The question “What about the waste?” is typically thrown out by the antinuclear crowd as an attempt to bog down the discussion of nuclear development. However, with renewed interest in nuclear power—and new advanced reactors in particular—what to do about used nuclear fuel is coming to the fore as a question that needs resolving.
Deep geologic repository progress—2025 Update
Editor's note: This article has was originally published in November 2023. It has been updated with new information as of June 2025.Outside my office, there is a display case filled with rock...
ORNL, INL make deals on AI for nuclear licensing
The United States has tight new deadlines—18 months, max—for licensing commercial reactor designs. The Department of Energy is marshaling the nuclear expertise and high-performance...
Data centers planned at four DOE sites
At the end of his July 15 speech at the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, President Trump promised that “a lot more [was] going to be announced in the coming week” for...
Savannah River Site could produce 3.1 MT of HALEU as downblending plan okayed
From 2003 to 2011, staff at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site downblended high-enriched uranium in the site’s H Canyon, producing over 300 metric tons (MT) of low-enriched...
Trump expels all but one member of nuclear waste oversight board
The Trump administration has dismissed seven of the (formerly) eight board members of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, the independent federal agency tasked with evaluating the...
Argonne’s Aurora sets the stage for AI and nuclear energy executive summit
Leaders from private companies, government, and national laboratories gathered at Argonne National Laboratory on July 17 and 18 for an exclusive AI x Nuclear Energy Executive Summit that the...
New model simulates radionuclide migration in geologic disposal systems
Researchers with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working with scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Orléans, have modeled radionuclide...
Bahrain signs a nuclear collaboration MOU with the U.S.
Less than a week after news broke of the U.S. entering into civil nuclear talks with Malaysia, the U.S. State Department announced that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Bahrain’s Minister...
Test reactor fuel fabrication will be fast-tracked by DOE under new pilot program
The Department of Energy has announced a program to accelerate nuclear fuel fabrication for new test reactors. The Fuel Line Pilot Program would see the DOE approve facilities developed by...
INL to use Microsoft’s AI to streamline nuclear licensing
The Idaho National Laboratory has announced that it will collaborate with Microsoft on the use of artificial intelligence technologies to streamline the nuclear permitting and licensing...
