KazAtomProm will reduce planned uranium production by 20% for a period of three years beginning in January 2018. Cameco (Canada) announced a 10-month temporary suspension of production from the McArthur River mining and Key Lake milling operations in northern Saskatchewan by the end of January “due to continued uranium price weakness”. Kazakhstan has 12% of …
Uranium can perform reactions that previously no one thought possible, which could transform the way industry makes bulk chemicals, polymers, and the precursors to new drugs and plastics, according to new findings from The University of Manchester. Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the chemists have discovered that uranium can perform reactions that used to …
Peninsula Energy has started the process to amend the license and permits for its Lance in-situ leach (ISL) uranium project in Wyoming, after laboratory tests showed that using an acidic rather than alkaline mining solution could potentially transform the project’s operating performance and costs. Peninsula Energy website is here. Tests using mildly acidic solutions have …
The amount of used nuclear fuel will continue to increase, reaching around 1 million tonnes by 2050. The uranium and plutonium that could be extracted from that used fuel would be sufficient to provide fuel for at least 140 light water reactors of 1 GWe capacity for 60 years, she said. “It makes sense to …
There are new small modular reactors where the nuclear reactor could be approaching the size of a shipping container but then the balance of the nuclear plant (turbines and other systems) is far larger. Holos Generator is transportable (by heavy lift cargo plane or truck), sealed, self-controlled, highly-efficient, affordable, and load-following, thus providing a generator …
The Defense Science Board has a 99 page report which proposes that the US military fund the development of very small nuclear reactors for forward remote operating bases. The Task Force reviewed several nuclear reactor concepts that differ in size and technology from conventional commercial reactors and the small modular reactor (SMR) concepts currently under …
NASA’s technology development branch has been funding a project called Kilopower for three years and testing is due to start in September, 2017 and end in January 2018. NASA Game Changing Development program backed Kilopower, with the goal of building and testing a small fission reactor by Sept. 30, 2017, the end of the current …
Westinghouse Electric Company yesterday announced the formal launch of its “accident-tolerant fuel solution”, EnCore Fuel, during the company’s Fuel Users’ Group Meeting. EnCore Fuel is intended to offer “design-basis-altering safety, greater uranium efficiency and estimated economic benefits up to hundreds of millions of dollars” to Westinghouse’s nuclear fuel customers. Delivered in two phases, the initial …
Japan is restarting unit 4 of its Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui prefecture. The reactor – which together with unit 3 has been offline since March 2016 – is expected to re-enter commercial operation next month. The company said the 830 MWe (net) pressurised water reactor (PWR) was restarted at 3.00pm today and is …
The efficient characterization of quantum systems, the verification of the operations of quantum devices and the validation of underpinning physical models are central challenges for quantum technologies and fundamental physics. The computational cost of such studies could be improved by machine learning enhanced by quantum simulators. Here researchers interface two different quantum systems through a …
The U-Battery consortium, led by Urenco, has registered its micro-modular reactor technology for pre-licensing vendor design review with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). U-Battery is a ‘micro’ nuclear reactor which will be able to produce local power and heat for a range of energy needs, mainly targeting the markets for industrial power units and …