Power & Operations

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.

The Nuclear Company, a nuclear power project development firm, is partnering with global investment firm Brookfield to form a new company specializing in the execution of projects involving Westinghouse nuclear reactors.

X-energy recently announced that it has begun collaborating with Louisville Gas and Electric Company and Kentucky Utilities to deploy X-energy’s Xe-100 reactor in Kentucky. The news comes soon after X-energy went public on the Nasdaq and represents the latest in a string of growing investments Kentucky has made in nuclear development over the last two years.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved subsequent license renewals for St. Lucie Units 1 and 2, extending the operating licenses for the pressurized water reactors by another 20 years.

Tuesday’s approval means that the 1,062-MWe Unit 1 and 1,074-MWe Unit 2 can now operate until March 1, 2056, and April 6, 2063, respectively. Unit 1 commenced operations in 1976 and Unit 2 in 1983. With the original 40-year operating licenses and first 20-year renewals, these second 20-year renewals bring the reactors’ lifespan to 80 years.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has renewed the Robinson nuclear power plant’s operating license in record time, the agency announced last week.

The subsequent license renewal process for the Hartsville, S.C., facility was completed within 12 months, according to the NRC. The process has typically taken 18 months. This was the first license renewal review conducted under the directive of Executive Order 14300 to streamline processes like renewing operating licenses.

A newly signed contract between U.K.-based Rolls-Royce SMR and the ČEZ Group in the Czech Republic will allow for design work to begin on the planned small modular reactors at the Temelín nuclear power plant site in the Czech Republic. The companies, which hope to deploy as much as 3 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the country, signed an early works contract that will see them begin preparing for consents, permitting, and licensing and continuing preliminary infrastructure activities as they develop a site application for the SMRs.

The Department of the Air Force has selected three companies to be potential developers and operators of microreactors at Air Force installations as part of the Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program: Radiant Industries, Antares Nuclear, and Westinghouse Government Services.

The communities in and around Duane Arnold had a chance on Tuesday evening to hear from Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials on the progress to restart Iowa’s only nuclear power plant in early 2029.

Licensing, inspections and assessments, the noticing process, and the role of the restart panel were among the topics discussed at the public meeting, which was held in Cedar Rapids, Ia., with an option for virtual attendance.

Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. (Photo: Malmstrom AFB)

The Department of the Air Force (DAF) and the Defense Innovation Unit within the Department of Defense have selected Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado and Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana to potentially site microreactors.

Wednesday’s announcement moves forward the plans of the Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program, which was launched in 2024 with the objective of deploying “advanced, contractor-owned and operated” microreactors from commercial reactor companies on bases.

Yesterday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has received an application from Westinghouse to renew and update the design certification (DC) for its AP1000 reactor. This application seeks to formally incorporate the lessons learned from the construction of Vogtle-3 and -4 into the design control document (DCD) of the AP1000.

This long-expected submittal builds on previous plans at both the NRC and Westinghouse for the future of gigawatt-scale light water reactor deployments in the United States.