Who owns nuclear power plants

Society overall benefits from these public goods. Said another way, federal taxpayer support for the national security benefits associated with saving a nuclear power plant may make sense, whereas support from ratepayers in certain competitive markets does not. Investor Limitations. Private equity has cyclically gobbled up devalued assets during down markets, profiting when markets recover and assets become profitable.

The U. And, economically struggling nuclear plants might not lose money forever, especially if natural gas prices inch up perhaps as new pipeline capacity moves gas out of the Appalachian shales, and LNG exports expand. So, the taxpayer investment might eventually turn a profit. A Win for Shareholders. Plant owners could sell the assets, but still earn risk-contained revenues through contracts to operate the plants. Applications were due by 18 March This was the fourth open solicitation from the department's loan program office, alongside solicitations for projects for advanced fossil energy, renewable and efficient energy, and advanced technology vehicle manufacturing.

It told the NRC that it would submit a licensing application by , with prelicensing interactions with the agency set to begin in The company is reviewing four potential sites for a first commercial plant. The apparent nuclear subsidy was entirely due to a change in tax rules related to decommissioning, under the EPA. The purpose was to achieve better coordination of policy by putting previously disparate agencies and programs together into a single Cabinet-level department.

The Secretary of Energy reports to the President. The DOE's responsibilities include policy and funding for programs on nuclear energy, fossil fuels, hydropower and alternative sources of energy such as wind and solar power. The DOE also manages often through a private-sector operations contractor the government's 21 national laboratories, including the Idaho National Laboratory INL , which manages a major portion of the government's nuclear energy research.

The DOE sponsors more basic and applied research, including research done at universities or by industry, than any other government agency. In addition to the DOE's responsibilities for civilian nuclear energy, its National Nuclear Security Administration NNSA oversees the military application of nuclear energy, maintaining the country's weapons stockpile and managing the design, production and testing of nuclear weapons.

Most of the federal programs concerned with civilian use of nuclear energy are run by the DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy, including research and development of next-generation nuclear plants, advanced fuel cycle technology, funding for government-industry partnerships for construction of new reactors, and operations and funding for nuclear energy projects at national laboratories.

Budgets for these programs have generally grown in recent years as the US government has sought to meet the goals of energy independence, reduction of carbon emissions and meeting the future demand for electricity. However, under the Obama administration the total level of funding for the Office of Nuclear Energy has been reduced. The major increases in the DOE budget are in the areas of alternative energy sources, such as wind, solar and geothermal, and energy efficiency and conservation.

A national series of workshops on nuclear energy innovation held in March focused on nuclear energy concepts that are already conceived, but not matured. The test bed concept could range from fundamental research platforms where separate effects testing are performed to reduce technical risks for a developmental nuclear energy technology to a full scale reactor prototype commercialisation.

The core recommendations from the Nuclear Innovation Workshops were:. In February , the DOE announced the Nuclear Power programme e , a government-industry, cost-shared partnership to spur new construction of advanced current generation Generation III plants. The programme provided matching funds for the preparation of licence applications and encouraged the industry to make use of expedited licensing procedures, such as the combined construction and operating licence COL process in seeking approvals from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The initiative led to the formation of several utility-vendor consortia, formed to put together proposals to receive matching funds for advanced plant applications, and to the filing of 17 applications for licences under the COL process see Preparing for new build section in the information page on Nuclear Power in the USA and Nuclear Power in the USA Appendix 3: COL Applications.

For FY , the budget request was zero, on the basis that the programme had been successfully completed. While the broad outlines of US nuclear policy, on matters such as energy independence and controlling carbon emissions remain the same, each new administration brings shifts in policy. Much of the USA's applied research, as well as a significant amount of basic research, is conducted at DOE's 21 national laboratories. INEEL was established in as the National Reactor Testing Station and for many years had the largest concentration of nuclear reactors in the world — 52 different reactors were designed and tested there, including the first reactor to generate electricity from nuclear power in It also was developing spacecraft power systems for NASA.

