The first Advances in Nuclear Fuel Management (ANFM) conference in eight years is being held July 20–23, 2025, at the Sheraton Sand Key Resort in Clearwater Beach, Fla.

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.

An agreement signed by the state of Idaho and the U.S. Department of Energy will open the way for a single cask of high-burnup spent nuclear fuel to be shipped from Dominion Energy’s North Anna nuclear power plant in Virgina to Idaho National Laboratory for research purposes.

Mike Rinehart

The nuclear industry is entering a period of renewed urgency, driven by the need for stable baseload power, heightened energy security concerns, and expanded defense infrastructure. Now more than ever, we must deliver new nuclear projects on time and on budget to maintain public trust and industry momentum.

The importance of execution certainty cannot be overstated—public trust, industry investment, and future deployment all hinge on our ability to deliver these projects successfully. However, history has shown that cost overruns and schedule delays have eroded confidence in the industry’s ability to deliver nuclear construction. As we embark on many first-of-a-kind (FOAK) reactor builds, fuel cycle infrastructure projects, and extensive defense-related nuclear projects, we must ensure that execution certainty is no longer an aspiration—it is an expectation.

The next opportunity to earn professional engineer (PE) licensure in nuclear engineering is this fall. Now is the time to sign up and begin studying with the help of materials like the online module program offered by the American Nuclear Society.

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).

Curiosity landed on Mars sporting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) in 2012, and a second NASA rover, Perseverance, landed in 2021. Both are still rolling across the red planet in the name of science. Another exploratory craft with a similar plutonium-238–fueled RTG but a very different mission—to fly between multiple test sites on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon—recently got one step closer to deployment.

On April 25, NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) announced that the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s icy moon passed its critical design review. “Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and test plans are all approved, and the mission can now turn its attention to the construction of the spacecraft itself,” according to NASA.

Idaho National Laboratory is looking for a sponsor to invest $5 million–$10 million in a privately funded innovation incubator to support seed-stage start-ups working in nuclear energy, integrated energy systems, cybersecurity, or advanced materials. For their investment, the sponsor gets access to what INL calls “a turnkey source of cutting-edge American innovation.” Not only are technologies supported by the program “substantially de-risked” by going through technical review and development at a national laboratory, but the arrangement “adds credibility, goodwill, and visibility to the private sector sponsor’s investments,” according to INL.

The International Atomic Energy Agency announced that its Nuclear Technology for Controlling Plastic Pollution (NUTEC Plastics) initiative has partnered with Ecuador’s Oceanographic Institute of the Navy (INOCAR) and Polytechnic School of the Coast (ESPOL) to build microplastic monitoring and analytical capacity to address the growing threat of marine microplastic pollution in the Galapagos Islands.

Here is a recap of industry happenings from the recent past:

ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE

TerraPower’s Natrium reactor advances on several fronts

TerraPower has continued making aggressive progress in several areas for its under-construction Natrium Reactor Demonstration Project since the beginning of the year. Natrium is an advanced 345-MWe reactor that has liquid sodium as a coolant, improved fuel utilization, enhanced safety features, and an integrated energy storage system, allowing for a brief power output boost to 500-MWe if needed for grid resiliency. The company broke ground for its first Natrium plant in 2024 near a retiring coal plant in Kemmerer, Wyo.

The American Nuclear Society presented the Illinois Institute of Technology with a plaque last week to officially designate the Armour Research Foundation Reactor a Nuclear Historic Landmark, following the Society’s decision to confer the status onto the reactor in September 2024.

DTE Energy, the owner of Fermi nuclear power plant in Michigan, is considering an extended uprate for Unit 2 that would increase its 1,100-MW generation capacity by 150 MW.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management has awarded a five-year contract worth up to $74.8 million to Independent Strategic Management Solutions for professional support services at the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management site in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

Gov. Katie Hobbs put the brakes on legislation that would have eliminated some of Arizona’s regulations and oversight of small modular reactors, technology that is largely under consideration by data centers and heavy industrial power users.

Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) recently approved two new American Nuclear Society standards covering different aspects of nuclear criticality safety (NCS).

Spring marks the passing of the torch for American Nuclear Society leadership. During this election cycle, ANS members voted for the newest vice president/president-elect, treasurer, and six board of director positions (four U.S., one non-U.S., one student). New professional division leadership was also decided on in this election, which opened February 25 and closed April 15. About 21 percent of eligible members of the Society voted—a similar turnout to last year.

Utah-based waste management company EnergySolutions announced that it has signed a memorandum of understating with the Intermountain Power Agency and the state of Utah to explore the development of advanced nuclear power generation at the Intermountain Power Project (IPP) site near Delta, Utah.