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.

Curiosity landed on Mars sporting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) in 2012, and a second NASA rover, Perseverance, landed in 2021. Both are still rolling across the red planet in the name of science. Another exploratory craft with a similar plutonium-238–fueled RTG but a very different mission—to fly between multiple test sites on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon—recently got one step closer to deployment.

On April 25, NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) announced that the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s icy moon passed its critical design review. “Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and test plans are all approved, and the mission can now turn its attention to the construction of the spacecraft itself,” according to NASA.

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.

New ultrasonic testing equipment being used by the Department of Energy’s Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP) to confirm the integrity of thousands of legacy waste drums is saving taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management announced.

The technology allows ICP personnel to inspect the thickness transuranic waste drums held in storage at the DOE’s Idaho National Laboratory Site, ensuring they meet Department of Transportation minimum thickness requirements to be shipped for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. According to DOE-EM, if drums meet the DOT thickness requirements, they can be loaded directly into shipping casks without the need for an expensive overpack container, leading to a minimum cost savings of $26 million.

Southern Nuclear recently loaded nuclear fuel with uranium-235 enriched up to 6 percent—higher than the usual 3–5 percent enrichment—into Vogtle-2 to test it through irradiation.

The Department of Energy announced March 31 that a new Molten Salt Flow Loop Test Bed at Idaho National Laboratory recently went through its inaugural test run. The closed-loop test system will allow for continuous monitoring and analysis of chloride-based molten salt reactor technology and instruments before the construction of the Southern Company/TerraPower Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment. MCRE—an experimental fast-spectrum molten salt research reactor—will be built at INL’s repurposed Zero Power Physics Reactor, which has been renamed LOTUS (Laboratory for Operation and Testing in the United States).

The Korea Times has reported that a Department of Energy contract employee at Idaho National Laboratory has been terminated for trying to take INL-owned, export-controlled, proprietary nuclear reactor design software on a flight to South Korea. The individual was stopped while attempting to board a Korea-bound flight with the design software, according to a formal report that the DOE Office of the Inspector General submitted to Congress for the period October 2023–March 2024.

The Idaho Environmental Coalition (IEC) has provided funding to 15 classrooms in southeastern Idaho to support local educators and encourage the next generation of workers to pursue technical careers, the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management announced. The IEC, which is led by Amentum and includes North Wind Portage as a partner, was awarded a 10-year, $6.4 billion contract in 2021 to manage cleanup operation at the Idaho National Laboratory Site.

Idaho National Laboratory recently conducted a safety test on high-burnup fast reactor fuel from historic irradiation testing at the lab’s Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II). According to the Department of Energy, which announced the work March 12, it’s the first such safety test to be performed in over 20 years.

Scientists at Idaho National Laboratory continue to make progress on the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE), which entails research and development for the first operational advanced nuclear reactor to use a mixture of molten chloride salt and uranium as fuel and coolant. The experiment is evaluating the safety and physics of the molten chloride fast reactor that Southern Company and TerraPower are planning to build.

A team from Idaho National Laboratory and the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy recently visited Carolina Fabricators Inc. (CFI) in West Columbia, S.C., to launch the fabrication process for the primary coolant system of the MARVEL microreactor. Battelle Energy Alliance, which manages INL, awarded the CFI contract in January.

A team with the Department of Energy’s Idaho Cleanup Project successfully tested robotic equipment being developed to retrieve radioactive calcine, a granular solid waste, at the Idaho National Laboratory Site, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management has announced.

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.

The Department of Energy’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) has awarded four fiscal year 2025 vouchers to support the development of advanced nuclear technologies. Each company will get access to specific capabilities and expertise in the DOE’s national laboratory complex—in this round of awards both Idaho National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are named—and will be responsible for a minimum 20 percent cost share, which can be an in-kind contribution.

Advanced nuclear company Oklo and data center developer Switch closed out 2024 by announcing a new partnership to deploy 12 GW of advanced nuclear power under a master power agreement.

Jay F. Kunze

We welcome ANS members with long careers in the community to submit their own stories so that the personal history of nuclear power can be captured. For information on submitting your stories, contact nucnews@ans.org.

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pa. In 1959, I received my Ph.D. in experimental nuclear physics utilizing the 400-MeV synchrocyclotron at Carnegie Mellon University, involving measuring the scattering of pi-­mesons from protons (as a liquid hydrogen target). I joined ANS in January 1960.

I later joined General Electric’s Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion project to build a nuclear jet engine at the National Reactor Testing Station at Idaho Falls (now Idaho National Laboratory). In January 1961, the U.S. Army’s experimental nuclear reactor SL-1 blew up, killing three army personnel. At first, the Air Force would not permit General Electric to take part in the cleanup, but after the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion project was canceled by President Kennedy in March, GE took on the SL-1 disassembly and analysis project. I oversaw the analysis, which took nearly two years.

The Department of Energy’s Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP) has improved transuranic waste operations to address aging waste containers being stored at the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project (AMWTP) at the Idaho National Laboratory Site, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management announced on December 10.

As of last week, crews with Department of Energy cleanup contractor Idaho Environmental Coalition (IEC) processed more than 142,000 gallons of radioactive sodium-bearing tank waste at Idaho’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) this year.

Radiant Industries has announced a $100 million Series C funding round to be used primarily to complete its Kaleidos Development Unit (KDU) microreactor for testing in Idaho National Laboratory's Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments (DOME) facility within two years.

Clean Core Thorium Energy (Clean Core) announced November 12 that test rodlets of its patented thorium-uranium fuel design known as ANEEL (advanced nuclear energy for enriched life) have reached a burnup milestone in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory.