As work progresses on the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, which will progress through DOE authorization rather than Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing, three members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce have sent a critical letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

The letter demands “information about the DOE and its employees’ dealings with the NRC and its staff” and expresses concern that DOE staff has “broken the firewall” between the departments.

A cohort of women working in the nuclear community visited Canada recently as part of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Lise Meitner Program (LMP) to boost their career development. During the third and final leg of the 2025 LMP, the women took part in two weeks of training focused on research reactors.

A new study, “Building Confidence in Models for Complex Barrier Systems for Radionuclides,” highlights a breakthrough in the modeling and simulation of underground nuclear waste interactions. Led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ph.D. student Dauren Sarsenbayev, assistant professor and ANS member Haruko Wainwright, and scientists Christophe Tournassat and Carl Steefel, the research shows how cutting-edge, high-performance computing simulations closely align with real-world experimental data from the Mont Terri underground laboratory in Switzerland. The alignment enhances confidence in the long-term safety of geological nuclear waste repositories.

About two years ago, on August 11, 2023, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker vetoed S.B. 76, a bill that would have lifted the state’s moratorium on new nuclear power plant construction. It was a reversal on his decidedly pronuclear stance; in 2021, he signed S.B. 2408, which supported Braidwood, Byron, and Dresden nuclear power plants with $694 million in state funding.

As most attendees of this year’s ANS Annual Conference left breakfast in the Grand Ballroom of the Chicago Downtown Marriott to sit in on presentations covering everything from career pathways in fusion to recently digitized archival nuclear films, 40 of them made their way to the hotel’s fifth floor to take part in the second offering of Nuclear 101, a newly designed certification course that seeks to give professionals who are in or adjacent to the industry an in-depth understanding of the essentials of nuclear energy and engineering from some of the field’s leading experts.

The article “Finding the shadows in a fusion system faster with AI,” published by the Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, details the public-private partnership among PPPL, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The partnership has led to a new artificial intelligence approach that is faster at finding what’s known as “magnetic shadows” in a fusion vessel: “safe havens protected from the intense heat of the plasma.”

The next opportunity to earn professional engineer (P.E.) licensure in nuclear engineering is this fall. Sign up now to enhance your studying with the help of the online module program from the American Nuclear Society.

The ninth International Mentoring Workshop in Japan was hosted recently by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency in partnership with the Japan Atomic Energy Commission. Held at the Wakasa Bay Energy Research Centre (WERC) in Tsugura, Fukui Prefecture, the workshop brought together 26 Japanese female high school students to explore career options in STEM and nuclear energy fields.

The Nebraska Public Power District, the largest electric utility in the state, recently hosted the first in a series of informational open houses in Valentine, one of the 16 cities that NPPD is considering for the siting of a new nuclear power plant.

Eleven high-burnup fuel rods manufactured by Global Nuclear Fuel have been delivered to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for a battery of destructive tests. PNNL’s evaluation will provide GNF and the Department of Energy with information about the performance of the fuel, which—like other fuels developed through the DOE’s Accident Tolerant Fuel program— was engineered to handle longer operating cycles, improve fuel cycle economics, and support power uprates for existing light water reactors.

A strategic collaboration has been launched by Lightbridge Corporation and Oklo Inc. to explore locating Lightbridge’s fuel fabrication facility within Oklo’s planned advanced fuel manufacturing facility. The collaboration aims to “accelerate the commercialization of advanced nuclear fuels through joint fuel fabrication and research and development, including manufacturing fuel using repurposed plutonium from legacy materials,” according to the companies.

California-based microreactor developer Radiant Industries has announced the signing of what it calls “the first-ever agreement” to deliver a mass-manufactured nuclear microreactor to a U.S. military base. The contract was signed with the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the U.S. Air Force as part of the Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program.

Brazilian model, nuclear advocate, and philanthropist Isabelle Boemeke, who the online TED lecture series describes as “the world’s first nuclear energy influencer,” was the subject of a recent New York Times article that explored her ardent support for and advocacy of nuclear technology.

Members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) viewed the efforts underway to address legacy transuranic waste during a recent visit to Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico.

When small modular reactors and other advanced nuclear plants someday provide electricity, hydrogen, desalination, and district heating, the North Carolina Collaboratory will deserve some credit. Headquartered at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, the collaboratory is a research funding agency established by the North Carolina General Assembly in 2016 to partner with academic institutions and government agencies. Its goal is to help transform research into practical applications for the benefit of North Carolina’s state and local economies. To that end, it engages in research projects related to advanced nuclear energy, among other initiatives.

The United Nuclear Corporation and General Electric will undertake a nearly $63 million, decade-long cleanup project at the former Northeast Church Rock Mine in northwestern New Mexico under a consent decree with the United States, the Navajo Nation, and the state of New Mexico.

The race to bring test reactors on line by July 4, 2026, got a boost today when the Department of Energy unveiled the names of 10 companies selected for the Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program—a new pathway that allows reactor authorization outside national labs.

As first outlined in one of the four executive orders on nuclear energy released by President Trump on May 23 and in the request for applications for the Reactor Pilot Program released June 18, the companies must use their own money and sites—and DOE authorization—to get reactors operating. What they won’t need is a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science has committed $20 million to the University of Missouri that—with a matching $20 million from the state government—will support construction of a Radioisotope Science Center (RSC) at the university’s Discovery Ridge research park in Columbia, Mo., projected for completion in early 2029. The new facility will pair the DOE’s Office of Isotope R&D and Production (IRP)—formerly known as the DOE Isotope Program—with the decades of expertise developed at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR).

...and today.

Levin in the late 1980s...

Growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s and ’60s, I had interests in two areas that ultimately had major impacts on my education and career. The first was science—especially nuclear physics—and the second was science fiction.

One early influence was undoubtedly Disney’s short film “Our Friend the Atom.” I don’t recall exactly when or where I saw it, but I clearly remember the demonstration of a chain reaction with mousetraps and ping pong balls. It looked like an exciting area about which to learn.

I also had a shelf full of Tom Swift Jr. sci-fi/adventure books, and around the fourth grade I discovered Robert Heinlein—specifically, his book Have Space Suit, Will Travel. Kip Russell, the teenage hero of the book, is abducted by hostile space aliens but manages to escape and, with the help of a friendly alien, saves Earth from destruction. At the end, having returned to Earth, Kip prepares to go off to college at MIT. With the assistance of my trusty World Book Encyclopedia, I researched MIT and decided—rather audaciously at the age of 10—that I would go there, too.

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

ADVANCED REACTORS MARKETPLACE

SMR service center targeted for Ontario

GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy has announced plans to invest as much as $50 million to establish a Canadian BWRX-300 Engineering and Service Center near Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington New Nuclear Project site. The Ontario government had previously approved the construction of the first of four BWRX-300 small modular reactors at the site. The center will provide engineering and technical services for the long-term operation and maintenance of the future fleet of SMRs in Ontario. It will also serve as a hub for innovation and training, knowledge sharing, supply chain engagement, and workforce development.