Carnival of Nuclear Energy 274

1. Neutron Bytes – Dan Yurman -TVA’s Watts Bar 2 Asks NRC for Part 50 Operating License

The Tennessee Valley Authority is on track to open the nation’s first new nuclear generating plant of the 21st century.

This week the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) sent documentation to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) informing the agency that construction of the Watts Bar Unit 2 nuclear reactor is substantially complete. The letter provides a list of remaining key activities which will be finished prior to operations and requests that an operating license be issued for the unit.

The “substantially complete” letter is a major construction and licensing milestone for the project.

2. Forbes Jim Conca – Japan’s Nuclear Power Awakens After Long Sleep

Amid protests by local citizens and anti-nuclear groups, Japan restarted the first of its shuttered nuclear reactors today, four years after the Fukushima disaster closed all of that country’s nuclear plants. There were no problems during the restart. As more nuclear restarts occur Japan can begin ratcheting down its fossil fuel imports, ratcheting up its economy, and getting back to being the economic powerhouse like we all remember.

3. Yes Vermont Yankee – Every Nuclear Plant is a Jewel:” American Nuclear Society Facebook Page and more

Meredith Angwin was asked to provide a picture and a quote for the American Nuclear Society Facebook and Twitter pages. Her picture is in front of Vermont Yankee, and her quote explains why every nuclear plant is a jewel. Post includes some backstory on both the picture and the quote.

4. Nextbigfuture – Construction of the Xipu fast neutron reactor nuclear power demonstrative project in east China’s Fujian province is designed to start at the end of 2017, China Business News quoted Xu Mi, an academician with Chinese Academy of Engineering, as saying.

The demonstrative nuclear power project, designed with 600,000kw (600 MWe) installed capacity, will be a fourth generation reactor designs.

5. Nextbigfuture – Kyushu Electric Power has begun restaring of one of its nuclear reactors. This begins a Japanese government-backed process to get more atomic stations online throughout Japan, a policy supported by industry, yet largely opposed by the public.

Kyushu Electric plans to restart a second reactor in the middle of October. Next year another 11 may begin operation, according to Polina Diyachkina, an analyst who has covered Japan’s power utilities for three years at Macquarie Group Ltd.

* Russia began Mox fuel production for 800 MWe fast neutron breeder reactor, BN-800.

The first batch of 20 standard fuel assemblies with mixed oxide fuel is being produced in the new Mox Fuel Plant (MFP) at Russia’s Mining and Chemical Combine (MCC) in Zheleznogorsk after signing a contract to supply the BN-800 fast reactor Beloyarsk 4.

* EDF, the giant electricity utility owned by the French government, does not have the £25 billion (US$38.5bn) needed to build the two huge nuclear reactors in England that it has already agreed to construct, because it is in debt and its partners have pulled out.

The British government, despite its critics’ accusation that the proposed power station atHinkley Point in the west of England will be an expensive white elephant, still wants to go ahead and is to sign an agreement with the Chinese to finance the deal.

China’s President, Xi Jinping, is due in London in October and is expected to agree with David Cameron, the UK’s Prime Minister, to fund the deal

* Containment pressure tests have been successfully completed at unit 3 of the Fuqing nuclear power plant in China’s Fujian province. CNNC’s Fuqing plant will eventually house six Chinese-designed PWRs, the first four being 1087 MWe CPR-1000 pressurized water reactors. Unit 1 started up in July 2014, was connected to the grid the following month and entered commercial operation in November.

Unit 2 achieved first criticality last month and is expected to enter commercial operation later in 2015