Hinkley Point C gets over $6 billion in financing from Apollo

June 24, 2025, 3:00PMNuclear News
A model of the Hinkley Point C station. (Image: UK government)

U.S.-based private capital group Apollo Global has committed £4.5 billion ($6.13 billion) in financing to EDF Energy, primarily to support the U.K.’s Hinkley Point C station. The move addresses funding needs left unmet since China General Nuclear Power Corporation—which originally planned to pay for one-third of the project—exited in 2023 amid U.K. government efforts to reduce Chinese involvement.

Nuclear techniques highlighted at UN Ocean Conference

June 24, 2025, 7:00AMNuclear News
IAEA director general Rafael Grossi speaks during a session on combating marine pollution. (Photo: E. McDonald/IAEA)

Plastic waste is polluting the oceans and entering the human body in the form of microplastics. According to the United Nations, without immediate action the amount of plastic finding a way into the oceans each year could reach 37 million metric tons by 2040, becoming a threat to marine and human life.

High-power electricity direct from radiation is the vision of Rads to Watts

June 23, 2025, 12:00PMNuclear News
In this artist’s concept, a notional spacecraft with a high-power plasma thruster is powered by kilowatt-level radiovoltaics. (Image: DARPA/Alan Clarke)

You could call it a power contest. Teams picked for a new research program from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will compete to design radiovoltaic cells that can outperform others in measured power density and endure high-flux radiation from a U.S. Army Research Lab linear accelerator. The top teams will strive to make it through a second downselect based on the performance of cells sequestered in time capsules and subjected to even more punishing high-flux radiation. Concepts that make it to the bonus period have a chance to be built into radioisotope-fueled power systems uniquely suited to high-radiation regions of space or dark, remote places on Earth.

Prepare for the 2025 Nuclear PE Exam with ANS guides

June 23, 2025, 9:30AMANS News

The next opportunity to earn professional engineer (PE) licensure in nuclear engineering is this fall, and now is the time to sign up and begin studying with the help of materials like the online module program offered by the American Nuclear Society.

MOU signed for Solo microreactor

June 23, 2025, 7:01AMNuclear News
Paragon vice president John Portillo (left) and Terra Innovatum partner and chief business development officer Giordano Morichi at the signing ceremony. (Photo: Paragon)

Paragon Energy Solutions has signed a memorandum of understanding with Terra Innovatum, a developer of micro-modular nuclear reactors, to support the design and integration of instrumentation and control systems for Terra’s Solo micro-modular reactor. Paragon is a provider of safety-related I&C systems for the nuclear energy community.

Take steps on SNF and HLW disposal

June 20, 2025, 3:08PMNuclear NewsMatt Bowen

Matt Bowen

With a new administration and Congress, it is time once again to ponder what will happen—if anything—on U.S. spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste management policy over the next few years. One element of the forthcoming discussion seems clear: The executive and legislative branches are eager to talk about recycling commercial SNF. Whatever the merits of doing so, it does not obviate the need for one or more facilities for disposal of remaining long-lived radionuclides. For that reason, making progress on U.S. disposal capabilities remains urgent, lest the associated radionuclide inventories simply be left for future generations to deal with.

In March, Rick Perry, who was secretary of energy during President Trump’s first administration, observed that during his tenure at the Department of Energy it became clear to him that any plan to move SNF “required some practical consent of the receiving state and local community.”1

West Valley completes teardown of Main Plant Process Building

June 20, 2025, 12:02PMRadwaste Solutions
Before and after demolition: (1) Workers take the “first bite” during the start of the Main Plant Process Building demolition in 2022. (2) The Fuel Receiving and Storage Facility is now visible from this vantage point following the completion of the building demolition this month. Workers have begun groundwork to install a protective cover over the Main Plant footprint. (Image: DOE)

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management and its cleanup contractor CH2M Hill BWXT West Valley (CHBWV) completed the on-time removal of the Main Plant Process Building at the West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) in New York. Located 35 miles south of Buffalo, the 150-acre WVDP site is home to the only commercial spent nuclear fuel reprocessing facility to operate in the United States.

DOE opens pilot program to authorize test reactors outside national labs

June 20, 2025, 9:35AMNuclear News

Details of the plan to test new reactor concepts under the Department of Energy’s authority but outside national laboratory boundaries—first outlined in one of the four executive orders on nuclear energy released on May 23—were just released in a request for applications issued by the DOE.

