Nuclear News

A team of innovative companies has plans to bring floating nuclear power plants to U.S. ports.

Core Power, a maritime and nuclear technology company, announced in January a new partnership in with naval architecture company Glosten. The pair is working on a design for a floating nuclear power plant (FNPP) that could generate up to 175 gigawatt-hours of clean electricity annually and provide clean power to ships, equipment, and port vehicles, Offshore Energy reported.

Ontario Power Generation in Canada announced that Unit 1 of its Darlington nuclear power plant, which has returned to service from refurbishment, is now producing the medical isotope cobalt-60. During refurbishment activities, OPG made modifications to the unit to allow it to produce Co-60, which is used to sterilize 30 percent of the world’s single-use medical devices, such as syringes, gloves, and implants.

Despite its significant benefits, the public perception of radiation is generally negative due to its inherent nature: it is ubiquitous yet cannot be seen, heard, smelled, or touched—as if it were a ghost roaming around uncensored. The public is frightened of this seemingly creepy phantom they cannot detect with their senses. This unfounded fear has hampered the progress of the nuclear industry and radiation professions.

The Canada-Poland Nuclear Energy Cooperation Agreement was signed this week by the prime ministers of the two countries, supporting plans for developing Poland’s first nuclear power plants to aid its transition away from coal.

From lifting moratoriums to launching studies to labeling it as clean, state lawmakers are exploring ways to give nuclear energy a boost in 2025. Here’s a look at some of the pronuclear legislation under review.

A framework agreement to continue the work of the Generation IV International Forum (GIF) will enter into force on March 1.

Robertson

Candice Robertson will continue to lead the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management and will become office’s principal deputy assistant secretary, the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA) reported on January 28. Robertson was appointed to the EM-1 position in June 2024, replacing William “Ike” White, who was nominated by President Biden to serve on the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.

Jeff Avery, who served as DOE-EM’s principal deputy assistant secretary, has moved to the National Nuclear Security Administration as the acting associate administrator for management and budget.

Roger Jerrell, who served in the EM office during the President Trump’s first administration, is returning to DOE-EM as a senior advisor. Jerrell most previously served as general counsel for UCOR of Oak Ridge, Tenn.

South Carolina public utility Santee Cooper and its partner South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) called a halt to the Summer-2 and -3 AP1000 construction project in July 2017, citing costly delays and the bankruptcy of Westinghouse. The well-chronicled legal fallout included indictments and settlements, and ultimately left Santee Cooper with the ownership of nonnuclear assets at the construction site in Jenkinsville, S.C.

Ontario Power Generation announced this week new contracts with BWXT Canada worth more than C$1 billion ($695.4 million) for projects at the Pickering and Darlington nuclear power plants.

The ANS Public Policy Committee (PPC), represented by PPC chair Bradley Williams, approached the Board of Directors at the Winter Conference in November in Orlando with a request to approve a revision to Position Statement #12 regarding fusion energy.

In the past year and a half, the International Atomic Energy Agency has established the Nuclear Security Training and Demonstration Center (NSTDC) to help countries strengthen their nuclear security regimes. The center, located at the IAEA’s Seibersdorf laboratories outside Vienna, Austria, has been operational since October 2023.

Iowa’s lone nuclear plant may soon see new life as NextEra Energy takes a step toward relicensing the Duane Arnold nuclear power plant.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a new mission statement to formalize the agency’s pledge to “be a part of the solution” in bringing new nuclear energy projects to life across the country.

The Tennessee Valley Authority announced last week the selection of several partners—Bechtel, Sargent & Lundy, and GE Hitachi—to advance plans for what the company hopes will be its first small modular reactor project at its Clinch River site.

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) has announced that it has subjected nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) fuel samples to several “high-impact” tests at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) in Huntsville, Ala. That news comes as NASA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and multiple nuclear and space technology companies continue to build on recent progress in nuclear thermal rocket design and demonstration.

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission review board will hear oral arguments on February 12 on petitions concerning Holtec Palisades LLC.

Ann Bisconti

We welcome ANS members with long careers in the community to submit their own stories so that the personal history of nuclear power can be capured. For information on submitting your stories, contact nucnews@ans.org.

It is 1983. I receive a phone call from Herbert Krugman, my boss in my first job at Marplan, a prestigious Madison Avenue research firm. He had moved to General Electric and hired me through UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute for research that gave GE a blueprint for recruiting top graduates from their key universities. “There is a new organization that will be looking for someone to direct all their research,” he tells me. “I can’t reveal what it’s about, but I told them they have to hire you.”

This new organization was the U.S. Council for Energy Awareness (USCEA), a forerunner of the Nuclear Energy Institute. Industry leaders had set up two main organizations in response to the Three Mile Island-2 accident: one to promote excellence in operations (Institute of Nuclear Power Operations) and one to promote excellence in communications (USCEA). I was charged with conducting all the research necessary to guide a large communications program that included advertising as well as media and public relations.

A growing number of institutional, national, and funder mandates are requiring researchers to make their published work immediately publicly accessible, through either open repositories or open access (OA) publications. In addition, both private and public funders are developing policies, such as those from the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the European Commission, that ask researchers to make publicly available at the time of publication as much of their underlying data and other materials as possible. These, combined with movement in the scientific community toward embracing open science principles (seen, for example, in the dramatic rise of preprint servers like arXiv), demonstrate a need for a different kind of publishing outlet.

A 1,300-acre site left undeveloped on the shores of Lake Ontario four decades ago could see new life as the home to a large nuclear facility.

The Department of Energy announced six Fusion Innovative Research Engine (FIRE) collaboratives set to receive funding of $107 million on January 16. The six selected teams represent a first round of awards from a funding opportunity announcement released in May 2023 as part of the DOE Office of Fusion Energy Sciences’ (FES) goal of creating a “fusion innovation ecosystem.”