Subject: Susquehanna Steam Electric Station. Units 1 and 2 - Fixed Fee Caps for Ongoing Licensing Actions (EPID L-2026-LLA-0061) ADAMS Accession No.: ML26281A398 |
Friday, October 9, 2026
Susquehanna Steam Electric Station. Units 1 and 2 - Fixed Fee Caps for Ongoing Licensing Actions (EPID L-2026-LLA-0061)
Wednesday, October 7, 2026
Google, Constellation reach 11-unit uprate plan; Constellation to invest $4.3 billion
POWER & OPERATIONS
Google, Constellation reach 11-unit uprate plan; Constellation to invest $4.3 billion
The Limerick plant in Pottstown, Pa. (Photo: Constellation)
Google has signed a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Constellation to support adding 890 MW of new nuclear capacity to 11 reactors across the PJM Interconnection region, including in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
The announcement Tuesday is the latest in a growing number of deals involving utility companies, tech giants, and nuclear power generation. It is the second announcement in about a week involving Constellation, as the utility recently entered a long-term PPA with Amazon that will see its Calvert Cliffs power plant in Maryland get a 190-MWe uprate. Google, meanwhile, is involved with a number of nuclear projects, including a partnership with Southern Nuclear’s Georgia Power, announced in September, to uprate the Vogtle and Hatch plants.
Uprates incoming: Constellation will invest more than $4.3 billion in the 11 units as part of the PPA. This work will include modernizing and upgrading turbines, steam generators, and digital control systems. It has not been announced yet which Constellation-owned units are part of the PPA, but Constellation spokesman Paul Dempsey told Nuclear News the plants involved include Braidwood, Byron, LaSalle, and Quad Cities in Illinois; Limerick in Pennsylvania; and PSEG Nuclear’s Salem in New Jersey (Constellation owns 43 percent of Salem). A video Constellation posted on its Facebook page also named Braidwood as one of the selected facilities.
According to Constellation, the first uprate is “expected to be delivered by 2028.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s list of expected uprate applications has Constellation submitting multiple applications over the next few years, including one listed for the fourth quarter of 2028. The list, however, doesn’t contain any specific plant names or units for Constellation.
Both companies said the PPA aligns with the Trump administration’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge and the Department of Energy’s UPRISE program, and is intended to support energy growth by increasing the power output from existing nuclear facilities without passing costs on to customers.
“We’re committed to meeting our growth responsibly by actively investing in clean, reliable power that brings new capacity to our nation’s grids,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s global head of energy and power. “Our agreement with Constellation to fund nuclear reactor uprates will strengthen the PJM grid, which serves 67 million people, all while protecting energy affordability and supporting local union jobs.”
Other details: In addition to the nuclear PPA, the two companies entered into a separate 15-year energy supply agreement for 2,700 MW of power within the PJM region.
Under an expanded five-year technology agreement, the two companies also reached an agreement on Constellation’s use of Google’s cloud and artificial intelligence services, including Gemini Enterprise agentic workflows. The “AI for Energy” approach would shorten engineering and regulatory work on uprates, improve construction and operation performance, and better protect critical infrastructure, according to the announcement.
This agreement is expected to sustain roughly 4,400 existing jobs and create another 7,200 new construction jobs during the building period, Google and Constellation said.
“Preserving and expanding the output of the existing nuclear fleet and developing new clean generation is critical to meeting our nation’s growing energy needs while keeping costs affordable for homes and businesses,” Constellation President and CEO Joe Dominguez said in a statement. “This long-term clean energy collaboration with Google can serve as a model for how technology companies and the energy industry can work together to responsibly develop the digital economy and invest in our nation’s energy infrastructure in a way that delivers grid-wide benefits for all, funded by private entities.”
