Orano USA has announced this week the opening of its Project IKE office building in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
The new office will employ 40 people and will be located nearly 10 miles away from the Project IKE site. The office employees will be additional to the 300-workforce expected to be at Orano’s uranium enrichment facility, Orano USA said.
Project IKE, would entail a multi-billion dollar uranium enrichment facility to supply American reactors with uranium to aid in the country’s quest for energy independence and national security, said Orano USA Thursday press release. The company said it should be one of the largest investments in Tennessee history.
Westinghouse has received approval from the Department of Energy for its eVinci microreactor’s preliminary safety design report.
The preliminary safety design report provides the detailed design and safety case overview of the eVinci test reactor required by the DOE to locate it at its National Research Innovation Center’s Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments (NRIC DOME) test bed, Westinghouse said in its Tuesday press release.
According to the press release, Westinghouse is the first microreactor developer to receive an approval of a preliminary safety design report for the NRIC DOME test bed at the Idaho National Laboratory. The eVinci microreactor is a scaled down 3 megawatt heat pipe reactor.
Lightbridge has completed its final design review for its near-future irradiation experiment at Idaho National Laboratory.
The advanced nuclear fuel company has been working in collaboration with INL to further test nuclear technology. The completion of the final design review is a milestone towards the next phase of testing in INL’s Advanced Test Reactor.
The data from the upcoming irradiation experiment will be used to support Lightbridge’s licensing efforts for its Lightbridge Fuel, according to the company’s Monday press release.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has begun a special inspection this week at the Constellation Energy’s Quad Cities Nuclear Power Plant in Cordova, Ill.
The special inspection is in response to a notice of unusual event due to a brief battery fire at Quad Cities’s Unit 2 that occurred on May 23, according to the NRC’s Tuesday press release. A notice of unusual event is considered the NRC’s lowest emergency level classifications.
The NRC recently completed a separate special inspection at the plant to review the inoperability of safety-related vacuum breakers.
NuScale announced this week the opening of its newest Energy Exploration Center at George Mason University in Virginia.
The nuclear company partnered up with George Mason’s College of Engineering and Computing to open its largest Energy Exploration center in the United States, according to NuScale’s Wednesday press release.
The 345,000-square-foot Energy Exploration Center will be at George Mason’s new Fuse building, at Mason Square in Arlington, VA. The NuScale’s center is designed to engage students in hands-on nuclear science and engineering educational activities, the company said.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Region I public affairs officer Diane Screnci has retired after 34 years with the agency according to her LinkedIn.
Screnci served all 34 years with the NRC in the northeastern region.
