NEI Nuclear Notes

One of the most vexing aspects of President Barack Obama’s 2014 budget request (as regards topic of blog, naturally) is the deep cut made to MOX facility construction in South Carolina. This is being built at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site and is about 60 percent complete. But let’s back up. What is the MOX facility? For that matter, what’s MOX ? (link to NEI’s member site – you can see the whole thing if you’re a member – but this is the key part) Shaw AREVA MOX Services is the prime contractor for the design, construction and startup of the Energy Department’s mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility being built at DOE’s Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. Under a program managed by DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, the MOX plant will help dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus weapons grade plutonium by blending it into fuel for commercial power reactors And here’s the thing or at least a thing: we share this obligation with Russia, who participa...

AREVA CEO Mike Rencheck (right), along with MOX Services Executive Vice President and Deputy Project Manager Steve Marr (center), answer questions about the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility for NEI President and CEO Marv Fertel (left). Yesterday, a group of NEI executives led by our President and CEO Marv Fertel , traveled to the Savannah River Site in South Carolina to personally see the progress being made on the construction of a nuclear fuel fabrication facility that will be jointly managed by the Shaw Group and AREVA. Once construction is complete, the facility will begin to mix weapons grade plutonium with uranium -- a process that will eventually eliminate 68 metric tons of weapons grade plutonium from U.S. and Russian stockpiles. NEI Senior Vice President Scott Peterson, who accompanied Fertel on the tour, provided us with the following report. Nearly 60 years ago, the U.S. government began production at its first reactor at the government’s sprawling S...

The Department of Energy proposed a couple of years ago spurring the development of small nuclear reactors by entering public-private partnerships with several vendors to foster the building of prototypes and, eventually, generate NRC license applications for the designs. Now, the first fruit of this program has budded: Hyperion Power Generation Inc., the Department of Energy – Savannah River, and Savannah River National Laboratory have announced their commitment to deploy a privately-funded first-of-a-kind Hyperion reactor at the DOE Savannah River Site. Hyperion doesn’t need a license to pursue its work, as it could sell its reactor technology overseas if it chose and go through whatever processes are established in other countries. But it recognizes the value of the NRC’s license procedure as a kind of gold standard: “It is important that we achieve NRC licensing to provide worldwide confidence in the technology and design of our advanced Generation 4 reactor,” said Dave Carl...