A group of nine former nuclear regulatory commissioners sent a letter Wednesday to the current Nuclear Regulatory Commission members lending support to efforts to get rid of mandatory hearings in the licensing process, which should speed up the process by three to six months and save millions of dollars.

At COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, a clear consensus emerged: Nuclear energy must be a cornerstone of the global clean energy transition. With electricity demand projected to soar as we decarbonize not just power but also industry, transport, and heat, the case for new nuclear is compelling. More than 20 countries committed to tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy forecasts that the country’s current nuclear capacity could more than triple, adding 200 GW of new nuclear to the existing 95 GW by mid-century.

The Department of Energy announced on June 5 that three companies—all of which are new to the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) voucher program—will receive vouchers to support their research on advanced fuels, materials, and sensors. The second round fiscal year 2025 vouchers will let the companies access specialized research facilities and expertise in the DOE’s national laboratory complex.

NuScale Power Corporation has opened another Energy Exploration (E2) Center—this one at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. Just last month, a NuScale E2 Center opened at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, S.C. The newest E2 at George Mason is the company’s 11th center.

Gierszewski

In late 2024, Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization announced the selection of a site in northwestern Ontario for its deep geological repository for the country’s used nuclear fuel.

This is a major step in a plan that was first laid out in 2010. From the beginning, the plan had been clear that any selected site must be technically safe, must be accessible for fuel transportation, and must have informed and willing host communities.

By 2020, potential sites had been narrowed from an initial set of 22 communities that had indicated interest in learning more down to two specific sites.

My primary involvement was on the technical safety side. We wanted to know that we could safely build and operate the repository at the chosen site.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting a special inspection at Constellation’s Quad Cities nuclear plant to review two events caused by battery issues. Neither event had any impact on public health or plant workers.

Hu

Argonne National Laboratory has added a new twist to digital twin technology for research into nuclear energy. According to Rui Hu, a principal nuclear engineer at Argonne, “Our digital twin technology introduces a significant step toward understanding and managing advanced nuclear reactors, enabling us to predict and respond to changes with the required speed and accuracy.”

The research of Hu and his colleagues, “Development of Whole System Digital Twins for Advanced Reactors: Leveraging Graph Neural Networks and SAM Simulations,” was published in the American Nuclear Society journal Nuclear Technology.

Virtual representation: A digital twin technology is an accurate virtual representation of a complex system. It is updated with real-time data from sensors applied to the physical system, such as a nuclear reactor.

The Bonneville Power Administration recently approved a $700 million extended uprate project for Energy Northwest to increase its nuclear plant electrical output by 186 MW by 2031.

Europe’s largest nuclear power plant has just one remaining power line for essential nuclear safety and security functions, compared with its original 10 functional lines before the military conflict with Russia, warned Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Uranium futures rose to $71.90 per pound on June 2, according to online analysis firm Trading Economics. That price was near its highest level since early February—in contrast to an 18-month low in prices reached in mid-March.