Nuclear News

The Tennessee Valley Authority has issued a letter of intent to fusion energy start-up Type One Energy regarding the utility’s interest in the potential deployment of Type One Energy’s fusion power plant technology at TVA’s former Bull Run fossil plant site once it is commercially ready.

Tyler Folse, a nuclear engineer with more than 10 years of experience, is bringing his unique spin and sense of humor to the masses as he debunks common nuclear misconceptions online.

The American Nuclear Society is hosting a Supplier Showcase webinar, “License Renewal: Smarter, Faster, Better,” tomorrow, September 23, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (ET) on the increasing urgency of submitting license renewals and subsequent license renewals both efficiently and accurately.

The webinar is free for all viewers and requires registration.

Last week saw a wave of U.S. and U.K. nuclear companies and organizations forging new transatlantic ties, with even the American Nuclear Society and the U.K.’s Nuclear Institute reaching a new agreement.

The University of New Mexico School of Engineering held its first-ever nuclear engineering camp, Experience Nuclear Engineering 2025, a free program for high school students.

Despite the emergence of new projects, technologies, and commercial ventures, the rate of actual deployment worldwide has been relatively slow—but not necessarily for the reasons people might think.

Williams

Garrish

Theodore “Ted” Garrish is the Department of Energy’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy and Brandon Williams is the DOE’s undersecretary for nuclear security and administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration following their confirmations yesterday by the U.S. Senate.

While awaiting confirmation, Garrish has been serving since January as senior advisor to Energy Secretary Chris Wright. He assumes the duties of NE-1 that Michael Goff has held as interim assistant secretary since Kathryn Huff stepped down from the NE-1 role in May 2024. The post of acting NNSA administrator has been held by Teresa Robbins since January 20; Jill Hruby held the post from 2021 to 2025.

The nuclear regulators of Belgium, Italy, and Romania signed on this week to the first “prelicensing” project under the IAEA’s Nuclear Harmonization and Standardization Initiative (NHSI) during the opening day of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 69th General Conference, pledging to work with the EAGLES Consortium to clarify regulatory requirements for a lead-cooled reactor ahead of formal licensing.

The International Atomic Energy Agency presented its 2025 Global ISOP Innovation Award for AI to Blue Wave AI Labs, Constellation, and the Southern Company subsidiary Southern Nuclear for the companies’ collaborative work on Blue Wave's ThermalLimits.ai. The technology is an AI application that provides accuracy in online thermal limit forecasting for boiling water reactors.

Applications are now open for the fall 2025 testing period for the American Nuclear Society’s Certified Nuclear Professional (CNP) exam. Applications are being accepted through October 14, and only three testing sessions are offered per year, so it is important to apply soon. The test will be administered from November 12 through December 16. To check eligibility and schedule your exam, click here.

In addition, taking place tomorrow (September 19) from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m. (CDT), ANS will host a new webinar, “How to Become a Certified Nuclear Professional.” More information is available below in this article.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will host a hybrid public workshop on September 24 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (EDT) to discuss its activities for the safe and secure use of artificial intelligence in NRC-regulated activities.

The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.

Noting recent momentum behind nuclear power, the International Atomic Energy Agency has revised up its projections for the expansion of nuclear power, estimating that global nuclear operational capacity will more than double by 2050—reaching 2.6 times the 2024 level—with small modular reactors expected to play a pivotal role in this high-case scenario.

IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi announced the new projections, contained in the annual report Energy, Electricity, and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2050 at the 69th IAEA General Conference in Vienna.

In the report’s high-case scenario, nuclear electrical generating capacity is projected to increase to from 377 GW at the end of 2024 to 992 GW by 2050. In a low-case scenario, capacity rises 50 percent, compared with 2024, to 561 GW. SMRs are projected to account for 24 percent of the new capacity added in the high case and for 5 percent in the low case.

Chad Wolf

When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.

The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).

Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.

President Trump will arrive in the United Kingdom this week for a state visit that promises to include the usual pomp and ceremony alongside the signing of a landmark new agreement on U.S.-U.K. nuclear collaboration.

Mike Harkin

When ANS first announced its new Nuclear 101 certificate course, I was excited. This felt like a course tailor-made for me, a transplant into the commercial nuclear world. I enrolled for the inaugural session held in November 2024, knowing it was going to be hard (this is nuclear power, of course)—but I had been working on ramping up my knowledge base for the past year, through both my employer and at a local college.

The course was a fast-and-furious roller-coaster ride through all the key components of the nuclear power industry, in one highly challenging week. In fact, the challenges the students experienced caught even the instructors by surprise. Thankfully, the shared intellectual stretch we students all felt helped us band together to push through to the end.

We were all impressed with the quality of the instructors, who are some of the top experts in the field. We appreciated not only their knowledge base but their support whenever someone struggled to understand a concept.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has found that the environmental impacts of renewing the operating license of the Dresden nuclear power plant outside Chicago, Ill., for an additional 20 years are not great enough to prohibit doing so.

The startup of a new cascade of gas centrifuge at Urenco USA’s (UUSA) uranium enrichment facility in Eunice, N.M., came ahead of schedule and on budget, according to the company.

A new career guide for the nuclear energy industry is now available: The Nuclear Empowered Workforce by Earnestine Johnson. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience across 16 nuclear facilities, Johnson offers a practical, insightful look into some of the many career paths available in commercial nuclear power. To mark the release, Johnson sat down with Nuclear News for a wide-ranging conversation about her career, her motivation for writing the book, and her advice for the next generation of nuclear professionals.

When Johnson began her career at engineering services company Stone & Webster, she entered a field still reeling from the effects of the Three Mile Island incident in 1979, nearly 15 years earlier. Her hiring cohort was the first group of new engineering graduates the company had brought on since TMI, a reflection of the industry-wide pause in nuclear construction. Her first long-term assignment—at the Millstone site in Waterford, Conn., helping resolve design issues stemming from TMI—marked the beginning of a long and varied career that spanned positions across the country.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a two-day public workshop September 30–October 1 to discuss efforts to improve realism in probabilistic risk assessment. The hybrid workshop, which will be held in person and online, will focus on enhancing risk-informed decision-making for nuclear power plants by making PRA models more realistic and reflective of reactor design, operations, and real-world behavior.