Ontario’s Darlington SMR project to cost nearly $21-billion, significantly higher than expected.
Matthew McClearn, May 8, 2025
The Ontario government approved Ontario Power Generation’s plan to spend $7.7-billion to construct the first small modular reactor in a G7 country – a price far greater than independent observers deem necessary to spark widespread adoption.
On Thursday, the government announced its wholly-owned utility can spend $6.1-billion to build the first BWRX-300 reactor adjacent to OPG’s existing Darlington Nuclear Generating Station. In addition, it can spend another $1.6-billion on common infrastructure such as administrative buildings and cooling water tunnels the new reactor will share with three additional BWRX-300s to be built later.
Those remaining units are expected to cost substantially less: all told, the 1,200-megawatt plant‘s estimated cost is $20.9-billion, expressed in 2024 dollars and including interest charges and contingencies.
Those costs are far higher than what independent observers argue are necessary for widespread adoption of SMRs. For comparison, a recently-completed 377-megawatt natural gas-fired power station in Saskatchewan cost $825-million.
High costs, overruns and delays contributed to the decline of nuclear power in advanced economies such as the U.S., France and Canada, all former leaders in reactor construction. The global reactor fleet‘s collective generating capacity has been largely flat since the 1990s, around the same time Canada’s newest reactor (Darlington Unit 4) was built. Most reactors under construction today are of Chinese and Russian design. Only one reactor is currently under construction in the Western hemisphere, and two in Western Europe, according to Mycle Schneider Consulting.
OPG’s project, known as the Darlington New Nuclear Project, is being watched closely by utilities around the world. The BWRX-300 is a candidate for proposed projects in the U.S., U.K., Poland, Estonia and elsewhere.
Thursday’s announcement marks a significant milestone for major capital projects. Proposals and memorandums of understanding for nuclear power plants abound, but very few advance to this stage.
Construction was scheduled to wrap up in 2028, but OPG has pushed that back by one year. It attributed the delay to a construction licence the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission granted in April, later than expected; the scheduled months between breaking ground and completion remain unchanged.
OPG’s costs are several times greater than Wilmington, N.C.-based GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy originally promised. Early in the BWRX-300’s development, GE Hitachi emphasized it was designing to achieve a specific cost: US$700-million per reactor, or US$2.25-million per megawatt, low enough to compete with natural gas.
OPG said the government is not funding the project: the utility will pay for it using its own funds, including cash on hand, cash flow from generating stations and debt.
Ontarians will pay OPG back over time through their electricity bills.
Officials estimated the average cost of power from the four reactors at 14.9 cents per kilowatt hour, contingent on the federal government providing investment tax credits.
The IESO said an alternative would be to build between 5,600 and 8,900 megawatts of wind and solar generators supported by batteries. Their capacity would need to be far greater, it reasoned, to account for the intermittent nature of wind and sunlight, and they would also require far more new transmission infrastructure. The IESO estimated the costs for all that at between 13.5 and 18.4 cents per kilowatt hour. Building the BWRX-300, the IESO concluded, is the lower-risk option.
Clean Prosperity, a Canadian climate policy think tank, said in a report last year that the final construction cost of the first BWRX-300 will be influential in determining how many other utilities will be interested in building their own. A cost of $3-billion, or $10.16-million per megawatt, would encourage rapid adoption of SMRs – a level some countries have achieved.
“Russia, India, South Korea and Japan have had average construction costs of $3.4-million to $4.6-million per megawatt since 2000,” the report said.
“In contrast, France and the U.S. built reactors for $12.5-million and $17.5-million per megawatt, respectively, over the same time frame.”
In a January report, the International Energy Agency said costs must come down; SMRs need to reach US$4.5-million per megawatt by 2040 to enjoy rapid uptake, far less than OPG’s estimated costs.
OPG said it‘s confident it will stick to its schedule and budget. The utility pointed to its ongoing $12.8-billion refurbishment of Darlington’s existing four reactors, a complex project it said remains on schedule and on-budget and is scheduled to wrap up next year. But if overruns do occur on the Darlington SMR, OPG and its partners (which include GE Hitachi, architect/engineer AtkinsRéalis and constructor Aecon) will share those costs.
