor is being built, there are only 160 builders still in position and this will be reduced to 30 by November. “They have acquired knowledge in building nuclear reactors,” González reportedly said. “Halting the project means older workers who are close to retirement age will not be able to transfer their knowledge to newer generations.” Workers from several different unions such
as Uecara and Uocra, ATE and Luz y Fuerza, protested by blocking National Route 9. ATE said the excuse being given is engineering problems when they understand that in reality the problem is “the brutal adjustment that the Milei government is making”. ■
“For the first time, a pilot batch of fuel rods of a new design has been manufactured. These fuel elements will be part of the standard fuel assemblies used in the core of the MBIR reactor being built at the institute’s site. This fuel element design ensures a high neutron flux density in the core, which makes MBIR the most attractive device for conducting reactor experiments,” said Alexander Svyatkin, head of the fuel technology department at NIIAR. The products have successfully passed a cycle of preliminary and acceptance tests for compliance with technological and design documentation. A special Rosatom commission oversaw quality control with the participation of representatives of various project participants.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
