The Nuclear Regulatory Commission Region III office in Lisle, Illinois, has activated its incident response center and entered monitoring mode due to an Unusual Event declared at the Byron nuclear power plant Unit 2. The event was declared due to a loss of offsite power at 10:18 a.m. CT. The two-unit plant is operated by [...]
UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, announced this week that its adsorbent ion exchange products are successfully being used by Toshiba Corporation and Shaw Global Services LLC for the cleanup of radiation-contaminated water at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. The Simplified Active Water Retrieve and Recovery System (SARRY) is utilizing UOP IONSIV™ Ion [...]
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Research by a team of Sandia chemists could impact worldwide efforts to produce clean, safe nuclear energy and reduce radioactive waste. Sandia chemist Tina Nenoff heads a team of researchers focused on removal of radioactive iodine from spent nuclear fuel. They identified a metal-organic framework that captures and holds the volatile gas, [...]
Ever since the end of World War Two, the U.S. has come to regard Saudi Arabia as almost its exclusive oil producing enclave. In February 1945, after the Yalta Conference with Soviet General Secretary Iosif Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on his way home U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and King Ibn Saud [...]
At the best of times, the U.S. government is regarded as somewhat out of touch with what’s happening in the American “heartland,” much less the world at large, so much so that the phrase “inside the Beltway” was coined to define the syndrome. But every now and again, an incident occurs that so perfectly encapsulates [...]
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has proposed a $140,000 civil penalty against Entergy Operations, Inc. at the River Bend Station, for control room operators accessing the internet without authorization and failure by the utility to take timely corrective actions once the issue was identified. River Bend is located 24 miles northwest of Baton Rouge. Control room operators are [...]
The implosion of the USSR in December 1991 produced massive economic “collateral damage” in its East European allies, as they simultaneously sought both to assert their new-found independence and draw closer to their potential European allies on the western side of 1946′s “Iron Curtain.” Following the euphoria amity quickly devolved down to practical issues, one [...]
NRC SEEKS PUBLIC COMMENT ON ASSUMPTIONS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDY OF EXTENDED STORAGE OF SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL The Nuclear Regulatory Commission seeks public comment on a report updating preliminary assumptions for an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) the agency will develop to analyze the effects of storing spent nuclear fuel from the nation’s commercial power reactors for [...]
Secretary Chu Statement on AP1000 Reactor Design Certification Washington, D.C. – U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu issued the following statement last week in support of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) decision to certify Westinghouse Electric’s AP1000 nuclear reactor design, a significant step towards constructing a new generation of U.S. nuclear reactors. In February 2010, the [...]
Taiwan imports 99 percent of its energy, which is vital to its rapidly industrializing economy. The island nation’s electricity demand was recently growing at almost 5 percent per year, but this is slowing to about 3.3 percent per annum to 2013. Nuclear power has been a significant part of the electricity supply for two decades [...]
With the Fukushima disaster, earthquake-related reactor shutdowns, further reactor project cost escalation, infighting at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and cheap natural gas, 2011 was a year the nuclear power industry would prefer to get behind it as quickly as possible. But, looking ahead to 2012, experts see continuing challenges that will make it extremely [...]
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has determined that electrical breakers installed in a key safety system would not have functioned during certain scenarios at the Oconee nuclear plant, representing a finding of “substantial safety significance” that will result in increased NRC inspection and oversight of the facility. The three-unit plant is operated by Duke [...]
VICTORIA, British Columbia — In an order valued at nearly $400,000 USD, a large US power utility in the Southwestern United States has selected the EverGEN 1530 solar LED outdoor lighting system for the second installment in a perimeter fence security lighting project. The solar lighting systems by Carmanah CA:CMH -2.38% CMHXF -0.12% are being [...]