Today, a bipartisan group of experts including energy consultant Lake Barrett and former NRC chair Allison Macfarlane have published a report titled The Path Forward for Nuclear Waste in the U.S.

The report recommends a new solution for managing domestic nuclear waste—one that centers around the foundation of an independent corporation led by reactor owners. Responsibility for waste management transport, storage, and disposal would be managed by this corporation rather than the Department of Energy.

NASA and the Department of Energy have announced a “renewed commitment” to their mutual goal of supporting research and development for a nuclear fission reactor on the lunar surface to provide power for future missions. The agencies have signed a memorandum of understanding that “solidifies this collaboration and advances President Trump’s vision of American space superiority.”

Tech giant Meta is making big bets on TerraPower and Oklo. With the former, the hyperscaler could support the deployment of up to eight new reactors. With the latter, it could be as many as sixteen.

For both start-ups, Meta hopes its demand bolsters supply chains, the workforce, and the nuclear industry generally. For itself, the company is aiming to secure more generation to cleanly power its AI ambitions.

Thursday was a busy news day for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with three significant announcements.

In the span of a few hours, the NRC released the news of Ho Nieh’s promotion to chair, the reversal of the plan to sunset its aircraft impact assessment provisions, and new guidance for interagency collaboration.

The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy convened its first hearing of the year, “American Energy Dominance: Dawn of the New Nuclear Era,” on January 7, where lawmakers and industry leaders discussed how nuclear energy can help meet surging electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence, data centers, advanced manufacturing, and national security needs.

This week, the Department of Energy has finalized two new other transaction agreements (OTAs) with participating companies in its Reactor Pilot Program, which aims to get one or two fast-tracked reactors on line by July 4 of this year. Those companies are Terrestrial Energy and Oklo.

Yesterday, the Department of Energy announced that three enrichment services companies have been awarded task orders worth $900 million each. Those task orders were given to American Centrifuge Operating (a Centrus Energy subsidiary) and General Matter, both of which will develop domestic HALEU enrichment capacity, along with Orano Federal Services, which will build domestic LEU enrichment capacity.

The DOE also announced that it has awarded Global Laser Enrichment an additional $28 million to continue advancing next generation enrichment technology.

Fusion technology company Thea Energy announced this week that it has completed the preconceptual design of its fusion power plant, called Helios. According to the company, Helios is “the first stellarator fusion power plant architecture that is realistic to build and operate with hardware that is available today, and that is tolerant to the rigors of manufacturing, construction, long-term operation, and maintenance of a commercial device.”

The Department of Energy has issued a three-year contract extension to Salado Isolation Mining Contractors (SIMCO), a single-purpose entity comprising Bechtel National and Los Alamos Technical Associates as a teaming contractor, for the continued management and operations of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the DOE’s geologic repository for defense-generated transuranic waste in southeastern New Mexico.

Workers change out spent 27,000-pound TSCR filter columns and place them on a nearby storage pad during a planned outage in 2023. (Photo: DOE)

While the Department of Energy recently celebrated the beginning of hot commissioning of the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), which has begun immobilizing the site’s radioactive tank waste in glass through vitrification, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has reported a possible bottleneck in waste processing. According to the DNFSB, unless current systems run efficiently, the issue could result in the interruption of operations at the WTP’s Low-Activity Waste Facility, where waste vitrification takes place.

During operations, the LAW Facility will process an average of 5,300 gallons of tank waste per day, according to Bechtel, the contractor leading design, construction, and commissioning of the WTP. That waste is piped to the facility after being treated by Hanford’s Tanks Side Cesium Removal (TSCR) system, which filters undissolved solid material and removes cesium from liquid waste.

According to a November 7 activity report by the DNFSB, the TSCR system may not be able to produce waste feed fast enough to keep up with the LAW Facility’s vitrification rate.

In April, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14270, “Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting to Unleash American Energy,” which calls for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (along with the Department of Energy, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the Environmental Protection Agency) to issue a “sunset rule” to effectively nullify certain regulations in no more than five years.

Longenecker & Associates has announced a $500,000 pledge from John and Bonnie Longenecker to the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, Nev. The contribution will strengthen the museum’s missions to inform the public about America’s national security legacy and current programs and to inspire students, educators, and young professionals pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

With about seven months left in the race to bring DOE-authorized test reactors on line by July 4, 2026, via the Reactor Pilot Program, Deep Fission has announced that it will break ground on its associated project on December 9 in Parsons, Kansas. It’s one of many companies in the program that has made significant headway in recent months.

Nuclear waste disposal technology company Deep Isolation Nuclear has announced the completion of a three-year project to manufacture, physically test, and validate a disposal-ready universal canister system (UCS) for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from advanced reactors.

This week, BWX Technologies, alongside Idaho National Laboratory and the Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office, announced the arrival of a full core of TRISO fuel at INL’s Transient Reactor Test Facility.

The American Nuclear Society’s Risk-informed, Performance-based Principles and Policy Committee (RP3C) has held another presentation in its monthly Community of Practice (CoP) series. Former RP3C chair N. Prasad Kadambi opened the meeting with brief introductory remarks about the RP3C and the need for new approaches to nuclear design that go beyond conventional and deterministic methods. He then welcomed this month’s speaker: Craig Benson from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who presented “Natural Systems Approach for Closure of Uranium Mill Tailing Facilities.”

One of the executive orders issued by President Trump in November —“Launching the Genesis Mission”—focuses on a national effort to accelerate the use of AI in scientific research. The Genesis Mission EO preceded a reorganization of the Department of Energy and further tightens links between science and security under the administration’s quest for “global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence.”

In a recent press release, the Department of Energy announced an organizational realignment aimed at “expanding American energy production, accelerating scientific and technological leadership, and ensuring the continued safety and readiness of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.”

. . . and today.

Weitzberg then. . .

My first exposure to nuclear engineering was in 1956–57 when I was a fourth-­year chemical engineering undergraduate at MIT. The previous summer, I worked at an oil refinery in New Jersey and our class visited a Monsanto sulfuric acid factory in Boston Harbor. I lost my enthusiasm for chemical engineering and decided to take a couple of introductory nuclear engineering courses as a senior. After a summer job at Y-­12 in Oak Ridge, I started on a nuclear engineering master’s degree program. (An Atomic Energy Commission fellowship certainly helped my decision.)

The following summer, I performed reactor physics experiments at Brookhaven with Herb Kouts, Joe Hendrie, Rudy Sher, and Henry Windsor. In January 1962, after defending my Ph.D. dissertation on measuring uranium-­238 capture in lattices of uranium rods in heavy water, I headed to Los Angeles to work on SNAP reactors for Atomics International. There, I performed critical experiments and managed their aerospace safety program.

Small modular reactor developer X-energy and its subsidiary TRISO-X announced yesterday the start of aboveground construction for its TX-1 advanced nuclear fuel fabrication facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.  The first-in-the-nation facility will be the first of two Oak Ridge facilities built to manufacture the company’s TRISO fuel for use in its Xe-100 SMR.