Drilling begins. (Photo: Kairos Power)
Kairos Power announced this morning that safety-related nuclear construction has begun at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., site where the company is building its Hermes low-power test reactor. Hermes, a scaled demonstration of Kairos Power’s fluoride salt–cooled, high-temperature reactor technology, became the first non–light water reactor to receive a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 2023. The company broke ground at the site in July 2024.
Isotek employees load canisters of Th-229 that will go to TerraPower to support cancer treatment research. (Photo: DOE)
Workers with Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management contractor Isotek have surpassed a significant milestone in the supply of medical radioisotopes, extracting more than 15 grams of rare thorium-229 through the Department of Energy’s Thorium Express Project.
NRC hosting public meetings today on TVA project
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week shared a portion of the construction permit application from the Tennessee Valley Authority to build a small modular reactor at the Clinch River nuclear site in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
In anticipation of TVA’s filing, NRC staff scheduled two public meetings in Oak Ridge for today, to discuss the agency’s process for licensing nuclear power plants.
INL’s Hot Fuel Examination Facility. (Photo: INL)
An agreement signed by the state of Idaho and the U.S. Department of Energy will open the way for a single cask of high-burnup spent nuclear fuel to be shipped from Dominion Energy’s North Anna nuclear power plant in Virgina to Idaho National Laboratory for research purposes.
On his recent trip to Washington, D.C., IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi (right) met with Energy Secretary Chris Wright. (Photo: IAEA/D. Candano)
International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Mariano Grossi recently traveled to Washington, D.C., for the first time since Trump took office in January. In his three-day visit to the capital, Grossi spoke with key nuclear leaders from around the world and in the federal government, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair David Wright, on topics including nuclear power, safety, security, funding, and nonproliferation.
Idaho National Laboratory’s Idaho Falls campus. (Photo: INL)
Idaho National Laboratory is looking for a sponsor to invest $5 million–$10 million in a privately funded innovation incubator to support seed-stage start-ups working in nuclear energy, integrated energy systems, cybersecurity, or advanced materials. For their investment, the sponsor gets access to what INL calls “a turnkey source of cutting-edge American innovation.” Not only are technologies supported by the program “substantially de-risked” by going through technical review and development at a national laboratory, but the arrangement “adds credibility, goodwill, and visibility to the private sector sponsor’s investments,” according to INL.
Work on Argonne's METL sodium test loop. (Photo: Argonne National Laboratory)
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
Concept art of Pacific Fusion’s planned demonstration system. (Image: Pacific Fusion)
Pacific Fusion has a staff that knows its way around pulsers and inertial fusion, and an ongoing collaboration with General Atomics. Today, the two companies are announcing plans to test Pacific Fusion’s pulser-driven inertial fusion energy concept, with commercial fusion power as the goal.
“We are building a fusion machine and testing all equipment—including components and a pulser module—at our Pacific Fusion test center,” Pacific Fusion cofounder and chief technology officer Keith LeChien told Nuclear News. “GA’s engineering expertise remains an important part of our progress, and we expect this collaboration to continue through future phases of development.”
This Deimos core configuration shows the fuel, stainless steel, polyethylene, and borated polyethylene positioned for the THETA project. (Photo: DOE)
Los Alamos National Laboratory recently performed a series of customized criticality experiments to obtain data that will support the transportation of HALEU TRISO fuel, the Department of Energy announced April 21.
Reports say LPO could lose more than half its staff
Nearly 60 percent of staff at the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear-friendly Loan Programs Office may be lost through President Trump’s deferred resignation program, the Washington Examiner reported.
According to the news outlet, 123 of the 210 current LPO employees have opted into the retirement buyout, which would amount to a 58.5 percent staffing cut in the office that helps finance new nuclear projects among other energy proposals. There is a 45-day period for federal employees older than 40 to change their minds, which could impact the final number of exiting staff.
Deacy (left) speaks with senior project manager Mike McDowell (center) and civil construction manager Buck Collins (right) outside the construction trailer at the Clinch River site in Tennessee. (Photo: TVA)
In a Q&A posted on TVA’s website last week about a “new nuclear heyday,” Bob Deacy shared his vision for the Clinch River nuclear site in Oak Ridge, Tenn.—and some news about next steps for the company’s small modular reactor plans.
The Tennessee Valley Authority’s senior vice president for the Clinch River project, Deacy described his vision for up to four SMRs built on plots smaller than a football field with state-of-the-art digital equipment and a newly trained workforce providing reliable 24/7 power to the grid.
Hanford crews break up concrete and remove contaminated soil near the site’s former K Area reactors in 2023. (Photo: DOE)
The cost to complete the cleanup of the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site in Washington state could cost as much as $589.4 billion, according to the 2025 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule, and Cost Report, which was released by the DOE on April 15. While that estimate is $44.2 billion lower than the DOE’s 2022 estimate of $640.6 billion, a separate, low-end estimate has since grown by more than 21 percent, to $364 billion.
The life cycle report, which the DOE is legally required to issue every three years under agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology), summarizes the remaining work scope, schedule, and cost estimates for the nuclear site. For more than 40 years, Hanford’s reactors produced plutonium for America’s defense program.