The utility added that 80 per cent of its spending on the project will go to Ontario companies; just 5 per cent goes to U.S. companies, primarily GE Hitachi for its design and development work.
Last fall, the Ford government passed legislation dubbed the Affordable Energy Act, which committed to prioritizing nuclear power to meet future increases in electricity demand. The province plans up to 4,800 megawatts of new nuclear capacity at the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station, and as much as 10,000 megawatts at Wesleyville, a proposed new OPG station in Port Hope.
Google agrees to fund the development of three new nuclear sites
Nuclear developer Elementl Power said Wednesday it’s signed an agreement
with Google. to develop three sites for advanced reactors. It’s the
latest example of tech giants teaming up with the nuclear industry in an
effort to meet the vast energy needs of data centers. Google will commit
early-stage development capital to the three projects, although the exact
terms of the deal remain private. Each site will generate at least 600
megawatts of power capacity, and Google will have the option to buy the
power once the sites are up and running. The proposed locations remain
private, but Elementl said Google’s funding will be used for things like
site permitting, securing interconnection rights to the transmission
system, contract negotiations and other early-stage matters.
CNBC 7th May 2025, https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/07/google-agrees-to-fund-the-development-of-three-new-nuclear-sites.html
Ontario signs up for a huge financial and security risk
Ontario Clean Air Alliance 9 May 25
1 Yesterday the Ford Government announced it is rolling the dice on building four untested, first-of-their-kind nuclear reactors at the Darlington Nuclear Station.
It’s an expensive and risky roll. The government claims these four reactors will cost $20.9 billion and will take 10 years to build. A much more realistic cost estimate based on real-world experience says these reactors will cost at least $27 billion.
Of course, these American-designed reactors will also depend on enriched uranium imports from the United States. So much for sending Donald Trump a message and protecting Canada’s national security.
Today we released a report which compares the costs of these never-before-built reactors with much lower cost, safer and more climate effective options such as solar and wind power.
It finds that power from these new nuclear reactors will cost up to 8 times more than power from onshore wind turbines; almost 6 times more than power from solar farms; and up to 2.7 times more than Great Lakes offshore wind power.
That’s according to the highly respected Energy Futures Group, not the nuclear insiders the government is depending on for its estimates. While they used data from Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), the Energy Futures Group made realistic estimates about the capital costs of new reactors and their performance based on real-world data that the IESO chose to pass over in favour of assumptions with little grounding in reality.
Why would we spend many, many times more for power from risky reactors rather than doing what the rest of the world is doing and fully develop low-cost renewable power? Remember, Ontario has not contracted for a single kilowatt-hour of new wind and solar electricity during that last 7 years while use of solar, in particular, has skyrocketed in much of the rest of the world.
The Ford Government doesn’t want to talk about the real costs and alternatives to its nuclear fantasy plans. But we can’t afford to live in a fantasy world, especially now. We need to get real about the best way to control energy costs and to protect our province. Splashing out on unproven nuclear reactors is not a good choice when we can save billions with reliable, already available and proven renewable options.
See our report for all the fine print on the Energy Futures Group’s calculations. Then tell the Ford Government that it’s time to get real and invest in our lowest cost power options, not expensive nuclear pipe dreams.
EDF seeks joint financing for UK projects
April 30, 2025, https://www.neimagazine.com/news/edf-seeks-joint-financing-for-uk-projects/?cf-view&cf-closed
DF is seeking to consolidate financing for the Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C NPPs under construction in the UK. French Energy Minister Marc Ferracci told the Financial Times that they should be treated as one financial venture in negotiations. He said he had discussed the issue with UK Energy Minister Ed Miliband on the sidelines of a conference in London.
“France and EDF are very committed to deliver the projects but we have to find a way to accelerate them, and we have to find a way to consolidate the financial schemes of both projects,” he said.
Both projects started out with equity stakes from Chinese state-owned nuclear development corporations but the UK government cancelled the arrangements because of “security issues”. The UK government partly replaced the funding and is seeking support from institutional investors.
Ferracci denied that the French government intended to use Sizewell as “leverage” against the financial troubles at Hinkley. “It is not a discussion about leverage, it is a discussion between friends and allies. . . So there is a way through, and I hope we will be able to find it in the next few months.”
