Nuclear News

First Light Fusion announced last week that it has set a new record for the highest quartz pressure achieved on Sandia National Laboratories’ Z machine using its amplifier technology to achieve an output pressure of 3.67 terapascal (TPa)—roughly doubling the pressure the company reached in its first experiment on the machine one year ago.

Amid recent ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine, President Donald Trump suggested the U.S. should take control of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants for long-term security, the Associated Press reported.

“American ownership of those plants could be the best protection for that infrastructure,” Trump suggested, according to a later statement.

The final passage of Senate Bill 424 from Indiana’s House of Representatives last week sent a key piece of pronuclear legislation to Gov. Mike Braun for final approval.

The legislation offers public utilities that want to develop small modular reactors in the Hoosier State to recover preconstruction costs from their customers before the project even begins. The company would have to petition the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission and, if approved, would have the opportunity to establish a new rate that reflects the cost of the project.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received a request from the state of Connecticut asking that the state be allowed to assume regulatory authority over certain radioactive materials within state borders.

Fleischmann

U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann is all about energy—specifically nuclear energy.

On March 20, the GOP congressman from Tennessee joined the official launch of Atoms for Appalachia, the new report from the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center that studied opportunities for deploying advanced nuclear energy in the area to spur economic development.

The council hosted a series of Atoms for Appalachia (A4A) workshops in 2024 in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and West Virginia in partnership with the Breakthrough Energy Foundation. The sessions explored workforce demand, partnership opportunities, and innovation happening across the nuclear industry.

As nations look to nuclear energy as a source of reliable electricity and heat, researchers and industry are developing a new generation of nuclear reactors to fill the need. These advanced nuclear reactors will provide safe, efficient, and economical power that go beyond what the current large light water reactors can do.

But before large-scale deployment of advanced reactors, researchers need to understand and test the safety and performance of the technologies—especially the coolants and materials—that make them possible.

Now, the United States and the United Kingdom have teamed up to test hundreds of advanced nuclear materials.

Fiona Rayment

Shaping the global nuclear future requires an understanding of nuclear’s role in addressing national and energy security endeavors together with foresight into the energy sector’s future needs. Nuclear typically produces reliable baseload electricity, but it could also play an important role in economically viable cogeneration. In addition, future electricity demand will require significant enhancements to baseload generation. Addressing these challenges requires a combination of innovation, collaboration, capacity enhancements, and focused strategic investments.

Nuclear is increasingly recognized as essential to enabling energy security and achieving net-zero emissions. The United Kingdom has demonstrated leadership in this area, with initiatives such as the Young Generation Network’s global #NetZeroNeedsNuclear campaign at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland. Efforts like these are impossible without international collaboration.

A pair of bills working their way through the Iowa statehouse aim to promote nuclear energy projects in the state—in part by changing how the plants would be regulated and funded.

Sellafield Ltd. and AtkinsRéalis have successfully operated a robotic dog from a remote location in what might be the first time such an operation has happened at a nuclear licensed site, according to the companies in a March 18 press release.

U.S. uranium production increased throughout 2024, with more growth planned in 2025. The producers who can make that happen, however, were burned before by a “renaissance” that didn’t take off. Now they are watching and waiting for signals from Washington, D.C., including the impacts of tariffs, shifting relationships with global uranium producers, and funding for the enrichment task orders designed to boost demand for U.S. uranium.

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.