July 31, 2025, 12:06PMANS NewsGeoffrey Rothwell Left: noted economist Milton Friedman (left) presented the “best graduate
student paper” prize from the Western Economics Association to Rothwell in 1984. Right: Rothwell in 2018, the year of his retirement.
When I was 10, in October 1963, my family moved to Richland, Wash., so that my father could work for Vitro-Hanford Engineering Services, later for Bechtel, on the design of the Fast Flux Test Facility. I was a “new” kid throughout my excellent education in the Richland School District. It was the mid-1960s, and I wanted to be a rocket scientist or aerospace engineer. I took all the math and science that Richland High School (RHS) had to offer. What struck me during our tour of Hanford’s N-reactor with my physics class was the loudness of the steam turbine room compared to the hydro turbine rooms in the dams along the Columbia River. I am now establishing a residence on Columbia Point Drive in Richland.
N.S. Savannah, the first commercial nuclear-powered cargo vessel, en route to the World’s Fair in Seattle in 1962. (Photo: U.S. National Archives)
The world’s first nuclear-powered merchant ship, the NS Savannah, will have a public site visit in Baltimore, Md., on Saturday, August 23.
To register for the event and find up-to-date details on the event’s address, time, and more, click here.
North Carolina's State Legislative Building in Raleigh.
I have been a North Carolinian for 62 years and involved in the state’s nuclear energy industry from my high school days to today. I have seen firsthand how North Carolina has flourished. This growth has been due to the state’s enterprising people and strong leaders. Clean, competitive, and always-on nuclear power has also played an important role.
The 3D-printed forms—inside of which concrete is poured—are used to build radiation shielding columns for Kairos Power’s Hermes Low-Power Demonstration Reactor. (Screen capture from ORNL video)
The Department of Energy’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in partnership with Kairos Power and Barnard Construction, has successfully developed and validated large-scale, 3D-printed polymer composite forms for casting complex concrete structures.
The test took place at Kairos Power’s Oak Ridge, Tenn., campus, where the Hermes Low-Power Demonstration Reactor is currently under construction.
See a video of construction activity here.
Acting director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation Greg Bowman (seated, left) and Holtec president Kelly Trice (seated, right) and other NRC officials celebrate the Palisades license restoration at the NRC headquarters. (Photo: NRC)
The Palisades nuclear power plant has been formally transitioned from decommissioning status to holding an operating license following the completion of an extensive technical review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It’s a historic move; before this, no U.S. nuclear plant had ever made the transition from shut down to approved for restart.
ORNL leadership gathered at the Nuclear Opportunities Workshop in Knoxville, with Trey Lauderdale, CEO of Atomic Canyon. From left: Joe Hoagland, Director of Special Initiatives; Susan Hubbard, Deputy for Science and Technology; Stephen Streiffer, ORNL Director; Lauderdale; Gina Tourassi, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing and Computational Sciences; and Mickey Wade, Associate Laboratory Director for Fusion and Fission Energy and Science. (Photo: Carlos Jones/ORNL)
The United States has tight new deadlines—18 months, max—for licensing commercial reactor designs. The Department of Energy is marshaling the nuclear expertise and high-performance computing assets of its national laboratories, in partnership with private tech companies, to develop generative AI tools and large-scale simulations that could help get nuclear reactor designs through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing process—or the DOE’s own reactor pilot program. “Accelerate” and “streamline” are the verbs of choice in recent announcements from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory, as they describe plans with Atomic Canyon, Microsoft, and Amazon.