He also called for a global solution that would result in a deal that benefitted EDF’s returns across both schemes. “It is a good approach to have a global approach to our relationship,” Ferracci said, adding more “grid connections between France and the UK” could come into the negotiations.
Meanwhile, workers at the Hinkley Point C NPP construction site are complaining about a significant rat infestation, raising health and safety concerns. In early April, the Unite and GMB trade unions at Hinkley Point C told EDF that the facility was overrun with rats. The unions said immediate action was needed as the rodents were “everywhere”. In recent months, workers have also complained about poor working conditions and low pay. In addition, hundreds of project staff went on strike in November over the inadequate security access to the site.
Kingston Fossil Plant and Oakridge Nuclear Facility – an unholy alliance of radioactive pollution,
While no one was killed by the 2008 coal ash spill itself, dozens of workers have died from illnesses that emerged during or after the cleanup. Hundreds of other workers are sick from respiratory, cardiac, neurological, and blood disorders, as well as cancers.
The apparent mixing of fossil fuel and nuclear waste streams underscores the long relationship between the Kingston and Oak Ridge facilities.
Between the 1950s and 1980s, so much cesium-137 and mercury was released into the Clinch from Oak Ridge that the Department of Energy, or DOE, said that the river and its feeder stream “served as pipelines for contaminants.” Yet TVA and its contractors, with the blessing of both state and federal regulators, classified all 4 million tons of material they recovered from the Emory as “non-hazardous.”
A U.S. Environmental Protection Agency analysis confirms that the ash that was left in the river was “found to be commingled with contamination from the Department of Energy (DOE) Oak Ridge Reservation site.
For nearly a century, both Oak Ridge and TVA treated their waste with less care than most families treat household garbage. It was often dumped into unlined, and sometimes unmarked, pits that continue to leak into waterways. For decades, Oak Ridge served as the Southeast’s burial ground for nuclear waste. It was stored within watersheds and floodplains that fed the Clinch River. But exactly where and how this waste was buried has been notoriously hard to track.
A Legacy of Contamination, How the Kingston coal ash spill unearthed a nuclear nightmare, Grist By Austyn Gaffney on Dec 
15, 2020 This story was published in partnership with the Daily Yonder.
In 2009, App Thacker was hired to run a dredge along the Emory River in eastern Tennessee. Picture an
industrialized fleet modeled after Huck Finn’s raft: Nicknamed Adelyn, Kylee, and Shirley, the blue, flat-bottomed boats used mechanical arms called cutterheads to dig up riverbeds and siphon the excavated sediment into shoreline canals. The largest dredge, a two-story behemoth called the Sandpiper, had pipes wide enough to swallow a push lawnmower. Smaller dredges like Thacker’s scuttled behind it, scooping up excess muck like fish skimming a whale’s corpse. They all had the same directive: Remove the thick grey sludge that clogged the Emory.
The sludge was coal ash, the waste leftover when coal is burned to generate electricity. Twelve years ago this month, more than a billion gallons of wet ash burst from a holding pond monitored by the region’s major utility, the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA. Thacker, a heavy machinery operator with Knoxville’s 917 union, became one of hundreds of people that TVA contractors hired to clean up the spill. For about four years, Thacker spent every afternoon driving 35 miles from his home to arrive in time for his 5 p.m. shift, just as the makeshift overhead lights illuminating the canals of ash flicked on.
Dredging at night was hard work. The pump inside the dredge clogged repeatedly, so Thacker took off his shirt and entered water up to his armpits to remove rocks, tree limbs, tires, and other debris, sometimes in below-freezing temperatures. Soon, ringworm-like sores crested along his arms, interwoven with his fading red and blue tattoos. Thacker’s supervisors gave him a cream for the skin lesions, and he began wearing long black cow-birthing gloves while he unclogged pumps. While Thacker knew that the water was contaminated — that was the point of the dredging — he felt relatively safe. After all, TVA was one of the oldest and most respected employers in the state, with a sterling reputation for worker safety.
Then, one night, the dredging stopped.
Sometime between December 2009 and January 2010, roughly halfway through the final, 500-foot-wide section of the Emory designated for cleanup, operators turned off the pumps that sucked the ash from the river. For a multi-billion dollar remediation project, this order was unprecedented. The dredges had been operating 24/7 in an effort to clean up the disaster area as quickly as possible, removing roughly 3,000 cubic yards of material — almost enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool — each day. But official reports from TVA show that the dredging of the Emory encountered unusually high levels of contamination: Sediment samples showed that mercury levels were three times higher in the river than they were in coal ash from the holding pond that caused the disaster.
