Wylfa backers ready for quick restart on nuclear power plant

Backers of the £20bn Wylfa Newydd nuclear power plant on Anglesey are poised to restart work, as “detailed conversations” get underway with government. Horizon Nuclear Power chief executive Duncan Hawthorne has revealed that conversations with government about a new funding mechanism are ongoing. Enabling work at the site was suspended in January 2019 after Hitachi, …

Tianwan 5 achieves grid connection

Unit 5 of the Tianwan nuclear power plant in China’s Jiangsu province has been connected to the grid for the first time. The 1080 MWe domestically-designed ACPR1000 pressurised water reactor achieved the milestone at 19:52 local time on 8 August, China National Nuclear Corporation announced today. The unit, which achieved first criticality on 27 July, …

Geiger Counter – Hot stuff

 Hot stuff The covid-19 pandemic has heavily impacted global uranium production, taking around 20% of global capacity offline. This has exacerbated the supply deficit, leading to users running down inventories at an even faster rate. The net effect has been a rising uranium price (up 32% so far in 2020), but the managers of Geiger …

Safe Start-up of Unit 1 of Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant Successfully Achieved

The Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) today announced that its operating and maintenance subsidiary, Nawah Energy Company (Nawah) has successfully started up Unit 1 of the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant, located in the Al Dhafrah Region of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). This step is the most historic milestone to date in the delivery …

Gujarat Kakrapar-3 Atomic Power Plant: The significance of KAPP-3

KAPP-3, which attained criticality on Wednesday morning, is India’s first 700 MWe unit, and the biggest indigenously developed variant of the Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor. The third unit of the Kakrapar Atomic Power Project (KAPP-3) in Gujarat achieved its ‘first criticality’ — a term that signifies the initiation of a controlled but sustained nuclear fission reaction — …

One more unit at Kakrapar achieves criticality, ready to produce atomic power

The third unit of Kakrapar Atomic Power Plant (KAPP) in Gujarat is ready to generate electricity, with the 700 MWe reactor achieving ‘criticality. A nuclear reactor reaches ‘criticality’, when it is ready for ongoing nuclear reaction or fission that generates energy. “Congratulations to our nuclear scientists for achieving criticality of Kakrapar Atomic Power Plant-3! This …

Fuel Loading Starts at Power Unit 2 of Leningrad NPP-2

The first of 163 nuclear fuel assemblies has been loaded into the VVER-1200 reactor of power unit 2 of Leningrad NPP-2. Fuel loading marks the beginning of the physical start-up of an NPP. The plant is operated by ROSATOM’s Electric Power Division Rosenergoatom. Rosenergoatom‘s Director General Andrei Petrov said: “Beginning physical start-up procedures means that …