Before the Fukushima Daiichi accident in March 2011, nuclear power from 54 reactors provided about 30 percent of Japan’s electricity. In the wake of the disaster, Japan shut down every one of its reactors.

Recently, the country has been restarting its nuclear power plants. Among its current fleet of 33 operable reactors, fewer than half have been restarted. Nuclear power is currently providing about 8.5 percent of Japan’s electricity (with natural gas and coal accounting for more than 60 percent).

The Japanese government’s present energy plan, announced last year, calls for nuclear power to meet 20 percent of the country’s electricity needs by 2040. While the government views nuclear as a crucial asset toward meeting its goal of net zero emissions by 2050, public support for nuclear energy also continues to increase. A 2012 Pew Research poll—conducted one year after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster—indicated that 70 percent of the public opposed nuclear power. However, a 2022 poll by Nikkei Business Publications suggests that now, more than 50 percent of the public supports nuclear power—if safety can be ensured.

Contributing their expertise to these restarts in recent years are young nuclear industry professionals who were trained a decade ago in a mentorship/training program involving U.S. institutions.

This “Super Engineer Project” was sponsored by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry and Hokkaido University from 2015 to 2017. METI sponsored the project to improve the Japanese nuclear safety culture by learning from the U.S. safety culture.

The University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign, in partnership with Nano Nuclear Energy, has submitted a construction permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for construction of a Kronos micro modular reactor (MMR). This is the first major step in the two-part 10 CFR Part 50 licensing process for the research and test reactor and is the culmination of years of technical refinement and regulatory alignment.

The team chose to engage with the NRC in a preapplication readiness assessment, providing the agency with draft versions of the majority of the CPA’s technical content for feedback, which is expected to ensure a high-quality application.

Nuclear is enjoying a bit of a resurgence. The momentum for reliable energy to support economic development around the country—specifically data centers and AI—remains strong, and strongly in favor of nuclear. And as feature coverage on the states in the January 2026 issue of Nuclear News made abundantly clear, many states now see nuclear as necessary to support rising electricity demand while maintaining a reliable grid and reaching decarbonization goals.

New York City–based Nano Nuclear Energy has signed a memorandum of understanding with the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, on behalf of the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign, to collaborate on the development, construction, and operation of the company’s Kronos MMR (micro modular reactor) as an on-campus research reactor. The new MOU represents the latest aspect of Nano Nuclear’s partnership on the Kronos MMR project with the university, which includes state funding for a manufacturing and research center, to be located in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook.

New York City–based advanced nuclear technology developer Nano Nuclear and the Office of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced on Tuesday that Nano will receive $6.8 million in state funding to establish its new manufacturing and research and development facility in Illinois.

New York City–based advanced nuclear technology developer Nano Nuclear Energy has been awarded a Direct-to-Phase II Small Business Innovation Research contract for its Kronos micro modular reactor (MMR) by AFWERX, the innovation and venture arm of the U.S. Air Force. The contract calls for AFWERX, with the 11th Civil Engineering Squadron, to explore the feasibility of deploying the Kronos MMR Energy System at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling (JBAB) in Washington, D.C.

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.

Plans to bring a university research reactor like no other to the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) were punctuated last fall by the news that Ultra Safe Nuclear, the developer of the gas-cooled reactor technology selected for the Illinois Microreactor Project, had declared bankruptcy.

It’s been almost 35 years since Illinois last added a nuclear power reactor to the grid (Braidwood-2, a pressurized water reactor operated by Constellation, reached commercial operation in October 1988). And it’s been 63 years since a research reactor reached initial criticality at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). The university’s TRIGA Mark II started up in August 1960 and was shut down in 1998. For about 25 years, UIUC—the flagship public university in a state that generates more power from nuclear energy than any other—has lacked an operating research reactor.

Tokamak Energy’s ST40, which achieved plasma temperatures of 100 million °C earlier this year. (Photo: Tokamak Energy)

Tokamak Energy on October 26 announced plans to construct a high field spherical tokamak using high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. Dubbed the ST80-HTS, the machine would demonstrate multiple technologies required to achieve commercial fusion energy, the company says. Tokamak Energy plans to complete the ST80-HTS in 2026 to demonstrate spherical tokamak operations and inform the design of its successor, a fusion pilot plant called ST-E1 that the company says could deliver electricity into the grid in the early 2030s and produce up to 200 MWe.

