What’s been happening?

It has certainly been a busy week for the nuclear sector!  There has been a host of positive news on the SMR front, the usual barrage of good policy news that we are growing accustomed to - and even some intrigue amongst uranium juniors.

Brandon’s stand-out SMR news (amongst a very full competitive field) was the Joint Development agreement between US utility Energy Northwest and X-Energy for up to 12 Xe-100 SMRs. This is an upgrade from the April 2021 announcement of 4 Xe-100 modules at Energy Northwest’s Columbia NPP site. The first SMR is expected online by 2030. 

The IEA released its 2023 Electricity Market Report

We have talked many times about the impact of power volatility on consumers. Now the IEA is bragging about it!   

Uranium Energy Corp (UEC) announced it has completed the steps required in their plan for a resumption of operations, enabling a faster restart at the Christensen Ranch in-situ recovery (ISR) Project in Wyoming.

Unfortunately for Peninsula Energy, UEC’s Christensen Ranch project need to free up that faster production from UEC’s Irigaray processing plant, which had been a vital part of Peninsula’s stage 1 restart of its Lance project.  

Peninsula announced a day later that it has delayed production at their Lance Projects in Wyoming because UEC has terminated their Resin processing agreement. Peninsula described the news as “disappointing” but is highlighting the silver lining – ie accelerating plans for in-house resin processing by going directly to stage 2 of the Lance restart.

Winner of the week 

Poland, for getting on with the job of developing nuclear power to replace its coal fired power base. Poland & South Korea sign 6 MoUs related to nuclear power generation, including 2 MoUs signed between Doosan Enerbility and Polish companies on the construction of new nuclear power plants in Poland.

Ministry of Climate and Environment has approved Polish copper and silver producer, KGHM Polska Miedź SA's plan to construct a power plant based on NuScale Power's small modular reactor (SMR).

Polish state-owned development bank, BGK, announced it will lend €500 million to help finance the building of small nuclear reactors.

Bungle of the week

New York State’s independent grid operator, ‘New York ISO’ has officially identified a shortfall of electric generating capacity for New York City in 2025 of 446MW – more if the city has another heatwave.  What a shame they turned off 2GW of emissions free nuclear power from the Indian Point nuclear power plant.  Even the three new gas fired power plants built to generate 1.8GW to replace Indian Point won’t be enough

Question of the week

What's the significance of the Paladin Energy announcement to retain 75% interest in Michelin JV in Labrador?

Tweet of the week

https://twitter.com/JohnLeePettim13/status/1681312834091896832?s=20

Moonshots & Fizzers

This week ‘Great British Nuclear’ (GBN) was launched, a new organisation backed by the UK government, to boost UK energy security, reduce dependence on volatile fossil fuel imports and deliver government priority to grow the economy. GBN kickstarted with a competition for game-changing small modular reactor (SMR) technology, which could result in billions of pounds of public and private sector investment in SMR projects. The aim is to have the first SMR up and running by 2030. By 2050 GBN wants to see nuclear providing a quarter of the UK’s electricity.