The Department of Energy has issued a request for information inviting states to express interest in hosting Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses. According to the DOE, the proposed campuses could support work across the nuclear fuel life cycle, with a primary focus on fuel fabrication, enrichment, spent fuel reprocessing or recycling, separations, and radioactive waste management.

The DOE said the RFI marks the first step toward potentially establishing voluntary federal-state partnerships designed to build a coherent, end-to-end nuclear energy strategy for the country.

Nuclear Transport Solutions and Westinghouse have signed a strategic agreement to codevelop NTS’s Pegasus—a transport package for high-assay, low-enriched uranium fuel.

The companies signed the agreement at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., on January 22, taking what Westinghouse called “an important step in making HALEU available to enable advanced nuclear energy in the U.S. and UK.”

The Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy is requesting comments on a draft voluntary agreement for the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Defense Production Act (DPA) Consortium, with a short deadline of November 24 for comments.

Notice of the request for comments, along with the text of the draft voluntary agreement, was published in the November 17 Federal Register.

American Fuel Resources, a provider a nuclear fuel cycle solutions headquartered in Spokane, Wash., has submitted an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requesting transfer of a materials license from Idaho-based radioisotope manufacturer International Isotopes for a depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) deconversion plant in Lea County, N.M.

The American Nuclear Society has sent a letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright with a set of recommendations for the Department of Energy to take to establish an effective national program to manage the storage, reprocessing, and final disposal of U.S. commercial used nuclear fuel.

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency has issued a report calling for more-detailed information on tracking the decay heat of spent nuclear fuel from light water reactors. According to the NEA, the report highlights the increasing importance of accurate decay heat estimations due to evolving fuel characteristics, including higher initial fuel enrichment, increased burn-up rates, and extended reactor cycle lengths.

The report, Summary of the NEA Assessment on Spent Nuclear Fuel Decay Heat for Light Water Reactors, summarizes the findings of a subgroup of the NEA’s Working Party on Nuclear Criticality Safety (WPNCS), which ran from January 2022 to January 2024.

San Diego, Calif.–based General Atomics has announced a $20 million, 10-year strategic investment in Canada’s Fusion Fuel Cycles Inc. (FFC), a joint venture between Canadian Nuclear Laboratories and Japan’s Kyoto Fusioneering. The investment will help accelerate the development of FFC’s flagship project, the Unique Integrated Testing Facility (UNITY-2), a deuterium-tritium fuel cycle test facility located at CNL’s Chalk River Laboratories.

The Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy is setting up a nuclear fuel Defense Production Act Consortium that will seek voluntary agreements with interested companies “to increase fuel availability, provide more access to reliable power, and end America’s reliance on foreign sources of enriched uranium and critical materials needed to power the nation’s nuclear renaissance.” According to an August 22 DOE press release, the plan invokes the Defense Production Act (DPA) to give consortium members “defense from antitrust laws when certain criteria are met” and “allow industry consultation to develop plans of action.” DOE-NE is looking for interested companies to join the consortium ahead of its first meeting, scheduled for October 14.

The Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory will collaborate with Wisconsin-based fusion technology company Shine to design new chemical processes for separating valuable materials from used nuclear fuel.

Urenco USA has initiated production of enriched uranium in its newest gas centrifuge enrichment cascade—the first in a planned expansion of its Eunice, N.M., facility announced in July 2023. When the expansion is complete, early in 2027, the site will have increased its capacity by about 15 percent, adding about 700,000 separative work units (SWU) per year, the company said May 19.

U.S. uranium production increased throughout 2024, with more growth planned in 2025. The producers who can make that happen, however, were burned before by a “renaissance” that didn’t take off. Now they are watching and waiting for signals from Washington, D.C., including the impacts of tariffs, shifting relationships with global uranium producers, and funding for the enrichment task orders designed to boost demand for U.S. uranium.

Advanced reactor company Moltex Energy Canada said it has successfully validated its waste to stable salt (WATSS) process on used nuclear fuel bundles from an unnamed Canadian commercial reactor through hot cell experiments conducted by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories.

New Strategic Understanding for Premier Education and Research (SUPER) agreements signed by Idaho National Laboratory, Boise State University, and University of Idaho will foster collaboration among the institutions in advanced energy and cybersecurity projects. The five-year agreements are designed to open doors for research and development opportunities, while advancing existing research and development initiatives, including projects in nuclear energy and high-performance computing.

It's been another successful publishing year for the American Nuclear Society's Nuclear News, Radwaste Solutions, the online Nuclear Newswire, and the NN Daily newsletter.

For Nuclear News, below are the publishing themes for 2025.

If you have story ideas for any of these themes or for Radwaste Solutions, please contact Nucnews@ans.org.

Peters

Latta

To streamline the licensing requirements for nuclear fuel recycling facilities and help increase investment in nuclear energy in the United States, U.S. Reps. Bob Latta (R., Ohio) and Scott Peters (D., Calif.) have introduced the bipartisan Nuclear REFUEL Act in the House of Representatives.

The bill, introduced on December 6, would amend the definition of “production facility” in the Atomic Energy Act, clarifying that a reprocessing facility producing uranium-transuranic mixed fuel would be licensed only under 10 CFR Part 70. According to the lawmakers, this single-step licensing process would significantly streamline the licensing requirements for fuel recycling facilities.

Utilities need to know months ahead of a scheduled refueling outage that fresh fuel will be on-site and ready to load. Now that the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act has been signed into law, U.S. utilities with plans to use Russian-origin low-enriched uranium also need to know if they can secure a waiver for imports through December 31, 2027—subject to specific annual limits—if “no alternative viable source of [LEU] is available to sustain the continued operation of a nuclear reactor or a United States nuclear energy company” or if LEU imports from Russia are “in the national interest.”

The Department of Energy issued a final request for proposals (RFP) on January 9 for uranium enrichment services to help establish a commercial domestic supply of high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) to fuel a potential fleet of advanced reactors. Without HALEU, advanced reactors will not be able to proceed past the demonstration stage. And given the investments of capital and time required to license and build a nuclear power plant—even a smaller, more efficient advanced reactor—eliminating fuel uncertainty could be what a utility needs to invest in new construction.

TerraPower and Uranium Energy announced today that they have signed a memorandum of understanding to “explore the potential supply of uranium” for TerraPower’s demonstration reactor in Kemmerer, Wyo.

Advanced reactors may be key to a clean energy future, but to prove it they’re going to need fuel—and that fuel will be derived from limited uranium resources and managed throughout the nuclear fuel cycle, whether that cycle is open (like the current fuel cycle) or closed (with reprocessing). Six panelists convened on June 12 during the Annual Meeting of the American Nuclear Society for the executive session “Merits and Viability of Advanced Nuclear Fuel Cycles: A Discussion with the National Academies.” They discussed those fuel cycles and the findings of a National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) consensus committee released as a draft report in November 2022 and published earlier this year.

The White House’s recently released budget request for fiscal year 2024 would provide $1.006 billion in gross budget authority for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission—an increase of $63.2 million, or about 6.7 percent, from the enacted FY 2023 level. According to the agency, the boost is largely for increased salaries and benefits “consistent with the Office of Management and Budget guidance.”