Solar and Batteries in Romania
Europe’s new renewable-energy champion is a surprise
Romania is leading the EU in combining solar power and batteries
Tuesday, October 6, 2026
WV drops bid for $50B federal Nuclear Innovation Campus | State Journal News | wvnews.com
West Virginia drops bid for $50B federal Nuclear Innovation Campus
- by Charles Young EDITOR
- 2 hrs ago
- 3 min to read
West Virginia has joined a U.S. Department of Energy initiative exploring nuclear energy development, building on recent state efforts to remove legal and regulatory barriers to nuclear power.
Morrisey
Screenshot
Quick take:
- West Virginia will not host a federal nuclear campus: The state Office of Energy said Sept. 30 it cannot execute the U.S. Department of Energy’s hosting agreement or fully commit to its requirements.
- The state had previously pursued the opportunity: West Virginia joined the DOE’s Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus initiative and submitted a broad proposal in April that included nuclear generation and manufacturing as well as fuel recycling and spent nuclear fuel storage.
- Morrisey opposed nuclear waste disposal: Gov. Patrick Morrisey has said West Virginia should pursue nuclear generation and manufacturing but “will not be a dumping ground for nuclear waste.”
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia will not host a federal Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus after state officials said they are unable to execute the required hosting agreement and fully commit to its requirements.
In a Sept. 30 letter to Marla Morales, acting deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, West Virginia Office of Energy Director Nicholas S. Preservati said the state cannot sign the agreement but remains committed to supporting President Donald Trump’s and Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s vision for a national nuclear renaissance.
Preservati also said West Virginia remains ready to support the DOE, the Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus initiative and future campus recipients.
The decision marks a change from earlier this year, when West Virginia joined Idaho, Tennessee, Utah, Oklahoma and Louisiana in pursuing participation in the federal initiative.
The DOE program is intended to support development across the nuclear fuel cycle. Proposed campuses could include fuel fabrication, enrichment, used nuclear fuel recycling, advanced reactors, power generation, research and advanced manufacturing.
DOE estimates have indicated an individual campus could attract up to $50 billion in capital investment and create nearly 25,000 jobs. Those figures represented the potential scale of an individual campus and were not projections for West Virginia.
As part of its earlier participation, the West Virginia Office of Energy submitted a 48-page response in April to a DOE request for information about establishing Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses.
The state’s response described a broad vision for a campus and said West Virginia had “maximum interest” in hosting one.
The proposal called for West Virginia to serve as “the nation’s central hub for nuclear fuel recycling, interim storage, and long-term materials stewardship.”
It included potential development of a consolidated interim storage facility for partially spent and spent nuclear fuel from active and decommissioned nuclear power plants. The proposal also discussed fuel recycling, materials recovery and potential long-term disposal options.
The April response identified four potential sites: the 1,000-acre Hobet site in Boone County; the 380-acre Century site and 508-acre Casto site in Jackson County; and the 407-acre Old Standard site in Jefferson County.
Additional potential locations were identified in Grant County, Mason County, the Kanawha Valley and the Ohio River Corridor.
The sites had not been fully vetted or qualified based on geological characteristics, according to the state’s response.
The broad scope of the proposal also differed from Morrisey’s public position on West Virginia’s nuclear strategy.
Morrisey has emphasized nuclear power generation and manufacturing as ways to attract investment and high-paying jobs while building on the state’s existing energy industries.
“We are pursuing nuclear generation and manufacturing to bring high-paying jobs to West Virginia,” Morrisey said.
At the same time, Morrisey has explicitly rejected using West Virginia as a site for nuclear waste disposal.
“But West Virginia will not be a dumping ground for nuclear waste. Period,” Morrisey said.
Morrisey had directed the Office of Energy to ensure sites identified in final applications were considered only for nuclear generation or manufacturing.
The DOE initiative does not require participating states to host every type of nuclear activity contemplated by the broader federal program. States pursuing campuses were expected to enter hosting agreements with the department as the process progressed.
West Virginia’s decision not to execute the agreement ends its pursuit of hosting a campus through the current process, while state officials said they will continue to support the broader federal initiative and future campus recipients.
West Virginia’s efforts to expand its nuclear industry followed changes in state law.
