June 13, 2025, 3:00PMNuclear NewsAlex Gilbert, Harsh Desai, Patrick Snouffer The Z1 heat source was the first Sr-90 heat source built in the United States in nearly four decades and the first of its kind for a commercial company. (Photo: Zeno Power)
In the fall of 2023, a small Zeno Power team accomplished a major feat: they demonstrated the first strontium-90 heat source in decades—and the first-ever by a commercial company.
Zeno Power worked with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to fabricate and validate this Z1 heat source design at the lab’s Radiochemical Processing Laboratory. The Z1 demonstration heralded renewed interest in developing radioisotope power system (RPS) technology. In early 2025, the heat source was disassembled, and the Sr-90 was returned to the U.S. Department of Energy for continued use.
Housed at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, the Schmidt Laboratory for Materials in Nuclear Technologies will use a compact cyclotron to accelerate the testing of materials for use in commercial fusion power plants. (Image: Rick Leccacorvi and Rui Vieira/PSFC)
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) has launched the Schmidt Laboratory for Materials in Nuclear Technologies (LMNT). Backed by a philanthropic consortium led by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, LMNT is designed to speed up the discovery and evaluation of cost-effective materials that can withstand extreme fusion conditions for extended periods.
Hanford’s 324 Building, circa 2015. (Photo: DOE)
Working with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy has revised its planned approach to remediating contaminated soil underneath the Chemical Materials Engineering Laboratory (commonly known as the 324 Building) at the Hanford Site in Washington state. The soil, which has been designated the 300-296 waste site, became contaminated as the result of a spill of highly radioactive material in the mid-1980s.
Professor Joseph Newkirk operates a testing device in Missouri S&T’s Toomey Hall. (Photo: Blaine Falkena/Missouri S&T)
Concept art of the Dow plant in Seadrift, Texas. (Source: X-energy)
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is providing the opportunity to request a hearing on Dow Chemical Company’s application to construct a 320-MWe nuclear power plant at the company’s Seadrift site in Calhoun, Texas. Long Mott Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical, submitted its construction permit application to the NRC in March. It was accepted for review by the agency on May 12.
Concept art of the planned Sizewell C plant on the Suffolk coast, featuring two French-designed EPRs. (Image: Sizewell C)
It’s a move that “brings to an end decades of dithering and delay, with the government backing the builders.” That’s how the U.K. government announced, with alliterative fanfare, its £14.2 billion (about $19.2 billion) investment in Sizewell C, where EDF Energy plans to build two 1,600-MWe EPRs.
Solomon Bairai of Navarro-ATL prepares a Twister Stir Bar sample for analysis at the Hanford Site's 222-S Laboratory. (Photo: DOE)
A new method has received Washington state’s approval for use at the 222-S Laboratory at the Department of Energy’s Hanford Site, improving how experts analyze tank waste and providing more precise data to support safe and efficient cleanup.
Concept art of Rolls-Royce SMR’s reactor design. (Image: Rolls Royce)
Rolls-Royce SMR has emerged as the United Kingdom’s preferred bidder to build the country’s first small modular reactors following a two-year competition, the U.K. government announced June 10. Rolls-Royce SMR expects to build three SMRs with Great British Energy–Nuclear, subject to contracting later this year and regulatory approvals. Great British Energy–Nuclear will “aim to allocate a site later this year and connect projects to the grid in the mid-2030s.”
Figure 1. inDRUM Demonstration facility at Studsvik for simulated waste (left) and a drum being loaded into the container treatment unit (right)
Studsvik AB has completed construction of the new inDRUM Demonstration Facility outside of Nykoping, Sweden. We can now demonstrate how the inDRUM technology will process a wide range of problematic and legacy wastes through the removal of all liquids, organics and other materials, resulting in a stable and reduced volume product that can be disposed of in a suitable repository.
The first of four planned Chinese-made Hualong-1 units at the Zhangzhou nuclear power plant began operation earlier this year. (Photo: China National Nuclear Corporation/Xinhua)
As trade negotiations are in the works between the United States and China, Washington, D.C., has the advantage in semiconductors but nuclear power is a different story, according to a June 9 article in the Hong Kong–based South China Morning Post.
Argonne physicist Michael Kelly loads a superconducting cavity into a large furnace. (Photo: ANL)
Argonne National Laboratory said it has secured just over $10 million from the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) for two research projects investigating the transmutation of spent nuclear fuel into less radioactive substances.
The NWMO has launched a two-year engagement process as it begins plans for a second deep geological repository to manage radioactive waste in Canada. (Photo: NWMO)
The Nuclear Waste Management Organization, which is mandated by law to develop an approach for the long-term care of Canada’s spent nuclear fuel, has begun collecting feedback from Canadians and Indigenous people to help refine its process for selecting a second deep geologic repository site.
