Nuclear News

Indianapolis-based reactor development start-up First American Nuclear (FANCO) announced on May 13 that it has entered into a strategic alliance with Montreal-based nuclear engineering company AtkinsRéalis.

Together, the companies now plan to jointly develop, test, and license FANCO’s EAGL-1 reactor design. For FANCO, the agreement comes as a chance to bring in a partner with decades of experience in nuclear project development. For AtkinsRéalis, the partnership provides the opportunity to establish a presence in Indiana.

For 45 years, Duane Arnold Energy Center operated in Linn County, Ia., near the town of Palo and just northwest of Cedar Rapids. The facility, owned by NextEra Energy, was the only nuclear power plant in the state.

In August 2020, a historic derecho swept across eastern Iowa with winds approaching 140 miles per hour. Damage to the plant’s cooling towers accelerated a shutdown that had already been planned, and the facility entered decommissioning soon after, with its fuel removed in October of that year. Iowa’s only nuclear plant had gone off line.

Today the national energy landscape looks very different than it did just six short years ago. Electricity demand is rising rapidly as data centers, artificial intelligence infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and electrification expand across the country. Reliable, carbon-free baseload power has become increasingly valuable. In that context, Linn County has approved the rezoning necessary to support the recommissioning and restart of Duane Arnold and is actively supporting NextEra’s efforts to secure the remaining state and federal approvals.

Utah State University and Battelle Energy Alliance, an Idaho National Laboratory contractor, have signed a memorandum of understanding, committing to a Strategic Understanding for Premier Education and Research (SUPER) agreement, which formalizes and expands the university’s collaboration with INL.

Last month, all five commissioners of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission went before the U.S. House Committee on Energy & Commerce’s Energy Subcommittee to discuss the agency’s fiscal year 2027 budget and share priorities and activities key to the agency.

On Wednesday, the five took the NRC’s $892.3 million budget request for FY 2027 to the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, where the focus shifted more toward the attrition of NRC employees and attempts to recruit and retain.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced that its Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) is setting a new benchmark in cleanup progress at the Tennessee nuclear site—conducting demolition of two former Manhattan Project–era uranium enrichment facilities in a single year.

This week, the United States and South Korea have taken two steps toward deepening their nuclear partnership through two notable announcements. First, the majority-state owned Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power signed a memorandum of understanding with Birmingham, Ala.–based Southern Nuclear.

In a first quarter earnings call Monday, executives at Constellation said they should know in June or July the status of a request to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to transfer capacity interconnection rights from the company’s Eddystone gas- and-oil-powered plant in Pennsylvania to Crane nuclear power plant (formerly Three Mile Island-1).

Advanced Decommissioning Partners, a joint venture of NorthStar Group Services and Orano USA, is set to complete major decommissioning activities at Crystal River-3 nuclear power plant in Florida this summer, according to the license termination plan (LTP) the company submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The Department of Transportation has announced an initiative to develop small modular reactors for commercial shipping. The U.S. Maritime Administration (MARAD) has launched a request for information (RFI) seeking industry input on the development of “a U.S.-built scalable, repeatable, commercially viable, system-centric, small modular reactor and their deployment within the marine transportation system.”

Originally scheduled for shutdown in 2025, Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant was given at least a few more years of life when in 2022, California lawmakers approved an extension of operations into 2030. The Avila Beach, Calif., plant already has the OK from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate into 2044 and 2045 after the two reactors’ operating licenses were renewed and extended for another 20 years, but state lawmakers still must approve any further extension beyond 2030 if the plant is to remain in operation.

A team within the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (DNN) in the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has worked with staff from the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research and the International Atomic Energy Agency to remove all remaining high-enriched uranium from Venezuela’s RV-1 research reactor, the NNSA has reported.

The American Nuclear Society recently opened two draft standards for public review. Previously, announcements of public review opportunities for ANS standards have been published exclusively in the American National Standards Institute’s weekly ANSI Standards Action publication.

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced last week that it has transferred 1.7 metric tons of high-assay low-enriched uranium from Japan to the United States.

Clean Core Thorium Energy has announced the completion of its nearly two-year ANEEL fuel irradiation testing and qualification campaign at Idaho National Laboratory.

The idea behind ANEEL (Advanced Nuclear Energy for Enriched Life) fuel is to provide existing pressurized heavy water reactors with a fuel option that has increased high-burnup performance without requiring any modification to the reactors.

The Bruce C nuclear power plant expansion project in Ontario, Canada, moved one step closer to fruition last week with the May 7 announcement that Bruce Power and the provincial government of Ontario had entered into a cost-sharing and recovery agreement that could be worth C$300 million ($219.4 million).

Ontario has directed the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) to enter into the agreement with Bruce Power so the Canadian utility can proceed with First Nations and community engagement, workforce planning, preconstruction and site preparation planning, and other critical activities that fall under predevelopment work. This work would be completed by 2030.

U.S. nuclear capacity additions are falling short of ambitious expectations set (and then reset) in recent years. Despite construction permits submitted or approved at this writing, new commercial, utility-scale nuclear generation is still a few years away from operation.

Framatome announced this week that its nuclear fuel manufacturing facility in Richland, Wash., has received Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval for a license amendment supporting fabrication of nuclear fuel with enrichment levels above 5 percent uranium-235, with manufacturing scheduled to begin in 2027.

Eden Radioisotopes has filed a construction permit application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a facility to produce medical radioisotopes, primarily molybdenum-99 and lutetium-177.

The United States has lacked a reliable domestic source of Mo-99 for diagnostic imaging for decades, and has invested in infrastructure in South Africa, the Netherlands, and Belgium to assist facilities in producing the isotope using HALEU targets. These reactors are old, and there have been disruptions to the supply chain due to unplanned outages for repairs. With a 66-hour half-life, Mo-99 cannot be stockpiled.

New Jersey’s two nuclear power plants, Hope Creek and Salem, may be joined by other nuclear facilities after lawmakers lifted the state’s de facto moratorium on new nuclear construction.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill said state officials are eyeing sites for potential nuclear facilities. Executives at PSEG Nuclear—the operators of Hope Creek and Salem—welcome the news of the growing momentum for nuclear power in the state but cautioned it will take more than lifting a moratorium to make this feasible.

This year’s print edition of the Nuclear News Buyers Guide officially has been dropped in the mail and is on its way to ANS members now. The Buyers Guide is an annual directory that has been connecting every tier of nuclear suppliers with partners, customers, and the workforce since the 1960s—just as the commercial nuclear industry was truly gathering speed.

Print and digital resources: The Buyers Guide is accessible only to ANS members and subscribers of Nuclear News. It is additionally available for download to all ANS members on the ANS website.