2024: The Year in Nuclear—July through September

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 July through September 2024.

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

July

Atlas spent fuel railcar receives AAR approval

The DOE made another step forward in its preparations to move America's SNF to consolidated storage when it announced on June 4 that the Association of American Railroads had certified its Atlas railcar system to operate on all major freight railroads in the United States. The 12-axle Atlas railcar will be used to transport the nation's commercial SNF and high-level radioactive waste. According to the DOE, the railcar project took 10 years to complete and cost approximately $33 million. The entire railcar system includes Atlas, two buffer railcars, and a rail escort vehicle that was developed in partnership with the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program.

Atlas is one of two railcars the DOE is developing to provide flexibility in transporting SNF and HLW to future federal interim storage facilities and disposal sites. Fabrication efforts are underway on the 8-axle Fortis railcar that will be used to handle lighter loads once in operation. Fortis is expected to begin testing no earlier than 2025 and could be operational before the end of the decade.

Constellation discussing TMI-1 restart with Pa. officials

Constellation Energy is in talks with the governor's office and state legislators about funding to restart Unit 1 at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, Reuters reported in July. The ongoing talks were described as "beyond preliminary" by two sources.

President Biden signs ADVANCE Act

The president signed into law the long-awaited Accelerating Deployment of Versatile Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy (ADVANCE) Act on July 9, bipartisan legislation aimed at providing a major boost to the future of nuclear energy in the United States. The U.S. Senate passed the ADVANCE Act on June 18, sending legislation to the White House that would make sweeping changes to the approval process for new technology in the nuclear energy sector.

"This bipartisan piece of legislation will encourage more innovation and investment in nuclear technologies right here on our shores. It also directs the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to more efficiently carry out its important regulatory mission and helps redevelop conventional energy sites for future nuclear energy projects," said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R., W.Va.), ranking member of the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee.

Senate staffer and former reactor operator nominated to the NRC

President Joe Biden announced Matthew Marzano as his choice to fill the open seat on the five-member NRC. The panel of commissioners has had a vacancy since Jeff Baran's term as commissioner ended in June 2023.

Marzano, an ANS member, currently serves as an Idaho National Laboratory detailee for the U.S. Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee, advising the EPW on policy matters relating to clean air, climate, and energy. Most recently, he advised the committee's chairman on the ADVANCE Act, legislation designed to prepare the NRC for an expected surge in new nuclear reactor oversight.

DOE issues RFI for spent fuel safety demonstration

The DOE issued a request for information to gather input on its proposed package performance demonstration, which is intended to demonstrate the robustness of SNF transportation casks in hypothetical accident conditions. Looking to address public concerns regarding the safety of transporting SNF, the DOE plans to conduct physical demonstrations on a rail-sized SNF transportation cask. The DOE is considering both demonstrations based on regulatory tests and demonstrations based on realistic transportation incident scenarios.

The DOE will use responses to the July 31 RFI to help inform the department's plans for a future request for proposals for the equipment and services needed to conduct the package performance demonstration, which will undergo a phased development schedule, preliminarily planned from 2024 to 2028. The demonstration date will depend on authorization, funding, and availability of materials and services for the demonstration, according to the DOE.

Oklo completes end-to-end demonstration of advanced fuel recycling

Oklo Inc. announced in mid-July that it had completed the first end-to-end demonstration of its advanced fuel recycling process as part of an ongoing $5 million project in collaboration with Argonne and Idaho National Laboratories. Oklo's goal: scaling up its fuel recycling capabilities to deploy a commercial-scale recycling facility that would increase advanced reactor fuel supplies and enhance fuel cost-effectiveness for its planned sodium fast reactors. Oklo was awarded cost-share funding from the DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) under the Optimizing Nuclear Waste and Advanced Reactor Disposal Systems (ONWARDS) program in March 2022 for Enabling the Near-Term Commercialization of an Electrorefining Facility to Close the Metal Fuel Cycle. Work began in July 2022 and is scheduled to continue until October 2025.

NextEra Energy considering Duane Arnold plant restart

The Duane Arnold nuclear power plant in Iowa could see new life, according to NextEra Energy chief executive officer John Ketchum.

NextEra shut down the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo, Ia., in October 2020, after ending its power purchase agreement with key customer Alliant Energy. It was one of a dozen nuclear reactors in the U.S. to close in the 2013-2021 period.

August

U.K. regulator accepts Westinghouse AP300 SMR application for review

The United Kingdom's Department of Energy Security and Net Zero accepted Westinghouse's AP300 SMR in August for the first step in the generic design assessment licensing process to bring new nuclear technology to the nation. It's part of the larger Great British Nuclear program, launched in 2023, to support the U.K.'s goal of expanding nuclear energy capacity to 24 GW by 2050-which would be the nation's largest expansion of nuclear in 70 years.

The U.K. government outlined the planned buildout in its Civil Nuclear Roadmap. The report, which was released in January, lays out goals and actions for building nuclear capacity, including the need to double its 64,500 workers in the industry over the next 20 years.