Then there was the nuclear waste. Continue reading
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts US nuclear weapons will cost nearly a trillion dollars over the coming decade.
Greg Mello, Los Alamos Study Group, 30 Apr 25
Albuquerque, NM — Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest biennial estimate of the costs of nuclear weapons over the coming decade (2025-2034).
CBO’s nuclear weapons cost estimates are built from the budget projections of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), as well as CBO’s own estimates of likely cost increases for these programs over the period in question, based on CBO’s historical records for comparable programs.
CBO estimates that nuclear weapons will cost a total of $946 billion (B) over the coming decade, an average of about $95 B per year. This is $190 B (25%) higher than CBO’s estimate from two years ago.
Albuquerque, NM — Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest biennial estimate of the costs of nuclear weapons over the coming decade (2025-2034).
CBO’s nuclear weapons cost estimates are built from the budget projections of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), as well as CBO’s own estimates of likely cost increases for these programs over the period in question, based on CBO’s historical records for comparable programs.
CBO estimates that nuclear weapons will cost a total of $946 billion (B) over the coming decade, an average of about $95 B per year. This is $190 B (25%) higher than CBO’s estimate from two years ago.
In the case of the Sentinel silo-based missile system, CBO’s estimates explicitly “do not include all of the cost growth that the program is likely to experience” (pp. 6-7). In other words, CBO knows its estimate is too low but cannot provide a defensible better one, because it would only be a guess at this point. In other words, neither DoD nor CBO have any real idea what Sentinel will cost.
Many nuclear weapons-related costs, such as DOE environmental cleanup, are not included.
The report breaks down its findings in several ways, all clearly presented. Year-by-year estimates are not provided.
CBO’s findings include these items of particular interest regarding NNSA:
- NNSA’s facility modernization plans are likely to cost $72 B over the coming decade, out of a total of $110 B that NNSA will spend on facilities over this period (p. 5). NNSA’s facilities will thus cost much more than the $16 B earmarked for “stockpile services” (NNSA’s part in maintaining existing weapons), or the $67 B to be spent on “other stewardship and support activities” (p. 4).
- “CBO projects that the costs of nuclear acquisition programs would represent 11.8 percent of DoD’s total planned acquisition costs over the next decade as outlined in the 2025 budget submission…Competition for funding among
acquisition programs will force DoD to make difficult choices about which programs to pursue.” (pp. 5-6). - NNSA’s projected total 10-year costs have increased by 27% over just the past two years. Some 85% ($45 B / $83 B) of these costs are not associated with any particular warhead but are rather expenses associated with NNSA’s capabilities overall (p. 10). CBO believes NNSA’s programs will cost an extra $11 B over the decade beyond NNSA’s projections, a little more than $1 B per year.
- Regarding NNSA’s cost increase, “[a]bout 60 percent of the total increase comes from higher expected costs for operation and modernization of infrastructure, including establishing and operating new pit production facilities, secondary production facilities, tritium production facilities, and domestic uranium enrichment facilities. About 30 percent comes from support programs, such as scientific research to improve the weapon production and sustainment process, and federal employee oversight of contractors operating laboratories.” The balance of the NNSA increase comes from new programs and projects, leading to higher annual spending in the 2032-2034 years than in 2023-2024 years, which are now in the rear-view mirror.
- “CBO’s estimates come with substantial uncertainty stemming mainly from two sources: Future plans may not be achievable, leading to cost growth and delays; and the costs of developing, producing, and operating weapon systems are uncertain even when the plans are fully determined” (p. 8).
Study Group director Greg Mello:
“As CBO notes, most nuclear weapons costs are incurred by modernizing the arsenal and its production facilities, not by deploying and maintaining existing weapons.
“NNSA insists that its entire growing portfolio of projects and programs is necessary. There is no distinction between “needs” and “wants.” NNSA also believes, and has said, it is no longer “cost-constrained” [NNSA: “Evolving the Nuclear Security Enterprise,” Sep 2022, p. 3]. Under these assumptions, NNSA’s costs are certain to continue growing rapidly. If the present growth rate continues, NNSA’s warhead budget will double in less than 8 years.