In 2022, the Legislature repealed restrictions dating to 1996 that had limited construction of nuclear power plants in West Virginia.
In 2024, lawmakers established a state radiation control framework and began the process of seeking an agreement with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Those changes did not authorize construction of a nuclear plant at any specific location.
West Virginia officials have previously pointed to the state’s existing energy infrastructure, industrial base and workforce as potential advantages for nuclear-related development.
The state’s decision to decline the federal hosting agreement does not preclude other nuclear development in West Virginia, including projects focused on nuclear generation or manufacturing.
Editor Charles Young can be reached at 304-626-1447 or cyoung@wvnews.com
Summary: Article on Palisades spent fuel assembly incident
Matheny, Keith, Nuclear regulators probe fuel assembly installation mishap at Palisades, Detroit Free Press, Sep 26, 2026. https://www.freep.com/story/
[“Built in the late 1960s, the Palisades nuclear power plant began commercial power generation at the end of 1971 and it operated for roughly 50 years until it permanently shut down in May 2022.” Holtec International is now attempting to make Palisades the first commercial reactor in the US to repower after permanent cessation.
On August 31, 2026, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued two notices of violation to Holtec for its Palisades restart work based on the findings of NRC inspectors that Holtec "‘failed to implement and maintain its radiation protection program for work activities with high alpha contamination levels,’ and ‘failed to monitor internal dose for individuals impacted by elevated airborne radioactivity in accordance with established procedures.’ Inspectors further found that ‘the issues with high alpha contamination levels and airborne radioactivity were not promptly raised to sufficient levels to initiate timely corrective actions to prevent repeated occurrences.’"
The NRC characterized the violations as Green-level findings because no regulatory dose limit was exceeded with workers despite the elevated levels of airborne radioactivity.
On August 31, 2026, Holtec issued a news release announcing that it had begun fuel-loading at Palisades. The press release said that refueling consisted of 204 fuel assemblies and included both new fuel and previously used fuel assemblies from the Palisades plant's final operating cycles prior to its shutdown in May 2022.
Apparently around the time it began the refueling process, a used fuel assembly tilted from its upright position after it had been placed, and the fuel-handling machine grapple was disengaged.
“A nuclear power plant's fuel assembly is a bundled structural matrix of ceramic uranium dioxide fuel pellets stacked inside long metal tubes, supported by a rigid framework. An assembly typically has 179 to 264 fuel rods, is 12 to 14 feet long and weighs between 700 and 1,750 pounds.”
“Neither the Palisades plant's owner, Camden, New Jersey-based Holtec, nor NRC officials released information to the public about the incident for weeks.”
Holtec finally mentioned the fuel rod assembly incident in one of several notices in a September 21, 2026 overview press release titled "Progress Report on Palisades’ March to Startup." Holtec said it has paused fuel loading activities while it seeks to determine the cause of the incident. The statement said: “‘Consistent with the plant’s nuclear quality assurance program, a root cause evaluation has been initiated to determine the cause of the event and identify any resulting corrective actions. In parallel, Holtec’s corporate engineering division has devised and is developing equipment for the fuel retrieval and on-site storage equipment to return the fuel to the spent fuel pool. Palisades is also preparing a License Amendment Request (LAR) for submission to the NRC related to the proposed methodology to retrieve the assembly.’"
In a Sept. 24 statement to the Free Press, NRC spokeswoman Viktoria Mitlyng said that the incident “‘did not meet reporting requirements to the NRC.’"
On September 26, 2026, in a news story headlined “Nuclear regulators probe fuel assembly installation mishap at Palisades”, the Detroit Free Press covered the incident and noted that Palisades’ refueling had been halted as Holtec seeks a license amendment from the NRC to retrieve the assembly from within the nuclear reactor vessel.
Edwin Lyman, a physicist and director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a leading nuclear energy watchdog, found the incident and lack of transparency disturbing: "‘I suspect that the rush to do things quickly is leading to mistakes − and you don't like to have too many mistakes when you're talking about a nuclear power plant’" he commented.
