The Department of Energy announced $29 million in funding for seven team awards for research in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data resources for fusion energy sciences on August 31. In all, 19 institutions will build algorithms to address high-priority research opportunities in fusion and plasma sciences using interdisciplinary collaborations of fusion and plasma researchers teamed with data and computational scientists.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

Hi friends, I hope you had a good summer. Like many of you, I took a break from my summer vacation to watch Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. I’m an unabashed Nolan fan—Inception and Interstellar rank among my top 10 favorite movies—but I’ll admit that Oppenheimer required more time for me to digest.

The film itself is first-rate: powered by a taut screenplay, its stripped-down elemental cinematography largely validates the director’s decision not to use any computer-generated imagery (although a couple of quick CGI scenes from the K-25 enrichment facility or the X-10 graphite reactor would have been really cool). The result is a historically faithful, largely accurate celebration of the brilliant minds that enabled one of the most daring engineering feats of all time.

The American Nuclear Society has added two new books to its publication catalog: Robert Busch’s Nuclear Criticality Safety: Evaluations, Calculations, and Experiences and Raymond J. Juzaitis’s Redemption of Prometheus: Creating a Sustainable Nuclear Enterprise for the 21st Century. The titles were released for purchase in late August and early September, respectively.

Kerry

During a side event held at last week’s Three Seas Initiative Summit in Bucharest, Romania, special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry announced U.S. actions to further the role of new nuclear technologies in accelerating the clean energy transition in Europe.

These actions, according to a September 7 media note from the U.S. State Department, expand on Romania’s leadership role in deploying the first small modular reactor in Europe and in converting a former Romanian coal plant to an SMR facility.

Building on his rollout of the Project Phoenix initiative at last year’s COP27 climate change conference in Egypt, Kerry said that proposals from the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia have been selected to participate in the project and will receive support for coal-to-SMR feasibility studies.

Abilene Christian University’s Gayle and Max Dillard Science and Engineering Research Center (SERC) has opened. SERC contains the Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing Laboratory (NEXT Lab) and is the future home of one of the first advanced reactors in the United States. More than 300 people were on hand to celebrate the opening and tour the facility, including donors, government officials, and scientists from ACU and other research institutions.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted for review CFPP LLC’s limited work authorization (LWA) application to permit certain early construction activities at the Carbon Free Power Project site in Idaho prior to the issuance of a combined license. (An LWA, according to 10 CFR 50.10, allows for “the driving of piles, subsurface preparation, placement of backfill, concrete, or permanent retaining walls within an excavation, installation of the foundation, including placement of concrete, any of which are for an SSC [safety-related structures, systems, or components] of the facility for which either a construction permit or combined license is otherwise required.”)

Wagner

Rufner

Advanced manufacturing is more than just additive manufacturing, as Jorgen Rufner and Adrian Wagner—both group leads at Idaho National Laboratory—would be quick to point out. Researchers at INL have been working with additive manufacturing (that’s 3D printing, colloquially) for decades. These days, INL boasts the largest industrial-scale electric field -assisted sintering (EFAS) machine of its kind and four other EFAS systems, including one coupled with a glove box for work with radioactive materials. That equipment and more can make samples, fuels, and components for both light water reactors and advanced reactors and for both publicly and privately funded programs.

BWX Technologies, Inc. has announced the details of a contract with the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration to process thousands of kilograms of government-owned scrap material containing enriched uranium and produce more than two metric tons of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) in an oxide form at an enrichment level of 19.75 percent U-235. That HALEU oxide could supply a fraction of the 22 metric tons the DOE has estimated will be needed by the mid-2020s to fuel advanced reactor demonstrations and meet existing commitments for research reactor fuel.

Harris

Abram

Cleo Abram and Johnny Harris are young, independent video journalists—and friends and colleagues—who have been posting educational and supportive videos about nuclear energy on YouTube.

Abram describes her work as “making optimistic tech explainers.” The name of her show is Huge If True, “an antidote to the doom and gloom, helping its audience decode the world around them and see positive futures they can help build.”

For the second consecutive year, the American Nuclear Society has selected two of its members to receive the Glenn T. Seaborg Congressional Science and Engineering Fellowship. The 2024 Congressional Fellows, Emily Caffrey and William Murray, will help the Society fulfill its strategic goal of enhancing nuclear policy by working in the halls of Congress, either in a congressional member’s personal office or with a committee, when their fellowship term begins in January.

In the second tranche of planned investment in Britain’s nuclear sector this summer, the U.K. government has made available £341 million (about $426 million) of previously allocated funding for development work on the proposed Sizewell C project in Suffolk, England.

Centrus Energy’s HALEU demonstration cascade. (Photo: Centrus Energy)

Centrus Energy announced on September 6 that it is conducting final system tests and expects to begin producing high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) in October from its 16-machine gaseous centrifuge enrichment demonstration cascade at the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio. After achieving initial HALEU production, Centrus has specific goals to meet under contract as the company ramps the demonstration cascade to its target annual production rate of 900 kg per year.

