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.

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.”

The Department of Energy announced yesterday a total of $49 million in funding for 19 projects in the Foundational Fusion Materials, Nuclear Science, and Technology programs that span functional and structural materials R&D for heating technology, magnet technology, blankets, fuel cycle, and first wall research.

The American Nuclear Society introduced its online Buyers Guide database earlier this month, timing the release to coincide with the delivery of the 2023 print edition of that publication. The fully searchable database includes content published in both the Nuclear News and Radwaste Solutions annual directories and is available to all ANS members. Users can search through over 600 records to find the right company, partner, or people to keep the nuclear fleet operating. Companies are catalogued and cross-referenced under thousands of nuclear-related categories, products, and services to match any need.

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) have formed a strategic research partnership to investigate how different types of materials behave under the influence of high-energy neutron sources. The five-year partnership was announced by ORNL and by the UKAEA on March 13.

Jasmina Vujic

Nuclear energy is uniquely poised to create reliable, carbon-free, domestically produced baseload electricity to meet our rising energy demands. It must be a central part of our energy mix in order to have sustainable development, competitiveness, and independence as global energy demand continues to grow. There is also a growing need to address national security challenges like nuclear proliferation resistance and nuclear threat reduction. The fastest and most efficient way to realize the full potential of nuclear power and address nuclear security challenges is to draw on the strengths of our universities, national laboratories, and industry.

U.S. universities are well equipped to be the preeminent providers of nuclear science and engineering education at the undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate levels and to perform world-class research across all nuclear science and engineering disciplines, utilizing the resources available across the higher education network and through unique national laboratory partnerships.

The Department of Energy’s commitment to breaking down market barriers with initiatives, programs, and access to facilities is making it simpler and more efficient than ever for industry to partner with national laboratories. It is especially timely, as the country continues to face evolving security, economic, and clean energy challenges. Partnering opportunities via the DOE’s Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) and Strategic Partnership Projects (SPPs) are particularly prevalent in the commercial nuclear community and have seen a tremendous amount of funding and support dedicated to advancing the development, demonstration, and deployment of new reactor technologies.

The Nuclear Innovation Alliance (NIA) released a new report last week titled Transforming the U.S. Department of Energy: Paving the Way to Commercialize Advanced Nuclear Energy, which gives recommendations for how the Department of Energy (DOE) can help advanced nuclear power technologies cross the finish line to commercialization. It calls for a “whole-of-government and whole-of-society effort dependent on successful public-private partnerships.”

The NIA report acknowledges that boosting energy security and meeting decarbonization goals will require at least double the domestic nuclear energy capacity that is on line today. But the nuclear industry is highly complex, and its supply chain is atrophied. The success of advanced nuclear technology will depend on careful collaboration and planning to bolster a new supply chain.

Icenhour

Alan S. Icenhour, an ANS member since 2002 and a Fellow, has been named deputy for operations at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He succeeds Jeff Smith, who is retiring this spring after serving in the role since UT-Battelle began operating the lab in 2000.

Background: Icenhour joined ORNL in 1990 as an engineer and served most recently as associate laboratory director for the Isotope Science and Engineering Directorate. He led the Nuclear Science and Engineering Directorate from 2014 until the isotopes directorate was formed in October 2020, and he has held a variety of other leadership positions as well as an assignment as senior technical adviser to the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The ANS Young Members Group is hosting a free webinar, on Thursday, February 11, featuring the Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL) as part of its ongoing "Spotlight on National Labs" series. The broadcast runs from noon to 1:30 p.m. (ET) and will cover RSL’s current and future initiatives. Registration is free and open to all.

Details: As part of the Global Security Mission Directorate, RSL is a center for creating and using advanced technologies that provide a broad range of scientific, technological, and operational disciplines with core competencies in emergency response operations and support, remote sensing, and applied science and technologies in support of counterterrorism and radiological and nuclear incident response.

Located at the Nevada National Security Site, RSL is composed of scientists, engineers, technologists, pilots, operations specialists, and administrators, many of whom hold doctorate degrees, providing the lab with a wide diversity of education and experience. Working in sophisticated laboratories with state-of-the-art equipment, these personnel work to advance the technological and operational capabilities of the emergency response teams and other RSL customers and stakeholders.

Wagner

John C. Wagner, ANS Fellow and member since 1991, has been named as the next director of Idaho National Laboratory, Battelle Energy Alliance (BEA) announced on Thursday. BEA manages and operates the laboratory for the Department of Energy.

Wagner will begin his new role on Dec. 11. He has been at INL since 2016 and has been an associate laboratory director for Nuclear Science and Technology since 2017.

On August 4, the Department of Energy announced it will provide $57.5 million over five years to establish two multidisciplinary teams to take advantage of DOE supercomputing facilities at Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The goal is to spur advances in the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Funds of $11.5 million have been made available for Fiscal Year 2020, with future funding contingent on congressional appropriations.

Goldstein

William H. Goldstein announced on July 7 that he will retire as director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and president of Lawrence Livermore National Security (LLNS) following the selection of his successor.

The ANS Young Members Group (YMG) is delivering an in-depth look at the Department of Energy’s national laboratories through a series of live webinars called Spotlight on National Labs. The third and most recent webinar attracted more than 1,000 participants who were keen to learn about the mission and key projects of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The ANS Young Members Group (YMG) is offering a series of live webinars—Spotlight on National Labs—to highlight the missions, key projects, and rising stars of the Department of Energy’s national laboratories. Recently it was Argonne National Laboratory’s turn to shine.

ANS Young Members Group Chair Harsh Desai

The ANS Young Members Group has developed a new live webinar series that is free to all, and Harsh Desai is excited. “We have a great opportunity to highlight our national laboratory infrastructure, which is a pinnacle of innovation in nuclear science, technology, and engineering,” said Desai, chair of the YMG. “We’re giving each of the national labs the opportunity to highlight their mission, key projects, and rising stars, and we’re also giving members of the YMG executive committee valuable leadership experience building and moderating the webinar panels.”