Record amount of methane added to atmosphere last year

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Because it's potent but short-lived, cutting methane has

immediate climate benefits, scientists say

The Associated Press · Posted: Apr 08, 2022 

A flare to burn methane from oil production is seen on a well pad near Watford City, North Dakota, in 2021. Methane in the atmosphere rose by a record amount in 2021, NOAA reports. (Matthew Brown/The Associated Press)

Global atmospheric levels of the potent but short-lived greenhouse gas methane increased by a record amount last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday, worrying scientists because of the large role methane has in climate change.

The preliminary airborne level of methane jumped 17 parts per billion, hitting 1895.7 parts per billion last year. It's the second year in a row that methane rose at a record rate, with 2020 going up 15.3 ppb over 2019, according to NOAA.

Methane levels are now way more than double pre-industrial levels of 720 parts per billion, said Lindsay Lan, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA and the University of Colorado.

Methane's role in climate change

Methane is a big contributor to climate change, leading to about a 0.5 C increase in temperature since the 19th century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Carbon dioxide has caused about 50 per cent more warming than methane.

It is the only greenhouse gas for which emission reductions can quickly cool the climate- Zeke Hausfather, climate scientist

"This trend of accelerating increase in methane is extremely disturbing," said Cornell University methane researcher Robert Howarth.

Methane is about 25 times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. But it only lasts nine years in the air instead of thousands of years like carbon dioxide, Lan said.

Because it doesn't last in the air long, many nations last year agreed to target methane for quick emission cuts as low-hanging fruit in the global efforts to limit future warming to 1.5 or 2 C since pre-industrial times. The world has already warmed 1.1 to 1.2 C.

"To limit warming to well below 2 C this century, we need to cut our methane emissions dramatically, and today we are clearly moving in the wrong direction," said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of Stripe and Berkeley Earth in an email.

"Cutting methane has strong immediate climate benefits, as it is the only greenhouse gas for which emission reductions can quickly cool the climate (versus slowing or stopping the rate of warming)."

NOAA has been tracking methane levels in the air since 1983.

Lan said early signs point more to natural causes for the methane jump, because of La Nina, the natural and temporary cooling of parts of the Pacific that change weather worldwide, but it's still early.

La Nina tends to make it rain more in some tropical regions and the two years in a row of record increases during La Nina points to methane escaping from wetlands, she said.

Where the methane comes from

Methane is the main component in natural gas, an increasingly used energy source. Much methane comes out of livestock and human-generated agriculture, as well as from landfills. Scientists also fear future release of trapped methane under the ocean and in frozen Arctic land, but there's no indication that's happening on a large scale.

The key question is whether this increasing trend could add to climate change problems or is a pandemic-related blip due to the decrease in methane-destroying nitrous oxides from less car and industrial pollution, said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson.

Cows and calves are separated by a fence at a cattle farm near Cremona, Alta. Much methane comes from livestock and human-generated agriculture. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)

"It seems to be something else instead of COVID," Lan said. She figures high levels in 2020 and then even higher levels in 2021, when lockdowns were eased, point away from a pandemic effect.

Both fossil fuels and agriculture are key in methane increases, Howarth said. But he said, "my research strongly points toward fossil fuels as being the largest cause of the increase since 2008, with increase emissions from shale gas production from fracking in the U.S. being a major part of that."

In a study last year, Lan looked at the chemical isotopes to isolate where steady increases in methane emissions since 2006 may be coming from. The chemical signature pointed away from fossil fuels as the bigger guilty party and more toward either natural wetland emissions or agriculture, she said.

NOAA also said carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere last year increased 2.66 parts per million over 2020, one of the higher increases in history, but not a record. The annual average for 2021 for carbon dioxide was 414.7 parts per million. Pre-industrial is about 280 parts per million.

NOAA said carbon dioxide levels are now the highest since about 4.3 million years ago, when the sea level was about 23 metres higher and the average temperature was about 3.9 C warmer.

"Our data show that global emissions continue to move in the wrong direction at a rapid pace," said NOAA chief Rick Spinrad in a statement.

Shards of Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs May Have Been Found in Fossil Site


Kenneth Chang
Fri, April 8, 2022

Robert DePalma, a paleontologist, gives a presentation on his findings of fossilized remains at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on Wednesday, April 6, 2022.

