During a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing today, Ho Nieh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as a commissioner at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, was urged to maintain the agency’s independence regardless of political pressure from the Trump administration.
The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management and Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration issued requests for proposals last month, seeking plans from companies to build AI data centers at the Oak Ridge Reservation, the Savannah River Site, and Idaho National Laboratory.
Nieh
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a nomination hearing Wednesday for Ho Nieh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as a commissioner at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Trump nominated Nieh on July 30 to serve as NRC commissioner the remainder of a term that will expire June 30, 2029, as Nuclear NewsWire previously reported.
Nieh has been vice president of regulatory affairs at Southern Nuclear since 2021, though since June 2024 he has been at the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations as a loaned executive.
A return to the NRC: If confirmed by the Senate, Nieh would be returning to the NRC after three previous stints totaling nearly 20 years.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a license application submitted by Disa Technologies to use high-pressure slurry ablation (HPSA) technology for remediating abandoned uranium mine waste at inactive mining sites.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has authorized Urenco USA to enrich uranium up to 10 percent U-235 following changes to plant systems and procedures and an operational readiness review. The company announced the news today, two days after the NRC issued its authorization on September 30 and said that all existing and future cascades at its Eunice, N.M., enrichment facility will be licensed to produce both low-enriched uranium, typically enriched to 5 percent fissile U-235, and LEU+, between 5 and 10 percent U-235.
The Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will furlough thousands of employees and operate at reduced capacity under a government shutdown that started after midnight on October 1 following a failed congressional vote on a short-term funding bill.
Kock
Andrea Kock was named director of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Nuclear Materials Safety and Safeguards.
Kock was previously the Region I administrator in King of Prussia, Pa., and had been serving recently as temporary head of the NMSS.
NMSS licenses and regulates the facilities and materials associated with the processing, transport, and handling of nuclear materials, including uranium recovery activities and the fuel used in commercial nuclear reactors. The office also implements the NRC’s Agreement State program; liaises with American Indian tribal governments; and supports agency rulemaking, environmental review, and financial assurance projects.
Connecticut has become the 40th state in the union to sign an agreement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that gives the state regulatory authority to manage certain radioactive materials within its borders.
El Segundo, Calif.–based reactor start-up Valar Atomics recently announced that it has broken ground on its test reactor, the Ward 250, at Utah San Rafael Energy Lab (USREL), becoming the second company participating in the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program to do so.
Last week saw a wave of U.S. and U.K. nuclear companies and organizations forging new transatlantic ties, with even the American Nuclear Society and the U.K.’s Nuclear Institute reaching a new agreement.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will host a hybrid public workshop on September 24 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (EDT) to discuss its activities for the safe and secure use of artificial intelligence in NRC-regulated activities.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a two-day public workshop September 30–October 1 to discuss efforts to improve realism in probabilistic risk assessment. The hybrid workshop, which will be held in person and online, will focus on enhancing risk-informed decision-making for nuclear power plants by making PRA models more realistic and reflective of reactor design, operations, and real-world behavior.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently announced that David Wright, after being nominated by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate, was ceremonially sworn in as NRC chair on September 8.
This swearing in comes more than a month after Wright began his third term on the commission; he began leading as chair July 31. His term will conclude on June 30, 2030.
Texas Tech University and Fermi America are now one step closer to realizing their massive vision for the Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus in Amarillo, Texas, as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted the first two parts of its combined license application (COLA) for four Westinghouse AP1000s.
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.
Hoping to tackle a growing global demand for energy, The Open Group, a vendor-neutral technology and standards membership organization, has announced the formation of the Industrial Advanced Nuclear Consortium (IANC) to collaborate on finding advanced nuclear energy solutions to serve industrial customers.
The American Nuclear Society’s Risk-informed, Performance-based Principles and Policy Committee (RP3C) has held another presentation in its monthly Community of Practice (CoP) series. Former RP3C chair N. Prasad Kadambi opened the meeting with brief introductory remarks about the RP3C and the need for new approaches to nuclear design that go beyond conventional and deterministic methods. He then welcomed this month’s speaker: Kent Welter, a member of the ANS Standards Board and chief engineer of testing and analysis at NuScale, who presented “RIPB Design and Licensing of the NuScale US460 Small Modular Reactor.”
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy will hold a webinar on August 27 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (EDT) to discuss commercial-scale facility and transportation criticality analyses for the high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel cycle.
Those interested in attending the workshop can register using this link.
Holtec International has submitted a license termination plan (LTP) for Oyster Creek nuclear power plant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a milestone in the decommissioning of the boiling water reactor, which operated from 1969 to 2018. Holtec took over Oyster Creek’s license from Exelon Generation in 2019 for the immediate decommissioning of the plant, located in Forked River, N.J.
As work progresses on the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, which will progress through DOE authorization rather than Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing, three members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce have sent a critical letter to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
The letter demands “information about the DOE and its employees’ dealings with the NRC and its staff” and expresses concern that DOE staff has “broken the firewall” between the departments.