Lyman noted that the use of old spent fuel is an issue, “‘because once it's been irradiated there are fission products within the fuel, and if one of those fuel rods were to rupture, some of those gases could escape’". He added, “‘It's not as radioactive as spent fuel that's no longer usable and is waste. But it has more radioactivity than in an unradiated assembly. It will increase the challenge to recovery compared to if it was all unradiated fuel ... it will require very special precautions.’”
Lyman additionally called the August 31, 2026 NRC violation notices to Holtec "’very disturbing”" and that he does not put much stock in the NRC's assessment of the incident's low safety significance.
Referring to the agenda of the Trump administration to push ahead with nuclear development, Lyman reflected, “‘The NRC is now a tool of the White House political program, and that program is expanding nuclear power as fast as possible and getting rid of regulations that they saw as slowing it down.’”
President Trump’s Executive Order 14300 of May 23, 2025 ordering the reform of the NRC and directs "‘a deadline of no more than 18 months for final decision on an application to construct and operate a new reactor of any type, commencing with the first required step in the regulatory process, and (2) a deadline of no more than 1 year for final decision on an application to continue operating an existing reactor of any type, commencing with the first required step in the regulatory process.’"
One new rule proposed by the NRC, Lyman said, would reduce the scope of non-emergency events that have to be reported to either the NRC or the public in a timely fashion.
The recent incidents at Palisades, "‘illustrate that trying to speed things up, trying to reduce oversight to meet arbitrary timelines, is counterproductive in the end, because ultimately it only causes delays down the road or potentially even worse,’” Lyman said. “‘Nuclear power operation isn't something you can speed up and lower your guard on without expecting serious consequences.’"]
Michel Lee, Esq.
Chairman
Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy (CIECP)
Senior Analyst
Promoting Health and Sustainable Energy (PHASE)
Friday, October 2, 2026
NY lawmakers letter to PSC Re Gov. Hochul Administration push for nuclear expansion (Sep 24 2026)
LETTER
September 24, 2026
Kathy Hochul
Governor of New York State
Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12224
Rory M. Christian, Chair and CEO
Michelle L. Phillips, Secretary to the Commission
New York State Public Service Commission Empire State Plaza
Agency Building 3
Albany, New York 12223-1350
Doreen M. Harris
President and CEO
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority
RE: Proceeding on Motion of the Commission to Implement a Nuclear Reliability Backbone, Case Number 26-E-0335
Dear Governor Hochul, Chair Christian, President Harris, and Secretary Phillips:
We write to oppose the use of any taxpayer or ratepayer subsidies to support the construction of new nuclear power plants in New York, as proposed in the Advanced Nuclear Policy Options paper published on June 12th, 2026, by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the Department of Public Service1
Nuclear power is the most expensive form of new energy. The Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island cost roughly 85 times its original estimate and left Long Islanders with some of the highest utility bills in the country when most of the $6 billion cost of the facility was passed along to local ratepayers after it was decommissioned due to public backlash over safety concerns2. The Vogtle Plant Units 3 and 4 in Georgia are the most recent nuclear generators built in the United States, the first in 30 years. That 2GW facility took 15 years to build, 7 years longer than planned3, at a cost of $36.8 billion, more than double the original cost estimate of $14 billion4. The exorbitant cost of this new nuclear generation led to a nearly 25% rate increase for Georgia Power customers5. By comparison, over just the past four years the state of Texas has built 30GW of solar and 6GW of storage for roughly the same cost6.
If construction of new nuclear generation in New York follows anything like a similar path to the most recent precedent in the United States, it will not only lead to unacceptable cost burdens for ratepayers and taxpayers, but will also arrive over a decade later than needed to address current near-term generation capacity needs. As a recent analysis of the New York State Energy Plan by Dr. Joseph Romm of the University of Pennsylvania7 pointed out, at a time when data centers are the largest driver of new electricity demand, “ironically, new reactors are the only option that worsens the affordability problem but can’t be built fast enough to address the AI data center demand crisis.”8 The same analysis also finds that small modular reactors lead to even higher costs per unit of energy than large facilities like Vogtle, and that the cost to develop new reactors does not benefit from learning reductions, but has become more expensive, not less, as more generating capacity has been developed.
