Nuclear News

Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced this week the release of the second part of Holtec’s loan disbursement for the Palisades nuclear plant restart plans in Michigan.

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have demonstrated a new method to track chemical changes in molten salt, according to a March 17 announcement from the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy.

It’s been a busy eight months, Mike King told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a recent hearing on the immediate and projected impacts of new federal legislation aimed at supporting the nation’s current nuclear energy renaissance.

Patrick Fragman, Westinghouse’s chief executive, said in a recent interview with Politico that the U.S. and Europe are still ideal partners on nuclear power.

Even though President Trump’s latest policy moves are straining some U.S. relations with nations, “Westinghouse stresses it’s a private company that is now Canadian-owned—and that nuclear projects function on a time scale that extends beyond politicians,” Fragman told Politico.

For the full Politico article, click here.

The proposed location of Douglas Point in Maryland, on the banks of the Potomac River, compared to currently operating nuclear plants in Maryland and Virginia.

The Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station that is the subject of this article is not the CANDU reactor that operated in Ontario from 1966 to 1984. This one was a proposed nuclear power plant in Charles County, Md., that was to provide power to the Washington D.C. area, about 30 miles north of the intended site.

In the early 1970s, the Potomac Electric Power Company (PEPCO) was looking for additional means of generation. At the time, the Washington D.C. metropolitan area was one of the fastest growing regions in the nation.

Site selection was tricky for PEPCO, as the company was contending with a confined load in a growing urban area. A new site as near as possible to the load center that could house at least 2,000 MWe of generating capacity and keep development costs down was needed. Three sites were ultimately reviewed: Douglas Point on the lower Potomac River, a second site toward the mouth of the Potomac River, and a third on the shore of Chesapeake Bay.

Since nuclear physics works the same in Ontario as it does in Tennessee, the industry has been trying to create a reactor that can be deployed on both sides of the border. Now, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission have decided that some of their rulings can cross the border too.

Letters have been issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the nation’s 94 operating commercial nuclear reactors regarding their performance in 2024, the agency reported yesterday. The assessment letters are issued annually.

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

I find myself saying the expression above a lot these days—to my kids, my wife, my friends, and colleagues. Most recently, I said it to the person sitting next to me after the pilot of our plane—bound for Reagan National Airport a day after the collision of AA flight 5342 and a military Blackhawk helicopter—aborted the landing at the last minute.

I am not sure where I picked up this pronouncement, but I find it to be apropos to the topsy-­turvy moment where we find ourselves in 2025. In addition to the first U.S. commercial airline crash in 15 years, we are witnessing a new presidential administration in its infancy playing by the Silicon Valley rules of “move fast, break things.” We’ve seen DeepSeek, the low-cost Chinese AI that reportedly uses 50–75 percent less energy than its NVIDIA-powered counterparts, tank Constellation’s market value by more than 20 percent in one late-January trading day.

Prodigy Clean Energy and Lloyd’s Register have announced a collaboration to support the deployment of Prodigy’s “transportable nuclear power plants” (TNPPs) in Canada by 2030. Prodigy’s goal is to build marine-based nuclear power plants that are compatible with different end uses and reactor suppliers. What the plants would have in common is offshore siting close to an end user, which could include offshore oil and gas platforms, commercial seaports, mining operations, remote communities, and desalination plants.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service has finally gained full control over a blaze that started February 14 after a drone struck the protective dome over the destroyed reactor from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant accident.

Idaho National Laboratory recently conducted a safety test on high-burnup fast reactor fuel from historic irradiation testing at the lab’s Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II). According to the Department of Energy, which announced the work March 12, it’s the first such safety test to be performed in over 20 years.

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

ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE

BWRX-300 SMR deployment partnership developed

Several U.S. utility companies and supply chain partners have formed a coalition to accelerate deployment of GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s BWRX-300 small modular reactor. The coalition, which has applied for $800 million in funding from the Department of Energy’s Generation III+ SMR program, is led by the Tennessee Valley Authority and includes GEH, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, Duke Energy, Electric Power Research Institute, Indiana Michigan Power, Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Sargent & Lundy, Scot Forge, other utilities and advanced nuclear project developers, and the State of Tennessee. TVA previously selected the BWRX-300 SMR for possible deployment at the Clinch River site, near Oak Ridge, Tenn. If the new coalition is awarded the requested DOE funding, TVA intends to accelerate construction of the first SMR at this site by two years, planning for commercial operation by 2033.

Lisa Marshall
president@ans.org

This year's ANS Conference on Nuclear Training and Education (CONTE), held in early February, tackled emerging approaches to nuclear skills and the workforce. How do we attract, retain, and qualify our future professionals? What technologies will enhance teaching and assessment methods?

In 2024, the Department of Energy called the following developments “wins for nuclear energy”:

• Vogtle-4 had its commercial start.
• The ADVANCE Act to accelerate deployment of advanced reactors.
• Reactor recommissioning announcements and collaborations with tech companies.
• Growing our domestic nuclear fuel supply chain and expanding domestic capacity by 200 GW.
• Demonstration projects such as Natrium, Project Pele, and Hermes.

Following in the steps of an international push to expand nuclear power capacity, a group of powerhouse corporations signed and announced a pledge today to support the goal of at least tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050.

New commentary on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s proposed 10 CFR Part 53 licensing recommendations for advanced reactors argues that more work is needed to make the framework practical.

As part of a broader series on the future of global energy markets, S&P Global has released a report on examining the growing interest in nuclear power as the solution to many of the problems the energy sector faces.

To read the full details and conclusions of the report, click here.

Applications for the 2025 Nuclear Engineering Student Delegation (NESD) are now open. Student delegates have a unique opportunity to directly engage with policymakers in Washington, D.C., educating them on and advocating for nuclear energy initiatives of critical importance to the United States.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s International Nuclear Information System (INIS) has increased its user friendliness and knowledge expanse by incorporating Invenio, an open-source platform developed by the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is gearing up to tackle an influx of licensing requests and oversight of advanced nuclear reactor technology, especially small modular reactors.

TerraPower has continued to make aggressive progress in several areas for its 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 facility in Kemmerer, Wyo.