West Virginia couple use ANS Geiger counters for nuclear education

June 20, 2025, 7:10AMNuclear News
Ann Gibeaut (center row, second from left), Tim Adkins (center row, far right), and other volunteer educators with Civil Air Patrol cadets. (Photo: Boone Composite Squadron, Civil Air Patrol)

Husband-and-wife team Timothy Adkins and Ann Gibeaut are using Geiger counters supplied by the American Nuclear Society to educate young people in West Virginia about nuclear science and ionizing radiation. In 2022, ANS donated some old nonfunctioning Geiger counters to Tim and Ann, who recalibrated them and got them working again.

Supreme Court rules against Texas in interim storage case

June 18, 2025, 3:00PMRadwaste Solutions

The Supreme Court voted 6–3 against Texas and a group of landowners today in a case involving the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing of a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, reversing a decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to grant the state and landowners Fasken Land and Minerals (Fasken) standing to challenge the license.

Hanford teams prepare for first tank waste transfer

June 18, 2025, 12:16PMRadwaste Solutions
Hanford contractor teams rehearse procedures for the first transfer of waste from one of the site’s underground tanks to the WTP later this summer. (Photo: DOE)

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management said that crews at its Hanford Site in Washington state are preparing for the site’s first-ever transfer of radioactive waste from one of its large underground tanks, Tank AP-106, to the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP).

IAEA reports on safety status of Iran’s nuclear facilities

June 18, 2025, 9:31AMNuclear News
The IAEA director general prepares to deliver his update. (Photo: Dean Calma/IAEA)

Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has shared his concerns about the Iran-Israel conflict with the agency’s board of directors.

“Military escalation threatens lives, increases the chance of a radiological release with serious consequences for people and the environment and delays indispensable work towards a diplomatic solution for the long-term assurance that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon,” Grossi said on June 16. “Consistent with the objectives of the IAEA and its statute, I call on all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid further escalation.”

Germany’s Unterweser completes removal of steam generators

June 18, 2025, 7:00AMRadwaste Solutions
Unterweser’s four steam generators rest on cradles at the plant before being shipped off-site. (Photo: PreussenElektra)

All four steam generators at Germany’s Unterweser nuclear power plant have been removed from the reactor building, plant owner PreussenElektra has announced. The single-unit pressurized water reactor was shut down in 2011 as part of Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear energy. Decommissioning and dismantlement of the reactor began soon after PreussenElektra was granted a permit for the work in February 2018.

Share:

Contractor selected for Belgian LLW/ILW facility

June 17, 2025, 3:00PMRadwaste Solutions
Belgium will construct a surface disposal facility for low- and intermediate-level short-lived waste in Dessel. (Image: ONDRAF/NIRAS)

Brussels-based construction group Besix announced that is has been chosen by the Belgian agency for radioactive waste management ONDRAF/NIRAS for construction of the country’s surface disposal facility for low- and intermediate-level short-lived nuclear waste in Dessel.

K-State to offer NE bachelor's degree starting this fall

June 17, 2025, 12:00PMNuclear News
Looking down into K-State’s research reactor. (Photo: Kansas State University)

The Carl R. Ice College of Engineering at Kansas State University is adding nuclear engineering as its 15th bachelor of science degree program. Offered through the Alan Levin Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, the curriculum of 123 credit hours will be officially available starting in the fall this year.

Trump administration begins overhaul of the NRC

June 17, 2025, 7:42AMNuclear News

Hanson

Since the president's inauguration in January, the Trump administration has been on course to make big changes at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to realize its goals of deregulation, energy dominance, and deployment of advanced reactors. Given the executive orders (EOs) and the work that the Department of Government Efficiency has done in cutting the federal workforce, it was a surprise that NRC commissioner Christopher Hanson was dismissed on Friday, according to a statement Hanson posted on his LinkedIn profile early Monday.

Hanson said in the post that President Trump terminated his position “without cause, contrary to existing law and long-standing precedent regarding removal of independent agency appointments.”

Scientific mission to track radwaste barrels on Atlantic seabed

June 17, 2025, 7:01AMRadwaste Solutions
Greenpeace protest the dumping of barrels in the early 1980s. (Photo: Greenpeace/Pierre Gleizes)

A scientific mission led by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) set sail this past weekend in the Northeast Atlantic to investigate the long-term impacts of radioactive waste dumped at sea between the 1950s and 1990s.