“There is one high-dollar NNSA infrastructure program that is not generic to all warheads but rather needed solely for just one, namely pit production at LANL. LANL pit production is explicitly directed to the W87-1 warhead for the Sentinel missile and is unlikely to be sustainable beyond the needs of that program, if indeed it can be established at all. The jury is still out on whether LANL pit production will be possible, or stable and if so, for how long.
“NNSA will not be able to operate two pit facilities, even if it can set one up at LANL. Once the pit facility at the Savannah River Site begins production, every budget hawk on Capitol Hill and the Pentagon will eye LANL’s gerry-rigged pit program for closure, assuming it operates at all.
“As CBO notes, there will be increased competition for defense dollars as nuclear weapons programs grow. The huge expenses tallied in this report were not anticipated at the outset of the nuclear modernization program. Since 2015, and with every report, estimated nuclear weapons costs have increased beyond prior predictions, from $348 B in 2015 to $946 B today. The opportunity costs are staggering.
“CBO devotes two big text boxes to the troubled Sentinel program — why they can’t estimate its cost, etc. The buzzards are circling. The coming year will bring more revelations about Sentinel and they won’t be good. The White House and Congress should pull the plug on Sentinel now, however difficult that would be.
“In every report since 2015, CBO has revised its estimate of future cost overruns. This year’s prediction will also be too low, especially for Sentinel and NNSA.
“The problems faced by nuclear weapons programs cannot all be fixed by pouring in more money. There are very real material and human limitations involved. There will be no return to the ‘heroic mode of production’ for nuclear weapons. Even if Congress dumped $100 or $200 billion more on nuclear weapons, the system that produces them would not ‘jump to the task’ for years, if at all. The people, the skills, the facilities, the motivation — none of these are in place for a nuclear arms race, especially if the U.S. is going to build its manufacturing back and repair its sorry civilian infrastructure. The neocons who want to ramp up nuclear production are ignorant about what that would really entail. They are going to be sorely disappointed.
“Practical problems aside, ‘peace through strength’ is a mistaken idea in this place and time, especially as regards nuclear weapons. No thoughtful strategy supports the proliferation of US nuclear weapons. Quite the contrary — present policies are driven by organized greed and fear. US nuclear weapons policies, and as we see here their costs, are out of control.”
Scrapping Britain’s nuclear power plans would lead to lower energy bills
Letters, John French, and Dr David Lowry 29 Apr 25, https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/apr/28/scrapping-britains-nuclear-power-plans-would-lead-to-lower-energy-bills
You report that experts have warned that adding levies to electricity bills to support low-carbon projects will make it more difficult for people to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels (Why the UK’s electricity costs are so high – and what can be done about it, 20 April).
One way to reduce those levies dramatically would be to scrap all planned nuclear power stations. These include the crazily expensive Sizewell C, which has already received nearly 2.5bn in subsidies before it has even started construction and which will cost the bill payer dear, even without the inevitable huge cost overruns that the French-state-owned EDF always incurs (think Flamanville and Hinkley C); and the four, possibly six, new reactors to be built on a flood plain on the River Severn at Oldbury in Gloucestershire.
Scrapping Britain’s nuclear power plans would lead to lower energy bills
New nuclear power stations will cost billions to build and run, and cost taxpayers and energy customers dear, says John French. Plus a letter from Dr David LowryTue 29 Apr 2025 01.52 AESTShare
You report that experts have warned that adding levies to electricity bills to support low-carbon projects will make it more difficult for people to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels (Why the UK’s electricity costs are so high – and what can be done about it, 20 April).
One way to reduce those levies dramatically would be to scrap all planned nuclear power stations. These include the crazily expensive Sizewell C, which has already received nearly 2.5bn in subsidies before it has even started construction and which will cost the bill payer dear, even without the inevitable huge cost overruns that the French-state-owned EDF always incurs (think Flamanville and Hinkley C); and the four, possibly six, new reactors to be built on a flood plain on the River Severn at Oldbury in Gloucestershire.
These latter reactors are still at an early design stage, will have to go through years of safety approval before construction can start, and, being of an uncertain and novel design, will end up costing the bill payer a fortune in subsidies. And then there’s the unquantifiable cost of decommissioning and trying to deal with the highly radioactive waste.
The energy minister, Ed Miliband, has publicly expressed doubts in the past about the wisdom of subsidising nuclear power at the expense of renewables. Now is the time for him to scrap all plans for this unaffordable and dangerous way to boil water, and invest in renewables, including tidal power.
John French
Stand (Severnside Together Against Nuclear Development)
Your report says that “by generating more electricity from renewable energy and nuclear reactors, electricity costs would begin to fall”. All reliable recent studies demonstrate this is so for renewables, but not so for nuclear, if the full costs of uranium mining, milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication, radioactive waste management and nuclear facility decommissioning are taken into account.
To illustrate this, a very recent report from the US Department of Energy projects to final clean-up costs of Hanford, the US equivalent of Sellafield, but bigger, is an extraordinary $589bn. These huge sums need to be factored into nuclear power’s costs to give the real price of power from splitting the atom.
Dr David Lowry
Co-author, The International Politics of Nuclear Waste
EDF’s new UK plants should be negotiated as one, French energy minister says.
EDF’s two UK nuclear construction projects at Hinkley Point and Sizewell
should be negotiated as a single financial venture, France’s energy
minister has urged, to prevent the French energy giant shouldering
significant cost overruns.
Marc Ferracci said he had held discussions on
the projects with Britain’s energy minister Ed Miliband on Thursday, on
the sidelines of an energy security summit in London. “France and EDF are
very committed to deliver the projects but we have to find a way to
accelerate them and we have to find a way to consolidate the financial
schemes of both projects,” Ferracci told the FT.
France has been lobbying
the UK government to help EDF with the finances of Hinkley Point C in
Somerset for more than a year. It argues that the French state-owned
electricity operator should not be left on the hook for cost overruns that
have taken the total bill to as high as £46bn. EDF — which has also
experienced long delays on other projects using the same reactor technology
in Finland and France — has warned that the first of two reactors at
Hinkley Point C could be delayed to as late as 2031, which would be six
years later than its original target.
The French company has a smaller
equity stake in the Sizewell C project in Suffolk, which it is also
developing. Ferracci denied that the French government was seeking to use
Sizewell as “leverage” to help bail it out of financial difficulties at
Hinkley.
FT 25th April 2025,
https://www.ft.com/content/0c50a553-3376-42d8-8ac5-c8aa84d2e78d
Nuclear Free Local Authorities sign letter asking leading banks to back our planet not the bomb!
The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities have endorsed an Open Letter
calling on five major banks to divest from nuclear weapons. The letter was
drafted by activists at Medact as the next action in their Don’t Bank on
the Bomb UK campaign. Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest and Standard
Chartered have provided $30.5 billion to the nuclear weapons industry. For
the survival of humanity and the planet, the elimination of nuclear weapons
and prevention of their use is an urgent priority. This letter calls on the
five banks to stop choosing profit over people and end financing nuclear
weapons.
NFLA 22nd April 2025, https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/nflas-sign-letter-asking-leading-banks-to-back-our-planet-not-the-bomb/
Framatome awarded backup power and remote sensing Sizewell C contract
Framatome has been awarded a contract to provide conventional field
instrumentation (CFI) and emergency backup power generation capacity to
Sizewell C. The company is 80.5% owned by EDF – a French state-owned
company, which is the minority owner of Sizewell C. The remaining 19.5% of
Framatome is owned by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The UK Government is
currently the majority owner of Sizewell C, which has sunk £6.4bn of
taxpayer cash into the project. Sizewell C has not yet achieved a final
investment decision (FID), which is a requirement before main construction
can take place. Framatome will be supplying “ultimate diesel
generators” which will be “controlled by Framatome’s digital control
systems”, according to a statement from the company. Ultimate diesel
generators provide emergency backup power capacity to nuclear power
stations in the event that grid power becomes unavailable.
New Civil Engineer 22nd April 2025
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/framatome-awarded-backup-power-and-remote-sensing-sizewell-c-contract-22-04-2025/
DOE Releases More Funding to Reopen Palisades Nuclear Plant
Energy Secretary Chris Wright on April 22 announced the release of a third
loan disbursement to Holtec for the reopening of the Palisades Nuclear
Plant in southwest Michigan. Today’s action releases $46,709,358 of the
up to $1.52-billion loan guarantee to Holtec for the Palisades project.