TVA puts $150 million toward SMRs

The Tennessee Valley Authority's board of directors approved $150 million in additional funding to continue design work and TVA's plans for SMRs at its Clinch River site near Oak Ridge, Tenn. With the August decision and an initial $200 million investment announced in early 2022, TVA has put a total of $350 million toward the development of SMRs at the site. The utility also developed a quality assurance program for its New Nuclear Program that could help it streamline the licensing of additional new nuclear construction in its service area.

DOE okays $1.5 billion loan for "restoration and maintenance"

The DOE signed off on a $1.5 billion loan guarantee to Holtec Palisades to support initial work needed to restart that Michigan nuclear plant. The funding is earmarked for "general restoration and maintenance activities in support of repowering [Palisades], an 800-MW electric nuclear generation station in Covert Township, Michigan," according to an August 5 notice in the Federal Register.

Finland begins trial run of Onkalo repository

Finland's waste management organization Posiva began a trial run of placing spent fuel canisters in the Onkalo geologic repository in southwestern Finland on August 30, during which the repository's equipment and systems were tested together for the first time. By October, the first three of four canisters were packed with test elements simulating spent nuclear fuel. During the remainder of the trial run, which was to last several months, the four test canisters will be placed in deposition holes excavated within a repository tunnel, which will then be filled with bentonite clay and the tunnel sealed with a concrete plug. The trial run also covers the retrieval of a damaged canister back to the ground level. Repository operations are expected to begin sometime after 2025.

On December 4, Finland's regulatory authority, the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK), delayed issuing an opinion on Onkalo's safety case until the end of 2025. A favorable finding by STUK is required before the government can issue an operating license (see Waste Management, page 79).

September

Constellation to restart TMI-1 through PPA with Microsoft

Nuclear powerhouse Constellation announced September 20 the signing of a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft that will pave the way for the restart of Three Mile Island Unit 1-under a new name to honor Chris Crane, former chief executive of Exelon when Constellation was part of the larger company.

Under the agreement, Microsoft would purchase energy from the plant as part of its goal to help match the power used by its data centers within the Eastern Interconnection with carbon-free energy. The facility's new name will be the Chris Crane Clean Energy Center.

NRC restores expiration dates for renewed Turkey Point licenses

The NRC restored the expiration dates of the subsequent license renewals (SLRs) for Turkey Point-3 and -4 to July 19, 2052, and April 10, 2053, respectively. Florida Power & Light submitted a supplemental environmental report in June 2022 to comply with a February 2022 NRC determination that a generic environmental impact statement (GEIS) for license renewals cannot be applied to an SLR-which is an extension of 20 years beyond the initial license renewal (from 60 years of operation to 80 years)-even though a GEIS is acceptable during the initial license renewal process. Since the GEIS for Turkey Point analyzed only the environmental impacts of an initial 20-year license renewal term, it did not apply to a subsequent renewal term, the NRC decided.

Palisades to receive $3B in federal, state funding to fuel plant restart

With a $1.52 billion loan from the DOE and $1.3 billion in grants to rural electric cooperatives near the plant, the ambitious plans to restart Michigan's Palisades nuclear plant next fall are moving ahead.

Young nuclear advocates "get in the game" this college football season

Nuclear advocates across the country spent the college football season asking fans to cheer for more than just touchdowns. They wanted people to learn about and support nuclear energy-to "heart" nuclear as much as they do. Back on August 31, Gabriel Ivory was among the first to squeeze his way into the camera shot for ESPN's College GameDay broadcast, proudly waving his nuclear support sign at the Texas A&M game. Photos and video of him waving his sign quickly took off on social media as national labs, utilities, influencers, and even former Miss America Grace Stanke-a nuclear engineer herself-shared the message. Throughout the fall, many others declared their love for nuclear on College Gameday.

Orano plans for enrichment in Oak Ridge

Orano announced on September 4 that it selected Oak Ridge as its preferred site to build a "multibillion--dollar" uranium centrifuge enrichment facility it's calling Project Ike. For Orano and the nuclear power community, the announcement is another sign the nation is edging closer to adding front-end nuclear fuel cycle capacity. It would be Orano's second attempt to bring French enrichment technology to the United States.

Orano's Oak Ridge uranium enrichment center would be a multistructure commercial production site covering approximately 750,000 square feet. Facility operations would create more than 300 new direct jobs for Roane County, which sits just west of Oak Ridge, Tenn.

ACU gets permit to build nation's first molten salt university research reactor

The NRC issued a construction permit on September 16 to Abilene Christian University, giving ACU and its partners the go-ahead to build the Molten Salt Research Reactor (MSRR) facility on its Abilene, Texas, campus. The 1-MWt research reactor is the first molten salt-fueled reactor to get a construction permit from the NRC. After Kairos Power's Hermes, it is the second non-light water reactor construction permit issued by the NRC. The nonpower research reactor will use HALEU fuel dissolved in molten FLiBe salt (a mix of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride).

After ACU submitted its application in August 2022, the NRC accepted the application and began its regulatory review in November 2022. The permit sets the earliest possible date for construction completion as March 31, 2026, and the latest as December 31, 2029.

Read more from 2024:

• 2024: The Year in Nuclear-January through March
• 2024: The Year in Nuclear-April through June