 (Taylor Mickal/NASA via The New York Times)

GREENBELT, Md. — Pristine slivers of the impactor that killed the dinosaurs have been discovered, said scientists studying a North Dakota site that is a time capsule of that calamitous day 66 million years ago.

The object that slammed off the Yucatán Peninsula of what is today Mexico was about 6 miles wide, scientists estimate, but the identification of the object has remained a subject of debate. Was it an asteroid or a comet? If it was an asteroid, what kind was it — a solid metallic one or a rubble pile of rocks and dust held together by gravity?

“If you’re able to actually identify it, and we’re on the road to doing that, then you can actually say, ‘Amazing, we know what it was,’” Robert DePalma, a paleontologist spearheading the excavation of the site, said Wednesday during a talk at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt

A video of the talk and a subsequent discussion between DePalma and prominent NASA scientists will be released online in a week or two, a Goddard spokesperson said. Many of the same discoveries will be discussed in “Dinosaurs: The Final Day,” a BBC documentary narrated by David Attenborough, which will air in Britain this month. In the United States, the PBS program “Nova” will broadcast a version of the documentary next month.

A New Yorker article in 2019 described the site in southwestern North Dakota, named Tanis, as a wonderland of fossils buried in the aftermath of the impact some 2,000 miles away. Many paleontologists were intrigued but uncertain about the scope of DePalma’s claims; a research paper published that year by DePalma and his collaborators mostly described the geological setting of the site, which once lay along the banks of a river.

When the object hit Earth, carving a crater about 100 miles wide and nearly 20 miles deep, molten rock splashed into the air and cooled into spherules of glass, one of the distinct calling cards of meteor impacts. In the 2019 paper, DePalma and his colleagues described how spherules raining down from the sky clogged the gills of paddlefish and sturgeon, suffocating them.

Usually the outsides of impact spherules have been mineralogically transformed by millions of years of chemical reactions with water. But at Tanis, some of them landed in tree resin, which provided a protective enclosure of amber, keeping them almost as pristine as the day they formed.

In the latest findings, which have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, DePalma and his research colleagues focused on bits of unmelted rock within the glass.

“All these little dirty nuggets in there, every single speck that takes away from this beautiful clear glass is a piece of debris,” said DePalma, a graduate student at the University of Manchester in England and an adjunct professor at Florida Atlantic University.

Finding amber-encased spherules, he said, was the equivalent of sending someone back in time to the day of the impact, “collecting a sample, bottling it up and preserving it for scientists right now.”

Most of the rock bits contain high levels of strontium and calcium — indications that they were part of the limestone crust where the meteor hit.

But the composition of fragments within two of the spherules were “wildly different,” DePalma said.

“They were not enriched with calcium and strontium as we would have expected,” he said.

Instead they contained higher levels of elements like iron, chromium and nickel. That mineralogy points to the presence of an asteroid, and in particular a type known as carbonaceous chondrites.

“To see a piece of the culprit is just a goose-bumpy experience,” DePalma said.

The finding supports a discovery reported in 1998 by Frank Kyte, a geochemist at UCLA. Kyte said he had found a fragment of the meteor in a core sample drilled off Hawaii, more than 5,000 miles from the Chicxulub crater. Kyte said that fragment, about one-tenth of an inch across, came from the impact event, but other scientists were skeptical that any bits of the meteor could have survived.

“It actually falls in line with what Frank Kyte was telling us years ago,” DePalma said.

In an email, Kyte said it was impossible to evaluate the claim without looking at the data. “Personally, I expect that if any meteoritic material is in this ejecta, it would be extremely rare and unlikely to be found in the vast volumes of other ejecta at this site,” he said. “But maybe they got lucky.”

DePalma said there also appear to be some bubbles within some of the spherules. Because the spherules do not look to be cracked, it’s possible that they could hold bits of air from 66 million years ago.

Jim Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA Goddard, said it would be fascinating to compare the Tanis fragments with samples collected by NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission, a spacecraft en route to Earth after a visit to Bennu, a similar but smaller asteroid.

State-of-the-art techniques being used to study space rocks, such as the recently opened samples from the Apollo missions 50 years ago, could also be employed on the Tanis material. “They would work perfectly,” Garvin said.