Centrus is required under a cost-share contract with the Department of Energy to produce 20 kg of 19.75 percent–enriched HALEU in uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) form by the end of this year. That contract, announced in November 2022, replaced an earlier contract signed in October 2019 that called for first production of HALEU by June 2022. The current contract calls for production at an annual rate of 900 kg of HALEU UF₆ per year in 2024, with additional options—subject to appropriations—to produce material in future years.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will conduct a mandatory hearing on October 19 regarding Kairos Power’s application for a construction permit to build a Hermes nonpower test reactor in Oak Ridge, Tenn. This hearing marks the final step in the agency’s review of the application.

Ken Petersen
president@ans.org

The front end of the fuel cycle is getting a lot of attention lately—and it needs it. The war in Ukraine has disrupted the global supply chain for many products, nuclear fuel being one. Several countries have determined that they no longer want to rely on nuclear fuel from Russia. This can be anything from fabricated fuel including uranium, conversion, and enrichment to just enrichment.

Since the Cold War, Russia has been a major supplier of nuclear fuel to the West. Replacing Russia as the main supplier will take both time and money—a fact that has become even more clear as the small modular reactor community grows, and with it, the demand for high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for fuel.

The American Nuclear Society has been highlighting the immediacy of the fuel supply problem—which will become a crisis without immediate action—for years. In 2021, ANS wrote to Congress, urging swift action. This year, Nuclear News and ANS’s Nuclear Newswire have run a three-part series by energy writer and consultant Matt Wald on the domestic nuclear fuel shortage. The first article, “On the verge of a crisis: The U.S. nuclear fuel Gordian knot,” was published on Newswire on April 14; the second, “The U.S. nuclear fuel Gordian knot: From global supplier to vulnerable customer,” on May 19. The final piece of the series, “The U.S. nuclear fuel Gordian knot: The uncertain path forward,” was posted on September 1.

Pavol Štuller, JAVYS chairman and chief executive officer, on the left, and Vakisasai Ramany, EDF senior vice president in charge of new nuclear development, sign an agreement in Paris.

Slovakia’s state-owned nuclear company JAVYS has announced the signing of a framework cooperation agreement (FCA) with France’s EDF for further cooperation “in the field of nuclear energy and in the implementation of projects aimed at development of large power reactors and small modular reactors.” Currently, the Slovakian nuclear fleet consists of two VVER-440/V213 pressurized water reactors at Bohunice, and two at Mochovce (with two more units on their way).

The signing took place on August 25 during an official visit to Paris by Slovakia’s minister of economy Peter Dovhun.

The Freemelt ONE 3D printer.

Hungary’s Institute for Nuclear Research (ATOMKI) is set to take delivery this year of a 4.6 million Swedish krona ($414,300) electron-beam 3D printer for nuclear material science research.

The printer—the Freemelt ONE model—is manufactured by Freemelt, a Swedish company.

Research plans: ATOMKI intends to use the printer for “research in surface science [and] surface topology, which means creation of new surface structures and composite materials via non-adiabatic [not occurring without heat loss or heat gain] alloying,” according to Kalman Vad, a senior research associate at ATOMKI. “The open architecture and free parametrization of the properties of the [electron] beam makes Freemelt ONE an ideal tool for research purposes.”

Cooper

While a pronuclear energy bill currently under consideration in the North Carolina General Assembly appears to stand a good chance of advancing to Gov. Roy Cooper’s desk, its chances of receiving his signature are less clear.

The legislation, S.B. 678, would replace the term “renewable energy” in state statutes with “clean energy” and specify that the new term includes both nuclear fission and fusion. In addition, the bill would eliminate language impeding the North Carolina Utilities Commission (NCUC) from issuing Certificates of Public Convenience and Necessity for nuclear facilities.

According to S.B. 678, “clean energy resource” includes solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, biomass, “waste heat derived from a clean energy source and used to produce electricity or useful, measurable thermal energy at a retail electric customer’s facility,” and “nuclear energy resources, including an uprate to a nuclear energy facility, fusion energy, or hydrogen derived from a clean energy resource.”

The American Nuclear Society will host the online event “Hispanic Excellence in the Nuclear Field” on September 20 at 10:00 a.m. (EDT), featuring a distinguished panel of nuclear experts. The panelists will share unique insights from their careers and discuss opportunities and challenges facing the future nuclear workforce, including what they see as future opportunities for the Hispanic community in the nuclear field.

The next opportunity to earn professional engineer (P.E.) licensure in nuclear engineering will be this fall when the exam is administered nationwide on October 24, 2023. If you haven't yet done so, you can brush up for the exam by obtaining the various preparation materials made available by the American Nuclear Society.

According to Joshua Vajda, chair of the ANS Professional Engineering Examination Committee (PEEC), it is important for ANS as a scientific society to continue to encourage professional licensure: “Emphasizing the importance of obtaining nuclear credentials is a Society initiative to maintain high ethical standards in the industry and to provide career advancement for the next generation of young practicing nuclear engineers.”

Johnson

Duncan

McMorris Rodgers

A trio of GOP House lawmakers is asking four federal agencies to report on their progress toward implementing National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reforms included in the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA), signed by President Biden in early June.

Last Friday, House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.); Energy, Climate, and Grid Security Subcommittee chair Jeff Duncan (R., S.C.); and Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Materials Subcommittee chair Bill Johnson (R., Ohio) sent letters to the Department of Energy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Environmental Protection Agency, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.