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round up
POLICY ADDRESSING THE 69TH General
Conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Affairs & Trade Péter Szijjártó said: “Despite all attempts to kill our project, Hungary is accelerating the construction of its new NPP with which we will be able to connect 2,400 MWe to the national grid by two reactors at the beginning of the next decade.”
SAFETY & SECURITY THE DISCHARGE OF treated water from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi NPP is proceeding in line with international safety standards, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Task Force confirmed today in its fourth report since the water discharge began in August 2023. The monitoring programmes carried out for the ALPS (Advanced Liquid Processing System) treated water are also consistent with the relevant international safety standards and guidance, the report states.
REGULATION THE US NUCLEAR Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the UK Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) have renewed their memorandum of understanding, reaffirming a shared commitment to regulatory excellence that will enable the safe, efficient and accelerated deployment of next generation nuclear technologies.
CHINA’S LAWMAKERS HAVE voted to adopt the atomic energy law, which passed at a session of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC). The law comprises 62 articles in eight chapters. The NPC began discussing the draft atomic energy law in April, with an aim promoting the sound and sustainable development of the atomic energy industry with strengthened security.
COMPANIES DEEP FISSION WENT public through a reverse merger transaction with Surfside Acquisition raising $30m through a private placement offering. Surfside Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company, merged with the company to form a new entity that retains the name Deep Fission.
US-BASED START-up NANO Nuclear Energy has signed a letter of intent (LOI) for the proposed sale of its ODIN low-pressure coolant microreactor design and all associated intellectual property to UK-based Cambridge Atom Works. It calls for a total purchase price of $6.2m, with a $250,000 upfront non-refundable down payment and a $5.95m payment in 2026.
European Union
EU court relaxes rules on nuclear The Luxemburg-based General Court, part of the Court of Justice of the European Union (EU) has ruled that the EU can continue to count nuclear power, and in some cases fossil gas, as “environmentally sustainable”. The General Court found against a complaint from Austria, which sought to overturn the decision to include the two energy sources in the EU’s taxonomy regulation, which determines which investments can be considered as green. The Taxonomy Regulation, adopted by the EU in 2020, sought to channel finance towards sustainable activities with a view to achieving a climate-neutrality in the EU by 2050. The regulation lays down the criteria for determining whether an economic activity qualifies as environmentally sustainable. To qualify an activity must contribute substantially to one or more environmental objectives without causing significant harm to any of those objectives, and comply with technical screening criteria.
The General Court said the European
Commission (EC) “was entitled to take the view that nuclear energy generation has near to zero greenhouse gas emissions and that there are currently no technologically and economically feasible low-carbon alternatives at a sufficient scale, such as renewable energy sources, to cover the energy demand in a continuous and reliable manner”. The case was brought by Austria in October
2022 on the grounds that the inclusion of nuclear power and fossil gas breached EU law and that the EC had neglected to carry out an impact assessment or public consultation and bypassed normal legislative processes. Austria was responding to a delegated
regulation adopted by the EC in February 2022 and approve by the European Parliament the following August, which established technical screening criteria to include certain activities in the nuclear and gas sectors in the category as activities contributing substantially to climate change mitigation or climate change adaptation. The court said it “endorses the view that
economic activities in the nuclear energy and fossil gas sectors can, under certain conditions, contribute substantially to climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation. The approach taken by the 2022 delegated regulation is a gradual approach based on a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in stages, while allowing for security of supply”. It added that the EC took “sufficient account of the risks associated with normal operation of nuclear power plants, serious reactor accidents and high-level radioactive waste”. The ruling comes after Germany signed an
agreement with France to develop a coherent policy accepting the inclusion of nuclear power in a low-carbon energy mix. Austria has just over two months to appeal to the Court of Justice against the General Court decision.
10 | October 2025 |
www.neimagazine.com
China Largest cooling tower takes shape Construction of the main structure of the cooling tower for unit 1 of China’s Lianjiang Nuclear Power Project in Guangdong Province has been completed, paving the way for installation of the internal components of the tower, according to State Power Investment Corp (SPIC).
This is the world’s largest NPP cooling tower with a height of 218.7 metres and a diameter at its base of about 175 metres. It comprises a foundation, inclined pillars, tower tube, and inlet. This includes a central water shaft, water distribution system, heat exchange filler, water collection system, main water collection tank, and water eliminator. The final concrete for the foundation of
the tower was poured in November 2023. The foundation is more than 10 metres wide and more than 2 metres thick. Its construction required 15,900 cubic metres of concrete. A further 137,400 cubic metres of concrete was used in the tower’s construction. The water spraying area of the tower is 20,000 square metres. According to SPIC, unlike the “once-through
circulation cooling” used in traditional NPPs, the “secondary circulation cooling technology” used in the Lianjiang 1 tower is a technical breakthrough. This technology replaces the direct discharge of seawater with the recycling of cooling water. It uses the atmosphere as the final heat trap, and realises the recycling of cooling water through air-water heat exchange. This significantly reduces the water intake, greatly reducing the risk of an influx of marine organisms improving the safety and stability of power supply. The water discharge is significantly reduced to one-fortieth of that of traditional NPPs, and the temperature of the discharged water approaches that of natural seawater. SPIC said the high-level water collection design adopted by the cooling tower is a key innovation to improve efficiency, which not only reduces the ventilation resistance, increasing the cooling efficiency, but also lowers the temperature of water leaving the tower under the spray area, which can indirectly increase power generation. At the same time, the operating noise is reduced by 4-8 decibels compared with a conventional cooling tower. Construction of the first two CAP1000 reactors at Lianjiang NPP was approved by China’s State Council in September 2022. Excavation works for the units began in the same month, with the pouring of first concrete for the foundation of unit 1 completed at the end of September 2023 and for unit 2 in April 2024. Lianjiang unit 1 is expected to be completed and put into operation in 2028. Once all six units planned at the site are
completed, annual generation will be about 70.2 TWh, which will reduce coal consumption by more than 20m tonnes and carbon dioxide emissions by more than 52m tonnes.
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