In addition to being very expensive and taking a very long time to build, nuclear power is toxic and dangerous, generating massive quantities of hazardous waste and radioactive pollution while threatening catastrophic accidents. 84 years after the world’s first nuclear reactor was built in the U.S., there is still no solution for safe long-term disposal of the intensely radioactive and long-lived nuclear waste that reactors produce. All that waste will remain a danger to New Yorkers, our environment, and our drinking water for many generations into the future.
The options for state financial support proposed in the Policy Options paper include adding enormous surcharges to utility bills, providing taxpayer-funded construction grants, investing public money directly into nuclear reactors, and using public money to provide cost-overrun guarantees. The Public Service Commission estimates that these subsidies could total $23.9 billion, which is very likely an underestimate based on the industry’s track record. These costs would be on top of the recently approved $33 billion ZEC subsidy program to keep New York’s four existing nuclear reactors operating through 2049. Any of these options would burden New Yorkers with higher electric bills while taking on the risk of paying for cost overruns that history suggests are highly probable.
New York taxpayers and ratepayers are not a bottomless ATM machine for the nuclear industry. The extraordinary subsidies the PSC has authorized for nuclear power vastly overshadow spending on far more affordable and rapidly deployable clean options.
Rather than devoting financial resources to environmentally destructive, expensive, and slow-to-build nuclear schemes, we should be investing in proven, affordable solutions like wind, solar, storage, thermal energy, energy efficiency, demand response, and any number of other technologies and policies that can meet our needs more quickly and at lower cost to ratepayers and taxpayers.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely
Liz Krueger
28th Senate District
Jo Anne Simon
52nd Assembly District
Jabari Brisport
25th Senate District
Cordell Cleare
30th Senate District
Leroy Comrie
14th Senate District
Kristen Gonzalez
59th Senate District
Robert Jackson
31st Senate District
Kevin Parker
21st Senate District
Roxanne J. Persaud
19th Senate District
Gustavo Rivera
33rd Senate District
Julia Salazar
18th Senate District
Jose M. Serrano
29th Senate District
Khaleel M. Anderson
31st Assembly District
Chris Burdick
93rd Assembly District
Catalina Cruz
39th Assembly District
Martiza Davila
53rd Assembly District
Manny De Los Santos
72nd Assembly District
Phara Souffrant Forrest
57th Assembly District
Emily Gallagher
50th Assembly District
Deborah J. Glick
66th Assembly District
Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas
34th Assembly District
Andrew Hevesi
28th Assembly District
Anna R. Kelles, PhD
125th Assembly District
Marcela Mitaynes
51st Assembly District
Steven Raga
30th Assembly District
Linda B. Rosenthal
67th Assembly District
Grace Lee
65th Assembly District
Dana Levenberg
95th Assembly District
Diana Moreno
36th Assembly District
Mary Jane Shimsky
92nd Assembly District
Sarahana Shrestha
103rd Assembly District
Phil Steck
110th Assembly District
Yudelka Tapia
86th Assembly District
Claire Valdez
37th Assembly District
Phil Ramos
6th Assembly District
FN 3
FN 4
FN 5
FN6
Ibid
FN7
FN8
GABI Brief - Project Power: A New U.S.–Korea Nuclear Partnership
The Korean APR 1400 appears to be a worthy partner to the U.S. nuclear industry - repeatedly overly optimistic schedule estimates combined with years of overruns.
The dates listed for each unit are the years in which first concrete placement was started. Six of the reactors are in Korea. The other four were built by the Koreans in the UAE.
Two main points stand out: (1) the actual schedules are much longer than the projected and (2) there doesn't appear to be much of a positive learning curve.
David
| ||||||||||||||
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
