The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has amended Ontario Power Generation’s power reactor operating license for Darlington nuclear power plant to authorize the production of the medical radioisotopes lutetium-177 and yttrium-90.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced that it has introduced waste simulant chemicals to the Hanford Site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) as part of the cold commissioning testing of the plant’s Low-Activity Waste Facility.

The new Great Lakes Fusion Energy Alliance wants to build a fusion energy engineering consortium in the Great Lakes region to expand the Midwestern momentum behind fusion energy development and commercialization. The ultimate goal is to build fusion energy power plants in the region, but first the nascent organization is looking to invite other stakeholders into its alliance of universities, fusion companies, and supply chain and government partners. Together, they plan to “accelerate commercialization, expand the workforce, grow the supply chain, and make fusion more economically viable and sustainable as a global center of excellence.”

A milestone has been reached at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site when work crews successfully fabricated valves from old equipment and installed them on 137 specialized cylinders. This action will enable future work crews to transform depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) stored inside the cylinders into depleted uranium oxide, a stable chemical form suitable for reuse, storage or disposal.

North Carolina State University and Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) have joined forces to address the ongoing need for specialists in nuclear and criticality safety engineering (N&CSE) at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, near Aiken, S.C.

James Chamberlain, director of the Nuclear, Utilities, and Energy Sector at Rullion, has declared that the nuclear industry will not have workforce challenges going forward. “It’s time to challenge the scarcity narrative,” he wrote in a recent online article. “Nuclear isn't short of talent; it’s short of imagination in how it attracts, trains, and supports the workforce of the future.”

NuScale Power Corporation’s latest Energy Exploration (E2) Center has opened at South Carolina State University, in Orangeburg. E2 Centers are designed to provide visitors with hands-on experiences in simulated scenarios of operations at nuclear power plants. NuScale has established 10 such centers around the world. The company officially presented the fully installed E2 Center to SC State on May 21, after a collaborative setup and training process was completed.

The American Nuclear Society’s 2025 Annual Conference is right around the corner, taking place June 15–18 in Chicago at the Downtown Marriott.

Make sure to register for the meeting, make hotel reservations, and see the full conference program.

The Trump administration issued four executive orders on Friday aimed at boosting domestic nuclear deployment ahead of significant growth in projected energy demand in the coming decades. These orders aim to reclaim leadership in nuclear technology crucial for national security and competitive AI advancements.

At the Idaho National Laboratory Hot Fuel Examination Facility, containment box operator Jake Maupin moves a manipulator arm into position around a pencil-thin nuclear fuel rod. He is preparing for a procedure that he and his colleagues have practiced repeatedly in anticipation of this moment in the hot cell.

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management recently completed the transfer of a 32-acre parcel at the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) for private sector use. The transfer brings the total amount of property transferred from federal ownership for economic reuse to 1,832 acres at the ETTP, which was once home to the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

The U.S. House of Representatives pulled an all-nighter this week to narrowly pass (by a vote of 215–214) a revised budget plan Thursday morning and send it to the Senate for a reconciliation vote of its own.

Nuclear advocates have been monitoring the latest language regarding tax credits that have been in place since 2021 to help drive deployment. Earlier versions of the bill called for phasing out the nuclear credits.

The American Nuclear Society’s Risk-informed, Performance-based Principles and Policy Committee (RP3C) held another presentation in its monthly Community of Practice (CoP) series on May 2.

The International Atomic Energy Agency team at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) reported hearing gunfire near the site this morning while a drone hit the plant’s training center.

In a news release today, IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said this is the third drone to target the training center, located just outside the site perimeter, so far this year. He called for an immediate end to drones being flown over or near nuclear facilities.

Wright

Energy Secretary Chris Wright testified before the U.S. Senate’s Energy and Water Development Subcommittee yesterday to discuss how the Department of Energy would be impacted by the president’s proposed fiscal year 2026 budget.

The meeting highlighted concerns from lawmakers about the DOE’s spending and efficiency—pointing to the rise in the department’s budget from $61 billion in FY 2021 to $160 billion last year.

Committee chair John Kennedy (R., La.) called the DOE spending pattern “unsustainable.”

“The average electricity bill . . . for the average American family over the past four years is up 28 percent. That’s the first thing they care about,” Kennedy said. “We’ve got to address it . . . and talk very specifically about what programs are working and what isn’t.”

A research reactor built in 1962 that was converted to digital control and operation in 2019 is aiding the development of advanced nuclear reactors, such as small modular reactors and microreactors. An article published by Purdue University describes how Purdue University Reactor Number One (PUR-1), currently the only facility to be licensed for a fully digital safety and control system by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is being used to perform “first-of-a-kind experiments that are unique to the nuclear sector.”

ASP Isotopes Inc. announced on May 19 that it now has conditional commitments from TerraPower for a loan that could partially finance a new uranium enrichment facility in South Africa. The companies have also reached a supply agreement for high-assay low-enriched uranium from the proposed facility that, according to ASP, “supports the supply of HALEU for the first fuel core for TerraPower’s Natrium Plant in Wyoming and contemplates the supply of HALEU over a 10-year period.”

Korsnick

In the Nuclear Energy Institute’s annual State of the Nuclear Energy Industry report, NEI president and CEO and Maria Korsnick expressed optimism about the nuclear industry and she issued a call to action.

Her address was part of NEI’s Nuclear Energy Policy forum. The forum, being held in Washington, D.C., on May 20 and May 21, brings together industry leaders, policy stakeholders, and clean energy experts to discuss nuclear advocacy. Korsnick’s remarks focused on the private capital flowing into the industry, progress on regulatory reform and new nuclear technology, and how the U.S. is trying to take the lead on the global nuclear stage.

“We are here at an unprecedented time in our industry history,” Korsnick said. “I’m proud to say that the nuclear industry has a future of unlimited potential.”

The National Reactor Innovation Center is accepting applications from developers ready to take a fueled microreactor to criticality inside the former Experimental Breeder Reactor-II containment building at Idaho National Laboratory, now repurposed as DOME—a microreactor test bed. According to a Department of Energy announcement, DOME will be ready to receive the first experimental reactor in the fall of 2026, with testing likely to begin in 2027.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management said it will use a new simulator to help train operators on the safe and efficient movement of a remotely operated crane at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The DWPF, where Savannah River’s liquid high-level radioactive waste is vitrified and placed into storage containers, uses an unmanned bridge crane system to install and replace equipment in the high-humidity, high-radiation, and harsh chemical environment of the facility’s processing cells.