The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is holding an in-person open house on Thursday, May 15, to discuss the 2024 safety performance of the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has concluded—with an assist from a Department of Energy environmental assessment released in February—that no environmental impact statement is needed for an exemption request from TerraPower that would allow the company to begin construction of the energy island of its planned Natrium sodium fast reactor in Kemmerer, Wyo. The NRC’s EA and finding of no significant impact (EA/FONSI), published on May 7, could clear the way for significant construction to begin while the NRC continues to review TerraPower’s construction permit application.
Kairos Power announced this morning that safety-related nuclear construction has begun at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., site where the company is building its Hermes low-power test reactor. Hermes, a scaled demonstration of Kairos Power’s fluoride salt–cooled, high-temperature reactor technology, became the first non–light water reactor to receive a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 2023. The company broke ground at the site in July 2024.
NAC International has announced that it has received certification from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its new high-capacity Volunteer packaging system for transporting nonfissile or fissile-exempt radioactive materials.
International Atomic Energy Agency director general Rafael Mariano Grossi recently traveled to Washington, D.C., for the first time since Trump took office in January. In his three-day visit to the capital, Grossi spoke with key nuclear leaders from around the world and in the federal government, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair David Wright, on topics including nuclear power, safety, security, funding, and nonproliferation.
Here is a recap of industry happenings from the recent past:
TerraPower’s Natrium reactor advances on several fronts
TerraPower has continued making aggressive progress in several areas for its under-construction Natrium Reactor Demonstration Project since the beginning of the year. Natrium is an advanced 345-MWe reactor that has liquid sodium as a coolant, improved fuel utilization, enhanced safety features, and an integrated energy storage system, allowing for a brief power output boost to 500-MWe if needed for grid resiliency. The company broke ground for its first Natrium plant in 2024 near a retiring coal plant in Kemmerer, Wyo.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Nuclear Plasma and Radiation Engineering (NPRE) Department announced yesterday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved a fuel qualification methodology topical report for the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor the university wants to construct. The topical report was prepared by Ultra Safe Nuclear and submitted by UIUC to the NRC in March 2024. It describes the fuel that would be used in the microreactor that UIUC plans to host—initially containing uranium enriched to 9.9 percent U-235—and how it would be tested. The NRC issued its approval and a final safety evaluation on April 1.
Bipartisan legislation introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this month seeks to close a loophole that currently allows medical patients to be unintentionally exposed to radiation without reporting or disclosure. The Nuclear Medicine Clarification Act of 2025 (H.R. 2541) was introduced into the House by Reps. Don Davis (D., N.C.), Morgan Griffith (R., Va.), and Ben Cline (R., Va.), who said the legislation would improve care and ensure transparency for patients and simplify federal rules coming from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In a Q&A posted on TVA’s website last week about a “new nuclear heyday,” Bob Deacy shared his vision for the Clinch River nuclear site in Oak Ridge, Tenn.—and some news about next steps for the company’s small modular reactor plans.
The Tennessee Valley Authority’s senior vice president for the Clinch River project, Deacy described his vision for up to four SMRs built on plots smaller than a football field with state-of-the-art digital equipment and a newly trained workforce providing reliable 24/7 power to the grid.
Seattle-based TerraPower signaled its interest this week in building its Natrium small modular reactor in the United Kingdom, the company announced.
TerraPower sent a letter to the U.K.’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, formally establishing its intention to enter the U.K. generic design assessment (GDA) process. This is TerraPower’s first step in deployment of its Natrium technology—a 345-MW sodium fast reactor coupled with a molten salt energy storage unit—on the international stage.
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.
Gary Adkins
Subsequent license renewal (SLR) authorizes nuclear power plants to operate for an additional 20 years beyond the 60 years of the initial license (years 1–40) and the first license renewal (years 41–60). NUREG-2191, Generic Aging Lessons Learned for Subsequent License Renewal (GALL-SLR), and NUREG-2192, Standard Review Plan for Review of Subsequent License Renewal Applications (SRP-SLR), were issued in July 2017 and provide guidance for generic evaluation of plant aging management programs and reviews of SLR applications, respectively, by Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff.
The first SLR application was submitted to the NRC for review in January 2018. A total of 10 additional SLR applications addressing 20 operating units have been submitted to the NRC. Nine operating units have been approved by the NRC, and 13 units are under review. These 22 units do not have any issues, including operating experience issues, precluding them from achieving a renewed license.
Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org
This month’s Nuclear News pays tribute to the people and projects that keep our nuclear power plants running.
In the nuclear industry, “life extension” is a venerable term that broadly describes the care required to sustain the safe and efficient operation of large, complex energy generation facilities for decades to come, some of which you will read about in these pages.
Of late, however, the general concept of life extension has also taken a firmer hold in our societal consciousness.
Whether we absorb it from Instagram videos about some Silicon Valley techie’s quest for immortality or sense it in one of the thousands of dryly written journal articles documenting our increasing ability to control and change life at the molecular level, the promise of extended life and health has universal appeal—and it’s never seemed more within reach than it does right now.
All three units at the Duke Energy’s Oconee nuclear power plant in South Carolina are now licensed to operate for an additional 20 years.
Hagerty
Blackburn
In a strongly worded opinion piece published by Power Magazine on March 24, Tennessee Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty call for new leadership at the Tennessee Valley Authority to jumpstart its small modular reactor program.
The GOP lawmakers are looking to President Donald Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright to overhaul TVA’s board of directors to drive America’s role in the nuclear renaissance. TVA is the first and only U.S. energy company to obtain an early site permit for a small modular reactor, but the utility has not progressed on physical deployment of a unit since the permit was awarded in 2019.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has received a request from the state of Connecticut asking that the state be allowed to assume regulatory authority over certain radioactive materials within state borders.
Fleischmann
U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann is all about energy—specifically nuclear energy.
On March 20, the GOP congressman from Tennessee joined the official launch of Atoms for Appalachia, the new report from the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center that studied opportunities for deploying advanced nuclear energy in the area to spur economic development.
The council hosted a series of Atoms for Appalachia (A4A) workshops in 2024 in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and West Virginia in partnership with the Breakthrough Energy Foundation. The sessions explored workforce demand, partnership opportunities, and innovation happening across the nuclear industry.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced this week the release of the second part of Holtec’s loan disbursement for the Palisades nuclear plant restart plans in Michigan.
NorthStar Group Services has announced that it has closed on an agreement to acquire ownership of the Vallecitos Nuclear Center from GE Vernova and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy for NorthStar's nuclear decontamination, decommissioning, and environmental site restoration.
It’s been a busy eight months, Mike King told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a recent hearing on the immediate and projected impacts of new federal legislation aimed at supporting the nation’s current nuclear energy renaissance.