U.S. Urged to Move Quickly on Energy Technology Demonstrations

The United States must accelerate its development and deployment of new energy technologies and of "evolutionary" nuclear plants to secure a future of clean, domestic power, the National Research Council says in a report released today...
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USEC Scraps Plans for Enrichment Plant

USEC Inc said on Tuesday it would scrap plans to build a new uranium enrichment plant and may now seek a partner or buyer after the U.S. Department of Energy denied its request for a loan guarantee, sending its stock plummeting...
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U.S. Defense Official Skeptical of Revising Nuclear Deterrence Strategy

David Ochmanek, the deputy assistant defense secretary for forces transformation and resources, said nuclear weapons continue to be useful beyond simply deterring an adversary's nuclear strike against the United States or its allies, despite views to the contrary. Rather, he said, the nation should continue to view nuclear deterrence as broadly capable of preventing both conventional and unconventional conflict...
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Enrichment Plant Denied Loan Guarantee

US enrichment company USEC is preparing to 'demobilise' - or cancel - its partially built uranium enrichment plant after the US Department of Energy (DoE) denied its application for a loan guarantee...
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Application for Florida reactors

Florida Power & Light (FPL) has applied to build two Westinghouse AP1000s at Turkey Point. The sixth and seventh power units at the site could operate from the ends of 2017 and 2019...
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Energy focus of Tri-Cities Discussions

Washington State House Speaker Frank Chopp told a Tri-City audience Thursday that he thinks hydropower ought to be considered renewable and that nuclear energy will be part of the solution to the nation's dependence on foreign oil -- but only after the public perception is changed...
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San Antonio on center stage in nuclear power debate

With its recent recommendation to move forward with construction of two new nuclear power units in South Texas, the staff of CPS Energy has placed San Antonio at the forefront of a national debate that has been raging for more than two dozen years...
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New Nuclear Countries

Some 60 countries are considering the use of nuclear power, in addition to the 30 that already do so. One of these is Chile, which commissioned Finnish experts for advice...
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US nuclear utilities beat emissions goals

Two of the three companies recognized by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for reducing their greenhouse gas emissions under its Climate Leaders program are nuclear utilities...
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Thorium for EPR?

The potential use of thorium nuclear fuel in Areva's pressurized water reactors will be investigated...
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North Korea is Out of Allies and Options, Clinton Says

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today warned North Korea it has "no friends left" that can help the isolated nation cling to its nuclear-weapon program, Reuters reported...
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Russia to test its nuclear deterrent with supercomputers

Russia's Security Council will discuss a series of projects on the development of supercomputers to test the effectiveness of the country's nuclear deterrent, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Wednesday...
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Constellation, Maryland Governor at Odds Over Deal

The standoff between Constellation Energy Group and the state of Maryland remains at a stalemate and the hostility between the two sides appears to be widening...
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Permanent Nuclear-Waste Site Isn’t Urgent, U.S. Regulator Says

Finding a permanent site for spent nuclear fuel in the U.S. isn’t “an urgent problem,” the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. Gregory Jaczko, who took over as chairman of the agency in May, said in an interview that the material can continue to be stored safely for the time being at nuclear power plants...
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U.S. Worried by Possible North Korea-Myanmar Nuclear Link

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today that the United States is troubled by the possibility of nuclear ties between North Korea and Myanmar, the New York Times reported...
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Congress Must Do More to Protect Grid from Cyber, Nuclear Attacks, Expert Says

Congress should pass measures to protect the nation's electric grid against electromagnetic pulses emitted after a nuclear blast, witnesses told a hearing on Tuesday...
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New Fuel Source: Nuclear Waste?

There is a tantalizing amount of energy in all that nuclear waste that was slated to sit in Yucca Mountain for eons. Now that it won't be sitting there, some think it should be used...
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Experts Warn NPT Conference Will Test Obama’s Nonproliferation Goals

If the May 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review conference at the United Nations is a "debacle," there is a "real danger in the American political psyche that people will say 'It's not worth it,'" analyst Lewis Dunn said Thursday during a panel discussion at the Henry L. Stimson Center....
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Exelon gives up on NRG takeover

Exelon announced that it is terminating its pending offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of NRG Energy after NRG's shareholders voted today against the offer...
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U.S. and India Agree to Nuclear Deals

The United States struck deals here Monday to pave the way for billions of dollars in exports of civilian nuclear reactors and military hardware to India, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said...
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Iran Needs Six Months for Nuclear-Weapon Test, Diplomats Say

