NEI Nuclear Notes

Yesterday brought some happy news from our friends at USEC : USEC Inc. announced today that the Megatons to Megawatts(TM) program has converted 450 metric tons of weapons-grade uranium from dismantled former Soviet Union nuclear warheads into low enriched uranium fuel to generate clean, reliable electricity in commercial nuclear power plants. The program is now 90 percent complete. [...] Megatons to Megawatts is a 20-year, commercially financed government-industry partnership in which 500 metric tons of Russian weapons-grade uranium is being downblended to low enriched uranium for use as commercial reactor fuel. USEC, as executive agent for the U.S. government, and JSC "Techsnabexport" (TENEX), acting for the Russian government, implement the program. The Megatons to Megawatts program is on track to downblend the equivalent of 20,000 nuclear warheads into nuclear fuel by the end of 2013. The fuel generated to date has the energy equivalent of more than 193 billion gal...

Or even wins. Note the two posts about USEC below – it’s all about the company’s American Centrifuge project and DOE’s rejection of its loan guarantee application to move it to the next stage – and USEC’s almost ferocious response to that rejection. And now, DOE issues a press release : The Department of Energy and USEC Inc. today announced an agreement to delay a final review on the company’s loan guarantee application for the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, OH. There’s a good deal of give on both sides of the issue. From USEC: As it has indicated, the Department sees promise in the ACP technology, but USEC’s application does not meet all the statutory and regulatory standards that would permit the agency to grant a loan guarantee at this time.  Both DOE and USEC recognize that meeting these criteria will likely take six months or more. Okay, so USEC accepts that the application needs more work. From DOE: The Department plans to defer review of the ap...

We generally think protests and protesting are good things. They are ways of getting a message out and trying to bring attention to issues. We don’t even mind when a nuclear power plant is protested – after all, it’s a great opportunity to educate the protesters and even try a counter-protest. Seems so American, so small-d democratic. Even when it threatens to go small-a anarchic, we would still tilt in favor of an unruly public gathering. This came to mind while we were reading and thinking about a story in Politico this morning that talked about the increased rowdiness at political town hall meetings. It was Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) whose encounter with a disgruntled constituent brought the issue to the fore. But now, some pols are cancelling the meetings, others are ensuring there is a police presence if they do have one and getting escorted to their cars. It’s as if they’d never heard of a old fashioned free-for-all. But at least two politicians get it. “Town halls are ...

…but all fouled up at USEC, the company that enriches a lot of the uranium in the United States. The Department of Energy has turned down USEC’s loan guarantee application, making it difficult-to-impossible, says USEC, for it to acquire funding to finish its American Centrifuge project. This has led to a pair of dueling press releases that are fascinatingly disjunctive. Let’s look at USEC first: “We are shocked and disappointed by DOE’s decision. The American Centrifuge met the original intent of the loan guarantee program in that it would have used an innovative, but proven, technology, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and created thousands of  immediate jobs across the United States. The American Centrifuge is not a new idea. It was first ideated by the Department of Energy in the 1970s as a next generation enrichment facility and abandoned after a successful test in the 80s. USEC, which spun out of DOE as a private company, reactivated the project and, in its words, ...

If nuclear energy is going to push forward to a true international renaissance, it’s not enough to apply for licenses and and clear some land for new plants. An entire infrastructure has to be exist to support them – now, of course, there is such an infrastructure, since plants have been puttering along for a long while and need replacement parts, a supply of uranium and so on. But a marked increase in plant construction and operation promises a shockwave of new activity in associated industries and suppliers. Take a look at this article from Smart Money, which offers advice(which we do not recommend you follow without a lot of additional research – you really could find that your next home is your car) on where your investment dollars might flow in the nuclear sphere. This caught our eye: Nuclear plants also need fuel, of course, and tight supplies of enriched uranium should benefit USEC, one of only four commercial uranium processors in the world. So true, and what about...

From NRC : The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a license to USEC Inc. to construct and operate a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment plant at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant reservation near Piketon, Ohio. The facility, to be known as the American Centrifuge Plant, will use a design based on gas centrifuge technology developed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to enrich uranium for use in fuel for commercial nuclear power reactors. The license authorizes USEC to enrich uranium up to 10 percent of the fissile isotope uranium-235. USEC submitted its application for the license Aug. 23, 2004. The NRC staff published an environmental impact statement (NUREG-1834) on the facility in April 2006, finding that there would be no significant adverse environmental impacts that would preclude granting a license. The staff’s safety evaluation report (NUREG-1851), published last September, documents the staff’s review of the application.