The president and government officials at the meeting. (Photo: EPA)
Representatives across all levels of Pennsylvania government convened at Carnegie Mellon University on July 15 with investors and key leaders in the energy community at the behest of Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.).
The ITER tokamak pit with the two vacuum vessel sector modules installed. (Photo: ITER)
Westinghouse Electric Company announced that it has signed a $180 million contract with the ITER Organization for the assembly of the vacuum vessel for the fusion reactor being built in southern France. Designed to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power, the ITER tokamak will be the world’s largest experimental fusion facility.
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.”
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.
Commercial nuclear fuel rods being unloaded from cask inside a HFEF hot cell. (Photo: INL)
At the Idaho National Laboratory Hot Fuel Examination Facility, containment box operator Jake Maupin moves a manipulator arm into position around a pencil-thin nuclear fuel rod. He is preparing for a procedure that he and his colleagues have practiced repeatedly in anticipation of this moment in the hot cell.
A view of the DOME microreactor testbed, which is managed by the National Reactor Innovation Center. (Image: NRIC)
The National Reactor Innovation Center is accepting applications from developers ready to take a fueled microreactor to criticality inside the former Experimental Breeder Reactor-II containment building at Idaho National Laboratory, now repurposed as DOME—a microreactor test bed. According to a Department of Energy announcement, DOME will be ready to receive the first experimental reactor in the fall of 2026, with testing likely to begin in 2027.
The unfinished reactor containment building at Unit 2 of the V.C. Summer nuclear power plant in September 2024. (Photo: South Carolina's Nuclear Advisory Council)
Santee Cooper is satisfied with the response generated by its initial request for proposals to buy what remains of the Summer-2 and -3 nuclear power plant project in South Carolina. The RFP was issued in January and the application window closed May 5.
Plant Vogtle in Georgia. (Photo: Southern Nuclear)
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.
Southern Nuclear and Westinghouse C-suite executives John Williams, Dan Lipman, and Margaret Cosentino spoke during the Congressional AP1000 Fly-In in Washington D.C. (Source: Westinghouse)
Dozens of Westinghouse employees and supply chain partners descended on Washington, D.C., last week to build legislative support for new nuclear projects.
Conceptual illustration of a Prodigy Microreactor Power Station TNPP. (Image: Prodigy Clean Energy)
Prodigy Clean Energy and Lloyd’s Register have announced a collaboration to support the deployment of Prodigy’s “transportable nuclear power plants” (TNPPs) in Canada by 2030. Prodigy’s goal is to build marine-based nuclear power plants that are compatible with different end uses and reactor suppliers. What the plants would have in common is offshore siting close to an end user, which could include offshore oil and gas platforms, commercial seaports, mining operations, remote communities, and desalination plants.
A cross-section of an eVinci microreactor at the eVinci Technology Hub in Etna, Pa. (Photo: Westinghouse)
Penn State and Westinghouse Electric Company are working together to site a new research reactor on Penn State’s University Park, Pa., campus: Westinghouse’s eVinci, a HALEU TRISO-fueled sodium heat-pipe reactor. Penn State has announced that it submitted a letter of intent to host and operate an eVinci reactor to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on February 28 and plans to engage with the NRC on specific siting decisions. Penn State already boasts the Breazeale reactor, which began operating in 1955 as the first licensed research reactor at a university in the United States. At 70, the Breazeale reactor is still in operation.
One of two unfinished Westinghouse AP1000 reactors is shown in this photo of the Summer construction site. (Photo: SCE&G)
South Carolina public utility Santee Cooper and its partner South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCE&G) called a halt to the Summer-2 and -3 AP1000 construction project in July 2017, citing costly delays and the bankruptcy of Westinghouse. The well-chronicled legal fallout included indictments and settlements, and ultimately left Santee Cooper with the ownership of nonnuclear assets at the construction site in Jenkinsville, S.C.
The reactor building and the turbine building seen in October 2024 as employees worked on Vogtle Unit 3’s first-ever refueling outage. (Photo: Dot Schneider)
Southern Nuclear was first when no one wanted to be.
The nuclear subsidiary of the century-old utility Southern Company, based in Atlanta, Ga., joined a pack of nuclear companies in the early 2000s—during what was then dubbed a “nuclear renaissance”—bullish on plans for new large nuclear facilities and adding thousands of new carbon-free megawatts to the grid.
In 2008, Southern Nuclear applied for a combined construction and operating license (COL), positioning the company to receive the first such license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2012. Also in 2008, Southern became the first U.S. company to sign an engineering, procurement, and construction contract for a Generation III+ reactor. Southern chose Westinghouse’s AP1000 pressurized water reactor, which was certified by the NRC in December 2011.
Fast forward a dozen years—which saw dozens of setbacks and hundreds of successes—and Southern Nuclear and its stakeholders celebrated the completion of Vogtle Units 3 and 4: the first new commercial nuclear power construction project completed in the U.S. in more than 30 years.
A concept image of NASA’s Fission Surface Power Project. (Image: NASA)
Westinghouse Electric Company announced last week that NASA and the Department of Energy have awarded the company a contract to continue developing a lunar microreactor concept for the Fission Surface Power (FSP) project.
Here is a recap of industry happenings from the recent past:
