Ivan Prock, P.Eng., BEng, MS’ Post

Constellation Energy to restart Three Mile Island nuclear plant, sell the power to Microsoft for AI Constellation Energy plans to restart the Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island. It will sell the power to Microsoft to support the power needs of data centers. Unit 1 is separate from the reactor that partially melted down in 1979 in the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. Constellation will rename the plant the Crane Clean Energy Center. Constellation Energy plans to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant and will sell the power to Microsoft, demonstrating the immense power needs of the tech sector as they build out data centers to support artificial intelligence. Constellation expects the Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pennsylvania, to come back online in 2028, subject to approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the company announced Friday. Constellation also plans to apply to extend the plant’s operations to at least 2054. Constellation stock jumped more than 9% in early trading. Microsoft will purchase electricity from the plant to match the energy its data centers consume with carbon-free power. Constellation described the agreement with Microsoft as the largest power purchase agreement that the nuclear plant operator has ever signed. “The decision here is the most powerful symbol of the rebirth of nuclear power as a clean and reliable energy resource,” Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez told investors on a call Friday morning. Unit 1 ceased operations in 2019 as nuclear power struggled struggled to compete economically with cheap natural gas and renewables. It is separate from the reactor that partially melted down in 1979 in the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. Constellation will rename the plant the Crane Clean Energy Center. Electricity demand from data centers is expected to surge in the coming decades as the tech sector ramps up artificial intelligence, threatening to strain the electric grid. While estimates vary, Goldman Sachs has forecast data centers will consume 8% of total U.S. electricity demand by 2030, compared with 3% currently. Power demand is also surging from the expansion of domestic manufacturing and the adoption of electric vehicles. Rystad Energy has forecast that data center and electric vehicles alone will add 290 terawatt hours of electricity demand by the end of the decade, equivalent to the entire consumption of the nation of Turkey. Tech companies are hunting for nuclear power to meet that growing electricity demand while adhering to their climate goals. In March, Amazon Web Services bought a data center campus from Talen Energy that will be powered by the Susquehanna nuclear plant, also in Pennsylvania, in a first-of-its-kind deal. Oracle recently said it is designing a data center that will be powered by three small nuclear reactors.

#NuclearPower #SMRs #Alberta "The Alberta government is reconsidering whether the province should have conventional nuclear power plants, Affordability and Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf says. ... The Alberta government has since 2020 been working with the governments of Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick to develop plans for small modular reactors (SMRs), which generate less power than a conventional plant and can be manufactured elsewhere and assembled on site. Neudorf's comment Thursday was the first public suggestion that Danielle Smith's United Conservative Party government is contemplating conventional nuclear power plants like those in Ontario and New Brunswick. Neudorf said although the plants are pricey to build, there could be long-term savings over the facility's lifetime. ... Capital Power's January 2024 announcement of a partnership with Ontario Power Generation to study the feasibility of building SMRs to generate power is the first serious look at integrating nuclear into Alberta's electrical system, Bratt said. ... "It's very strange that someone would be considering large reactors at this point," said M.V. Ramana, a professor of public policy and global affairs at the University of British Columbia. He pointed to plant costs sometimes doubling or tripling once construction has begun, and facilities opening years later than scheduled. Jason Wang, a senior electricity analyst with the Pembina Institute, says many countries are embracing networks of smaller, renewable power plants and distributed electrical storage to modernize electrical systems, alongside technologies that enhance efficiency and incentivize off-peak power usage. "There's so many types of innovations that are coming to the electricity system that Alberta doesn't seem to have recognized as opportunities yet," he said. The introduction of nuclear power could also distort Alberta's deregulated electricity market, scaring off investors considering renewable energy installations or carbon capture, utilization and storage, Wang said. Wang questioned whether nuclear power companies would be expected to set money aside for future site and pollution cleanup the way the province says renewable energy companies will have to post a bond. There is also the challenge of where to store and treat nuclear waste, Wong said. "It's not just a multi-year problem," he said. "It's a multi-century, multi-millennium problem." Ramana says governments in fossil fuel-producing jurisdictions often talk about exploring nuclear energy to make it appear they're trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without having to take action. "Nuclear energy provides one way to say, 'We're serious about it. But the technology's not here,' " he said. Governments earnestly trying to meet climate targets would incentivize renewable energy construction, because windmills and solar panels are faster to build than nuclear plants, he said."

US Wyoming will soon be home to the most advanced nuclear facility in the world, 345 mega watt sodium cooled, built by Bill Gates & Company investors, construction started in 2024, estimated, cost $4 billion with $2 pledged from US Government, will have to wait as to the usual delays, quality control issues and final cost when completed by earliest 2030. Two nuclear reactors Vogtle, in Georgia, United States, the project is seven years late and $17 billion over budget, final cost $35 Billion. UK’s Hinkley Point Nuclaer Plant 3,200 megawatts, is now 12 years behind construction schedule, expected to be completed by 2031, initial cost estimates of $35 Billion is now over $90 Billion. China intends to build 150 new nuclear reactors between 2020 and 2035, with 27 currently under construction and the average construction timeline for each reactor about seven years, far faster than for most other nations. Cost per Kw capacity from diffrent sources Nuclear Plants China’s Taishin (3,313 MW) $3,313 US Vogtle (2,234 MW) $13,429 UK Hinkley (3,260 MW) $11,779 France Flamanville (1,630 MW) $12,890 Natural Gas CTG (85 MW) $83 million $974 $/kW Natural Gas Combined Cycle (540 MW) $542 million $1,003 $/kW Onshore Wind (100 MW) $244 million $2,438 $/kW Hydro-electric (500 MW) $1.5 billion $3,076 $/kW Coal-Fired Rankine Cycle (650 MW) $2 billion $3,167 $/kW Waste-to-Energy Biomass (50 MW) $193 million $3,860 $/kW Thermal Solar (100 MW) $470 million $4,692 $/kW Photovoltaic Solar (150 MW) $716 million $4,775 $/kW Nuclear (2,236 MW) $12 billion $5,335 $/kW Geothermal (50 MW) $279 million $5,578 $/kW Offshore Wind (400 MW) $2.4 billion $5,975 $/kW Delays, debts and false promises — inside France’s nuclear nightmare

Point Lepreau, one of North America’s worst-performing nuclear stations. Multiple Jeopardy Does Happen & Needs to be Developed in Highly Critical Industries Like Nuclear Power Generation! Existential Risk - Nuclear Meltdown & Radiation Risk Lasting 1,000 Years or Much More⚠️ ☢️ ⛔️ ☠️⚠️ New Brunswick Power’s dilemma points to challenges that other provinces, such as Alberta & Saskatchewan, should consider as they look to build new reactors. Daily outage costing $900,000/day. Globe & Mail - Matthew McClearn: Point Lepreau station is among North America’s worst-performing nuclear power plants. Can NB Power turn it around? In the early hours of Dec. 14, 2022, New Brunswick’s Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station lost power after an electrical fault. Just hours later, at 4:40 a.m., an alarm sounded: The plant had suffered a small coolant leak & NB Power, the facility’s owner, detected radioactivity. The station was locked down to prevent that radioactivity from escaping, & an emergency response team was readied. 
Somehow, 2 unrelated pieces of equipment had failed simultaneously, touching off a costly and time-consuming recovery. Workers needed to bring the reactor to a guaranteed shutdown state. They had to regain entry to the reactor building & decontaminate it. And they needed to find the leak & stop it. The station would remain out of service for 42 days. 
This outage was just one of several in recent years that, in combination, point to severe reliability problems at Atlantic Canada’s only nuclear power plant. The latest, which was planned to end after 100 days on July 12 & cost more than $100-million, included installing a new 9,000-horsepower primary heat transport pump & motor, which moves heat generated by the reactor to the station’s steam generators.

But NB Power spokesperson Dominique Couture said workers discovered a problem with the station’s main generator, which provides electricity to the province’s grid. At a rate hearing before the New Brunswick Energy & Utilities Board, company officials said the plant is expected to remain offline until at least September. And the station will remain at risk of unplanned outages because of aging equipment. 
“It will be many years before we have put those risks behind us,” said Jason Nouwens, the station’s director of regulatory and external affairs. 
Nuclear reactors are among the most expensive power plants money can buy. Their cost is offset by several desirable traits, an important one being that unlike intermittent sources such as wind & solar, reactors can provide a steady, predictable flow of baseload power, provided they are reliable. 
A reactor’s capacity factor is the ratio of how much energy it produces over a specific period of time divided by the energy it would have produced had it run continuously. While no reactor runs flat out indefinitely, each one must be taken off-line periodically for inspections & maintenance, the most reliable ones boast capacity factors above 90%.

Is Nuclear Power in America Reviving - or Flailing?: Last week America's energy secretary cheered the startup of a fourth nuclear reactor at a Georgia power plant, calling it "the largest producer of clean energy, and the largest producer of electricity in the United States" after a third reactor was started up there in December. From the U.S. Energy Department's transcript of the speech: Each year, Units 3 and 4 are going to produce enough clean power to power 1 million homes and businesses, enough energy to power roughly 1 in 4 homes in Georgia. Preventing 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution annually. That, by the way, is like planting more than 165 million trees every year! And that's not to mention the historic investments that [electric utility] Southern has made on the safety front, to ensure this facility meets — and exceeds — the highest operating standards in the world.... To reach our goal of net zero by 2050, we have to at least triple our current nuclear capacity in this country. That means we've got to add 200 more gigawatts by 2050. Okay, two down, 198 to go! In building [Unit] 4, we've solved our greatest design challenges. We've stood up entire supply chains.... And so it's time to cash in on our investments by building more. More of these facilities. The Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office stands ready to help, with hundreds of billions of dollars in what we call Title 17 loans... Since the President signed the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, companies across the nation have announced 29 new or expanded nuclear facilities — across 16 states — representing about 1,600 potential new jobs. And the majority of those projects will expand the domestic uranium production and fuel fabrication, strengthening these critical supply chains... Bottom line is, in short, we are determined to build a world-class nuclear industry in the United States, and we're putting our money where our mouth is. America's Energy Secretary told the Washington Post that "Whether it happens through small modular reactors, or AP1000s, or maybe another design out there worthy of consideration, we want to see nuclear built." The Post notes the Energy department gave a $1.5 billion loan to restart a Michigan power plant which was decommissioned in 2022. "It would mark the first time a shuttered U.S. nuclear plant has been reactivated." "But in this country with 54 nuclear plants across 28 states, restarting existing reactors and delaying their closure is a lot less complicated than building new ones." When the final [Georgia] reactor went online at the end of April, the expansion was seven years behind schedule and nearly $20 billion over budget. It ultimately cost more than twice as much as promised, with ratepayers footing much of the bill through surcharges and rate hikes... Administration officials say the country has no choice but to make nuclear power a workable option again. The country is fast r

Is Nuclear Power in America Reviving - or Flailing?: Last week America's energy secretary cheered the startup of a fourth nuclear reactor at a Georgia power plant, calling it "the largest producer of clean energy, and the largest producer of electricity in the United States" after a third reactor was started up there in December. From the U.S. Energy Department's transcript of the speech: Each year, Units 3 and 4 are going to produce enough clean power to power 1 million homes and businesses, enough energy to power roughly 1 in 4 homes in Georgia. Preventing 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution annually. That, by the way, is like planting more than 165 million trees every year! And that's not to mention the historic investments that [electric utility] Southern has made on the safety front, to ensure this facility meets — and exceeds — the highest operating standards in the world.... To reach our goal of net zero by 2050, we have to at least triple our current nuclear capacity in this country. That means we've got to add 200 more gigawatts by 2050. Okay, two down, 198 to go! In building [Unit] 4, we've solved our greatest design challenges. We've stood up entire supply chains.... And so it's time to cash in on our investments by building more. More of these facilities. The Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office stands ready to help, with hundreds of billions of dollars in what we call Title 17 loans... Since the President signed the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, companies across the nation have announced 29 new or expanded nuclear facilities — across 16 states — representing about 1,600 potential new jobs. And the majority of those projects will expand the domestic uranium production and fuel fabrication, strengthening these critical supply chains... Bottom line is, in short, we are determined to build a world-class nuclear industry in the United States, and we're putting our money where our mouth is. America's Energy Secretary told the Washington Post that "Whether it happens through small modular reactors, or AP1000s, or maybe another design out there worthy of consideration, we want to see nuclear built." The Post notes the Energy department gave a $1.5 billion loan to restart a Michigan power plant which was decommissioned in 2022. "It would mark the first time a shuttered U.S. nuclear plant has been reactivated." "But in this country with 54 nuclear plants across 28 states, restarting existing reactors and delaying their closure is a lot less complicated than building new ones." When the final [Georgia] reactor went online at the end of April, the expansion was seven years behind schedule and nearly $20 billion over budget. It ultimately cost more than twice as much as promised, with ratepayers footing much of the bill through surcharges and rate hikes... Administration officials say the country has no choice but to make nuclear power a workable option again. The country is fast run

THE LATEST FROM Canadians for Nuclear Energy. Rising electricity demand is driving Ontario to plan big increases in its capacity to generate low-carbon power, especially nuclear. Where should the new capacity be built? Finding, studying, and approving a site can take decades, so accelerating the search should be a top priority for energy planners. Ontario already has an ideal, approved site for new power generation: Wesleyville, on the north shore of Lake Ontario, about 100 kilometres east of Toronto. Ontario has experienced — and met — rapid growth in the demand for electricity before. Amid rapid industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s, Ontario Hydro surveyed the province for ideal spots for new power plants. After extensive seismic, environmental and other assessments, it whittled its list of potential sites down to just seven. Three — Pickering, Bruce, and Darlington — ended up hosting the nuclear stations that now provide the bulk of Ontario’s electricity emissions-free. Another three — Nanticoke, Lambton, and Lakeview — became coal stations whose output the nuclear plants ultimately replaced. Only Wesleyville remained unused. Hydro did build an oil-fired generator there but then the OPEC crisis hit and it never operated. Existing sites, such as Bruce and Darlington, are good places to build new nuclear power. In fact, that’s already happening. Darlington will host the western world’s first small modular reactor. And in a landmark announcement last summer, Energy Minister Todd Smith funded pre-development work for new nuclear at the Bruce station. These two initiatives will increase the province’s nuclear supply by almost 50 per cent. But the province’s Independent Energy System Operator (IESO) says its nuclear fleet needs to expand by 150 per cent. That would outstrip the space available at the existing nuclear sites, which makes Wesleyville attractive once more. https://lnkd.in/g7RWvXcr.

Protecting sites like Wesleyville & like the now-defunct coal stations, which remain transmission-connected with access to cooling water, is crucial. Five decades on, Wesleyville is still clearly a prime location for low-carbon power generation. #NuclearEnergy

