Cesare Mencarini’s recent extended project qualification (EPQ) earned him an “A” for his studies in the United Kingdom—and became, it is believed, the first nuclear reactor built in a school environment.

Actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger recently criticized Germany for shutting down its remaining nuclear power plants last year. Speaking in June in his native Austria at the 2024 Austrian World Summit, a climate conference held in Vienna, Schwarzenegger noted the contradiction of the German government’s stated goal of cutting carbon emissions while simultaneously eliminating the clean-energy source of nuclear power.

Wald

“We’re going to have to do things differently if we hope to trim the output of climate-changing emissions,” writes Matthew L. Wald in an essay recently published by the Breakthrough Institute. Wald is an independent energy analyst, writer, and Nuclear News contributor who formerly worked for the Nuclear Energy Institute and the New York Times. In the essay, he says that despite optimism surrounding progress in clean energy, consumption of fossil fuels is growing, and greenhouse gas emissions are increasing.

Wald suggests that this situation is unlikely to turn around until small modular reactors and other advanced nuclear technologies are demonstrated to be commercially viable.

Race to zero emissions? Wald notes that “global consumption of fossil fuels grew 1.5 percent last year.” Furthermore, “the fossil mix is getting worse; oil was up even faster than total fossil consumption, and demand passed 100 million barrels a day for the first time.

The peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology today hold more promise to heal the world since Austrian Swedish physicist Lise Meitner and her colleagues discovered nuclear fission in 1938, said Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in a new essay titled “Nuclear Must Be Part of The Solution” published by the magazine Foreign Affairs.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is seeking qualified candidates for open positions on its Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has announced the opening of this year’s application process for its Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship Program (MSCFP), which is designed to “inspire and encourage young women to pursue a career in the nuclear field, by providing highly motivated female students with scholarships for master’s programs and an opportunity to pursue an internship facilitated by the IAEA,” according to the program description.

Jenifer Shafer, the associate director for technology at the Advanced Research Projects Agency­–Energy (ARPA-E), recently delivered a TEDx talk in which she explained the basic concepts of nuclear waste recycling, including related nonproliferation issues. As Shafer wrote in a post on LinkedIn, “In my talk, I explored the misconceptions surrounding nuclear waste and discuss[ed] the possible emerging opportunities regarding nuclear fuel recycling. It’s crucial that we understand the real potential of nuclear energy, and leveraging our ‘nuclear treasure,’ in shaping a sustainable future.”

A statistical analysis of the factors behind the 2021–22 energy crisis in Europe is the subject of the article “Patterns and correlations in European electricity prices,” published in the journal Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science. The study—conducted by researchers at the Institute for Energy and Climate Research at Forschungszentrum Jülich and the University of Cologne, both in Germany, and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences—describes reasons for the surge in energy prices that go beyond the commonly cited cause of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The recent article “How Innovative Is China in Nuclear Power?” published by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) describes how China has become the world’s leading proponent of nuclear energy. The reason, the article maintains, is because its nuclear industry has been “supported by a whole-of-government strategy that provides extensive financing and systemic coordination.”

Dutton

The only nuclear reactor in Australia is a small one in the Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights, which has been used to produce medical radioisotopes since 1958. Recently, the Hon. Peter Dutton, Parliament’s leader of the opposition to the Labor-led government, announced his plan to get the country into the nuclear energy business by building five large reactors and two small modular reactors by 2050.

Criticizing the government’s “renewables-only” energy policy, Dutton promised to have the first nuclear reactor operating by the mid-2030s, should his Liberal–National Coalition win power in the next federal election (to be held on or before September 27, 2025). That promise, which would require overturns of existing federal and state bans on nuclear energy, has generated a great deal of controversy in Australia among government officials, political activists, and nuclear engineers.

Donalds

Byron Donalds, the Republican representative from Florida’s 19th Congressional District, is a well-known proponent of nuclear energy. In his latest op-ed, which appeared in The Floridian, Donalds describes himself as “unabashedly pronuclear” and characterizes his state as a supporter of nuclear power, with four operating reactors providing 69.3 percent of Florida’s carbon-free electricity, powering 2.3 million homes. He emphasizes, however, that “there’s so much nuclear potential yet to be realized in the Sunshine State.”

