The UK's Royal Society has issued a policy briefing on ways nuclear energy can be used beyond producing electricity, with an emphasis on using cogenerated heat to power chemical synthesis processes and provide district heating. The briefing notes that a typical nuclear power plant loses around 65% of its heat energy as waste heat.
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Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation announced that the new Barakah-1 nuclear power plant has reached 100% of the reactor unit's rated power of 1,400 megawatts. The unit will undergo testing before it's shut down for evaluation ahead of its commercial operation startup early next year.
The large number of barrels of radioactive waste mixed with chemicals stored at the Energy Department's Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico poses a potential explosive risk, according to a Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board report. The safety board notes that such an explosion would expose workers to a lethal dose of radioactivity.
Exelon is working with advisers to evaluate whether it should separate its non-utility assets, including 21 nuclear reactors, from the rest of the company, sources say. The move would allow Exelon to focus on the regulated utility power market, though no decision has been made.
A research paper by UK-based First Light Fusion founder Nicholas Hawker concludes that inertial confinement fusion reactor technology could eventually reach a levelized cost of energy of $25 per megawatt hour, below the $100 rate for the current fleet of nuclear reactors. The paper focuses on a new fusion design that requires fewer pulses fired to achieve nuclear fusion, thus cutting costs and engineering risks.
Belarus' nuclear power plant near Ostrovets has achieved first criticality in the Russian-made VVER-1200 reactor of Unit 1. Rosatom, which built the reactor, says more than 50 tests will now be conducted to verify the safety of the unit while it gradually increases operating power to commercial levels.