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A Mitsubishi company has become the first wholly owned unit of a Japanese company to become a member of the Nuclear Energy Institute, Mitsubishi Nuclear Energy Systems MNES, said Monday. The company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, is one of four reactor vendors that is a member of NEI. Noriyuki Kuwata, MNES executive vice president, said in a statement that the NEI designation "is a very important step for MNES because NEI recognizes our current performances in the US nuclear industry." The other three reactor vendors that belong to NEI are Areva, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, and Westinghouse Electric.

Dominion Resources Inc (D.N) expects to decide in the fall whether to continue working with General Electric Co/Hitachi Ltd on a proposed nuclear plant in Virginia, a spokesman said. Dominion opened a competitive process this month to broaden its discussions with potential nuclear vendors, spokesman Richard Zuercher said on Monday. The move to look at competing engineering and construction partners came after Dominion disclosed in January that it was unable to reach agreement with General Electric Co (GE.N)/Hitachi Ltd (6501.T) on terms to build the company's advanced nuclear design, the 1,550 MW Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor.

After a decade in development, microwave casting is about to become part of the production capabilities at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge. Y-12 has contracted with a vendor, Microwave Synergy Inc., to complete the detailed design work and deliver the first production unit by unit July 2010. "Overall completion of installation, checkout and turn-over of the microwave caster to operations is scheduled for the end of FY 2011," B&W, the government's contractor at Y-12, said in response to questions. The Oak Ridge plant currently has five R&D microwave units and a "production-scale" prototype caster in the 9212 complex, where uranium is processed and fabricated into nuclear warhead parts. "The current prototype unit only has been used to cast enriched uranium into different shapes for evaluation purposes," B&W said via e-mail.

After a decade in development, microwave casting is about to become part of the production capabilities at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge. Y-12 has contracted with a vendor, Microwave Synergy Inc., to complete the detailed design work and deliver the first production unit by unit July 2010. "Overall completion of installation, checkout and turn-over of the microwave caster to operations is scheduled for the end of FY 2011," B&W, the government's contractor at Y-12, said in response to questions. The Oak Ridge plant currently has five R&D microwave units and a "production-scale" prototype caster in the 9212 complex, where uranium is processed and fabricated into nuclear warhead parts. "The current prototype unit only has been used to cast enriched uranium into different shapes for evaluation purposes," B&W said via e-mail.

"Yesterday we brought you more of the continuing and farcical story of the state of the art European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) being built by AREVA at Olkiluoto in Finland. The many, many diverse delays incompetence in the project have led to it being (at the time of writing) four years behind schedule and 2.3 billion euros over-budget. It's not just in Finland, however, where the reactor that was supposed to relaunch the nuclear 'renaissance' is struggling. In the UK, where the EPR - along with the Westinghouse AP1000 - is being evaluated for possible construction there, the government's Health and Safety Executive has said its design assessment process will miss its June 2011 deadline. More information is required from the reactor vendors in a number of areas: fault studies, fuel design and electrical systems for AP1000; and mechanical engineering, environment and fuel design for the EPR. For both reactors the HSE wants more information on structural integrity as well as higher active waste and used fuel management."

"The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced that it has removed contaminated excess machine tools at Sandia National Laboratories in California under a low-cost plan that saved taxpayers millions by forging an innovative partnership with an outside vendor. "After overcoming several disposition challenges, we successfully executed a strategy that resulted in significant savings to NNSA and American taxpayers," said Randal S. Scott, Deputy Associate Administrator for Infrastructure and Environment. "The removal of the contaminated tools at Sandia California is another example of NNSA's commitment to turning a Cold War-era nuclear weapons complex into a 21st century nuclear security enterprise." Sandia California's Building 979 housed machine tools that had been used to support a wide array of research and development projects since the early 1990s. That work was completed in recent years, resulting in a determination that the tools were no longer needed by the Department of Energy and NNSA and could be disposed of as excess. "

Did you know that the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA) was enacted to provide compensation and medical benefits to employees who worked at certain Department of Energy (DOE) facilities, including contractors and subcontractors at those locations, and certain of its vendors? During the Cold War, workers employed in the nation's atomic weapons program or other programs may have been exposed to radioactive and toxic substances. As a result, the EEOICPA is intended to benefits to eligible employees and former employees of the U.S. DOE, its contractors and subcontractors, or to certain survivors of such individuals.

