Power & Operations

Mandatory hearings conducted as part of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission reactor licensing review will be held much sooner in the process, the agency announced Tuesday.

A provision states that uncontested hearings must be held at some point after 30 days of an application being docketed. Historically, the NRC has conducted these toward the end of its review of applications for construction permits, early site permits, and combined licenses. The change announced this week would have hearings be held sooner, about 30 days after an application is docketed.

On June 1, the planned restart of Crane nuclear power plant (formerly Three Mile Island-1) received a boost when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved Constellation’s waiver request to transfer certain rights to the Middletown, Pa., plant.

“The nuclear renaissance is real here,” said Ontario Power Generation’s Subo Sinnathamby on May 8, one year to the day after OPG secured a final investment decision to build the first of four planned BWRX-300 reactors at its Darlington nuclear power plant, and shortly after the new reactor’s foundation was lifted into place. “We got our license to construct in April and our [final investment decision] in May, and we’ve been off to the races since.”

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has approved Constellation’s waiver request to transfer PJM capacity interconnection rights from one of its gas- and oil-powered plants to its Crane nuclear power plant (formerly Three Mile Island-1).

While Constellation executives previously said that an unsuccessful waiver request wouldn’t have prevented the Middletown, Pa., plant from restarting as soon as 2027, it could have impacted whether Crane could fully deliver power to the grid once it is on line. The decision, issued by FERC on June 1, likely helps facilitate Constellation’s path forward for the plant’s restart.

The New York Power Authority is seeking nuclear reactor developers that can commence construction on large-scale reactors and/or small modular reactors before 2033 that can ultimately add at least 1 GW of new capacity to New York’s electrical grid.

Ten of the 27 member countries of the European Union recently sent a letter to the European Commission calling for nuclear power to be labeled as sustainable in a new rulemaking that pertains to powering data centers and artificial intelligence.

While the EC’s decision could have significant impact on the future deployment of nuclear across the continent, this call to action also represents a broader positive reconsideration of nuclear power in Europe in recent years.

The dormant Blue Castle nuclear power plant project in Utah has resurfaced, only this time as a proposed small modular reactor facility.

Blue Castle Holdings and Fulcrum Point Holdings—founded by the owner of Hi Tech Solutions, a company behind a separate Utah nuclear project—announced last week a joint venture to advance the Blue Castle project in Green River, Utah, the origins of which trace back almost 20 years.

Nielson

The renewed global interest in nuclear power is often framed as a policy story driven by decarbonization goals, energy security concerns, and surging electricity demand from digital infrastructure and electrification. While these forces are real and durable, they materially understate the challenge at hand. The practical constraint on nuclear deployment today is not strategic will, but execution. Specifically, the challenge lies in how nuclear projects are financed, how risk is allocated, and how investors assess credibility in a sector defined by long timelines and asymmetric downside risk.

Nicolas Stauff

Data centers power our digital lives—along with many aspects of our economy and the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence. Electricity demand is rising rapidly, with the domestic data center load projected to increase from 4 percent to 9 percent of U.S. electricity consumption by 2030. This surge is already reshaping utility planning, grid interconnection queues, and the market for reliable power nationwide.

Nuclear energy is well matched to data center needs, because it provides reliable, 24/7 electricity with stable long-term costs. Modern hyperscale data center campuses can require hundreds of megawatts for IT equipment and cooling, and many applications demand maximum uptime. At the same time, leading hyperscalers have aggressive decarbonization commitments that limit reliance on fossil generation. Data centers also require fiber connectivity, a skilled workforce, and local acceptance—yet they can deliver meaningful tax base and employment impacts, especially when coupled with a major energy project.

NextEra Energy is set to acquire Dominion Energy, the two utilities announced earlier today in an approximately $67 billion merger that will alter the energy landscape—including for nuclear power—in the United States.

For 45 years, Duane Arnold Energy Center operated in Linn County, Ia., near the town of Palo and just northwest of Cedar Rapids. The facility, owned by NextEra Energy, was the only nuclear power plant in the state.

In August 2020, a historic derecho swept across eastern Iowa with winds approaching 140 miles per hour. Damage to the plant’s cooling towers accelerated a shutdown that had already been planned, and the facility entered decommissioning soon after, with its fuel removed in October of that year. Iowa’s only nuclear plant had gone off line.

Today the national energy landscape looks very different than it did just six short years ago. Electricity demand is rising rapidly as data centers, artificial intelligence infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and electrification expand across the country. Reliable, carbon-free baseload power has become increasingly valuable. In that context, Linn County has approved the rezoning necessary to support the recommissioning and restart of Duane Arnold and is actively supporting NextEra’s efforts to secure the remaining state and federal approvals.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a regulatory conference Tuesday, May 19, with Vistra Operations Company officials to discuss a preliminary “white” safety finding at Comanche Peak-2.

Eight companies will collectively receive more than $94 million in cost-share funding to expedite the near-term deployment of small light water modular reactors, the Department of Energy announced Thursday.

This week, the United States and South Korea have taken two steps toward deepening their nuclear partnership through two notable announcements. First, the majority-state owned Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power signed a memorandum of understanding with Birmingham, Ala.–based Southern Nuclear.

In a first quarter earnings call Monday, executives at Constellation said they should know in June or July the status of a request to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to transfer capacity interconnection rights from the company’s Eddystone gas- and-oil-powered plant in Pennsylvania to Crane nuclear power plant (formerly Three Mile Island-1).

Originally scheduled for shutdown in 2025, Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant was given at least a few more years of life when in 2022, California lawmakers approved an extension of operations into 2030. The Avila Beach, Calif., plant already has the OK from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate into 2044 and 2045 after the two reactors’ operating licenses were renewed and extended for another 20 years, but state lawmakers still must approve any further extension beyond 2030 if the plant is to remain in operation.

The Bruce C nuclear power plant expansion project in Ontario, Canada, moved one step closer to fruition last week with the May 7 announcement that Bruce Power and the provincial government of Ontario had entered into a cost-sharing and recovery agreement that could be worth C$300 million ($219.4 million).

Ontario has directed the province’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) to enter into the agreement with Bruce Power so the Canadian utility can proceed with First Nations and community engagement, workforce planning, preconstruction and site preparation planning, and other critical activities that fall under predevelopment work. This work would be completed by 2030.

U.S. nuclear capacity additions are falling short of ambitious expectations set (and then reset) in recent years. Despite construction permits submitted or approved at this writing, new commercial, utility-scale nuclear generation is still a few years away from operation.

New Jersey’s two nuclear power plants, Hope Creek and Salem, may be joined by other nuclear facilities after lawmakers lifted the state’s de facto moratorium on new nuclear construction.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill said state officials are eyeing sites for potential nuclear facilities. Executives at PSEG Nuclear—the operators of Hope Creek and Salem—welcome the news of the growing momentum for nuclear power in the state but cautioned it will take more than lifting a moratorium to make this feasible.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted Radiant Industries’ 10 CFR Part 70 license application for its R-50 microreactor production facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and will launch an expedited review that it is aiming to complete within eight months.

According to NRC documents, the agency expects to complete its review of the license application by December 18, 2026. The timeline is described as “accelerated” in the NRC announcement—about 55 percent faster than the typical 18 months for Part 70 application reviews.