Latest news with #USNuclearRegulatoryCommission
Sky News AU
26-05-2025
- Business
- Sky News AU
ASX 200 zigzags on Monday after Donald Trump threatens 50 per cent tariff on European Union before delaying it days later
The ASX 200 has zig-zagged in the first hour of trading on Monday as mixed-messages from Donald Trump on his trade war sparked caution among investors. Uranium mining companies are continuing to surge on Monday after Trump signed an executive order to overhaul the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission and boost the power source in America. Deep Yellow has soared 12.4 per cent, Paladin Energy has jumped 10.9 per cent and Boss Energy is up 9.5 per cent, following similar rises for the miners on Friday. The ASX 200's largest tech company WiseTech more than five per cent on Monday as it confirmed reports it is purchasing Texas-based software firm e2open for $3.2 billion. The index jolted after mixed messages on Donald Trump's trade war as the US President agreed to delay 50 per cent tariffs on the European Union by a month. It followed Trump on Friday saying he was frustrated with the negotiations and threatened the massive levy on goods from the EU, despite initially announcing 20 per cent tariffs in April and later halving this. 'I received a call today from Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, requesting an extension on the June 1st deadline on the 50 per cent Tariff with respect to Trade and the European Union,' Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday. 'I agreed to the extension — July 9, 2025 — It was my privilege to do so. The Commission President said that talks will begin rapidly. Thank you for your attention to this matter!' The US President also warned Apple would face significant levies on foreign made iPhones, sending the major tech stock diving three per cent on Friday. On Wall Street, the Nasdaq plunged one per cent, the S&P 500 dropped 0.7 per cent and the Dow Jones lost 0.6 per cent on Friday. Trump's EU threat rattled European indexes with London's FTSE 250 Index slumping 0.4 per cent, Germany's DAX Index falling 1.5 per cent and the EURO STOXX 50 Index shedding 1.8 per cent. New Zealand's NZX 50 Index is down 0.2 per cent since trading began on Monday while Japan's Nikkei 225 is up 0.7 and South Korea's KOSPI 200 is up 0.5 per cent.
Hindustan Times
23-05-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
‘Significant milestone': Tennessee Valley Authority becomes 1st US utility to apply for small nuclear reactor permit
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), America's largest public power company, announced on Tuesday (May 20) that it has submitted a construction permit application to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a small nuclear reactor. The company plans on meeting the state's growing demand for electricity by introducing revolutionary nuclear power to the Clinch River Site at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Don Moul, President and CEO of TVA believes that the company can lay a new developmental path for other utilities by harnessing the power of modular nuclear reactors to fuel carbon-free energy. 'This is a significant milestone for TVA, our region and our nation because we are accelerating the development of new nuclear technology, its supply chain and delivery model to unleash American energy," said Moul in a press release. 'TVA has put in the work to advance the design and develop the first application for the BWRX-300 technology, creating a path for other utilities who choose to build the same technology.' Considerably smaller in size compared to traditional power plants, small nuclear reactors are designed to produce about a fourth of the power created by conventional reactors but in a carbon-free manner. The TVA had announced its plans to collaborate with Bechtel, Sargent and Lundy and GE Hitachi way back in January which involved installing a unit at the only permissible site in the US to install a nuclear reactor- the Clinch River. The application has been filed for GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy's small modular reactor BWRX-300 technology. The move comes as part of the board's 2022 program to reduce the emission of greenhouse warming gases by using these reactors. Previously, electrical utilities have been skeptical of investing in the technology due to large-scale cost overruns and delays in projects. Georgia Power Co.'s Plant Vogtle and a project reviewed by the NRC have previously failed owing to similar reasons. The Biden administration had been supportive of this technology which reflected in its $900 million investment for such reactors last year. The current Trump administration also supports the bid to use this carbon-free, reliable power for sectors with more energy demands such as industry and data centers. Alex Formuzis, spokesperson for the non-profit Environmental Working Group has, however, stated that there is 'no bigger example of a money pit than the fantasy of small modular reactors' when it comes to conversations around long-term energy efficiency. The organization believes that investments should be centered towards proven cleaner energy sources such as solar or wind power rather than nuclear fission.