Constellation Energy plans to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant and will sell the power to Microsoft, demonstrating the immense energy needs of the tech sector as they build out data centers to support artificial intelligence. Constellation expects the Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pennsylvania, to come back online in 2028, subject to approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the company announced Friday. Constellation also plans to apply to extend the plant’s operations to at least 2054. Constellation stock jumped about 15% in trading. Shares have more than doubled year to date. Microsoft will purchase electricity from the plant in a 20-year agreement to match the energy its data centers consume with carbon-free power. Constellation described the agreement with Microsoft as the largest power purchase agreement that the nuclear plant operator has ever signed. “The decision here is the most powerful symbol of the rebirth of nuclear power as a clean and reliable energy resource,” Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez told investors on a call Friday morning. Unit 1 ceased operations in 2019 as nuclear power struggled struggled to compete economically with cheap natural gas and renewables. It is separate from the reactor that partially melted down in 1979 in the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. Constellation will rename the plant the Crane Clean Energy Center. The plant is named after Chris Crane, who was CEO of Constellation’s former parent company and passed away in April. Constellation will invest $1.6 billion in restarting the plant through 2028, including on nuclear fuel, Chief Financial Officer Dan Eggers told investors during the call. Electricity demand from data centers is expected to surge in the coming decades as the tech sector ramps up AI, threatening to strain the electric grid. While estimates vary, Goldman Sachs has forecast data centers will consume 8% of total U.S. electricity demand by 2030, compared with 3% currently. Power demand is also surging from the expansion of domestic manufacturing and the adoption of electric vehicles. Rystad Energy has forecast that data center and electric vehicles alone will add 290 terawatt hours of electricity demand by the end of the decade, equivalent to the entire consumption of the nation of Turkey. There is growing bipartisan support from the federal and state governments to revive the nuclear industry after a decade-long wave of reactor shutdowns. Three Mile Island would be the second nuclear plant to restart operations in U.S. history. The Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan would be the first, with that plant expected to return to service at the end of 2025.

Is Nuclear Power in America Reviving - or Flailing?: Last week America's energy secretary cheered the startup of a fourth nuclear reactor at a Georgia power plant, calling it "the largest producer of clean energy, and the largest producer of electricity in the United States" after a third reactor was started up there in December. From the U.S. Energy Department's transcript of the speech: Each year, Units 3 and 4 are going to produce enough clean power to power 1 million homes and businesses, enough energy to power roughly 1 in 4 homes in Georgia. Preventing 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution annually. That, by the way, is like planting more than 165 million trees every year! And that's not to mention the historic investments that [electric utility] Southern has made on the safety front, to ensure this facility meets — and exceeds — the highest operating standards in the world.... To reach our goal of net zero by 2050, we have to at least triple our current nuclear capacity in this country. That means we've got to add 200 more gigawatts by 2050. Okay, two down, 198 to go! In building [Unit] 4, we've solved our greatest design challenges. We've stood up entire supply chains.... And so it's time to cash in on our investments by building more. More of these facilities. The Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office stands ready to help, with hundreds of billions of dollars in what we call Title 17 loans... Since the President signed the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, companies across the nation have announced 29 new or expanded nuclear facilities — across 16 states — representing about 1,600 potential new jobs. And the majority of those projects will expand the domestic uranium production and fuel fabrication, strengthening these critical supply chains... Bottom line is, in short, we are determined to build a world-class nuclear industry in the United States, and we're putting our money where our mouth is. America's Energy Secretary told the Washington Post that "Whether it happens through small modular reactors, or AP1000s, or maybe another design out there worthy of consideration, we want to see nuclear built." The Post notes the Energy department gave a $1.5 billion loan to restart a Michigan power plant which was decommissioned in 2022. "It would mark the first time a shuttered U.S. nuclear plant has been reactivated." "But in this country with 54 nuclear plants across 28 states, restarting existing reactors and delaying their closure is a lot less complicated than building new ones." When the final [Georgia] reactor went online at the end of April, the expansion was seven years behind schedule and nearly $20 billion over budget. It ultimately cost more than twice as much as promised, with ratepayers footing much of the bill through surcharges and rate hikes... Administration officials say the country has no choice but to make nuclear power a workable option again. The country is fast r