In the talk, DePalma also showed other fossil finds, including a well-preserved leg of a dinosaur, identified as a plant-eating Thescelosaurus. “This animal was preserved in such a way that you had these three-dimensional skin impressions,” he said.

There are no signs that the dinosaur was killed by a predator or by disease. That suggests the dinosaur might have died the day of the meteor impact, perhaps by drowning in the floodwaters that overwhelmed Tanis.

“This is like a dinosaur CSI,” DePalma said. “Now, as a scientist, I’m not going to say, ‘Yes, 100%, we do have an animal that died in the impact surge,’” he said. “Is it compatible? Yes.”

Neil Landman, curator emeritus in the division of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, visited Tanis in 2019. He saw one of the paddlefish fossils with spherules in its gills and is convinced that the site does indeed capture the day of the cataclysm and its immediate aftermath. “It’s the real deal,” he said.

DePalma also showed images of an embryo of a pterosaur, a flying reptile that lived during the time of the dinosaurs. Studies indicate the egg was soft like those of modern-day geckos, and the high levels of calcium in the bones and the embryo’s wing dimensions support existing research that the reptiles might have been able to fly as soon as they hatched.

Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland who was a consultant for the BBC documentary, is also convinced that the fish died that day, but he is not yet certain that the dinosaur and the pterosaur egg were also victims of the impact.

“I haven’t yet seen slam-dunk evidence,” he said in an email. “It’s a credible story but hasn’t yet been proven beyond a reasonable doubt in the peer-reviewed literature.”

But the pterosaur embryo nonetheless is “an amazing discovery,” he said. Although initially skeptical, he added that after seeing photos and other information, “I was blown away. To me, this may be the most important fossil from Tanis.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

NUKE NEWS

Canadian waste organisation completes borehole programme

08 April 2022

Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has completed its deep borehole drilling programme to understand the subsurface geology in the two areas that will potentially host a deep geological repository for the nation's used nuclear fuel. The programme will help inform the final selection of a site.

A geoscientist examines core samples extracted from bedrock in South Bruce (Image: NWMO)

The NWMO is charged with implementing Canada's plan for the safe, long-term management of used fuel, known as Adaptive Phased Management, and launched the site selection process in 2010. The selected site must have the support of "informed and willing" hosts and NWMO is working to ensure that the chosen location will be safe and secure.

By 2012, 22 communities had expressed an interest in learning about the project and exploring their potential to host it. Eleven of those communities went forward to the second phase of the NWMO's preliminary assessment process. By the end of 2019, the list of potential host communities had been narrowed down to two: one in the Wabigoon-Ignace area and the other in the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON)-South Bruce area. Both locations are in Ontario.

Drilling and testing of boreholes to depths of up to 1000 metres below the surface advances understanding of the subsurface geology in a study area and helps ensure the site will meet regulatory requirements. The process involves making a small diameter hole using drilling equipment and retrieving cylinder-shaped rock samples called core.

Drilling of two boreholes at SON-South Bruce began in April last year. Drilling of six boreholes at Wabigoon-Ignace - where work began on the first borehole in 2017 - was completed in November 2021, following a suspension during the COVID-19 pandemic.

NWMO has now announced the completion of the last borehole at the SON-South Bruce potential site, bringing to an end some five years of intensive field studies during which about 8 km of bedrock samples have been recovered from the two locations.

Deep geological repositories are internationally recognised as the safest way to manage used nuclear fuel over the very long term, NWMO Vice-President of Site Selection Lise Morton said. "Completion of this drilling programme is a significant step forward in our geoscience work. In addition to informing the safety case for the project, the resulting data will also provide important insights to the communities that are considering hosting the project in their area," she added.

Once the site has been selected, detailed site characterisation, federal impact assessment and licensing processes will begin. NWMO said it remains on track to complete the site selection in 2023. Construction of the repository is currently anticipated to begin in 2033, with operations beginning between 2040 and 2045.

Canadian companies collaborate to advance nuclear technology

07 April 2022

Bruce Power and Ontario Power Generation (OPG) have agreed to work together to support new nuclear technologies in Ontario. Building from shared experiences with their existing Candu fleets, the companies plan to collaborate on regulatory strategies and other enablers for a new nuclear fleet, as well as evaluating potential opportunities for the future deployment of small modular reactors (SMRs) and other new nuclear technologies.

