The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. It has also been known as Site W and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, the site was home to the Hanford Engineer Works and B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first atomic bomb, which was tested in the Trinity nuclear test, and in the Fat Man bomb used in the bombing of Nagasaki.
The Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) is a particular design of pebble bed reactor developed by South African company PBMR (Pty) Ltd from 1994 until 2009. PBMR facilities include gas turbine and heat transfer labs at the Potchefstroom Campus of North-West University, and at Pelindaba, a high pressure and temperature helium test rig, as well as a prototype fuel fabrication plant. A planned test reactor at Koeberg Nuclear Power Station was not built.
Darlington Nuclear Generating Station is a Canadian nuclear power station located on the north shore of Lake Ontario in Clarington, Ontario. It is a large nuclear facility comprising four CANDU nuclear reactors with a total output of 3,512 MWe when all units are online. It is Canada's second-largest nuclear power plant and provides about 20 percent of Ontario's electricity needs, enough to serve a city of two million people. It is named for the Township of Darlington, the name of the municipality in which it is located at the time of its planning.
The Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant is an electricity-generating facility located in Red Wing, Minnesota, along the Mississippi River, and adjacent to the Prairie Island Indian Community reservation.
Columbia Generating Station is a nuclear commercial energy facility located on the Hanford Site, 10 miles (16 km) north of Richland, Washington. It is owned and operated by Energy Northwest, a Washington state, not-for-profit joint operating agency. Licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1983, Columbia first produced electricity in May 1984, and entered commercial operation in December 1984.
Generation IV reactors are nuclear reactor design technologies that are envisioned as successors of generation III reactors. The Generation IV International Forum (GIF) - an international organization that coordinates the development of generation IV reactors - specifically selected six reactor technologies as candidates for generation IV reactors. The designs target improved safety, sustainability, efficiency, and cost. The first commercial Gen IV plants are not expected before 2040–2050, although the World Nuclear Association in 2015 suggested that some might enter commercial operation before 2030.
Hartlepool nuclear power station is a nuclear power station situated on the northern bank of the mouth of the River Tees, 2.5 mi south of Hartlepool in County Durham, North East England. The station has a net electrical output of 1,185 megawatts, which is 2% of Great Britain's peak electricity demand of 60 GW. Electricity is produced through the use of two advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGR). Hartlepool was only the third nuclear power station in the United Kingdom to use AGR technology. It was also the first nuclear power station to be built close to a major urban area.
In the United States, nuclear power is provided by 92 commercial reactors with a net capacity of 94.7 gigawatts (GW), with 61 pressurized water reactors and 31 boiling water reactors. In 2019, they produced a total of 809.41 terawatt-hours of electricity, which accounted for 20% of the nation's total electric energy generation. In 2018, nuclear comprised nearly 50 percent of US emission-free energy generation.
Energy Northwest is a public power joint operating agency in the northwest United States, formed 66 years ago in 1957 by Washington state law to produce at-cost power for Northwest utilities. Headquartered in the Tri-Cities at Richland, Washington, the WPPSS became commonly known as "Whoops!", due to over-commitment to nuclear power in the 1970s which brought about financial collapse and the second largest municipal bond default in U.S. history. WPPSS was renamed Energy Northwest in November 1998, and agency membership includes 28 public power utilities, including 23 of the state's 29 public utility districts.
Between 2007 and 2009, 13 companies applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for construction and operating licenses to build 31 new nuclear power reactors in the United States. However, the case for widespread nuclear plant construction has been hampered due to inexpensive natural gas, slow electricity demand growth in a weak US economy, lack of financing, and safety concerns following the Fukushima nuclear disaster at a plant built in the early 1970s which occurred in 2011.
Washington Nuclear Project Nos. 1 and 4, abbreviated as WNP-1 and WNP-4 were two of the five nuclear power plants on which construction was started by the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) in order to meet projected electricity demand in the Pacific Northwest. WNP-1, WNP-2 and WNP-3 were part of the original 1968 plan, with WNP-4 and WNP-5 added in the early 1970s.
Washington Nuclear Project Nos. 3 and 5, abbreviated as WNP-3 and WNP-5 were two of the five nuclear power plants on which construction was started by the Washington Public Power Supply System in order to meet projected electricity demand in the Pacific Northwest. WNP-1, WNP-2 and WNP-3 were part of the original 1968 plan, with WNP-4 and WNP-5 added in the early 1970s.
NuScale Power Corporation is a publicly traded American company that designs and markets small modular reactors (SMRs). It is headquartered in Portland, Oregon. A 50 MWe version of the design was certified by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in January 2023. NuScale has agreements to build reactors in Idaho in 2029 and 2030.
TerraPower is an American nuclear reactor design and development engineering company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. TerraPower is developing a class of nuclear fast reactors termed traveling wave reactors (TWR).
Small modular reactors (SMRs) are a proposed class of nuclear fission reactors, smaller than conventional nuclear reactors, which can be built in one location, then shipped, commissioned, and operated at a separate site. The term SMR refers to the size, capacity and modular construction only, not to the reactor type and the nuclear process which is applied. Designs range from scaled down versions of existing designs to generation IV designs. Both thermal-neutron reactors and fast-neutron reactors have been proposed, along with molten salt and gas cooled reactor models.
X-energy is an American private nuclear reactor and fuel design engineering company. It is developing a Generation IV high-temperature gas-cooled pebble-bed nuclear reactor design. Since its founding in 2009, it has received various government grants and contracts, notably through the Department of Energy's (DOE) Advanced Reactor Concept Cooperative Agreement in 2016 and its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) in 2020.
Electricity in the Puget Sound region is a significant factor in people's lives, an enabler for the modern economy, and has a unique relationship with the region's environment.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to infrastructure of the U.S. state of Washington.
The BWRX-300 is a design for a small modular nuclear reactor proposed by GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH). The BWRX-300 would feature passive safety, in that neither external power nor operator action would be required to maintain a safe state, even in extreme circumstances.
