The sold-out inaugural Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX) got off to a bumping start in Atlanta, Ga., Tuesday morning with an opening plenary that felt like part dance party and part highlight reel showing off the latest industry achievements.

That intro left the audience pumped up for Entergy’s CEO and NEI chair Drew Marsh, who welcomed everyone to the event, hosted jointly by the American Nuclear Society and the Nuclear Energy Institute. He spoke to a full house of more than 1,300 attendees, promising a blend of science, technology, policy, and advocacy centered around the future of nuclear energy.

The Primary Challenge

Schulz Electric™ was contacted by a nuclear power plant in the New England region that serves a community of over 2 million homes. After five years of service, a 1500 HP, 4 kV, 24-pole circulating water pump motor (measuring approximately 7’ wide, 8’ tall, and weighing several tons) needed refurbishing while the plant was still online. To add to their concern, the power plant is located close to the ocean. The aging motor was not only approaching the end of its serviceable life, but was highly susceptible to moisture intrusion and the salt-laden air, which can build up in air passages within the motor. These environmental conditions can lead to elevated operating temperatures and corrosion developing on the rotor, stator, and shaft components. These factors combined, placed the plant at an increased risk of downtime that could have potentially led to a significant loss of revenue if they were forced into a shutdown event.

The application period for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship Program (MSCFP) has opened. Women interested in studying nuclear-related subjects at the master’s degree level should apply by October 31, 2025.

More information on how to apply can be found here.

As part of its environmental review of Global Laser Enrichment’s planned Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility (PLEF) in Kentucky, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced it will conduct a scoping process ahead of preparing an environmental impact statement for GLE’s license application. Announced in the September 5 Federal Register, the NRC is seeking written comments on the scope of the EIS until October 6.

Since the Department of Energy kicked off a 10-company race with its Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program to bring test reactors on line by July 4, 2026, the industry has been waiting for new headlines proclaiming progress. Aalo Atomics broke ahead of the pack first by announcing last week that it had broken ground on its 50-MWe Aalo-X at Idaho National Laboratory.

ANSI/ANS-54.8-2025, Liquid Metal Fire Protection in LMR Plants, received approval from the American National Standards Institute on September 2 and is now available for purchase.

The 2025 edition is a reinvigoration of the withdrawn ANS-54.8-1988 of the same title. The Advanced Reactor Codes and Standards Collaborative (ARCSC) identified the need for a current version of the standard via an industry survey.

Typical liquid metal reactor designs use liquid sodium as the coolant for both the primary and intermediate heat-transport systems. In addition, liquid sodium and NaK (a mixture of sodium and potassium that is liquid at room temperature) are often used in auxiliary heat-removal systems. Since these liquid metals can react readily with oxygen, water, and other compounds, special precautions must be taken in the design, construction, testing, and maintenance of the sodium/NaK systems to ensure that the potential for leakage is very small.

Hash Hashemian
president@ans.org

Last month, I talked about my goal of strengthening ANS’s voice, in part by attending three conferences. I have now checked the first event off that list: the Nuclear Opportunities Workshop.

This year, NOW took another step in outgrowing its “workshop” moniker and transitioning to a full-fledged regional conference and expo. What started only a few years ago as a small gathering in Oak Ridge, Tenn., with roughly 50 attendees has skyrocketed to an event with 1,100 people in attendance in Knoxville.

NOW’s popularity reflected how busy the roughly 350 nuclear companies in Tennessee have been in recent years. There is significant work going on surrounding Gen IV reactor development and deployment, advancements in new nuclear fuels, and defense-related builds like the Uranium Processing Facility.

Late last week saw two announcements from companies working to recycle used nuclear fuel on a commercial scale, providing welcome news to anyone hoping to see the United States move to unlock the hidden potential of the more than 94,000 metric tons of spent fuel stored at power plant sites around the country.

David Garcia

If ComEd’s Zion plant in northern Illinois hadn’t closed in 1998, David Garcia might still be there, where he got his start in nuclear power as an operator at age 24.

But in his ninth year working there, Zion closed, and Garcia moved on to a series of new roles—including at Wisconsin’s Point Beach plant, the corporate offices of Minnesota’s Xcel Energy, and on the supplier side at PaR Nuclear—into an on-the-job education that he augmented with degrees in business and divinity that he sought later in life.