Working together to advance nuclear technology: OPG President and CEO Ken Hartwick (second from left) and Bruce Power President and CEO Mike Rencheck (far right) pictured with Canadian Nuclear Association President and CEO John Gorman (far left) and Ontario Minister of Energy Todd Smith (second from right) (Image: Bruce Power)

Ontario's Candus already provide about 60% of the province's clean electricity, and thanks to major projects by both companies, will continue to underpin Ontario's electricity system for decades to come. The shared experience of operating and refurbishing their Candu reactors has positioned OPG and Bruce Power to coordinate their efforts in expanding the role of nuclear power in the fight against climate change by evaluating technology options, promoting regulatory efficiencies, and developing strategies to best meet the needs of ratepayers in Ontario, they said yesterday.

OPG is over half-way through a CAD12.8 billion (USD10.1 billion) project to refurbish the four Candu units at Darlington that will enable the power station to operate for an additional 30 years. Bruce began refurbishment of the first of six of its nuclear units in 2020 as part of an overall life extension plan that began in 2016. In addition, the Darlington New Nuclear Project aims to deploy a BWRX-300 SMR at Darlington by the end of this decade. OPG has said it is preparing to submit its application for a construction licence by the end of this year.

The newly announced collaboration with Bruce Power will help advance new nuclear options for the long-term production of clean energy in Ontario and Canada, said OPG Executive Vice-President, Business Strategy and Commercial Management Chris Ginther: "We believe the Darlington New Nuclear Project is the first of many new nuclear opportunities that will need to be advanced as we make critical steps towards a net-zero future."

"Bruce Power is strongly supportive of OPG's SMR Project at Darlington and is looking forward to expanding our long-standing collaboration with OPG to advance new nuclear technology more broadly to create economic opportunities for the province, support innovation and to meet future energy needs while achieving net-zero," said James Scongack, Bruce Power's chief development officer and executive vice-president, Operational Services.

Microreactors are one of the three development streams identified in a joint strategic plan setting out a path for developing and deploying SMRs released by the governments of Ontario, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Alberta in March, and Bruce in 2020 agreed with Westinghouse Electric Company to pursue applications of Westinghouse's eVinci microreactor within Canada.

Samsung, Seaborg partnership on floating nuclear reactors

08 April 2

The Memorandum of Understanding is to manufacture and sell turnkey power plants combining Samsung Heavy Industry’s ship-building expertise and the Danish company’s Compact Molten Salt Reactor (CMSR). It also covers development of hydrogen production plants and ammonia plants.

How a 200 MWe Power Barge could look (Image: Seaborg)

Seaborg’s design is for modular CMSR power barges that can produce between 200 MW and 800 MW of electricity, with an operational life of 24 years. Instead of having solid fuel rods that need constant cooling, the CMSR’s fuel is mixed in a liquid salt that acts as a coolant, which means that it will simply shut down and solidify in case of emergency.

Jin-Taek Jeong, president and CEO of Samsung Heavy Industries, said: "CMSR is a carbon-free energy source that can efficiently respond to climate change issues and is a next-generation technology that meets the vision of Samsung Heavy Industries.

"Through this agreement, we plan to pioneer the CMSR-based floating nuclear power plant market as part of strengthening its future new business opportunity."

The partnership agreement was signed at an online event, with Seaborg CEO and co-founder Troels Schönfeldt saying: "We are honoured and proud to have formed this partnership with Samsung Heavy Industries, one of the world’s largest and most experienced shipyards. It is another step forward in our quest to introduce a new generation of nuclear reactors that are clean and safe and can be built using industrial technology with all the benefits of scalability, speed, and lower costs."

The signing of the partnership agreement took place on 7 April (Image: Samsung Heavy Industries)

The timeline for Seaborg, which was founded in 2014, has been for commercial prototypes to be built in 2024 with commercial production of Power Barges beginning from 2026.

Samsung Heavy Industries signed an agreement in June last year with the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute for offshore molten-salt-cooled reactors development and research.

AP1000 remains attractive option for US market, says MIT

08 April 2022

An overnight capital cost of USD2900 per kilowatt for the next AP1000 series in the USA is achievable, according to an independent assessment by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems. The report considers the cost in the context of the experience realised at the Vogtle site in Georgia, where two AP1000 units are under construction.

Vogtle units 3 and 4, pictured in January (Image: Georgia Power)

The delays and cost overruns faced by the Vogtle AP1000 project have "decimated US energy utilities' interest in large nuclear power plant construction projects. The general energy sector also utilises the experience at Vogtle as an indicator of nuclear energy's high cost and infeasibility of the role it can play in future energy markets," the report notes. It says several unique project parameters have led to the inflation of the Vogtle total project cost (currently standing at USD28 billion), including high interest rates, lack of detailed design prior to start of construction, construction management turnover and first-of-a-kind (FOAK) issues.

Construction of the two Vogtle AP1000 units began in 2013: unit 3 in March and unit 4 in November. Southern Nuclear and Georgia Power, both subsidiaries of Southern Company, took over management of the project to build the units in 2017 following Westinghouse's Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Vogtle unit 3 is now expected to be in service by the end of the first quarter of 2023, with unit 4 following by the fourth quarter of 2023.

Four Westinghouse AP1000 reactors are already in commercial operation at Haiyang and Sanmen in China.

"Almost 10 years after the start of construction in the US, the AP1000 is now a proven technology with four operating plants in China," MIT said. "The next AP1000 plant has potential to provide a viable product in the US and oversees if its original nth-of-a-kind (NOAK) capital cost and construction schedule projections by Westinghouse can be realised."

The 'should cost' decouples the impact of cost by competency of the reactor vendor, supply chain logic and construction execution from the design architecture, the report said. It is also essential to ensure comparison of like costs (FOAK or NOAK) when evaluating future technology selections, in recognition that most publicised costs are NOAK exclusive of owner's and financing costs.

MIT estimates the overnight capital cost for Vogtle 3 and 4 at USD7956/kW. It says the 'should cost' of the next AP1000 overnight capital cost in the USA to be USD4300/kW and USD2900/kW for the following 10th unit (online by around 2045), deployed in series, based on 2018 dollars.

"Contrary to perhaps the consensus verdict among US utilities, the AP1000 NOAK estimated overnight capital cost, which still requires large capital investment to realise, continues to make AP1000 an attractive option for nuclear energy development globally," it said. Globally, while some one-time FOAK issues will be reintroduced, "the lower labour rates, owner's costs and indirect costs relative to the US, can make AP1000 an affordable technology for displacing existing carbon emitting power plants."

The report says constructing more than 10 reactors consecutively allows achieving low costs for the direct portion of the capital cost (minimises rework), but particularly reduces indirect cost (sharing of engineering and management experience among units).

Competitive with SMRs

The study includes a comparison of the AP1000 technology relative to other near-term nuclear technologies, including large light-water reactors (LWRs) and small modular reactors (SMRs).

The AP1000 is an attractive technology for large scale decarbonisation, MIT said, since it "features a compact design in terms of amount of concrete and steel used per MWe generated compared to leading large LWRs and SMRs (i.e., lowest direct 'should cost') while still generating more than 1000 MWe of carbon free electricity (i.e., low O&M cost)."

It said overnight costs per kWe of SMRs are estimated to be 1.4-1.75 times the cost of the next AP1000 plant "because of the lack of economy of scale".

According to MIT, "SMRs are an attractive option for certain markets where small additional capacity of carbon free energy is needed. However, if multiple SMRs are housed in a single reactor building (e.g., NuScale), then no measurable reduction in overall onsite labour input compared to AP1000 is expected and the capital cost will be higher than a large reactor due to the large volume of concrete and steel per MWe produced."

EDF looks to extend Sizewell B operation

07 April 2022

EDF Energy is leading a Long-Term Operation (LTO) programme aimed at extending the operating lifespan of Sizewell B - the UK's only pressurised water reactor and newest nuclear power plant - by at least 20 years to 2055.

The Sizewell B plant in Suffolk, England (Image: EDF)

Sizewell B entered commercial operation in February 1995 and is currently expected to be in operation until 2035. By 2028, the 1198 MWe reactor will be the only operating nuclear power plant from the UK's existing fleet.

General Electric, Jacobs and Westinghouse have been selected by EDF to support the preliminary life extension work at Sizewell B.

"This is the start of a robust process which will involve key partners including Westinghouse, Jacobs, GE and Framatome, some of which were involved at the start of the station's operation," EDF Energy said.

The first phase of the LTO programme includes scoping and cost-benefit analysis. EDF Energy estimates the value of this phase at GBP10 million (USD14 million) to all participants.

Sizewell B will engage with industry regulators the Office for Nuclear Regulation and the Environment Agency throughout the process. Equipment will be systematically checked and the plant and partners will identify the areas where investment will be required to maintain safe and reliable generation, should the decision be taken to extend its operation to 2055.

EDF said it will make a final decision in 2024, which would then be followed by the required capital investment in the plant, safety enhancements and obtaining the necessary approvals.

"This collaboration, between Jacobs, General Electric, Westinghouse and EDF brings together the original equipment manufacturer/architect engineer organisations from the design and construction of Sizewell B in the 1990s," noted Jacobs Energy Security & Technology Senior Vice President Karen Wiemelt. "Jacobs has worked at the station since initial construction and, along with our partners, we bring intrinsic knowledge and experience of plant life extension to the LTO programme, which will help safeguard the future of a vital part of the UK's clean energy infrastructure."

"We are very proud to join Jacobs and General Electric on this key project to extend Sizewell B's operational lifetime which, in turn, will support the UK's economic growth and job market, providing a safe path to a clean energy future," said Tarik Choho, Westinghouse President, EMEA Operating Plant Services.

EDF Energy Chief Nuclear Officer Paul Morton said: "Sizewell B power station is an important national asset that helps deliver clean, independent energy supplies."

UK planning for rapid nuclear expansion

07 April 2022

The Energy Security Strategy's ambitions are for eight new reactors, plus small modular reactors, helping to produce 24 GWe capacity by 2050, representing about 25% of the UK's projected electricity demand.

Hinkley Point C will be the first new nuclear plant in the UK this century (Image: EDF)

Nuclear's share of energy in the UK is currently about 16%, however almost half of the country's current capacity is due to be retired by 2025 and all but one of its reactors will retire by 2030.

A new government body, Great British Nuclear, is being set up to bring forward new nuclear projects at a rate of about one a year this decade, including the Wylfa site in Anglesey, the strategy says.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: "We’re setting out bold plans to scale up and accelerate affordable, clear and secure energy made in Britain, for Britain - from new nuclear to offshore wind - in the decade ahead.

"This will reduce our dependence on power sources exposed to volatile international prices we cannot control, so we can enjoy greater energy self-sufficiency with cheaper bills."

UK operable nuclear power capacity, 1970-2022 (Image: World Nuclear Association)

As well as the expansion of nuclear, the strategy also includes a large increase in offshore wind - up to 50 GWe or enough to power every home in the UK, plus 5 GWe from floating offshore wind in deeper seas. Planning rule changes are also proposed to cut approval times from four years to one year.

However, amid reports of differences within Johnson’s Conservative Party about onshore wind, the strategy commits only to "consulting on developing partnerships with … communities who wish to host onshore wind infrastructure in return for guaranteed lower energy bills".

There will also be a licensing round for new North Sea oil and gas projects "recognising the importance of these fuels to the transition and to our energy security, and that producing gas in the UK has a lower carbon footprint than imported from abroad".

And on solar power the ambition is to increase the current 14 GWe capacity by five times by 2035, with possible changes in the rules governing solar projects on rooftops. There is a doubling of the ambition to 10 GWe of low carbon hydrogen production capacity, "with at least half coming from green hydrogen and utilising excess offshore wind power to bring costs down".

UK Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: "The simple truth is that the more cheap, clean power we generate within our borders, the less exposed we will be to eye watering fossil fuel prices set by global markets we can’t control.

"Scaling up cheap renewables and new nuclear, while maximising North Sea production is the best and only way to ensure our energy independence over the coming years."

The UK currently has one nuclear power station under construction, at Hinkley Point C in Somerset in south west England. Construction began in December 2018 for the plant which is composed of two EPR reactors of 1630 MWe each. The start of electricity generation from unit 1 is expected in June 2026, with unit 2 following in 2027 with a projected lifespan of 60 years. Negotiations between the government and EDF are on-going for a replica project of Hinkley Point C at Sizewell C in Suffolk in eastern England. There is also a project under way to extend the life of Sizewell B by 20 years to 2055.

Reaction - in quotes

Commenting on the new strategy, World Nuclear Association Director General Sama Bilbao y León said: "Governments across the world should be following the UK's example and setting out policies that put nuclear as an essential and substantial component of their long term energy strategies.

"With widespread agreement that nuclear has a key role to play in delivering a clean, affordable and secure energy mix it is vital that governments, industry and other key stakeholders work together to ensure we not only set out ambitious plans, but also deliver on them."

The energy strategy was welcomed by those involved in the nuclear industry in the UK, with EDF’s UK CEO Simone Rossi saying that "building more new nuclear will reduce Britain’s dependence on overseas gas and keep energy prices stable, creating thousands of jobs while we’re doing it".

"At Hinkley Point C we’re already building British nuclear, with 3600 British businesses and 22,000 people making it happen, including over 800 apprentices. The fastest way to get more nuclear in Britain is get on with the next two units at Sizewell C. It’s a copy of Hinkley Point C, the design is approved and ready to go, and British manufacturers are experts in how to build it. Building more of the same design is the best way to bring down costs and develop a strong UK supply chain."

Tom Greatrex, CEO of the UK Nuclear Industry Association, called the new nuclear target a "vital step forward for UK energy security and our net zero future".

He said: "This investment will also create tens of thousands of jobs across the country and revitalise a world class skills base right here in Britain. The ambition and determination to do much more and quicker is very welcome.

"Along with removing barriers to projects getting started, building investor confidence by ensuring nuclear is classified as green in the UK taxonomy and making it eligible for green bonds are important next steps. We also want to see the money from the promised Future Nuclear Enabling Fund allocated at pace, with good sites being made available for project development."

Dawn James, vice president Nuclear Power, for Jacobs said: "We are working on Hinkley Point C, on the Rolls-Royce Small Modular Reactor, on Urenco’s U-Battery micro reactor, and on nuclear fusion. We believe that large scale reactors, small modular reactors and fusion power will play a crucial part in reducing our dependency on fossil fuels and we are working to ensure that the UK is at the forefront of developing them."

Chris Ball, Managing Director, Nuclear & Power EMEA at Atkins, said: "Strengthening security of supply means creating a resilient energy system, fuelled by a mix of low-carbon technologies and renewable sources without dependence on any one fuel or region. The Energy Security Strategy unveiled by the UK government today will go some way towards achieving this in the medium to long-term."

He added, "Our sector has a major role to play in engineering net-zero and ensuring a viable plan is created to deliver secure and clean energy supplies that will power the UK's net-zero economy. We look forward to working with government and across the industry to ensure these ambitions translate into a successful and efficient energy system."

Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the UK’s largest union for energy workers, Unite, said: "It has taken a war and a global crisis to get this government to act on the long-standing and vitally important issue of meeting the energy needs of the country and the planet. This is something we have been pushing for years.

"Now we have promises of investment and new jobs. But the devil will be in the detail. Government investment must be tied to UK job guarantees and not be syphoned off to boost offshore profits. There can be no further delays on delivering the new jobs and they must be union jobs, covered by collective bargaining, good pay, terms and conditions."

Tom Samson, CEO of Rolls-Royce SMR, said: "The Rolls-Royce SMR remains the fastest route to market for new nuclear deployment in the UK and we welcome this government’s clear commitment to turbocharging nuclear deployment.Rolls-Royce SMRs offer an affordable, sustainable and secure low-carbon future for the UK and an export opportunity to realise the aims of Global Britain if we act now."

George Borovas, head of Hunton Andrew Kurth's nuclear practice, said: "It is great to see that the UK’s Energy Security Strategy has recognised the importance of giving nuclear energy a central role in the country’s future energy mix. Not only will this contribute to meeting net-zero goals, but it will also secure the UK’s energy independence in the long-term alongside investments in wind, hydro and solar power."

"The events in Ukraine have underscored the need for energy independence in the UK. New nuclear ticks all the boxes for a self-reliant UK as it is carbon-free, will re-purpose existing 'brownfields' sites, and will play a key role for the developing hydrogen economy," said Vince Zabielski, Partner at international law firm Pillsbury. "Kudos to the UK government for a return to rational thinking as regards energy policy."

On the overall strategy, the opposition Labour Party criticised the lack of targets for onshore wind power, saying that there was nothing in the energy strategy to provide help with soaring energy bills in the near future and no support for energy efficiency and reducing demand for energy. And EOn UK's CEO, Michael Lewis, said that "by abandoning any extra commitment to helping people to improve their homes, today’s announcement condemns thousands more customers to living in cold and draughty homes, wasting energy and paying more than they need to for their heating".

Tennessee site selected for advanced reactor fuel facility

06 April 2022

UPDATED: A site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee has been selected as the site for the USA's first commercial high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)-based fuel fabrication facility. Construction of the TRISO-X Fuel Fabrication Facility, or TF3, is to begin this year, with commissioning and start-up as soon as 2025. The company has submitted a licence application to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Artist rendering of TRISO-X's proposed headquarters and commercial fuel facility at the Horizon Center Industrial Park (Image: X-energy)

Xe-100 developer X-energy announced on 4 April that its wholly-owned subsidiary, TRISO-X LLC, has selected the Horizon Center Industrial Park in Oak Ridge to site the plant, which will initially produce 8 tonnes of fuel per year - enough to support about twelve Xe-100 small modular reactors.

The commercial facility’s cross-cutting design will enable manufacturing of fuel for any number of advanced or small nuclear reactors based on TRISO fuel, the company said.

TRISO - tristructural isotropic - fuel particles consist of a "kernel" of uranium oxycarbide (or uranium dioxide), surrounded by layers of carbon and silicon carbide, giving a containment for fission products which is stable up to very high temperatures. Fuel for X-energy's Xe-100 high temperature gas-cooled modular reactor consists of spherical "pebbles" each embedded with 18,000 TRISO particles. Each fuel pebble is about the size of a billiard ball - around 6cm in diameter.

TF3 will be a first-of-a-kind US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Category II-licensed TRISO-based fuel fabrication facility, X-energy said. It will utilise uranium enriched to less than 20% uranium-235 to manufacture nuclear fuel products for a variety of advanced and small modular reactors, plus speciality fuels for space nuclear projects. TRISO-X aims to expand the facility's capacity from its initial 8 tonnes per year to 16 tonnes year by the early 2030s.

In October 2020, the US Department of Energy selected X-energy as one of two recipients to receive funding under its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) to build a demonstration plant that can be operational within seven years. Under the project, X-energy is to deliver a commercial four-unit power plant based on the Xe-100, as well as a commercial-scale TRISO fuel fabrication facility. In April 2021, Energy Northwest, Grant County Public Utility District and X-energy formed the Tri-Energy Partnership to construct a plant based on the Xe-100 design at Energy Northwest's existing Columbia nuclear site in Washington state.

"The Department of Energy calls TRISO the most robust nuclear fuel on Earth," TRISO-X President Pete Pappano said. "TRISO is a technology that's been developed and improved over 60 years. Our facility will bring this game-changing fuel to market, beginning with a proprietary spherical fuel pebble for X-energy's Xe-100 reactor and its utility partner Grant County Public Utility District, in Washington state."

The TRISO-X Pilot Facility, already operating at Oak Ridge National Laboratory via a public-private partnership, produces kilogram quantities of HALEU fuel (Image: X-energy)

TF3 will also be used to continue to support government funded projects, such as mobile reactors for the military or space nuclear projects, Pappano added. TRISO-X is already operating two facilities at Oak Ridge: the TRISO-X Pilot Facility, located inside Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the TRISO-X Research and Development Center in the Centrus Technology Manufacturing Center. TF3 is projected to generate more than 400 jobs in the Oak Ridge area and attract some USD300 million of investment.

Licensing review

TRISO-X submitted its licence application - the first-of-a-kind for a facility dedicated exclusively to handling and processing uranium of such enrichment - to the NRC on 6 April. The licence application took about three years to develop, at a cost of almost USD20 million, and the NRC's review process is expected to take 24-36 months. TF3 would become the first 10 CFR 70 Category II licensed fuel facility in the USA.

TRISO-X Director of Regulatory Affairs Jennifer Wheeler presents the licensing application to NRC Licensing Project Manager Matthew Bartlett, watched by representatives from ADRP, NRC and TRISO-X (Image: X-energy)

The NRC review, and TRISO-X's interactions with the regulator over this period, are part of X-energy's cooperative agreement with ARDP. Andrew Griffith, US acting assistant secretary for Nuclear Energy, said the licensing milestone is "a critical step" towards achieving the programme's goals.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News