Dominion Energy South Carolina applied with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend the life of the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Station’s Unit 1 nuclear reactor for another 20 years, to Aug. 6, 2062.
The commission posted the plant operator’s application online on Tuesday. The application is dated Aug. 17. Located in Jenkinsville, S.C., Unit 1 went critical in X and is currently licensed to operate through Aug. 6, 2042.
Energy Northwest, an electric generator that already has a nuclear plant outside Richland, Wash., plans to be on hand Sept. 22 when the Department of Energy hosts an industry day for enterprises interested in generating carbon-free electricity at the Hanford Site.
“We have a long relationship leasing DOE land for clean energy generation projects. For almost 40 years we have successfully operated the Columbia Generating Station — our 1,207-megawatt nuclear energy plant — on land leased from DOE,” an Energy Northwest spokesperson said in an email reply Wednesday to Exchange Monitor. “We also own and operate the White Bluffs Solar Station that commenced operation in 2002 and is located on the Hanford site.”
The Columbia nuclear plant is located 10 miles north of Richland, Wash., on land leased from DOE at Hanford.
Orano announced that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved an accessory that will allow one of the company’s transport units to double the amount of uranium fuel it can carry.
The new High-Capacity Basket for Orano’s Versa-Pac VP-55 enriched uranium transport package is designed with an eye toward transporting high assay low enriched uranium, or HALEU, Orano wrote this week in a press release. Some reactors, of the type broadly known as advanced reactors, need this type of energy-dense fuel.
