ORNL leadership gathered at the Nuclear Opportunities Workshop in Knoxville, with Trey Lauderdale, CEO of Atomic Canyon. From left: Joe Hoagland, Director of Special Initiatives; Susan Hubbard, Deputy for Science and Technology; Stephen Streiffer, ORNL Director; Lauderdale; Gina Tourassi, Associate Laboratory Director for Computing and Computational Sciences; and Mickey Wade, Associate Laboratory Director for Fusion and Fission Energy and Science. (Photo: Carlos Jones/ORNL)
The United States has tight new deadlines—18 months, max—for licensing commercial reactor designs. The Department of Energy is marshaling the nuclear expertise and high-performance computing assets of its national laboratories, in partnership with private tech companies, to develop generative AI tools and large-scale simulations that could help get nuclear reactor designs through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing process—or the DOE’s own reactor pilot program. “Accelerate” and “streamline” are the verbs of choice in recent announcements from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory, as they describe plans with Atomic Canyon, Microsoft, and Amazon.
Vertiv and Oklo plan to collaborate on modular, energy-efficient power and cooling systems and designs developed to support data centers driven by nuclear power. (Image: Oklo)
In back-to-back press releases, Oklo recently announced two new partnerships that seek to advance the deployment of its commercial power reactors in the data center market.
These partnerships, one with Ohio-based Vertiv Holdings and one with Colorado-based Liberty Energy, continue Oklo’s trend in working to position their Aurora powerhouse as a key part of the energy solution for powering the AI boom.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright (center) and leaders from Argonne, Intel, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise cut the ribbon to celebrate the Aurora exascale supercomputer. (Photo: Argonne)
Leaders from private companies, government, and national laboratories gathered at Argonne National Laboratory on July 17 and 18 for an exclusive AI x Nuclear Energy Executive Summit that the Department of Energy called a first-of-its-kind forum to “align next-generation nuclear systems with the needs of digital infrastructure.”
Team members and the new closure welding system that seals canisters containing spent fuel. (Photo: DOE)
Teams from the Department of Energy’s Offices of Environmental Management and Nuclear Energy recently collaborated on the Road Ready Demonstration Project by testing new equipment to seal spent nuclear fuel into a safe and transportable system for future shipments out of Idaho.
(Photo: Idaho National Laboratory)
Following the signing of a new agreement, Kiewit Nuclear Solutions, a subsidiary of Kiewit Corporation, is officially the lead constructor for Oklo’s first commercial Aurora powerhouse, which will be built at Idaho National Laboratory.
A commercially irradiated, refabricated test rod in an INL hot cell. (Photo: INL)
An article in the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s July news bulletin noted that a first test has been completed for the High Burnup Experiments in Reactivity Initiated Accident (HERA) project. The project aim is to understand the performance of light water reactor fuel at high burnup under reactivity-initiated accidents (RIA).
The high-burnup research cask (center) stands with other spent nuclear fuel dry storage casks at the North Anna ISFSI in Virginia. (Photo: Dominion Energy)
The Department of Energy said it anticipated delivering a research cask of high-burnup spent nuclear fuel from Dominion Energy’s North Anna nuclear power plant in Virginia to Idaho National Laboratory by fall 2027. The planned shipment is part of the High Burnup Dry Storage Research Project being conducted by the DOE with the Electric Power Research Institute.
As preparations continue, the DOE said it is working closely with federal agencies as well as tribal and state governments along potential transportation routes to ensure safety, transparency, and readiness every step of the way.
Watch the DOE’s latest video outlining the project here.
A representation of the NRIC DOME microreactor test bed. (Image: NRIC)
Professor Joseph Newkirk operates a testing device in Missouri S&T’s Toomey Hall. (Photo: Blaine Falkena/Missouri S&T)
Commercial nuclear fuel rods being unloaded from cask inside a HFEF hot cell. (Photo: INL)
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.
A view of the DOME microreactor testbed, which is managed by the National Reactor Innovation Center. (Image: NRIC)
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.
INL’s Hot Fuel Examination Facility. (Photo: INL)
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.
Artist’s impression of NASA’s Dragonfly approaching a landing site on Saturn’s moon Titan. Essentially a flying chemistry lab, along with cameras and other science instrumentation, Dragonfly will travel between dozens of landing sites on Titan’s surface to investigate the chemical origins of life. (Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)
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’s Idaho Falls campus. (Photo: INL)
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.
An ICP worker supervises an evaluation of ultrasonic testing technology recently at the INL Site’s Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project. (Photo: DOE)
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.