Power & Operations

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The nuclear industry is rapidly embracing virtual reality (VR) technology to optimize operations and improve safety. VR companies build an interactive 3D virtually realistic environment where teams can be trained without compromising safety.

In the latest step toward its recently stated goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, Newark, N.J.–based Public Service Enterprise Group, owner of the Hope Creek and Salem nuclear plants, has entered into an agreement to sell its 6,750-MW fossil generating portfolio to newly formed subsidiaries of ArcLight Energy Partners Fund VII—a fund controlled by ArcLight Capital Partners. (ArcLight Capital is a Boston-based private equity firm, founded in 2001 and focused on energy infrastructure investments.) The $1.92 billion deal, announced by PSEG on August 12, is expected to be completed late in the fourth quarter of 2021 or the first quarter of 2022.

I still clearly remember a day in 2005. I was sitting at my desk when my boss at the time, Roosevelt Groves (then supply director of operations at Exelon), called me into his office with a select group and announced that we needed to figure out this “parts issue thing.”

Why was this “thing” such a pressing issue that it required an impromptu meeting? It was because manufacturing defects were having a significant impact on Exelon’s reliability. And this problem was well out of our direct control.

Day three of the 2021 Utility Working Conference commenced early Tuesday morning with a plenary session featuring Rita Baranwal, the Electric Power Research Institute’s vice president of nuclear and chief nuclear officer, and Greg Cullen, Energy Northwest’s vice president for energy services and development.

Steven P. Nesbit

Stories are unfolding (or have unfolded) in three of our key states that illustrate the challenges facing the backbone of our country’s clean, reliable electricity generation infrastructure. I write, of course, about existing nuclear power plants. On the East Coast, New York is a done deal. Indian Point-3 shut down on April 30. The state authorities are banking on offshore wind to pick up the slack. They shrug off the cost and intermittency challenges associated with deploying wind power. We’ll see.

Natural Resources Canada, a department of the Canadian government, and Romania’s energy ministry have signed a memorandum of understanding to strengthen cooperation in the civil nuclear realm, including collaboration on CANDU refurbishments and new-build projects in Romania.

Jacob Wiencek, a self-described concerned resident of Honolulu, is doing his part to encourage the state of Hawaii to embrace nuclear power. An opinion piece written by Wiencek was published in Honolulu Civil Beat, an online, nonprofit news site, on August 4.

Lamb

Fitzpatrick

Doyle

A bipartisan trio of House members from Pennsylvania last week introduced legislation to accelerate research and development, as well as deployment, of hydrogen from clean energy sources.

Hydrogen can be produced from a variety of domestically available clean sources, notes the Clean Hydrogen Energy Act, including nuclear power, renewables, and fossil fuels with carbon capture, utilization, and storage.

Reps. Mike Doyle (D., Pa.), Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), and Conor Lamb (D., Pa.) sponsored the measure.

Even before the 2021 Utility Working Conference got fully underway on Monday morning, it was already a noteworthy event. The hybrid in-person/virtual meeting based at the JW Marriott in Marco Island, Fla., marks the first time that ANS has held an in-person event since the Winter Meeting in November 2019.

As a knowledge manager for the 2018 Utility Working Conference, I had many opportunities to interact with nuclear utility leaders. The discussions often centered around finding innovative ways to sustain the existing fleet of nuclear plants by improving plant economics.

A delegation from the Department of Energy arrived in Romania in late July to discuss bilateral energy cooperation and Romania’s expansion plans for its sole nuclear power plant, Cernavoda. The delegation was led by Kathryn Huff, acting assistant secretary and principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy.

A $6 billion lifeline for struggling U.S. nuclear power plants is reportedly included in the nearly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill currently being mulled over in the U.S. Senate, but it won’t be thrown in time to rescue Illinois’s Byron and Dresden plants, according to owner and operator Exelon.

In an August 4 statement on second-quarter earnings, Exelon’s president and chief executive officer, Chris Crane, noted that while his company is encouraged by the growth of federal support for policies that acknowledge the value of nuclear’s clean energy generation, “passage of legislation remains uncertain and, regardless, will come too late to save our Byron and Dresden plants from early retirement this fall. While we remain hopeful that a state solution will pass in time to save the plants, clean energy legislation in Illinois remains caught in negotiations over unrelated policy matters, leaving us no choice but to continue down the path of closing the plants.” (Last August, Exelon announced its intention to prematurely retire Byron and Dresden, citing long­standing economic pressures. Last week, the company filed decommissioning plans for the two nuclear facilities.)

China continues its relentless march toward the top of the list of nations with the most power reactors. On July 31, China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) announced that Unit 5 at the Hongyanhe plant in Liaoning Province has begun commercial operation, giving China 51 commercial-scale power reactors, only five fewer than France, which currently sits at the number-two spot on the list with 56 operating reactors.

Craig Piercy

Per Nuclear News tradition, this month’s issue is dedicated to highlighting our nuclear technology supply chain. U.S. nuclear suppliers have certainly seen their share of challenges in the last decade or so. The widely anticipated “Nuclear Renaissance” of the early 2000s gave way to Fukushima, then a wavelet of plant closures that ANS President Steve Nesbit addresses in his column on page 15 of the August 2021 issue of Nuclear News.

However, the nuclear narrative has taken on a more positive tone of late. Significant federal investments in advanced nuclear energy systems, coupled with a broader recognition of the need to decarbonize, has stoked excitement for a new generation of U.S. technology on the verge of scaled commercial deployment by the end of the decade. Hopefully, in the words of Washington Nationals manager Davey Martinez, whose team went from a 19–32 record to World Series champs in 2019, “Bumpy roads lead to beautiful places.”

The U.K. government last week issued a “call for evidence” inviting stakeholders to weigh in on its choice of the high-temperature gas reactor for Britain’s £170 million (about $236 million) advanced modular reactor (AMR) demonstration program. The deadline for input on the government’s selection is September 9.

According to the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, the key objective of the AMR program is to demonstrate high-temperature heat production that can be used for low-carbon hydrogen production, process heat (for industrial and domestic use), and cost-competitive electricity generation in time for an AMR to support the government’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. The target for enabling an AMR demonstration is the early 2030s.

Sixty percent of respondents in a recent national survey favored the use of nuclear energy, with only 25 percent opposing its use. While the latest Bisconti Research poll focuses on nuclear power and electricity generation, its findings on public interest in climate change and using a spectrum of sources to meet energy needs are consistent with a recent Pew Research Center poll on a broad set of energy policy and climate change topics. The approaches the two online surveys took to measuring public opinion on nuclear energy yielded different numbers but found some common ground.

Georgia Power yesterday announced that due to 'productivity challenges' and the need for 'additional time for testing and quality assurance,' it has revised the schedule for the Vogtle-3 and -4 nuclear expansion project. The new schedule pushes back the Unit 3 in-service date to the second quarter of 2022 and the Unit 4 date to the first quarter of 2023—a three-to-four-month shift for each unit.

Public discourse on energy and climate increasingly includes nuclear energy, but how has that affected public opinion? The answer: a lot. A national public opinion survey conducted in May found that support for nuclear energy has rebounded, and politics, in part, may offer a window into why. For example, now Biden and Trump voters support nuclear energy about equally. Trump voters care more about affordable and reliable electricity. Biden voters care more about climate change, and their support is driven by perception of need. Perception of need is boosted by climate change, recent energy supply problems, and Democratic leadership endorsements. The importance of Democratic leadership endorsements is shown in the Obama bump in 2010 and the Biden bump in 2021. In both cases, the increase in overall support for nuclear is largely attributable to increased support among Democrats.

Approximately 40 percent of cumulative carbon dioxide emission reductions needed to meet sustainability targets rely on technologies not yet commercially deployed on a mass-market scale, according to last year’s Special Report on Clean Energy Innovation from the International Energy Agency.

Whitehouse

Crapo

Intent on lowering that percentage, both the Senate and House earlier this week introduced bipartisan legislation to rapidly scale up and diversify emerging energy technologies. On July 27, Sens. Mike Crapo (R., Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, and committee member Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) introduced the Energy Sector Innovation Credit (ESIC) Act, or S. 2475. The credit, according to Crapo’s office, is a technology-inclusive, flexible investment tax credit (ITC) or production tax credit (PTC) designed to promote innovation across a range of clean energy technologies, including generation, energy storage, carbon capture, and hydrogen production.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted for review the subsequent license renewal application for Duke Energy’s Oconee nuclear plant, the agency announced yesterday. The utility submitted the application for an additional 20 years of operational life for Oconee on June 7. A public version of the application (with proprietary details removed) is available on the NRC website.