A bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by the US Senate this week includes, amongst other things, provisions for investment in advanced nuclear reactor demonstration projects. The bill would also include investment in research hubs for next generation technologies such as carbon capture and clean hydrogen.

Nuclear power can be part of a broader portfolio alongside deploying other sustainable low- or zero-carbon technologies to decarbonise the global energy system and energy intensive industries, according to a new technology brief from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. The publication highlights nuclear power as an important source of low-carbon energy that can contribute to attaining carbon neutrality and for policy-makers who wish to meet climate and sustainable development objectives using nuclear power should provide positive, long-term policy signals for new nuclear development.

Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting global warming to about 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach, according to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The new IPCC Working Group I report assesses the physical science basis of climate change and is the first instalment of the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report, which will be completed next year.

Federal-level legislation will come too late to save the Byron and Dresden power plants from early retirement this autumn, Exelon CEO Chris Crane has said. The company is still hopeful that aid at the state level will save the plants. A group of Illinois legislators has called for the state's General Assembly to reconvene as soon as possible to vote on the provisions.

Exelon Generation yesterday announced the filing of Post Shutdown Decommissioning Activity Reports for its Byron and Dresden plants, due to shut later this year, with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. PSDARs set out long-term site restoration plans for the stations after they shut down, and their filing is one of the final regulatory steps before plant closure.
 

A new study published yesterday by the New Nuclear Watch Institute finds that the "supposed dependency concerns" associated with the host-vendor relationship in the nuclear energy sector are "historically and practically unfounded". The report - Energy Security in the Age of Net-Zero Ambitions and the System Value of Nuclear Power - focuses on the issue of energy security and the important contributions that nuclear power can make towards maintaining and strengthening it as energy systems decarbonise, both along the various transition pathways that energy systems have started upon and at their eventual low-carbon endpoint.

The UK government today published a Call for Evidence that sets out its suggested approach to building the first advanced modular reactor demonstrator. This will specifically explore high temperature gas reactors as the most promising model for the demonstration programme, which ministers are investing GBP170 million (USD237 million) into delivering by the early 2030s.

Taiwan Power Company has submitted an application to the Atomic Energy Council to shut down the two-unit Maanshan nuclear power plant. Under Taiwan's nuclear phase-out policy, its power reactors will be decommissioned as their 40-year operating licences expire. The phase-out will be completed with the closure of Maanshan unit 2 in 2025.

Nuclear energy must be included in a delegated act of the European taxonomy, 18 trade unions in the energy sector from 10 European Union countries have told Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. In a joint letter, the unions called for "a dialogue with the purpose of nuclear energy to play its full potential and build an economically efficient and socially just carbon-free Europe by 2050".

One-third of Italians are in favour of reconsidering the use of nuclear energy in the country, according to the results of a public opinion poll conducted on behalf of Comitato Nucleare e Ragione. More than half of respondents said they would not exclude the future use of new advanced nuclear technologies.

The deployment of microreactors in the short-to-medium term could support energy markets not available to large nuclear plants, but some significant challenges must be overcome for them to capture new market shares. In the longer term, they will be able to contribute to decarbonisation efforts. These are amongst the findings of a recently published technical report from the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory.

Carbon dioxide emissions from the USA's 100 largest power producers fell 10% between 2019 and 2020, according to the latest in a series of benchmarking studies dating back to 1997. Nuclear accounted for over half of the zero-carbon resources which together generated about 38% of US electricity in 2020.