The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is holding an in-person open house on Thursday, May 15, to discuss the 2024 safety performance of the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia.

Some people are born leaders, and some people make themselves leaders. Take Natalie Cannon, a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the Department of Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has been driven to succeed since she was a teenager in Southern California, when she was inspired by NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.

Wright

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright testified before a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies, on May 7, to answer questions about the DOE budget and priorities for fiscal year 2026.

Wright’s testimony: Wright said that the DOE was taking steps to accelerate innovation in commercial nuclear development. “In the past 100 days, DOE has issued two disbursements to support the reopening of Michigan’s Palisades nuclear energy plant. We allocated high-assay low-enriched uranium material to five U.S. advanced nuclear reactor developers to boost domestic reactor deployment.”

He added that it was imperative for the nation to strengthen its nuclear future and that he would take immediate action to accelerate the deployment of small modular reactors.

Ur-Energy Inc. has secured approval from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality’s Land Quality Division to construct and operate up to six additional mine units at its Lost Creek in situ uranium mine in south-central Wyoming. With that late April approval in hand, “we await only final concurrence and approval of the related aquifer exemption from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” the company said. That approval was granted just three days later, on May 1, but Ur-Energy doesn’t plan to expand Lost Creek for “several years.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has concluded—with an assist from a Department of Energy environmental assessment released in February—that no environmental impact statement is needed for an exemption request from TerraPower that would allow the company to begin construction of the energy island of its planned Natrium sodium fast reactor in Kemmerer, Wyo. The NRC’s EA and finding of no significant impact (EA/FONSI), published on May 7, could clear the way for significant construction to begin while the NRC continues to review TerraPower’s construction permit application.

Ontario Power Generation GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy announced May 8 that Ontario authorities have approved construction plans for the first of four BWRX-300 small modular reactors at the Darlington New Nuclear Project site on Lake Ontario, less than 50 miles east of Toronto, Canada. The first new nuclear construction project in Ontario in more than three decades is also the first SMR construction project in North America.

Global Laser Enrichment has commenced uranium enrichment demonstration testing at its test loop pilot facility at the company’s headquarters in Wilmington, N.C. The technology readiness level-6 testing program is expected to be a pivotal validation of large-scale enrichment performance under operationally relevant conditions, according to the company.

Elementl Power Inc. is a “technology agnostic” nuclear project developer looking to bring more than 10 gigawatts of new nuclear power on line in the United States by 2035, and Google wants to see more baseload nuclear power supplying its data centers. The two companies announced May 7 that they have signed a strategic agreement to “pre-position” three project sites for advanced nuclear energy.

SHINE Technologies, a fusion company building what is set to be the world’s largest medical isotope production facility at its Wisconsin campus, announced that it has agreed to acquire the single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) business from Lantheus, a radiopharmaceutical-focused company based in Massachusetts.

Kairos Power announced this morning that safety-related nuclear construction has begun at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., site where the company is building its Hermes low-power test reactor. Hermes, a scaled demonstration of Kairos Power’s fluoride salt–cooled, high-temperature reactor technology, became the first non–light water reactor to receive a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 2023. The company broke ground at the site in July 2024.

Workers with Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management contractor Isotek have surpassed a significant milestone in the supply of medical radioisotopes, extracting more than 15 grams of rare thorium-229 through the Department of Energy’s Thorium Express Project.

As part of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s engagement with the next generation of nuclear energy scholarship, Director General William Magwood IV and Deputy Director General Nobuhiro Muroya hosted students earlier this year from Tokyo Metropolitan Toyama High School.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week shared a portion of the construction permit application from the Tennessee Valley Authority to build a small modular reactor at the Clinch River nuclear site in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

In anticipation of TVA’s filing, NRC staff scheduled two public meetings in Oak Ridge for today, to discuss the agency’s process for licensing nuclear power plants.

Excitement around fusion has only grown this year since the French magnetic confinement fusion tokamak known as WEST maintained a plasma for 1,337 seconds in February, toppling the 1,006-second record set by China’s EAST a few weeks prior. Investment, legislation, and new research are riding this new surge of attention, but fusion development has a long history.

President Donald Trump released his discretionary budget request Friday, stirring up questions from nuclear advocates about how the federal funding earmarked for domestic energy would fare.

Garrish

A veteran nuclear leader with more than four decades of experience testified before a U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday as part of the nomination process to become the next NE-1, the Department of Energy’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy.

Theodore “Ted” Garrish appeared before the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources to answer questions about how he would approach the position—which he last held from 1987 to 1989, during the Ronald Reagan administration.

Garrish told the committee he has dedicated his career to energy—especially nuclear energy—and has worked mostly in public service positions, including posts in the DOE and Office of International Affairs.

The committee will advance Garrish’s nomination to the full U.S. Senate for a final vote, but no timeline was laid out.

A disruption in Spain’s energy grid around 12:30 p.m. local time on April 28 left tens of millions of people without power—and put Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in the hot seat to provide answers.

International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Mariano Grossi recently traveled to Washington, D.C., for the first time since Trump took office in January. In his three-day visit to the capital, Grossi spoke with key nuclear leaders from around the world and in the federal government, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair David Wright, on topics including nuclear power, safety, security, funding, and nonproliferation.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management said that crews with the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) and its cleanup contractor UCOR are preparing to demolish another deteriorating Manhattan Project–era building at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Amy Whitley has been selected by the American Nuclear Society and American Society of Mechanical Engineers to receive the 2025 ANS/ASME Barry Sloane Memorial Scholarship. The scholarship, which was established in 2024 to recognize an undergraduate student pursuing a degree in mechanical or nuclear engineering, honors contributions of the late Barry Sloane, a past member of the ANS/ASME Joint Committee on Nuclear Risk Management (JCNRM).