Iran's uranium enrichment program could generate nuclear-weapon material quickly enough for the Middle Eastern nation to test bomb within six months, diplomats told the Associated Press last week...
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India, U.S. to Hold Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Talks

Indian and U.S. officials are set tomorrow to discuss arrangements under which New Delhi could reprocess nuclear fuel purchased from the United States, the Indo-Asian News Service reported...
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U.S. Energy Use Drops in 2008

Americans used more solar, nuclear, biomass and wind energy in 2008 than they did in 2007, according to the most recent energy flow charts released by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The nation used less coal and petroleum during the same time frame and only slightly increased its natural gas consumption. Geothermal energy use remained the same...
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US House Votes Against Eliminating Yucca Mountain Funding

House Republicans Friday failed in a bid to force the Obama administration's hand on nuclear policy. The U.S. House of Representatives voted down a measure to eliminate funding for a nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada...
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Nuclear Title May Not Be Enough to Push Senate Climate Bill Over the Top

While supporters of nuclear energy ardently proclaim the power source is necessary to combat climate change, incentives for nuclear power may not be the silver bullet sponsors need to pass climate legislation in the Senate this year...
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Atom-splitting number-crunchers

The Linux cluster JAEA has ordered from Fujitsu will comprise some 2157 nodes and boast a theoretical peak performance of 200 teraflops (trillion floating point operations per second), making it the fastest supercomputer system in Japan and far faster than JAEA's current computers: a shared system (theoretical peak performance of 13 teraflops) and a system for use in its fast reactor project (2.4 teraflops)...
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U.S. Lawmakers Press for Monitoring UAE Nuclear Activities

Some U.S. lawmakers want to see a key U.N. agency more closely monitor nuclear activities in the United Arab Emirates as part of a deal in which Washington assists the Persian Gulf nation with its civil power needs...
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U.S. lawmakers debate climate bills' economic impact

U.S. lawmakers on Thursday clashed over what impact climate change legislation would have on U.S. employment and American consumers. With the economy struggling, Democratic lawmakers have touted legislation establishing a system to cap greenhouse gas emissions as a way to bolster the economy...
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Gone With The Wind

A year ago, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens was ready to shift the focus of the nation's energy industry from oil to wind. Now it seems the billionaire was tilting at windmills in his crusade to free America from dependence on foreign oil...
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To Get "Greener and Cleaner"

In a recent piece for the Chronicle's Outlook page (“Attack carbon emissions using gas, nuclear power,” Page B9, Thursday, July 9), Kinder offered nuts-and-bolts wisdom for lowering carbon emissions and dealing with the global warming issue. Much as many Americans would like to believe otherwise, he says, wind and solar alone won't do the job, at least for the foreseeable future. To get greener and cleaner, we'll need to expand our use of natural gas and nuclear power...
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British PM Demands Global Nonproliferation Strategy

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown today urged the international community to develop a "coherent global strategy" for managing the expansion of civilian nuclear energy capabilities around the world without encouraging nuclear-weapon proliferation...
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Pentagon Looks to Finish Nuclear Security Plan by September

The U.S. Defense Department intends by September to finish its plan for helping to achieve President Barack Obama's goal of securing the world's loose nuclear materials within the next four years, a Pentagon official said yesterday on Capitol Hill...
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Top Lawmakers Endorse UAE-U.S. Nuclear Trade Deal

U.S. lawmakers introduced resolutions this week that would explicitly endorse a pending civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates, Environment and Energy Daily reported...
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Nuclear Threats Seen Shaping Obama's Foreign Policy

Current and former U.S. officials believe that nuclear arms control has become a central force in President Barack Obama's international strategy, most notably in his policies on Iran, North Korea and Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported today...
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Mitsubishi Eyes Lithuania

Japan's Mitsubishi, among the world's leading manufacturers of nuclear reactors, is interested in working on Lithuania's planned nuclear energy plant, the Baltic nation's prime minister said Tuesday...
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TVA May Use Mixed Oxide Fuel

The Tennessee Valley Authority may use the mixed-oxide nuclear fuel, which contains plutonium from nuclear warheads, that Duke Energy tested at its Catawba plant on Lake Wylie.For several years, Duke was the only U.S. utility to tentatively agree to use the fuel in its nuclear plants. It's part of a government program to dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium...
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GE Hitachi Gets Advantage from Recession

The recession may prove to be a blessing for GE Hitachi’s most advanced reactor design, providing more time for the technology to be approved by regulators.Now making its way through the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) design certification process, the Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) is described by GE Hitachi as technology that offers a simplified reactor design and even higher safety margins than the already deployed U.S. fleet of 104 operating reactors, including two reactors at Progress Energy’s Brunswick Nuclear Plant in Southport.ESBWR was considered by Exelon, then set aside in 2008 as not ready for construction at the utility holding company’s Victoria, Texas, plant site. But ESBWR may get another look...
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Iran to Negotiate on Nuclear Stance?

Iran appears to be readying a plan that could open the door to new talks on its nuclear program, the Wall Street Journal reported today...
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NNSA Nuclear Weapons Budget Safe...Sort Of

The U.S. Congress does not appear likely to make any sizable additions or subtractions in the next budget year to spending on management of the country's nuclear arsenal, the Albuquerque Journal reported Friday...
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EXELON Holding on to Guadalupe Water

Exelon Energy's plans to build two nuclear reactors near Victoria may be on hold, but it hasn't stopped the power company from reserving the rights to 75,000 acre-feet of precious Guadalupe River water for another year — and maybe longer...
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Sen Inhofe Speaks Up for Nuclear Energy

Listen carefully in Washington, and almost everyone agrees that nuclear energy must be a part of our future domestic energy mix, and for good reason: Nuclear energy is the world’s largest source of carbon-free energy, generating over 70 percent of our emission-free electricity here in the U.S. Nuclear energy is a clean, safe, reliable and domestic source of affordable energy that has created 15,000 new jobs in the last year...
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Laser-Based Enrichment License Sought

Global Laser Enrichment has completed its application to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a license to build the world's first commercial laser-based uranium enrichment facility...
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Nuclear Security Summit- Obama

The Obama administration yesterday formally announced its intention to host a top-level Global Nuclear Security Summit next March...
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Stop Paying into Waste Fund

NEI, in a letter, has asked Energy Secretary Steven Chu to waive the $769 million that consumers are expected to pay this year into a federal waste-repository fund because the Obama administration has abandoned its plans for the Yucca Mountain site without making alternative plans...
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UAE Nuclear Plans

The U.S. has agreed to help the United Arab Emirates develop a civilian nuclear power industry, but it may cancel those plans if the Arab country violates the deal, an Obama administration official said Wednesday. Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher told lawmakers the UAE is a trustworthy ally...
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Climate Goals and Nuclear Power

Speaking to groups in San Antonio on Wednesday, former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said that the U.S. cannot achieve its climate goals and meet the increasing need for electricity without constructing more nuclear power plants. Nuclear energy offers the only alternative that can reliably generate enough power cleanly, she said...
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U.S.-Russia Joint Understanding to Replace 1991 START Agreement

U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev today signed a "joint understanding" on the broad goals of negotiations aimed at replacing the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the Washington Post reported...
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New Leader for IAEA

The governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency voted to choose Japan's Yukiya Amano to head the sensitive United Nations watchdog, in another step toward the end of a months-long selection process...
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Nuclear Plants on Barges??

Sustainable nuclear energy growth may need a different approach, along the lines of what a Lynchburg company, Babcock and Wilcox, is developing -- but instead of designing small nuclear units to be placed on land, put them on floating energy platforms...
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Exelon Raises Bid for NRG

Exelon Corp. on Thursday sweetened its hostile takeover bid for NRG Energy Inc. by 12 percent to $8 billion in stock, citing newly identified cost savings along with NRG's recent deal for Reliant Energy's Texas retail business...
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Nuclear Weapon Reductions after START

The United States and Russia plan to pursue additional reductions to their strategic and tactical nuclear arsenals after completing a deal to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the Wall Street Journal reported today...
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Exelon Delays Texas Plant

Power generator Exelon Corp. said Tuesday it has called off plans for now to build a new nuclear plant in Texas because of worries over the economy and the limited availability of federal loan guarantees...
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Laser Enrichment Plant

Global Laser Enrichment, a business venture of General Electric Co., Hitachi Ltd. and Cameco Corp., said Tuesday it completed its license application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build the world's first commercial uranium enrichment facility to use laser technology...
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Nuclear Part of Climate Bill

Duke Energy Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jim Rogers said Congress is likely to send the president in the first quarter of next year a climate bill that encourages the construction of nuclear plants...
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