The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has released a notice of intent to conduct a scoping process and prepare an environmental impact statement to evaluate Fermi America’s plan to construct and operate four AP1000 reactors at its Project Matador Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus in Texas.

While that announcement may seem routine, the process envisioned is not. As part of the company’s combined license (COL) application with the NRC, it has agreed to participate in an accelerated environmental review pilot program under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Under this pilot, the applicant(s) develop a draft EIS under NRC supervision.

Developers in Sweden have announced advancements for two reactor projects. Lead-cooled small modular reactor developer Blykalla is proceeding with the permitting process for its proposed SMR park in Norrsundet in the Gävle Municipality after conducting initial assessments to confirm that the site is suitable.

Meanwhile, SMR developer Kärnfull Next has submitted the first application under Sweden’s new Act on Government Approval of Nuclear Facilities, for a proposed SMR campus in the Valdemarsvik Municipality.

Beginning April 1, the U.K.’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and its subsidiary Nuclear Restoration Services (NRS) will take over the closed Hunterston B nuclear power plant for decommissioning. Located in North Ayrshire, Scotland, Hunterston B was shut down in 2022 after 46 years of service and is one of seven advanced gas-cooled reactor stations owned and operated by EDF Energy in the United Kingdom.

The U.K. government has announced a series of initiatives to progress fusion to commercialization, laid out in a fusion strategy policy paper published March 16. A New Energy Revolution: The UK’s Plan for Delivering Fusion Energy begins to describe how the government’s £2.5 billion (about $3.4 billion) investment in fusion research and development over five years will be allocated.

A new report commissioned by the Nuclear Scaling Initiative, conducted by energy consultant Solestiss, and funded by the Bezos Earth Fund identifies and recommends solutions to overcome current bottlenecks in the supply chain for advanced reactors.

Broadly speaking, the report recommends the repeated deployment of Gen III+ reactor designs to rebuild the foundation of domestic manufacturing, workforce, and qualification capacity.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s adjudicatory hearings have not received any significant reforms since 2004. In fact, according to NRC staff, these Atomic Safety and Licensing Board (ASLB) hearings have only undergone major reform three times in the board’s history.

That would change under a proposed rule that was issued earlier this month. At a March 19 virtual meeting, NRC staff provided more details on the proposed changes.

Ian Buck, Nvidia’s vice president of hyperscale and HPC computing (left), and Darío Gil, DOE Under Secretary for Science and Genesis Mission lead, at the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference. (Photo: Nvidia)

Department of Energy Under Secretary for Science and Genesis Mission lead Darío Gil participated in a session at the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference on March 17 that coincided with the announcement of the DOE’s $293 million Genesis Mission request for applications, which invites interdisciplinary teams to submit ideas for projects addressing over 20 of Genesis’s stated national challenges, several of which focus on accelerating nuclear research and nuclear energy output.

“We seek breakthrough ideas and novel collaborations leveraging the scientific prowess of our national laboratories, the private sector, universities, and science philanthropies,” said Gil.  

Recent years have seen growing global interest in nuclear energy and rising confidence in the sector. For the first time since the early 2000s, there is renewed optimism about the industry’s future. This change is driven by several major factors: geopolitical developments that highlight the need for secure energy supplies, a stronger focus on resilient energy systems, national commitments to decarbonization, and rising demand for clean and reliable electricity.

It has been 10 months since President Trump signed several executive orders that have reshaped the nuclear energy industry and set lofty goals for initiatives like the development and deployment of new nuclear technology.

One such initiative, the DOE’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, calls for at least 3 of the 11 reactors in the program to achieve criticality by July 4, 2026. Some have questioned whether this target is feasible.

X-energy announced Thursday that it has signed a letter of intent with Talen Energy to assess the deployment of X-energy’s Xe-100 reactor in Pennsylvania and throughout the market area of the PJM Interconnection regional transmission organization. That area, where the companies intend to explore the deployment of at least three four-unit Xe-100 power plants, includes several states in the eastern United States, from New Jersey to Illinois.

Arizona Public Service has informed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its intention to renew the operating licenses of the Palo Verde nuclear power plant’s three reactors for a second 20-year term, which could extend operations at the facility into the 2060s.

According to the announcement, APS won’t submit the subsequent license renewal application to the NRC until late 2027. The renewal would allow Unit 1 to operate through 2065, Unit 2 through 2066, and Unit 3 through 2067.

The University of Missouri has entered a consulting agreement with construction firm Burns & McDonnell to develop NextGen MURR, a new 20-MW light water research reactor that will produce medical isotopes for cancer treatments and theranostics and will be used to conduct neutron science research.

On March 17, Oklo released a series of four press releases in the span of a few hours containing some of the first substantial updates the company has given on its various approval processes with the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission since January.

Specifically, Oklo announced that it has received two nuclear safety design agreement (NSDA) approvals from the DOE and a materials license from the NRC.

Laurent Jerrige, JRC director for nuclear decommissioning (left), and Pavol Stuller, Amentum’s European development director, sign the JRC site cleanup contract. (Photo: Amentum)

The European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) awarded a framework contract worth $112 million (about €97.6 million) to an Amentum-led joint venture to lead the cleanup of nuclear research sites in four European countries.

TerraPower Isotopes, a TerraPower subsidiary, plans to increase its actinium-225 production 20-fold by opening a new manufacturing facility in Philadelphia, Pa., and by expanding the capacity of its Everett, Wash., facility. On March 17, TerraPower Isotopes said it expects the new facility to begin producing the medical radioisotope for targeted alpha therapy in 2029.

American enrichment start-up General Matter is to export nuclear fuel to Japan and South Korea, backed by up to $4.2 billion in potential debt financing from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM).

In an effort to revamp its nuclear sector and enable the build-out of new projects, the U.K. has unveiled a sweeping set of changes to project deployment. These changes, which are set to come into effect by the end of next year, will restructure the country’s regulatory and environmental approval framework and directly support new growth through various workforce efforts.

At last week’s Regulatory Information Conference, Jamie Pelton cochaired a panel on Palisades nuclear power plant’s restart—a “historic restart,” as she put it.

Her choice of words was perhaps an understatement. After all, no U.S. nuclear plant has yet restarted after being slated for decommissioning.

Hash Hashemian
president@ans.org

From kindergarten classrooms to national security facilities, each event I attended during the opening weeks of the new year underscored one truth: The future of nuclear energy depends on the people we inspire, educate, and empower today.

I had a busy start to 2026, first speaking at the Nashville Energy and Mining Summit alongside Tennessee Electric Cooperative Association senior vice president Justin Maierhofer to explore the necessary synergies among policy, academic coursework, research, and industry expertise in accelerating American nuclear innovation. Drawing on experiences in high-level government relations and public affairs and decades of work in nuclear instrumentation advancements, we discussed Tennessee’s nuclear renaissance, workforce development, and policy frameworks that support emerging energy demands.

The nuclear space is full of companies eager to power new AI development. At the same time, many AI companies want to provide services to the nuclear industry. It should come as no surprise, then, that two new partnerships have recently been announced that further bridge the AI and nuclear sectors.

AtkinsRéalis has announced a partnership with Nvidia that aims to leverage Nvidia’s technologies to deploy “nuclear-powered, large-scale AI factories.” Centrus Energy has announced a partnership with Palantir Technologies to use Palantir’s software in support of Centrus’s plans to expand enrichment capacity.