The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is providing the opportunity to request a hearing on Dow Chemical Company’s application to construct a 320-MWe nuclear power plant at the company’s Seadrift site in Calhoun, Texas. Long Mott Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company, submitted its construction permit application to the NRC in March. It was accepted for review by the agency on May 12.

It’s a move that “brings to an end decades of dithering and delay, with the government backing the builders.” That’s how the U.K. government announced, with alliterative fanfare, its £14.2 billion (about $19.2 billion) investment in Sizewell C, where EDF Energy plans to build two 1,600-MWe EPRs.

A new method has received Washington state’s approval for use at the 222-S Laboratory at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, improving how experts analyze tank waste and providing more precise data to support safe and efficient cleanup.

Taking advantage of growing global demand for nuclear decontamination and decommissioning, South Korea’s state-run Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power hopes to enter the U.S. nuclear power plant D&D market next year, according to a report by English news site Pulse (a service of Mael Business News Korea).

Rolls-Royce SMR has emerged as the United Kingdom’s preferred bidder to build the country’s first small modular reactors following a two-year competition, the U.K. government announced June 10. Rolls-Royce SMR expects to build three SMRs with Great British Energy–Nuclear, subject to contracting later this year and regulatory approvals. Great British Energy–Nuclear will “aim to allocate a site later this year and connect projects to the grid in the mid-2030s.”

Studsvik AB has completed construction of the new inDRUM Demonstration Facility outside of Nykoping, Sweden. We can now demonstrate how the inDRUM technology will process a wide range of problematic and legacy wastes through the removal of all liquids, organics and other materials, resulting in a stable and reduced volume product that can be disposed of in a suitable repository.

While attendance at the 2025 Waste Management Conference was noticeably down this year due to the ongoing federal retrenchment, the conference, held March 9–13 in Phoenix, Ariz., still drew a healthy and diverse crowd of people working on the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, both domestically and internationally.

Lisa Marshall
president@ans.org

“As we enter the 21st century, the status of the U.S. nuclear energy industry is in flux, dependent on actions by industry, government, circumstance . . . and public opinion. Its renewal coincides with several initiatives taken by government and capitalized in particular ways by energy organizations, be they utilities, engineering firms, professional societies, educational institutions, national laboratories, trade organizations, and/or research and regulatory governmental branches . . . Nuclear fission has unleashed upon society benefits and cautionary tales that are currently being privately and publicly debated.”

These words, which I wrote almost a decade ago as part of my master’s thesis, are as true today as they were then. I have a long-standing relationship with the nuclear energy landscape. And so, as I reflect on my journey to and as your ANS president, there are some truths that have stood the test of time, serving as signposts that must remain in sight for the nuclear community:

As trade negotiations are in the works between the United States and China, Washington, D.C., has the advantage in semiconductors but nuclear power is a different story, according to a June 9 article in the Hong Kong–based South China Morning Post.

In the weeks since President Donald Trump issued four nuclear energy–-focused executive orders (EOs), stakeholders across the nuclear industry weighed in on the plans and details. The American Nuclear Society convened an expert advisory group to study the directives and provide constructive input for the pending implementation.

Argonne National Laboratory said it has secured just over $10 million from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) for two research projects investigating the transmutation of spent nuclear fuel into less radioactive substances.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, which is mandated by law to develop an approach for the long-term care of Canada’s spent nuclear fuel, has begun collecting feedback from Canadians and Indigenous people to help refine its process for selecting a second deep geologic repository site.

At COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, a clear consensus emerged: Nuclear energy must be a cornerstone of the global clean energy transition. With electricity demand projected to soar as we decarbonize not just power but also industry, transport, and heat, the case for new nuclear is compelling. More than 20 countries committed to tripling global nuclear capacity by 2050. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy forecasts that the country’s current nuclear capacity could more than triple, adding 200 GW of new nuclear to the existing 95 GW by mid-century.

On May 23, President Donald Trump signed four Executive Orders (EOs) designed to “usher in a nuclear energy renaissance” by building on federal policies and programs and directing efficiencies in the licensing, siting, development, and deployment of advanced reactor technologies.

In order to evaluate the specific proposals contained in the EOs, a group of experts was convened from various sectors of the U.S. nuclear technology enterprise, under the auspices of the ANS External Affairs Committee, to compare the EOs against existing ANS board-approved Position Statements and to offer constructive input for subsequent implementation by the Trump administration.

The group’s findings and feedback, which were delivered by ANS CEO Craig Piercy to ANS President Lisa Marshall and the Board of Directors, are listed below, grouped by individual EO.

A group of nine former commissioners of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent a letter Wednesday to the chairs and ranking members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Committee, lending their support to efforts to remove mandatory hearings from the reactor licensing process. The move could speed up the new reactor licensing process by about three to six months and save millions of dollars.

The Department of Energy announced on June 5 that three companies—all of which are new to the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) voucher program—will receive vouchers to support their research on advanced fuels, materials, and sensors. The second round fiscal year 2025 vouchers will let the companies access specialized research facilities and expertise in the DOE’s national laboratory complex.

Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness is accepting nominations for its Fred C. Davison Distinguished Scientist Award and its Nuclear Service Award. Nominations for both awards must be submitted by August 1.

The awards will be presented this fall as part of the CNTA’s annual Edward Teller Lecture event.

The community of Lincolnshire in eastern England voted on June 3 to withdraw from consideration to host a deep geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste. Lincolnshire was one of three communities the U.K. government’s Nuclear Waste Services identified in January as possible hosts for a repository.

NuScale Power Corporation has opened another Energy Exploration (E2) Center—this one at George Mason University in Arlington, Va. Just last month, a NuScale E2 Center opened at South Carolina State University in Orangeburg, S.C. The newest E2 at George Mason is the company’s 11th center.

Gierszewski

In late 2024, Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization announced the selection of a site in northwestern Ontario for its deep geological repository for the country’s used nuclear fuel.

This is a major step in a plan that was first laid out in 2010. From the beginning, the plan had been clear that any selected site must be technically safe, must be accessible for fuel transportation, and must have informed and willing host communities.

By 2020, potential sites had been narrowed from an initial set of 22 communities that had indicated interest in learning more down to two specific sites.

My primary involvement was on the technical safety side. We wanted to know that we could safely build and operate the repository at the chosen site.