All this work was under DOE auspices. INL also plays a major role with the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management in developing procedures for high-level waste disposal. Research funded by the DOE is also conducted at more than 70 universities throughout the country.

Employees at the national laboratories come from both the government and the private sector, with many engineers and scientists as well as administrators working under contract. It uses high-enriched uranium oxide—Al cermet fuel. Several of the DOE laboratory sites have legacy wastes requiring clean-up, and programs are in place to achieve this. At Savannah River, where five production reactors and associated facilities were built in the s, the Defense Waste Processing Facility has vitrified tonnes of high-level radioactive waste sludges over into borosilicate glass and filled stainless steel canisters, of expected to be required.

These are destined for the national high-level waste repository. In the Salt Waste Processing Facility SWPF commenced operation treating million litres of radioactive salt waste — the main liquid waste at the site — over ten years. The concentrated HLW will be vitrified at the main plant. All the Savannah River waste is from defence-related spent fuel reprocessing activities that were conducted throughout the Cold War.

The Nuclear Energy Research Initiative NERI was launched in at a time of renewed concern over meeting the nation's long-term energy needs and increased awareness of the role of nuclear power as part of the energy mix.

In , the President asked his Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology to examine the current national energy portfolio and make recommendations that would address the energy needs over the next century.

A key recommendation was for a concerted research and development effort to overcome barriers to the expansion of nuclear energy capacity, such as capital costs, nuclear waste disposal and the risks of nuclear weapons proliferation.

In response to this recommendation, NERI was established in to fund research at the national laboratories, universities and industry facilities.

The development of new fuel cycle technology has been a goal of DOE since its inception, but funding has grown significantly in recent years, driven by the need to manage high-level waste, avoid the production of separated civilian plutonium, recover the energy value of spent fuel, and develop fuel cycles for next generation nuclear plants.

AFCI research and development efforts include technologies to separate the elements left in used fuel mainly the UREX processes and to transmute the most troublesome components of used fuel such as plutonium and minor actinides into material that is less hazardous for disposal or can be recycled as fuel for fast reactors. The DOE supports research on five next generation reactors: the thermal neutron, gas cooled very high temperature reactor VHTR ; the super-critical water cooled reactor SCWR ; the gas-cooled fast neutron reactor GFR ; the lead-cooled fast neutron reactor LFR ; and the sodium-cooled fast neutron reactor.

VHTR reactors would be capable of producing both electricity and hydrogen on a large scale, but would not have the same capability as fast reactors to burn recycled nuclear fuel. For this purpose, the NGNP Industry Alliance, which includes major reactor vendors and potential end users, was established in No actual long-term agreement on a public-private partnership with the DOE was ever reached.

In February the NGNP Industry Alliance said it had selected an Areva reactor concept "as the optimum design for next generation nuclear plants" that would provide both electricity and process heat. An earlier, higher-temperature direct cycle version of this design was known as Antares. The Industry Alliance also said it was "targeting for submittal of a Construction Permit application" for such a plant and that Entergy "has assumed the role of applicant".

Both groups aim to enable commercialization of HTR technology, and say they are setting targets to build and demonstrate installations in energy-intensive industries over the next ten years. They have said that they are to work on an MoU covering areas including the development of a joint vision, business plan and roadmap, establishing an international licensing framework, and supporting joint research beneficial to worldwide commercialization of their units.

INL was working closely with the industry to identify the opportunities and potential market for the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor technology in the industrial and transportation sectors. Primary interest is in providing co-generated process heat and electricity to large industrial energy end-users, including coal to synthetic oil, as well as producing hydrogen by high-temperature steam electrolysis not thermochemically.

Activities included examining the integration of modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor plants with chemical and other industrial processes, and evaluating the economics for such applications. However, economics is not the primary consideration, since the proposed energy applications involve industrial processes which have specific needs in terms of acceptable heat transport fluids and the associated thermodynamic conditions. Construction would commence from for start-up in Some regulatory changes would be needed to cope with the innovative design and reactor's likely location on industrial sites, along with different procedures for used fuel.