Environmental benefits: Donalds notes that nuclear energy provides “countless environmental benefits” to Floridians, as well as reliable electricity. The 1,132 acres on which the state’s St. Lucie nuclear power plant is located have mangrove swamps, beaches, marshes, and other wildlife habitats that are home to more than 180 species of animals—36 of which are endangered or threatened.

A computer rendering of a tokamak device designed by students at the University of New South Wales. (Credit: UNSW)

A recent article on Australia’s ABC News website highlighted the work of undergraduate physics and engineering students at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to design, build, and operate their own small nuclear fusion reactor. The ambitious work, known as the AtomCraft project, is being led by associate professor Patrick Burr with the objective of producing a student-built tokamak reactor by the end of 2026.

Australia-based HB-11 Energy and U.K.-based Tokamak Energy have partnered with UNSW for the project.

Research goals: The AtomCraft project has the following research goals for participating students, according to its website:

Our team aims [to] make the world’s first fusion reactor entirely designed, built, and operated by students. And [to] do so in 2 years. You will develop innovative solutions to engineering challenges across many engineering disciplines, work closely with industry partners, and be part a vibrant team of enthusiastic and dedicated people who want to push the boundaries of what is possible with fusion energy.

A new theoretical model about stabilizing plasma in tokamak fusion reactors is described in three papers from a study that was led by research physicist Jason Parisi of Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Two papers—“Kinetic-ballooning-limited pedestals in spherical tokamak plasmas” and “Stability and transport of gyrokinetic critical pedestals”—appear in the International Atomic Energy Agency journal Nuclear Fusion. The other paper—“Kinetic-ballooning-bifurcation in tokamak pedestals across shaping and aspect-ratio”—appears in Physics of Plasmas.

Eight graduate students from Ukrainian universities have completed a two-year Department of Energy internship program that included a visit to Argonne National Laboratory.

The U.K.-based Financial Times recently featured an article focusing on the return of retirees and the extending of professional careers in the nuclear industry in Western countries. According to the article, “the nuclear power industry is seeking to lure back thousands of retired engineers and older professionals as Western companies try to fill a skills gap to deliver the biggest wave of new projects in decades.”

The University of Michigan’s Fastest Path to Zero Initiative has launched the Global Fusion Forum, an online platform focused on fusion energy. It was created to foster international engagement and collaboration in the area of fusion technology.

Investor’s Business Daily reported May 10 that the first-quarter earnings of Constellation Energy, the largest operator of nuclear power plants in the United States, surged 858 percent to reach a share price of $2.78, partly as a result of promising expectations regarding demand for artificial intelligence data centers. The S&P 500 stock value of Constellation jumped 3.7 percent on May 8 to $208.

The Department of Energy has issued a request for qualifications (RFQ) for interested parties that are looking to establish carbon pollution–free electricity (CFE) projects at its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant site in New Mexico.

Borisov

Russian space agency Roscosmos has announced its intention to build a nuclear reactor on the lunar surface in collaboration with the China National Space Administration. According to Roscosmos director general Yury Borisov, “Today we are seriously considering a project—somewhere at the turn of 2033–2035—to deliver and install a [nuclear] power unit on the lunar surface together with our Chinese colleagues.” The reactor would apparently be used to supply power to the Russian-Chinese International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), plans for which the two nations unveiled in 2021.

These plans come on top of previously announced plans of the United States and United Kingdom for lunar nuclear reactors.

Researchers from the University of Rochester in New York and the University of California–San Diego have published a paper in Physical Review Letters describing a previously unknown class of plasma oscillations. In “Space-Time Structured Plasma Waves,” the researchers “demonstrate that electrostatic wave packets structured with space-time correlations can have properties that are independent of the plasma conditions,” such as “density, temperature, ionization state, or details of the distribution functions.” This finding is technologically relevant, the authors note, because “electrostatic waves play a critical role in nearly every branch of plasma physics from fusion to advanced accelerators, to astro, solar, and ionospheric physics.”