2024: The Year in Nuclear—January through March

Another calendar year has passed. Before heading too far into 2025, let's look back at what happened in 2024 in the nuclear community. In today's post, compiled from Nuclear News and Nuclear Newswire are what we feel are the top nuclear news stories from January through March 2024. Some images below are the covers of Nuclear News for the months as noted.

Stay tuned for the top stories from the rest of the past year.

January

$1.5 billion DOE loan aims to restart Palisades

The Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert, Mich., may become the first in the United States to be restarted after a permanent shutdown-with help from a $1.5 billion loan being championed by the Biden administration. Bloomberg reported in January that Holtec International could receive funding as soon as the end of the month. The loan is part of efforts by the Biden White House to bolster the U.S. nuclear fleet to meet ambitious climate goals.

DOE rolls out simplified HALEU enrichment RFP

The Department of Energy issued a final request for proposals on January 9 for high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) enrichment services to help establish a commercial domestic supply of HALEU to fuel a potential fleet of advanced reactors. After industry consultation, the DOE issued two RFPs for front-end HALEU fuel cycle services-the enrichment RFP released in January, which would enrich uranium feedstock to up to 19.75 percent fissile uranium-235, and an RFP released in November 2023 for deconversion of the enriched uranium into metal, oxide, and other forms.

The DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy plans to award one or more contracts with a maximum duration of 10 years to produce 10 metric tons of HALEU from domestic uranium enrichment capabilities. Once enriched, the HALEU material will be stored at the enrichment site as uranium hexafluoride gas to await deconversion and fabrication. Each chosen contractor would get a minimum order value of $2 million to be fulfilled over the term of the contract, with an overall contract ceiling of $2.7 billion.

Zeno Power will repurpose legacy radioisotope source from Oak Ridge

Zeno Power announced on January 26 that it will get the strontium-90 it needs to fuel full-scale radioisotope power systems (RPSs) for national security and space exploration missions from the DOE's Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM). Under a public-private partnership, a large legacy RPS known as the BUP-500 that had languished, unused, in storage at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was transported to a commercial radiological facility in Pennsylvania, where the Sr-90 it contains will be repurposed as heat sources for Zeno Power devices. Just days earlier, Zeno announced that it had selected Westinghouse Electric Company, headquartered in Cranberry Township, Pa., to process radioisotopes to fabricate its heat sources.

Ukraine accelerates plans for four new reactors

Ukraine planned to start construction on four new nuclear plants in the summer or fall of 2024, German Galushchenko, the country's energy minister, said in late January. The quicker timeline aims to compensate Ukraine for lost energy capacity as its war with Russia continues. Ukraine's government, however, still needs to sign off on the plans.

Two of the proposed reactors would be Russian-made VVER-1000 units, imported from Bulgaria. The other pair would use Westinghouse technology. All four units were proposed for the Khmelnytskyi nuclear plant in western Ukraine, where two 950-MWe VVER-1000 reactors are currently operating.

WIPP begins mining of new waste panel

For the first time in a decade, crews started mining a new disposal panel at the Department of Energy's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico in 2024. According to the DOE's Office of Environmental Management, during a ribbon-cutting at WIPP just before the new year, the spinning teeth of a multiton mechanical mining machine clawed through the ceremonial ribbon and began cutting the new Panel 11 out of the site's 250-million-year-old layer of salt.

Panel 11 is the first of two waste emplacement panels approved in 2023 by the New Mexico Environment Department as part of a 10-year extension of the operating permit for WIPP, the nation's deep geologic waste repository for defense-related transuranic waste. The waste to be emplaced in Panel 11 is within original congressional volume limits established for WIPP and does not represent an increase in the scope for the waste repository. Rather, the additional space will make up for that lost due to the radiological release that occurred in 2014.

February

Clinton seeks initial 20-year renewal

Constellation Energy applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for an initial license renewal for its Clinton nuclear plant in Illinois, which would allow the facility to operate through 2047.

Clinton benefitted from 2016 legislation in Illinois that provided financial support when economic factors were stacked against the plant. Subsequently, a federal nuclear production tax credit approved in 2022 extended support for the plant through at least 2032.

Type One Energy wants to build a stellarator at a retired coal plant

Type One Energy Group, a fusion start-up and one of eight fusion developers selected by the DOE for the public-private Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program, has relocated its headquarters from Madison, Wis., to the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Bull Run fossil plant in Clinton, Tenn., where it plans to build a stellarator fusion prototype machine. According to the company's February 21 announcement, the construction of the stellarator-called Infinity One-could begin in 2025, if necessary environmental reviews, partnership agreements, permits, and operating licenses are all in hand.

A triparty memorandum of understanding signed in 2023 among TVA, Type One, and ORNL created "Project Infinity" and the shared recognition that the three parties have "an interest in the successful development and commercialization of economic and practical fusion energy technologies." Project Infinity has funds from Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee's Nuclear Energy Fund for Infinity One and Type One's new headquarters.

Japanese gangster charged with trafficking nuclear materials

U.S. officials brought charges of nuclear materials trafficking against a Japanese gangster who has been in federal custody since 2022.

In a case filled with international espionage, along with alleged weapons and drug trafficking, Takeshi Ebisawa has been charged with attempting to sell uranium and weapons-grade plutonium.

March

Heat-up of Hanford's second LLW melter begins

Crews at the Hanford Site's Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, also known as the Vit Plant, began heating the second of two melters in the plant's Low-Activity Waste Facility on March 12. Crews began installing the 18 temporary heaters used to raise the melter's operating temperature to 2,100°F-hot enough to sustain a pool of molten glass-in February. The melter reached its operating temperature on March 23, after which the startup heaters were removed, and induction heating took over maintaining the melter's temperature. The plant's first melter began heating up in July 2023 after power anomalies that delayed its startup were corrected. It is expected that the two melters will begin radiological operations in 2025, when they'll be used to vitrify Hanford's low-activity tank waste, stabilizing it for on-site disposal.

TerraPower submits Natrium construction application to NRC

TerraPower submitted its formal Part 50 construction permit application to the NRC on March 29 for the Natrium reactor demonstration project.

TerraPower plans to build and operate its Natrium sodium fast reactor in Wyoming near one of the state's retiring coal plants. Kemmerer Power Station Unit 1 would operate a 345-MW sodium-cooled reactor in conjunction with molten salt-based energy storage.

Vogtle-4 reaches initial criticality, connects to grid

Southern Nuclear's Vogtle-4 reached initial criticality on February 14 and connected to the grid for the very first time on March 1. Along with Vogtle-3, the two new units are the first large-scale nuclear reactors to be built in the United States in more than three decades.

Amazon buys nuclear-powered data center from Talen

Talen Energy announced in March its sale of a 960-MW data center campus to cloud service provider Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of Amazon, for $650 million. The data center, Cumulus Data Assets, sits on a 1,200-acre campus in Pennsylvania and is directly powered by the adjacent Susquehanna Steam Electric Station, which generates 2.5 GW of power.