NEWS |
round up
REGULATION AND LAW AN INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC Energy Agency (IAEA) Integrated Regulatory Review Service mission said Singapore is committed to maintaining and strengthening its regulatory framework for radiation safety and noted areas which would benefit from further enhancements.
AS EVOLUTIONARY AND innovative reactor designs get closer to deployment, regulators are defining the best approaches for evaluating their safety and licensing their operation. This was the focus of an International Conference on Topical Issues in Nuclear Installation Safety: Strengthening Safety of Evolutionary and Innovative Reactor Designs in Vienna.
AN INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC Energy Agency (IAEA) Integrated Regulatory Review Service mission said Finland has strengthened its regulatory framework for nuclear and radiation safety and made progress in recent years. The team also identified areas for possible improvements.
POLICY
DURING A MEETING of permanent representatives of the European Union (EU) countries, Hungary won assurances that sanctions against the Russian Federation would not affect nuclear energy and the construction of new power units at its Paks NPP would not be affected, Hungarian Foreign Ministry Peter Szijjártó said.
V
● An investigation will be launched immediately into restarting units 1&2 of the Ringhals NPP.
● The ban on restarting closed reactors will be reversed.
Sweden’s six nuclear power reactors provide about 40% of its electricity. In 1980, the government decided to phase out nuclear power, but parliament repealed this policy in 2010. Power company Fortum welcomed the
investments in nuclear power detailed in the Agreement. The credit guarantees reduce the political risk. Fortum recently announced plans for a
two-year feasibility study to explore new nuclear. As part of the study, Fortum will examine commercial, technological and societal conditions both for SMRs and conventional large reactors. The study’s geographic focus is Finland and Sweden. Fortum has agreed to fully divest Uniper to the German State and, as a result, Fortum is in the process of updating its stand-alone strategy with the focus on sustainable power generation, security of supply and affordable energy. In this context, Fortum said its CO2
-free generation
assets are now needed more than ever and the new study will contribute to that.
USA
TRISO-X breaks ground TRISO-X, a wholly owned subsidiary of X-energy in October broke ground and began construction of the fi rst US commercial-scale advanced nuclear fuel facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The TRISO-X Fuel Fabrication Facility (TF3) will be the genesis of future commercial- scale advanced nuclear energy innovation and deployment, creating more than 400 jobs and attracting an investment of approximately $300 million, TRISO-X said. TF3 is set to be commissioned and operational by 2025. Tri-structural isotropic (TRISO) particle fuel
is considered the most robust nuclear fuel on the planet, according to the US Department of Energy (DOE).
In 2020, the DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) selected X-energy’s reactor technology to receive initial funding as part of a $3.2bn programme to develop, build, and demonstrate operational advanced reactors by the end of the decade. The TRISO-X nuclear fuel produced in the Oak Ridge facility will be used in X-energy’s Xe-100 high-temperature gas reactors expected to be operational by 2028. “TRISO-X will be the nation’s first commercial
scale facility dedicated to fuelling reactors that require high-assay low-enriched uranium TRISO particles,” said Dr Kathryn Huff, Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy. X-energy has a history of choosing Oak Ridge
as the location for its nuclear developments. In 2016, X-energy opened a pilot-scale nuclear fuel facility in Oak Ridge to further develop its TRISO-X fuel and its Xe-100 reactor design.
Germany Nuclear extended until April German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in October ordered the country’s three remaining nuclear power stations to continue operating until mid-April. Scholz’s order ends weeks of dispute within his governing coalition. The head of the liberal Free Democratic Party coalition partner, Christian Lindner, was pressing to keep all three plants running until at least 2024, while the Green Party led by Economy Minister Robert Habeck insisted on closing them as scheduled at the end of 2022. The Greens wanted only two plants to be kept on standby, to be used if needed in face of the energy crisis sparked by European sanctions on Russian energy. The liberal Free Democratic Party, on the other hand, had been pushing to keep all three reactors active until 2024. In 2021 Germany got 55% of its gas from
Russia, but in the summer that fell to 35% and is set to decrease further. Originally Germany had planned to phase out all three by the end of this year. The operators of the three remaining plants are E.ON, RWE and EnBW which, with a total capacity of 4.2GWe currently account for 6% of Germany’s power generation. U
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10 | November 2022 |
www.neimagazine.com
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