Areva, Northrop Grumman Deal Roundup

Yesterday's announced deal between AREVA and Northrop Grumman to build a $363 million nuclear reactor manufacturing plant in Newport News, VA is getting a whole lot of media attention.

The New York Times says Nuclear Power May Be in Early Stages of a Revival.

...Not since 1973 had anybody in the United States ordered a nuclear plant that was actually built, and the obstacles to a new generation of plants seemed daunting.

But now, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 21 companies say they will seek permission to build 34 power plants, from New York to Texas. Factories are springing up in Indiana and Louisiana to build reactor parts. Workers are clearing a site in Georgia to put in reactors. Starting in January, millions of electric customers in Florida will be billed several dollars a month to finance four new reactors.

On Thursday, the French company Areva, the world’s largest builder of nuclear reactors, and Northrop Grumman announced an investment of more than $360 million at a shipyard in Newport News, Va., to build components for seven proposed American reactors, and more for export.

The change of fortune has come so fast that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which had almost forgotten how to accept an application, has gone into a frenzy of hiring, bringing on hundreds of new engineers to handle the crush of applications.

Fortune magazine weighs in, Nuclear power revival gets big lift

The announcement follows one earlier this summer by The Shaw Group and Westinghouse of their plans to build a nuclear components plant in Louisiana. Both are important steps toward what AREVA chief executive Anne Lauvergeon, in an exclusive interview with Fortune before the announcement, described as “reviving the capacity of the nuclear industry in the U.S.”

Unsurprisingly, the deal made page one of the local, the Newport News Daily Press: 540 jobs, $363 million in nuclear reactor deal

"It enables, on the footprint of the shipyard, a new technology, a new form of production," said Gov. Timothy M. Kaine. "Shipbuilding is a massive industry. It has some cycles associated with it. But to have this technology at the shipyard location ... is a great thing for that shipyard."

The building where the joint venture will do the work will be constructed in the north end of the shipyard where there is currently a large parking lot. The companies make the large components, but not handle any radioactive nuclear materials, that will be used to construct a wave of planned reactors nationwide.

The move will further strengthen Virginia's position as a leader in nuclear technology and bring high-paying engineering and advanced manufacturing jobs to Newport News. Construction of the facility, which will help Northrop Grumman be less dependent on federal spending cycles that can lead to the loss of skilled employees, will start in March 2009.

"This gives us a chance to diversify a little bit and allow us to smooth more of that out," said Mike Petters, president of Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding. "We don't see this as interfering with anything we do on the Navy side. In fact, we think it compliments it very well."

WVIR, the NBC affiliate in Charlottesville, has the video of Governor Kaine's announcement at the Capitol in Richmond.

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

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