Areva, the Paris-based nuclear vendor, has signed a contract to deliver 300 mt of uranium to Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd, Areva said Thursday. The quantity is sufficient to fuel a third of the Indian state-owned utility's operating reactor fleet, Areva said. Npcil, which operates about 4 GW of nuclear plant, has had to reduce the output of its reactors last year and this year for lack of sufficient uranium supply. Until this fall, members of the international Nuclear Suppliers Group were not allowed to trade with the country, which has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Entergy asked NRC January 9 to suspend the review of the utility's two new plant license applications, citing difficulties in reaching an engineering, procurement and construction agreement with vendor GE Hitachi. Entergy had filed an application for a combined construction permit-operating license, or COL, in February for an additional unit at its Grand Gulf site in Mississippi and another COL application in September for a new unit at its River Bend station in Louisiana. An Entergy spokesman said the company has asked NRC to suspend the safety review for both applications and to temporarily defer the environmental portion of those reviews.

In a move that could affect its plans for a third nuclear reactor at North Anna Power Station, Dominion power is exploring options for another design. Dominion has been unable to reach an agreement with GE Hitachi on an engineering, procurement and construction agreement allowing Dominion to move ahead with Unit 3 at its plant on Lake Anna. Dominion nuclear operations spokesman Richard Zuercher said yesterday that time is the issue. "Our timeline to move forward to have a new unit operating at North Anna is between 2016 and 2018, and we have no agreement that gets us to that point," Zuercher said. He said that Dominion will seek out other vendors for an advanced reactor that can be licensed and built under that timeline.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a public workshop Dec. 10 - 11, in Rockville, Md., to share insights and lessons learned for companies supplying parts for new reactor construction. "We 're looking for an open discussion with current nuclear plant operators, plant component vendors and other interested groups," said Glenn Tracy, Director of the Division of Construction Inspection in the NRC 's Office of New Reactors. "We want everyone involved to understand what our safety requirements are, how we monitor quality assurance programs and other areas vital to proper reactor construction."

This is a good opportunity to remind everyone that while some parts of the Federal Government-such as the Commerce and Energy Departments-do promote nuclear energy, the Federal Government also includes the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. We are an independent regulator that takes no position on commercial nuclear power. Rather, we oversee the safety and security of nuclear facilities and materials. Of course, any revival in domestic nuclear power will also require that utilities, vendors, plant designers and engineers, and fuel suppliers make safety and security a priority.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has published the latest update to its policy statement on advanced nuclear power plant designs. The policy provides expectations and guidance on safety, security and preparedness-related issues so, as a matter of prudence, designers can address them early in the development of advanced reactors. The policy encourages the earliest possible interactions between the NRC and reactor vendors, potential applicants, the public, and other government agencies. The Commission believes designers should consider several reactor characteristics, including:

How much has the cost of new nuclear construction increased in recent years and what factors have contributed to cost estimates of up to $7000 per kWe? By Steve Kidd There is now a huge range of numbers in the public domain about the costs of new nuclear build. It has become clear that estimates produced by vendors a few years ago of below $2000/kWe on an overnight basis (ie without interest costs) were wide of the mark, at least for initial units in a market such as the USA.

Duke Energy won't have to reveal the cost estimate for a proposed nuclear plant any time in the near future, North Carolina regulators ruled Tuesday. The N.C. Utilities Commission agreed with the Charlotte electric utility that the estimated cost of a proposed nuclear plant is a "trade secret" under N.C. law. Duke Energy officials argued in a public hearing that revealing the cost estimates now would give tactical advantage to vendors and contractors during sensitive negotiations.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff will hold a workshop at the agency headquarters in Rockville, Md., on Thursday and Friday, Oct. 8 and 9, to discuss generic issues regarding potential applications for so-called "small and medium-sized" nuclear reactors. The workshop will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Oct. 8, and from 8:30 a.m. to noon on Oct. 9 in the auditorium of the NRC's Two White Flint building at 11545 Rockville Pike in Rockville. The public is invited to participate with NRC staff and industry representatives throughout the workshop. "We're going to examine how these 'small' reactor vendors would need to address the NRC's requirements in areas including safety, security, decommissioning and emergency preparedness," said Michael Mayfield, director of the Advanced Reactor Program in the NRC's Office of New Reactors. "This meeting will help us and our stakeholders determine what issues need more clarification and get everyone's expectations on the same page."

