Happy Friday, nuke-watchers. Before we wrap up this short week, here are some other stories RadWaste Monitor was tracking across the civilian nuclear power space this week.
Huff discusses DOE priorities at industry conference
The Department of Energy’s nuclear power chief laid out her office’s plans for supporting the industry this week during a conference held by one of its most prominent trade groups.
Nuclear energy “is an essential part of the equation” when it comes to decarbonizing the global economy, Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy (NE-1) Kathryn Huff said in remarks Tuesday at the Nuclear Energy Institute’s annual Nuclear Energy Assembly.
Among DOE’s priorities for supporting nuclear power, which include securing uranium supply chains and supporting advanced reactor development, is a nuclear waste storage solution that isn’t the moribund Yucca Mountain repository, Huff said. The agency’s ongoing consent-based interim storage siting program “allows us to work with communities that want to work with us,” the NE-1 said in a Twitter thread following her remarks.
DOE is in the process of putting together a plan for canvassing potential host communities for a future federally-operated interim storage site. The agency is currently working to summarize public responses to its November request for information, which Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said should become available in late summer. DOE is also planning a funding opportunity for interested host communities in the early fall.
Meanwhile, the feds and the nuclear industry won’t be able to accomplish any of their goals without teamwork, Huff said Tuesday. “We need terawatts of clean energy, but gigawatts of brainpower,” Huff said.
DOE gives Orano, TerraPower national labs access for advanced nuclear research
The Department of Energy’s nuclear innovation program announced this week that it was giving all-access passes to two nuclear power companies to use national laboratory facilities to conduct research on advanced reactor technologies, according to a press release.
DOE’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative awarded TerraPower and Orano vouchers which provide no-cost access to federal national labs, the agency said in a press release dated Tuesday.
Orano, partnered with Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will conduct a study aiming to update limits on the amount of enriched uranium gas that can be safely shipped in existing containers. TerraPower will work with Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to determine how chlorine isotopes will react in the company’s experimental Molten Chloride Fast Reactor.
This is GAIN’s third round of national labs vouchers for the 2022 fiscal year. The program in March and December gave similar awards to other advanced nuclear companies including Kairos Power, Terrestrial Energy and Framatome.
The GAIN initiative, established in 2015 under the Barack Obama administration, is designed to provide technical, regulatory and financial support to companies looking to roll out innovative nuclear power designs.