WIRED
29-04-2025
- Business
- WIRED
States and Startups Are Suing the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Apr 29, 2025 10:59 AM Critics of the NRC say its red tape and lengthy authorization timelines stifle innovation, but handing some of its responsibilities to states could undermine public trust and the industry's safety record. Photograph:American nuclear is in 25-year-old Isaiah Taylor's blood: his great-grandfather worked on the Manhattan Project. In 2023, Taylor, who dropped out of high school to work in tech, started his own nuclear company, Valar Atomics. It's currently developing a small test reactor, named after Taylor's great-grandfather. But the company says that overly onerous regulations imposed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the country's main regulatory body for nuclear reactors, has forced Valar Atomics to develop its test reactor overseas. In early April, Valar Atomics, in addition to another nuclear startup, Deep Fission, as well as the states of Florida, Louisiana, and Arizona's state legislature, signed onto a lawsuit against the NRC. The lawsuit, originally filed in December by Texas, Utah, and nuclear company Last Energy, blames the NRC for 'so restrictively regulat[ing] new nuclear reactor construction that it rarely happens at all.' The US has historically been the global powerhouse of nuclear energy, yet only three reactors have come online over the past 25 years, all behind schedule and with ballooning budgets. Meanwhile, other countries, like China and South Korea, have raced ahead with construction of reactors of all sizes. Some nuclear advocates say that the US's regulation system, which imposes cumbersome requirements and ultra-long timelines on projects, is largely to blame for this delay—especially when it comes to developing new designs for smaller reactors—and that some reactors should be taken from the NRC's purview altogether. But others have concerns about potential attempts to bypass the country's nuclear regulations for specific designs. The NRC has long been criticized for its ultra-slow permitting times, inefficient processes, and contentious back-and-forth with nuclear companies. 'The regulatory relationship in the US has been described as legalistic and adversarial for nuclear,' says Nick Touran, a licensed nuclear engineer who runs the website What Is Nuclear. 'That is kind of uniquely American. In other countries, like France and China, the regulators are more cooperative.' The lawsuit takes these criticisms one step further, claiming that by regulating smaller reactors, the NRC is misreading a crucial piece of nuclear legislation. In 1954, Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act, which created modern nuclear regulation in the US. That law mandated regulations for nuclear facilities that used nuclear material 'in such quantity as to be of significance to the common defense and security' or that use it 'in such manner as to affect the health and safety of the public.' 'We would love the NRC to respect the law that was written,' says Taylor, who believes the reactor his company is working on sits outside of that mandate. 'What it would do for us is to allow innovation to happen again. Innovation is what drives the American economy.' 'The NRC will address the litigation, as necessary, in its court filings,' agency spokesperson Scott Burnell told WIRED in an email. While we generally think of nuclear reactors as huge power plants, reactors can be made much smaller: Models known as small modular reactors, or SMRs, usually produce a third of the energy of a larger reactor, while even smaller reactors known as microreactors are designed small enough to be hauled by semitruck. Because of their size, these reactors are inherently less dangerous than their large counterparts. There's simply not enough power in an SMR for a Three Mile Island–style meltdown. The lawsuit argues that by mandating a cumbersome licensing process for all types of reactors—including those that are safer because of their size—the NRC is both violating the Atomic Energy Act and stifling progress. A company called NuScale, the only SMR company to get NRC approval for its model, spent $500 million and 2 million hours of labor over several years just to get its design approved. In late 2023 it pulled the plug on a planned power plant in Idaho after customers balked at the projected high price tag for power, which soared from an estimated $58 per megawatt-hour in 2021 to $89 per megawatt-hour in 2023. The lawsuit comes at a unique time for nuclear power. Public sentiment around nuclear energy is the highest it's been in 15 years. Dozens of new nuclear startups have cropped up in recent years, each promising to revolutionize the American nuclear industry—and serve power-hungry industries like data centers and oil and gas. Private equity and venture capital invested more than $783 million in nuclear startups in 2024, doing twice the number of deals in the sector as they did in 2023. The lawsuit 'is about getting steel in the ground. This is about getting nuclear on the grid,' says Chris Koopman, the CEO of the Abundance Institute, a nonprofit focused on encouraging the development and deployment of new technology. The Institute, which was founded last year, has no standing in the lawsuit and does not represent any plaintiffs but has served as a 'thought partner,' per Koopman, who coauthored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in January announcing the lawsuit. Deep Fission, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, seeks to generate electricity using small modular reactors placed a mile underground—a model its CEO, Liz Muller, says is both safer and cheaper than traditional construction. Even though Deep Fission is a party in the lawsuit, the company has also begun pre-licensing its design with the NRC. Muller sees the lawsuit as bringing a new approach to the agency regarding SMRs: helping it to develop 'a regulatory sandbox, where we're allowed to explore approaches to regulations while we're moving forward at the same time.' The lawsuit posits that individual states 'are more than capable of regulating' smaller reactors. Thirty-nine states are already licensed by the NRC to handle and inspect nuclear material, while Koopman points out that the states involved in the lawsuit have recently passed legislation to speed the construction of nuclear projects in-state. 'All of the states involved in the case have already entered into agreement with the NRC, in which the NRC has recognized that they know their stuff,' he says. Taylor believes allowing states to compete on regulation would help boost safety within the field of small modular reactors. 'Innovation is what drives the safety ball down the field, and the only way to do that is to have different regulators with different ideas,' he says. 'That's federalism 101.' Adam Stein, the director of the Nuclear Energy Innovation program at the Breakthrough Institute, an eco-modernist policy center, sees some serious flaws with this approach. He says that while some states, like Texas, may have the resources and the knowledge to create their own effective regulatory body, other states may struggle. Stein likens a patchwork of different regulations as being akin to car seat laws, where the age of the child required to be in a car seat varies across states, making it tough for a parent to plan a road trip. 'Some states are less consistent in applying safety standards than others,' he says. 'Some states would prefer their standards to be stricter than national standards. Some states have reduced safety standards from nationally recommended standards.' Muller says she understands these concerns. 'There is a risk if we get wildly different regulatory processes, that would not be a great result,' she says. 'But I think there's also an opportunity for states to move forward and then for other states to piggyback on what has been developed by the earlier adopter.' Stein also foresees a possibility for continued red tape, as even with state-level regulation, the NRC would still be forced to review individual reactor designs to see if they were safe enough to pass off for state review. 'A developer couldn't just assert that their design is so safe, that it's below the line,' he says. 'It's still going to have to go through a review to determine whether the NRC should review it.' Just because a nuclear reactor can't cause massive damage to big populations doesn't necessarily mean it's fail-safe. The only deadly nuclear accident on US soil occurred at a tiny reactor in Idaho, which killed its three operators in the early 1960s. Designs for small reactors have made leaps and bounds in safety since then—a development Touran says is thanks in part to regulations from the federal government. 'I believe a well-designed small reactor, subject to reasonable nuclear design standards based on years of lessons learned, would be very safe,' says Touran. 'I do not believe that this means anyone should be able to go out and build a small reactor with minimal oversight.' There have been efforts in recent years to speed up the NRC's permitting process. In 2019, during his first term, President Donald Trump signed the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act; among its many reforms, it mandated that the NRC shift around key licensing processes and create a new process for licensing smaller, more technologically varied reactors. Last year, President Joe Biden signed the ADVANCE Act, which made even more changes to the NRC process; both of these pieces of legislation passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. 'At this point, the NRC says pretty willingly that they're working hard to be more efficient, that they understand they need to be more efficient, that they have been more efficient with recent licensing applications,' says Klein. For developers like Taylor, this progress is too little, too late. 'Do we really want China and Russia to be the global nuclear developers for the world?' he says. 