Plaque honoring Frisch and Peierls at the University of Birmingham in England. (Photo: Anthony Cox)
The Manhattan Project is usually considered to have been initiated with Albert Einstein’s letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in October 1939. However, a lesser-known document that was just as impactful on wartime nuclear history was the so-called Frisch-Peierls memorandum. Prepared by two refugee physicists at the University of Birmingham in Britain in early 1940, this manuscript was the first technical description of nuclear weapons and their military, strategic, and ethical implications to reach high-level government officials on either side of the Atlantic. The memorandum triggered the initiation of the British wartime nuclear program, which later merged with the Manhattan Engineer District.
Ronald E. Evans, the command module pilot for Apollo 17, performed a deep-space extravehicular activity (EVA) to retrieve a film canister during the mission’s return to Earth. At about 160,000 miles from Earth, it was the most distant spacewalk ever conducted in deep space under full-spectrum GCR. (Photo: NASA)
In commercial nuclear power, there has always been a deliberate tension between the regulator and the utility owner. The regulator fundamentally exists to protect the worker, and the utility, to make a profit. It is a win-win balance.
From the U.S. nuclear industry has emerged a brilliantly successful occupational nuclear safety record—largely the result of an ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) process that has driven exposure rates down to what only a decade ago would have been considered unthinkable. In the U.S. nuclear industry, the system has accomplished an excellent, nearly seamless process that succeeds to the benefit of both employee and utility owner.
Chris Wagner, chief executive officer of Eden Radioisotopes.
Inset: Fission Mo-99 process. (Images: Eden)
Chris Wagner has more than 40 years of experience in nuclear medicine, beginning as a clinical practitioner before moving into leadership roles at companies like Mallinckrodt (now Curium) and Nordion. His knowledge of both the clinical and the manufacturing sides of nuclear medicine laid the groundwork for helping to found Eden Radioisotopes, a start-up venture that intends to make diagnostic and therapeutic raw material medical isotopes like molybdenum-99 and lutetium-177.
Clockwise from top left: Calutron operators at their panels in the Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge, Tenn., the USS Nautilus SSN571, women working in a factory of the United States Radium Corporation, and the front face of the B Reactor at the Hanford site.
There is a critical knowledge gap regarding the health consequences of exposure to radiation received gradually over time. While there is a plethora of studies on the risks of adverse outcomes from both acute and high-dose exposures, including the landmark study of atomic bomb survivors, these are not characteristic of the chronic exposure to low-dose radiation encountered in occupational and public settings. In addition, smaller cohorts have limited numbers leading to reduced statistical power.
WIPP completed the commissioning of a large-scale ventilation system, known as the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System, this spring. The system will restore full ventilation to the underground repository. (Photo: DOE)
This spring, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced that it had achieved a major milestone by completing commissioning of the Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System (SSCVS) facility—a new, state-of-the-art, large-scale ventilation system at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the DOE’s geologic repository for defense-related transuranic (TRU) waste in New Mexico.
Ann Gibeaut (center row, second from left), Tim Adkins (center row, far right), and other volunteer educators with Civil Air Patrol cadets. (Photo: Boone Composite Squadron, Civil Air Patrol)
Husband-and-wife team Timothy Adkins and Ann Gibeaut are using Geiger counters supplied by the American Nuclear Society to educate young people in West Virginia about nuclear science and ionizing radiation. In 2022, ANS donated some old nonfunctioning Geiger counters to Tim and Ann, who recalibrated them and got them working again.
June 13, 2025, 3:00PMNuclear NewsAlex Gilbert, Harsh Desai, Patrick Snouffer The Z1 heat source was the first Sr-90 heat source built in the United States in nearly four decades and the first of its kind for a commercial company. (Photo: Zeno Power)
In the fall of 2023, a small Zeno Power team accomplished a major feat: they demonstrated the first strontium-90 heat source in decades—and the first-ever by a commercial company.
Zeno Power worked with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to fabricate and validate this Z1 heat source design at the lab’s Radiochemical Processing Laboratory. The Z1 demonstration heralded renewed interest in developing radioisotope power system (RPS) technology. In early 2025, the heat source was disassembled, and the Sr-90 was returned to the U.S. Department of Energy for continued use.
Technical advisory committee members in front of a full-scale universal nuclear waste canister prototype developed through ARPA-E’s UPWARDS program. (Photos: Deep Isolation)
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.
Solidified reaction mixtures removed from the alumina crucibles after a chlorination technique experiment. (Photo: Bryan Foley /SRNL)
Ensuring energy resilience for our nation is on the minds of leaders and citizens alike. Advances in nuclear power technologies are increasing needs within the nuclear industry supply chain. Savannah River National Laboratory’s decades of experience in nuclear materials processing makes the lab uniquely qualified to meet the current and future challenges of the nuclear fuel cycle.
Commercial nuclear fuel rods being unloaded from cask inside a HFEF hot cell. (Photo: INL)
At the Idaho National Laboratory Hot Fuel Examination Facility, containment box operator Jake Maupin moves a manipulator arm into position around a pencil-thin nuclear fuel rod. He is preparing for a procedure that he and his colleagues have practiced repeatedly in anticipation of this moment in the hot cell.