Power & Operations

Despite the emergence of new projects, technologies, and commercial ventures, the rate of actual deployment worldwide has been relatively slow—but not necessarily for the reasons people might think.

Noting recent momentum behind nuclear power, the International Atomic Energy Agency has revised up its projections for the expansion of nuclear power, estimating that global nuclear operational capacity will more than double by 2050—reaching 2.6 times the 2024 level—with small modular reactors expected to play a pivotal role in this high-case scenario.

IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi announced the new projections, contained in the annual report Energy, Electricity, and Nuclear Power Estimates for the Period up to 2050 at the 69th IAEA General Conference in Vienna.

In the report’s high-case scenario, nuclear electrical generating capacity is projected to increase to from 377 GW at the end of 2024 to 992 GW by 2050. In a low-case scenario, capacity rises 50 percent, compared with 2024, to 561 GW. SMRs are projected to account for 24 percent of the new capacity added in the high case and for 5 percent in the low case.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has found that the environmental impacts of renewing the operating license of the Dresden nuclear power plant outside Chicago, Ill., for an additional 20 years are not great enough to prohibit doing so.

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.

David Garcia

If ComEd’s Zion plant in northern Illinois hadn’t closed in 1998, David Garcia might still be there, where he got his start in nuclear power as an operator at age 24.

But in his ninth year working there, Zion closed, and Garcia moved on to a series of new roles—including at Wisconsin’s Point Beach plant, the corporate offices of Minnesota’s Xcel Energy, and on the supplier side at PaR Nuclear—into an on-the-job education that he augmented with degrees in business and divinity that he sought later in life.

Garcia started his own company—Waymaker Resource Group—in 2014. Recently, Waymaker has been supporting Holtec’s restart project at the Palisades plant with staffing and analysis. Palisades sits almost exactly due east of the fully decommissioned Zion site on the other side of Lake Michigan and is poised to operate again after what amounts to an extended outage of more than three years. Holtec also plans to build more reactors at the same site.

For Garcia, the takeaway is clear: “This industry is not going away. Nuclear power and the adjacent industries that support nuclear power—and clean energy, period—are going to be needed for decades upon decades.”

In July, Garcia talked with Nuclear News staff writer Susan Gallier about his career and what he has learned about running successful outages and other projects.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has found that the environmental impacts of renewing the operating licenses of the Peach Bottom and Browns Ferry nuclear power plants for an additional 20 years are not great enough to prohibit doing so. If renewed, the licenses will allow the plants to operate for up to 80 years.

Constellation has reported that its employees were joined by hundreds of community members and labor leaders on August 26 at the Clinton Clean Energy Center to celebrate a power purchase agreement between Constellation and Meta that supports the relicensing, continued operation, and expansion of Clinton for another two decades. The rally was held at the plant site, located in rural DeWitt County, Ill.

Enthusiasm is continuing to trend upward in New Jersey this week as industry and government have rallied over the idea of new nuclear capacity in the state.

TerraPower announced yesterday that it has begun construction on the Kemmerer Training Center (KTC) at the site of the Natrium project in Kemmerer, Wyo. According to the company, the state-of-the-art KTC is the second facility to reach the construction milestone of the advanced nuclear project.

The Nebraska Public Power District, the largest electric utility in the state, recently hosted the first in a series of informational open houses in Valentine, one of the 16 cities that NPPD is considering for the siting of a new nuclear power plant.

The race to bring test reactors on line by July 4, 2026, got a boost today when the Department of Energy unveiled the names of 10 companies selected for the Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program—a new pathway that allows reactor authorization outside national labs.

As first outlined in one of the four executive orders on nuclear energy released by President Trump on May 23 and in the request for applications for the Reactor Pilot Program released June 18, the companies must use their own money and sites—and DOE authorization—to get reactors operating. What they won’t need is a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license.

Colorado’s first nuclear power plant of the 21st century could be built at an unconventional site: the Denver International Airport (DEN).

In its mission to gain energy independence and become the greenest airport in the world, DEN has announced that it will conduct a feasibility study to determine the viability of building a small modular reactor on its 33,500-acre campus.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has sent a confirmatory order to Constellation Energy Generation outlining the agreed-on actions to address apparent violations of agency requirements at Quad Cities nuclear power plant in Cordova, Ill. The corrective and preventive actions are based on a June neutral party–mediated alternative dispute resolution (ADR) session that had been requested by Constellation to help it and the agency decide on steps forward.

The Palisades nuclear power plant has been formally transitioned from decommissioning status to holding an operating license following the completion of an extensive technical review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It’s a historic move; before this, no U.S. nuclear plant had ever made the transition from shut down to approved for restart.

The Nuclear Energy Maritime Organization (NEMO) recently announced that it was officially granted nongovernmental organization consultative status with the International Maritime Organization.

The Idaho National Laboratory has announced that it will collaborate with Microsoft on the use of artificial intelligence technologies to streamline the nuclear permitting and licensing application process. Using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform, INL will generate the engineering and safety analysis reports that are required to be submitted for construction permits and operating licenses for nuclear power plants.

Texas-based Vistra Corporation has announced that its license renewal application for the Perry nuclear power plant was approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The plant first connected to the grid in 1986 and is still operating under its original 40-year license, which was set to expire next year.

A recent appropriation from the Texas legislature and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott directs funding to Texas Tech University to accelerate “produced water” research in partnership with Abilene Christian University and Natura Resources and to complete the construction of a molten salt research reactor at ACU.

The Wall Street Journal recently reviewed the status of nuclear energy in the United States, with a focus on how the U.S. nuclear industry can meet President Donald Trump’s executive orders (EOs) calling for nuclear power generation to quadruple within the next 25 years.

Dominion Energy’s V.C. Summer nuclear power plant, in Jenkinsville, S.C., has been authorized to operate for 80 years, until August 2062, following the renewal of its operating license by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a second time.