Garcia started his own company—Waymaker Resource Group—in 2014. Recently, Waymaker has been supporting Holtec’s restart project at the Palisades plant with staffing and analysis. Palisades sits almost exactly due east of the fully decommissioned Zion site on the other side of Lake Michigan and is poised to operate again after what amounts to an extended outage of more than three years. Holtec also plans to build more reactors at the same site.

For Garcia, the takeaway is clear: “This industry is not going away. Nuclear power and the adjacent industries that support nuclear power—and clean energy, period—are going to be needed for decades upon decades.”

In July, Garcia talked with Nuclear News staff writer Susan Gallier about his career and what he has learned about running successful outages and other projects.

The Department of Energy announced recently it will provide more than $35 million for 42 projects to help move emerging energy technologies from DOE national laboratories, plants, and sites related to grid security, artificial intelligence, nuclear energy, and advanced manufacturing to the marketplace. The selected projects will leverage over $21 million in cost-share from private and public partners, bringing total funding to more than $57.5 million.

A full list of the FY2025 selections is available here.

Flowserve Corporation, headquartered in Irving, Texas, has “received official approval from the U.S. Department of Energy (10 CFR Part 810) to be able to manufacture safety-critical pumps for India’s new reactors at our Coimbatore, India facility,” according to a post on the company’s LinkedIn profile.

Rhoades

Mudrick

Longtime nuclear industry executive Chris Mudrick has been named the new chief nuclear officer at Constellation Energy, effective September 29. He will take over the position from Dave Rhoades, who is retiring from the role.

History: Mudrick has been Constellation’s senior vice president of generation growth since December 2024, a position that marked his return to the company after serving as executive vice president and CNO at Bruce Power in Ontario, Canada, for more than four years. Prior to joining Bruce Power, Mudrick was at Constellation/Exelon for more than 32 years, ending his time there as senior vice president of operations–East and chief operating officer. He began his career with the company as a nuclear power plant operator in Pennsylvania in 1987.

General Atomics last week celebrated the completion of the central solenoid modules for the ITER reactor being built in southern France. Designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power, the ITER tokamak will be the world’s largest experimental fusion facility.

Demonstrating the beneficial reuse of equipment among Department of Energy cleanup sites, the DOE’s Office of Environmental Management transferred TRUPACT-III shipping equipment from its Savannah River Site in South Carolina to the Idaho Cleanup Project at the Idaho National Laboratory Site. This collaboration shows how DOE-EM drives efficiency, focusing on priorities and reining in costs without sacrificing safety or effectiveness, the DOE said.

Here is a recap of industry happenings from the recent past:

ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE

Progress continues on ITER vacuum vessel construction

Westinghouse Electric Company has signed a $180 million contract with the ITER Organization for the assembly of ITER’s vacuum vessel. Westinghouse has been collaborating with ITER for more than a decade, including in the manufacturing of sectors for the tokamak device’s vacuum vessel, in cooperation with its partners in the AMW consortium, Ansaldo Nucleare and Walter Tosto. After all the vacuum vessel sectors are in place, Westinghouse plans to simultaneously weld the nine sectors to form one circular ring-shaped torus.

The American Nuclear Society’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division (NNPD) held a webinar recently exploring the security aspects of floating and offshore nuclear power.

Moderator Shikha Prasad, CEO of Srijan LLC and immediate past chair of the NNPD, began the discussion by recapping the recent exponential growth in the field and its future economic potential before introducing the presenters, each of whom spoke about the work they and their organizations are doing to advance the field.

Below are brief summaries of each speaker’s presentation. To see their thoughts and the ensuing Q&A, click here.

The Tennessee Valley Authority and Houston, Texas–based energy production company Entra1 Energy recently announced the signing of an agreement to collaborate on the deployment of six new nuclear power plants equipped with NuScale small modular reactors.

Kairos Power and BWX Technologies announced today that they will work together to “collaboratively explore” optimizing commercial production of TRISO fuel for Kairos’s planned advanced reactor fleet—beginning with the 50-MWe Hermes 2, slated for operation in 2030—and other potential customers. Their collaboration could include jointly developing a TRISO fuel fabrication facility.

Canadian uranium provider Cameco calculated an end-of-August spot price for uranium of $75.13—up from the previous month’s spot price of $71.10. Cameco continues to list a long-term price of $81.00 for August and has set it at $80.00 or $81.00 all year.

Eight days after Aalo Atomics released the details of its securing of $100 million in Series B funding, the company announced that it has broken ground on the 50-MWe Aalo-X. Sited in the desert beside Idaho National Laboratory, it will be the company’s first nuclear power plant, and it remains on track to go on line by July 4, 2026.