The 800-MW Palisades plant, located in Covert Township, was closed in 2022.
Holtec bought the power station from Entergy that year, with intent to
decommission the facility, before deciding instead to restart the plant.
Palisades at present would be the first U.S. nuclear power plant to restart
after being closed.
The plant still needs licensing approvals from the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Opponents of restarting the nuclear power plant have said they will appeal a recent decision by a three-judge panel of the NRC’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, which refused to grant a hearing on the merits for seven safety-related contentions brought by a coalition that includes Beyond Nuclear, a nonprofit group. Beyond Nuclear and other groups have argued the plant should not be restarted.
Powermag 22nd April 2025,
https://www.powermag.com/doe-releases-more-funding-to-reopen-palisades-nuclear-plant/
Sam Altman steps down as chair of nuclear power supplier Oklo to avoid conflict of interest.
The modular reactor company he funded and led is in
talks to deliver energy to OpenAI. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman is
stepping down as chair of Oklo to avoid a conflict of interest ahead of
talks between his company and the nuclear start-up on an energy supply
agreement, as the race to power artificial intelligence intensifies.
Altman, who was an early-stage investor in Oklo, will step down immediately
and be replaced by Jacob DeWitte, the group’s CEO and co-founder. The
move comes as the AI industry strives to procure high-wattage, low-carbon
energy supplies. Although it may be years before tech companies can benefit
from nuclear power, the launch of DeepSeek, the less energy-intensive
Chinese large language model competitor, has underscored the urgency for
western companies such as OpenAI to compete.
Oklo has yet to enter into any firm partnerships or receive approval for any of its designs from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US.
FT 22nd April 2025,
https://www.ft.com/content/a511bae0-d19f-4ebd-9520-69d3f89d8556
Navy’s nuclear submarine hiring crisis as sailors forced to spend record 204 days underwater
By MARY O’CONNOR, 20 April 2025
Naval experts have sounded the alarm over a recruitment crisis plaguing
Britain’s submarine fleet. The Royal Navy is struggling to hire and hold on
to sailors manning the Trident nuclear deterrent, resulting in shortages of
engineers and other critical roles. Sailors are quitting amid a raft of
challenges, including maintaining ageing boats. There are increasingly long
patrols underwater, with sailors cut off from contact with loved ones for
months.
Daily Mail 19th April 2025,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14628517/sailors-forced-spend-record-days-underwater.html
Framatome and Sizewell C sign contract for EPR reactor instrumentation.
Framatome and Sizewell C have signed a contract for the supply,
qualification, and pre-assembly of conventional instrumentation for the EPR
reactors under construction at Sizewell, strengthening their collaboration
on this large-scale project.
Energy News 18th April 2025,
https://energynews.pro/en/framatome-and-sizewell-c-sign-contract-for-epr-reactor-instrumentation/
India Aims to Lure Foreign Nuclear Power Providers With Eased Liability Laws
Oil Price, By Tsvetana Paraskova – Apr 18, 2025,
India plans to remove an unlimited liability clause in its nuclear energy laws in a bid to attract foreign firms, especially U.S. companies, to its nuclear energy sector.
The Indian Department of Atomic Energy has prepared a bill that would remove a clause in the Civil Nuclear Liability Damage Act of 2010 that exposes suppliers to unlimited liability if accidents occur, government sources told Reuters.
India plans a major expansion to its nuclear energy capacity in the coming decades as a pillar of reliable zero-carbon electricity to meet surging power demand.
By capping the liability for suppliers of nuclear reactors, India seeks to attract foreign companies to an industry expected to become key to the country’s energy transition……………………………………..
ndia’s largest power utility, NTPC, plans to invest over the next two decades $62 billion in building 30 GW of nuclear generation capacity, sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters earlier this year.
NTPC is also reportedly looking to hire consultants for feasibility studies for small modular reactors that could potentially replace some of the utility’s old coal-fired power plants…………….. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/India-Aims-to-Lure-Foreign-Nuclear-Power-Providers-With-Eased-Liability-Laws.html
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