'I don't. I would like the United States to be the nuclear developer of the world.' Permitting reform alone, especially in the SMR space, may not solve the issue of competing with other world powers. Nuclear energy might be overregulated, but it is also expensive to build, even for smaller reactors, requiring big up-front investments and a large amount of labor. NuScale did lose valuable time and money on a cumbersome regulatory process—but its energy was also competing in price against gas and renewables, which are, on average, cheaper than nuclear power from plants that have been running for decades. After decades of battling public fear of nuclear plants, nuclear acceptance has reached a pivotal moment. When compared to the massive health toll from fossil fuels, which research shows are responsible for 1 in 5 deaths around the world, nuclear power is exorbitantly safe. But there's a sense from some advocates that some of the hard-won trust nuclear energy now has from the public—supported by decades of careful regulation—is in danger if the movement becomes too cavalier about safety. When Valar announced it would join the lawsuit, Taylor published a blog post on the company's website that claimed that the company's reactor was so safe that someone could hold the spent fuel in their hands for five minutes and get as much radiation exposure as a CAT scan. Touran questioned this claim, leading Taylor to post the numbers behind the company's analysis on X. Another nuclear engineer ran his own calculation using these inputs, finding that holding fuel under the conditions provided by Valar would give a 'lethal dose' of radiation in 85 milliseconds. (Taylor told WIRED that Valar is working on a 'thorough analysis' in response that will be public in a few weeks and that the initial claims around the spent fuel were simply 'a thought experiment we did for our own internal illustration purposes' and not part of the lawsuit materials.) 'We've operated reactors so well for so long that a whole new breed of advocates and even founders mistakenly believe that they're fail-safe by default,' says Touran. 'The reality is they're made fail-safe by very careful and well-regulated engineering and quality assurance.'
The Guardian
28-04-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
How a solar storm could lead to a US nuclear disaster worse than Chornobyl
On 14 May 1921, a powerful solar storm – called the New York Railroad storm – caused the northern lights to illuminate New York City's night sky. On Broadway, crowds lingered, enjoying 'flaring skies' that remained undimmed by city lights. The following morning, excess electric currents shut down the New York Central Railroad's signal and switching system in Manhattan, stopping trains. A fire broke out in a railroad control tower that was located at Park Avenue and 57th Street. Smoke filled the air. Along a stretch of Park Avenue, residents 'were coughing and choking from the suffocating vapors which spread for blocks'. When a solar storm's electrically charged particles envelop Earth, they cause geomagnetic storms that generate electric fields in the ground, inducing electric currents in power grids. Solar storms as intense as the 1921 superstorm have the potential to cause a nightmare scenario in which modern power grids, communication systems, and other infrastructures collapse for months. Such a collapse of power grids would likely also lead to nuclear power plant accidents, whose radioactive emissions would aggravate the overall catastrophe. Scientists estimate that solar storms powerful enough to collapse portions of modern power grids for months may hit Earth more often than once in a century. In July 2012, a solar superstorm, estimated to have been more intense than the New York Railroad storm, crossed Earth's orbit, missing the planet by one week's time. The east coast states, upper midwest, and Pacific north-west have geological characteristics – not predominant in other regions of the United States – that increase the vulnerability of power-grid infrastructures to solar storms. Unfortunately, the majority of the commercial nuclear power plants in the United States are located in east coast states and the upper midwest, two of the US regions that are most vulnerable to solar storm-induced blackouts. In a months-long blackout, nuclear plants would lose their supply of offsite electricity, which is necessary for their safe operation. Emergency diesel generators, which provide backup electricity, are designed to power cooling pumps for a number of days – not months. No nuclear plant in the United States has ever lost offsite electricity for longer than a week. In 2012, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission stated that an extreme solar storm could collapse power grids and potentially lead to reactor core damage at multiple nuclear plants. Storage pools at nuclear plants that house spent fuel assemblies, encasing nuclear waste, are also vulnerable to accidents. Spent fuel assemblies can overheat and catch fire, dispersing radioactive material into the environment, if a storage pool's coolant water is lost. Spent fuel assemblies are so thermally hot and radioactive that they must be submerged in circulating