Temperature milestone: Earlier this year, the company’s ST40 spherical tokamak reached the commercial fusion energy plasma temperature threshold of 100 million °C with what was reported as the highest triple product (an industry measure of plasma density, temperature, and confinement) of any private fusion energy company. The ST40 achieved those results with a plasma volume of less than one cubic meter, which is 15 times less volume than any other tokamak that has achieved the same threshold.

Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) celebrated the opening of its Pilot Fuel Manufacturing (PFM) facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., on August 18 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and tour attended by assistant secretary for nuclear energy Kathryn Huff, Tennessee lieutenant governor Randy McNally, U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R.), representatives from the offices of Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R.) and Bill Hagerty (R.), and other distinguished guests. The next day, radiological operations began at the privately funded facility, which was designed and built in less than twelve months within an existing industrial building purchased by USNC in 2021.

The Department of Energy announced awards for 18 Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) projects on July 6 that link private fusion energy developers with DOE national laboratories (and, in a first for the program, with U.S. universities) to overcome scientific and technological challenges in fusion energy development. The 18 selected projects include representation from 10 private companies, three national labs, and eight universities.

Now is such an exciting time to be a nuclear engineering student. We are seeing decades of work culminate in technology that can soon be deployed. The nuclear energy sector is experiencing growing support as more people recognize and accept the role that nuclear power has in decarbonizing our electric grid.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign formed a partnership with Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation to deploy an advanced research reactor on campus, based on a microreactor design that improves upon well-established high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) technology. Unlike traditional research reactors, our focus at UIUC is not on a laboratory tool to study radiation interactions with matter, or even on the production of radioisotopes. Instead, we will build a research, education, and training facility intended to help advanced reactor technology become a widely deployable, marketable, economic, safe, and reliable option for a clean energy future. If successful, the USNC-designed Micro Modular Reactor (MMR)^a would operate on UIUC’s campus with the capability to advance critical and enabling technologies required for advanced reactors to realize their full potential, while educating and training the workforce as a key step toward delivering on the technology’s promise. Microreactors can become a transformative distributed energy technology and revolutionize energy infrastructure worldwide.

Huff

Kathryn “Katy” Huff, who is currently serving as the Department of Energy's principal deputy assistant secretary of nuclear energy, has been nominated by President Joe Biden to head the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy as assistant secretary of energy. The role has been vacant since Rita Baranwal announced she was leaving the position on January 8, 2021.

Sustained commitment: Since Huff was named principal deputy assistant secretary of nuclear energy in May 2021, she has also served as acting assistant secretary of energy for nuclear energy.

Huff is on unpaid leave from her role as associate professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she led the Advanced Reactors and Fuel Cycles Research Group. Huff was also a Blue Waters assistant professor with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Prior to joining the NPRE faculty at UIUC, Huff was a postdoctoral fellow in the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Nuclear Science and Security Consortium and the Berkeley Institute for Data Science at the University of California–Berkeley. Huff received her Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2013, and her undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Chicago.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ANS Student Section is preparing to host the 2022 ANS Student Conference, to be held April 14–16 on the university campus. Registration is now open for the first in-person ANS student conference since 2019.

The U.S. state with more nuclear power plants than any other—Illinois—has no operating university research reactors. A team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) intends to reverse that situation and construct a high-temperature gas-cooled microreactor. If the team's plans go ahead, the first new U.S. university research reactor deployment in about 30 years could also support commercial advanced reactor deployment.

Huff

Kathryn D. "Katy" Huff, an assistant professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), has joined the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy as principal deputy assistant secretary, the DOE announced today. Huff will also take on the title of acting assistant secretary.

Called to serve: Just after she was officially sworn in, Huff took to Twitter to break the news:

“I’m thrilled to finally share that today is my first day in the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy,” she said. “I’m honored that the Biden-Harris administration has called me to serve . . . during a crucial time in humanity's endeavors toward sustainability, re-imagination of our energy infrastructure, and centering of environmental and energy justice in technology policy. . . . In this position, I hope to work across institutional and other barriers, listen to many voices, strive boldly, and serve responsibly.”