On December 12, 2013, the US Department of Energy announced that it had selected NuScale as the winner of a cost share program to develop small modular reactors. This morning, NuScale distributed the following press release announcing that the agreement with the DOE had been finalized for up to $217M over the next five years. […]
Smaller reactors
SMRs – Why Not Now? Then When?
I have shamelessly borrowed the title of one of the talks given during the first day of the Nuclear Energy Insider 4th Annual Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Conference as being representative of both the rest of the agenda and the conversations that I had in the hallways during the breaks. For the past five years, […]
SUNY Maritime Student Advocates Commercial Nuclear Ship Propulsion
Stimulated by early atomic optimism, naval successes and Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace initiative, four nations built ocean going ships with nuclear propulsion plants. The US built the NS Savannah, Germany built the Otto Hahn, Japan built the Mutsu, and Russia built a series of nuclear powered icebreakers. For reasons that are beyond the scope of […]
NEI Small Reactor Forum Report – Part 2
The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) hosted its biannual Small Reactor Forum on February 25, 2014. The agenda for the one day event included six well-organized sessions with presentations from three small reactor vendors, the industry trade group, the regulatory agency, and several outside observers with a significant interest in the technology from a variety of […]
NEI Small Reactor Forum Report – Part 1
The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) hosted its biannual Small Reactor Forum on February 25, 2014. The agenda for the one day event included six well-organized sessions with presentations from three small reactor vendors, the industry trade group, the regulatory agency, and several outside observers with a significant interest in the technology from a variety of […]
Argentina pours nuclear grade concrete for CAREM, a 25 MWe SMR
On February 8, 2014, Argentina poured its first nuclear grade concrete for CAREM-25, an integrated pressurized water reactor (iPWR) whose design has been in intermittent progress for more than 24 years. Will Davis wrote an informative piece titled Argentina carries torch for SMR construction about the design and the project at ANS Nuclear Cafe. Argentina […]
Westinghouse’s Roderick shifts resources from SMR to AP1000
NuScale was the sole winner in the latest round under the DOE’s Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) for small modular reactors (SMR). The DOE announced its decision in December 2013. As a result of that decision, Westinghouse has shifted internal resources from working on a 225 MWe SMR to focus more on continued refinements and completion […]
Chinese plan to dominate nuclear market worldwide
A California-based correspondent shared the following vignette to a private email list early this morning. An aside — had dinner with a Stanford biz prof teaching entrepreneurship. His 15 Chinese students were at the table too (big table). A few spoke English. One is international marketing head for China Nuclear Power Engineering Company — largest […]
NuScale wins second round of DOE SMR funding under FOA
On December 12, 2013, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced the selection of NuScale as the winner of the second round of funding under the Department of Energy Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). That announcement, which had been due since sometime in September, must have been quite welcome to a lot of really talented and […]
Root cause of Naval Reactors policy of strict secrecy about nuclear propulsion plant design
As a Navy nuke, I was carefully taught to believe that everything we learned about atomic energy had to be strictly protected from release to anyone who was not “cleared”, especially anyone who was not a US citizen. I started to question that policy after I completed my tour as the Engineer Officer on the […]
Naval Reactors should be empowered to show the way – again
President Obama should task John Richardson with a mission similar to the one that President Dwight Eisenhower gave Hyman G. Rickover. Richardson is the current leader of Naval Reactors (NR), the organization that Rickover built. If directed, NR could begin a new assignment to show others how to manufacture complete nuclear fission power systems starting […]
Turning small modular reactor concepts into reality in Idaho Falls
In the past half dozen years, the term “small modular reactor (SMR)” has entered the nuclear energy lexicon. Numerous projects have been initiated to develop various concepts, all aimed at producing nuclear reactor based power plants that are small enough to be built in a factory setting to take advantage of concepts like series manufacturing […]