water and cooled in a storage pool for years. Storage pools at US nuclear plants typically contain about six reactor core loads of nuclear fuel and are almost as densely packed with fuel assemblies as operating reactors – hazards that vastly increase the odds of a major accident. A spent fuel fire in an exposed, densely packed storage pool could potentially release 10 times as much caesium-137 as the Chornobyl accident is estimated to have released. Such a disaster could contaminate thousands of square miles of land and expose millions of people to large doses of ionizing radiation, many of whom might die from early or latent cancer. By contrast, if a thinly packed storage pool were deprived of coolant water, its spent fuel would likely release about 1% of the radioactive material estimated to be released by a spent fuel fire at a densely packed pool. Sufficiently cooled spent fuel assemblies can be transferred from a storage pool to dry cask storage; that is, passively cooled, liquid-free containers of steel and concrete that shield people from ionizing radiation. The inevitability of a nationwide power grid collapse that would lead to multiple nuclear disasters and untold human suffering emphasizes the need to transfer spent fuel assemblies to dry cask storage as quickly as possible. Promptly transferring the nationwide inventories of spent fuel assemblies that have been cooled for at least five years from US storage pools to dry cask storage would be 'relatively inexpensive' – less than a total of $5.5bn. The economic cost of losing vast tracts of urban and rural land for generations to come because of radioactive contamination would be far more expensive. Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts introduced the Dry Cask Storage Act in 2014, calling to outlaw the practice of overloading spent fuel pools. The act, which Markey has reintroduced in subsequent congressional sessions, has not passed into law. The nuclear industry's mismanagement of spent fuel must stop. Congress needs to pass legislation requiring the owners of nuclear plants to swiftly thin out spent fuel pools. Mark Leyse is a nuclear power safety advocate with a degree in nuclear engineering
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Last Energy plans 30 microreactors in Texas to meet data centre demand
Micro-nuclear technology developer Last Energy has announced plans to build 30 microreactors in Haskell County, Texas. The initiative aims to serve data centre customers across the state, addressing the increasing power demand. The company has secured control of the 200-acre site and intends to deliver energy through a combination of private wires and grid transmission. The company has already applied for a grid connection with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Following discussions with local stakeholders, Last Energy will apply for an early site permit from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The move is driven by the recent surge in demand from Texas-based data centre developers over the past year. Last Energy founder and CEO Bret Kugelmass stated: 'Texas is America's undisputed energy leader, but skyrocketing population growth and data centre development is forcing policymakers, customers and energy providers to embrace new technologies. 'Nuclear power is the most effective way to meet Texas' demand, but our solution — plug-and-play microreactors, designed for scaleability and siting flexibility — is the best way to meet it quickly. Texas is a state that recognises energy is a precondition for prosperity, and Last Energy is excited to contribute to that mission.' Last Energy's existing commercial agreements include the delivery of more than 80 microreactors across Europe, with half dedicated to data centres. The Texas project will add 30 units to the company's development capacity, supporting the expansion of its commercial pipeline in the US. The project is expected to enhance grid capacity and meet data centre deployment projections. Texas currently hosts 340 data centres, consuming almost 8GW of power, which accounts for 9% of the state's electricity demand. Texas Governor Greg Abbott said: 'Texas is the energy capital of America, and we are working to be number one in advanced nuclear power. Last Energy's microreactor project in Haskell County will help fulfil the state's growing data centre demand. 'Texas must become a national leader in advanced nuclear energy. By working together with industry leaders like Last Energy, we will usher in a nuclear power renaissance in the United States.' Last Energy's PWR-20 microreactor is designed for mass-manufacturability, allowing scaleability based on user demand. As a founding member of the Texas Nuclear Alliance, Last Energy aims to accelerate nuclear deployment across the state. The company has secured its first full core load of fuel, scheduled for arrival in September 2026. "Last Energy plans 30 microreactors in Texas to meet data centre demand" was originally created and published by Power Technology, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
