Directly purchasing uranium by establishing a uranium reserve, ending the Department of Energy's bartering of uranium and re-evaluating DOE's excess uranium inventory management policy are among the US Nuclear Fuel Working Group's recommendations to the US Administration in a strategy it published yesterday on reviving the USA's nuclear fuel cycle.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has to date granted work hour exemptions to seven nuclear power plants giving licensees flexibility to manage personnel resources to maintain plant operational safety and security during a period when facility staffing may be reduced due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Restart activities at BWX Technologies Inc's TRISO fuel manufacturing facility in Lynchburg, Virginia are progressing ahead of schedule, the company said yesterday. It has completed the demonstration of the fuel kernel sintering process and plans to bring two additional furnaces online to meet projected production demand before restart activities are complete.

US-based Climate Coalition is urging New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to suspend the closure of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, due to take place later this month. Closing the plant now will add unnecessarily to New York City's vulnerability as state resources are stretched dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, the group says.

COVID-19-induced reductions in electricity pricing and energy demand from the shuttered US economy could be especially problematic for merchant baseload generators including nuclear, according to an assessment by the Brattle Group. Electricity loads across most of the USA fell during February and March, but less than half of this decline is likely attributable to COVID-19, the report finds.

Entergy's Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York State would remain protected in the unlikely event that a newly-installed 42-inch natural gas transmission pipeline that runs near it ruptures, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has concluded. However, it said Entergy should revisit the assumptions it made in its analysis.

The Tennessee Valley Authority is to collaborate with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville to evaluate the development of a new generation of advanced nuclear reactors at TVA's Clinch River site. TVA has an early site permit from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission for two or more small modular reactors at the site but has not yet taken a decision to build.

Electricity generation is vital in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but scheduled refuelling and maintenance outages at nuclear power plants around the world must still go ahead. Operators are introducing risk-minimising procedures so outages that have been planned years in advance can proceed, while some are being prompted to rethink or extend scheduled outages.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and related government responses could disrupt or delay construction, testing, supervisory and support activities at the Vogtle 3 and 4 construction project, but it is too early to say what those effects will be, Southern Company has told the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Russia's Rosatom is looking into the possibility of returning part of the Russian personnel from overseas nuclear power plant construction sites.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the transfer of the licence for Crystal River 3 from Duke Energy Florida to Accelerated Decommissioning Partners LLC subsidiary ADP CR3. The transfer will enable ADP CR3 to carry out active decommissioning of the former nuclear power plant.

The containment vessel top head for Georgia Power's Vogtle unit 4 has been lifted into place, marking the completion of all major lifts inside the containment vessels for Vogtle 3 and 4. The project to build two AP1000 reactors at the site near Waynesboro, Georgia is now about 84% complete.

Five US National Laboratories will play a key role in a consortium tasked with harnessing the power of supercomputers to combat COVID-19, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said in a video address yesterday. The supercomputing facilities at the Department of Energy's national laboratories are used, amongst other things, to carry out research supporting the development of next-stage nuclear reactors and advanced nuclear fuel. President Donald Trump announced the launch of the consortium, which includes the Argonne, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Sandia labs, on 23 March.