Outreach effort ramping up from impulse power to warp drive Areva logoNote to public relations consultants to major nuclear reactor vendors, Areva, the world's largest integrated firm across the entire nuclear fuel cycle, thinks the blogsphere is worth its time in terms of dialog. The French nuclear giant has an initiative underway in which company officials hold monthly conference calls with nuclear energy bloggers. During the hour-long call, bloggers get to ask some tough questions. For their part, Areva is working to emerge from a traditional corporate communications strategy of walking softly and not saying very much to the press, much less to bloggers. Wide ranging topics for discussion In the conference call held this past Friday, May 8, the fifth in the series, the firm fielded questions about the facts behind a hostile article published in the Economist May 7, the status of the MOX fuel plant under construction in South Carolina, and next steps at Calvert Cliffs III which was short-listed for federal loan guarantees and got a green light this week from the Maryland PUC. The project to build the first 1,600 MW EPR reactor in the US is scheduled to break ground in 2011 and enter revenue service in 2015.

Ontario, Canada's economic hub, announced Monday the suspension of its plan to build two new nuclear reactors, citing concerns about vendor Atomic Energy Canada Limited's viability, and pricing. The provincial government said AECL's bid to build the two new nuclear power plants at its Darlington station, 43 miles (70 kilometers) east of Toronto, by 2018 was the only one to meet its terms and objectives. The project was to be the first step in the modernization of Ontario's aging nuclear fleet. France's Areva and Westinghouse Electric Company, a subsidiary of Japan's Toshiba, had also bid on the project in February.

Areva North American President Jacques Besnainou is like a starship captain. This past week he went where no reactor vendor CEO has gone before by opening up, unfiltered by corporate PR, to a group of nuclear energy bloggers. The company has claimed it will practice "transparency" in its communication with the public and the press. This week it got a chance to prove it and it did a pretty good job. Despite the fact bloggers are somewhere in the middle of those two groups, they got candid answers to tough questions. In an exclusive interview published only here on the EnergyCollective, Besnainou laid out his views on the nuclear renaissance, recycle spent nuclear fuel, and a big investment in biomass and wind energy in the U.S. Jacques Besnainou2 It must have been quite a challenge for the executive suite in Bethesda, MD, to agree to get wired into the blogsphere. Of course Bensnainou (right) has been blogging himself for a few months via the Areva's blog. However, taking questions live from bloggers themselves is an entirely different matter than tapping out a thoughtful blog post in the quiet of a corner office.

"Students, faculty and administrators at New York University, Stanford, Columbia, MIT, SUNY at Stony Brook and over a dozen universities in the United States may have been exposed to cancer causing radiation, beryllium, plutonium, silica and other highly toxic substances while attending school or working at universities holding contracts with the Department of Energy from 1941 through the present. The universities on a list from Department of Energy (DOE), Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA) website provided by the Office of Health, Safety and Security were listed as "Atomic Weapons Employers", "Beryllium Vendors" and "Weapons Research and Development Facilities" doing work such as "nuclear research involving plutonium and uranium" at the universities' laboratories. "

"More than 60 countries are examining how to include nuclear power into their energy plans. During a meeting of approximately 100 representatives from 47 countries opening today in Vienna, Austria, some of the 60 countries will explain just how they plan to accomplish this. The workshop includes representatives from almost 35 Member States which are considering or already launching a nuclear power programme. Six of the major vendor countries - Canada, France, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the USA - are also in attendance. Participants are also set to discuss ways to integrate security and safeguards considerations into the design and planning for nuclear power."