The ARDP will concentrate resources on designs that are "affordable" to build and operate. The programme would also extend to risk reduction for future demonstrations, and include support under the Advanced Reactor Concepts pathway for innovative and diverse designs with the potential to be commercial in the mids.

Key criteria for selecting applicants included innovative reactor design and a credible management team able to supply the required match in resources and deliver the projects within seven years. In April X-energy signed an agreement with Energy Northwest and a public utility to set up the Tri Energy Partnership with a view to building an Xe plant near the Columbia nuclear power plant in Washington state.

In June TerraPower announced plans to build a demonstration Natrium unit in Wyoming at a retired coal plant site. It plans to submit a construction permit application in and an operating licence application in Bechtel joined the TerraPower-GEH consortium in October to provide design, licensing, procurement and construction services to the project.

After the DOE considered about 18 reactor and non-reactor concepts for fast-neutron testing capability, in November the Idaho National Laboratory awarded a subcontract to GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy to support the development of the proposed fast spectrum VTR that was "critical for the development of innovative nuclear fuels, materials, instrumentation and sensors.

The VTR is designed to operate for 60 years and will support an ongoing nuclear energy technology transition, not just the first few advanced reactor demonstrations. They would be supported by the Energy Northwest utility consortium. The only other fast research reactor operating is the BN in Russia, to be replaced after by the MBIR multi-purpose fast neutron research reactor. Bechtel is also working on the project.

The DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy hoped to demonstrate the commercial-scale production of hydrogen using heat from a nuclear energy system by The National Renewable Energy Laboratory NREL has investigated the economic potential of two tightly-coupled nuclear-renewable hybrid energy systems producing hydrogen: high-temperature electrolysis HTE integrated via both thermal and electrical energy; and low-temperature electrolysis LTE integrated via electrical energy only.

The DOE has also selected two teams to investigate the economic feasibility of producing hydrogen using power from existing reactors. A following phase will involve demonstration. One team led by GE Global Research will look at the alkaline electrolysis technique and another team led by Electric Transport Applications will pursue electrolysis using proton exchange membranes, based on a pilot plant in Arizona that produces m 3 per day of hydrogen. The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership GNEP initiative announced by the US government in proposed that the United States and other developed nations would move forward with proliferation-resistant recycling technologies and provide nuclear fuel to developing countries that promised not to engage in enrichment and reprocessing activities.

GNEP has attracted criticism, but has brought increased attention to the possibilities of reprocessing used fuel from commercial reactors, an issue once thought to be decided in the USA since being banned by the Carter administration in Northeastern Ontario. Northeastern Ontario contains 14 of our hydroelectric stations, including several we built or redeveloped through key partnerships with local Indigenous communities.

Northwestern Ontario. Northwestern Ontario hosts 11 of our hydroelectric stations as well as a former coal generating station that we converted to use biomass as fuel.

Southern Ontario. The golden horseshoe of Southern Ontario is home to key operations including our Darlington and Pickering nuclear stations, and our iconic Sir Adam Beck hydroelectric stations in Niagara Falls. Southwestern Ontario. Southwestern Ontario is host to our Western Waste Management Facility in Bruce County, as well as one hydroelectric station and our new solar facility on the site of the former Nanticoke coal station.

Other OPG sites. Careers Other Business Projects. OPG Careers Explore our latest job postings. Laurentis Energy Partners. It is currently the largest nuclear power station in Europe and the fifth largest in the world. The power station is located at Gravelines in Northern France and consists of six similar capacity PWR units commissioned between and The nuclear power facility, owned and operated by the French electric utility company Electricite De France EDF , created a benchmark in August by delivering its 1, billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.

The plant is spread across ha on the waterfront of the English Channel and uses water from the Channel for the cooling. Construction of the nuclear power station began in The first two units of the plant were connected to grid in The third and fourth units were commissioned in The power plant is owned and operated by EDF.

The net capacity of the plant is 5,MW, which is similar to that of Paluel NPP, the seventh largest nuclear power plant in the world. Construction of the plant started in and commercial operations began in April