Drilling begins. (Photo: Kairos Power)
Kairos Power announced this morning that safety-related nuclear construction has begun at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., site where the company is building its Hermes low-power test reactor. Hermes, a scaled demonstration of Kairos Power’s fluoride salt–cooled, high-temperature reactor technology, became the first non–light water reactor to receive a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December 2023. The company broke ground at the site in July 2024.
Artist’s impression of NASA’s Dragonfly approaching a landing site on Saturn’s moon Titan. Essentially a flying chemistry lab, along with cameras and other science instrumentation, Dragonfly will travel between dozens of landing sites on Titan’s surface to investigate the chemical origins of life. (Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)
Curiosity landed on Mars sporting a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) in 2012, and a second NASA rover, Perseverance, landed in 2021. Both are still rolling across the red planet in the name of science. Another exploratory craft with a similar plutonium-238–fueled RTG but a very different mission—to fly between multiple test sites on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon—recently got one step closer to deployment.
On April 25, NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) announced that the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s icy moon passed its critical design review. “Passing this mission milestone means that Dragonfly’s mission design, fabrication, integration, and test plans are all approved, and the mission can now turn its attention to the construction of the spacecraft itself,” according to NASA.
Idaho National Laboratory’s Idaho Falls campus. (Photo: INL)
Idaho National Laboratory is looking for a sponsor to invest $5 million–$10 million in a privately funded innovation incubator to support seed-stage start-ups working in nuclear energy, integrated energy systems, cybersecurity, or advanced materials. For their investment, the sponsor gets access to what INL calls “a turnkey source of cutting-edge American innovation.” Not only are technologies supported by the program “substantially de-risked” by going through technical review and development at a national laboratory, but the arrangement “adds credibility, goodwill, and visibility to the private sector sponsor’s investments,” according to INL.
Plastic pollution from overseas washes up on San Cristobal Island, part of the Galapagos Islands archipelago, in 2019. (Photo: F. Oberhaensli/IAEA)
The International Atomic Energy Agency announced that its Nuclear Technology for Controlling Plastic Pollution (NUTEC Plastics) initiative has partnered with Ecuador’s Oceanographic Institute of the Navy (INOCAR) and Polytechnic School of the Coast (ESPOL) to build microplastic monitoring and analytical capacity to address the growing threat of marine microplastic pollution in the Galapagos Islands.
Work on Argonne's METL sodium test loop. (Photo: Argonne National Laboratory)
Argonne National Laboratory has successfully swapped out an aging cold trap in the sodium test loop called METL (Mechanisms Engineering Test Loop), the Department of Energy announced April 23. The upgrade is the first of its kind in the United States in more than 30 years, according to the DOE, and will help test components and operations for the sodium-cooled fast reactors being developed now.
At-211 undergoes purification and a series of quality checks. (Photo: Don Hamlin/University of Washington)
The Department of Energy’s National Isotope Development Center (NIDC) on March 31 announced the successful long-distance shipment in the United States of a biologically active compound labeled with the medical radioisotope astatine-211 (At-211). Because previous shipments have included only the “bare” isotope, the NIDC has described the development as “unleashing medical innovation.”
Principal investigator Ruchi Gakhar (left), technician Dean Burt (center), and intern Diego Macias, shown loading salt into the loop. (Photo: INL)
The Department of Energy announced March 31 that a new Molten Salt Flow Loop Test Bed at Idaho National Laboratory recently went through its inaugural test run. The closed-loop test system will allow for continuous monitoring and analysis of chloride-based molten salt reactor technology and instruments before the construction of the Southern Company/TerraPower Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment. MCRE—an experimental fast-spectrum molten salt research reactor—will be built at INL’s repurposed Zero Power Physics Reactor, which has been renamed LOTUS (Laboratory for Operation and Testing in the United States).
Illustration showing how radially oriented honeycomb structures can be used within a container to provide strength, sound insulation, or thermal insulation. The structure includes multiple radially aligned layers of a shaped strip. (Image: SRNL)
Savannah River National Laboratory said it has received a patent for its radially oriented honeycomb structures. The technology offers a solution to the deformation of cylindrical honeycomb structures when they are formed from flat panels, providing a way to create structures with greater wall thickness than traditional methods.
Uranium chloride fuel salt. (Photo: INL)
Scientists at Idaho National Laboratory continue to make progress on the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE), which entails research and development for the first operational advanced nuclear reactor to use a mixture of molten chloride salt and uranium as fuel and coolant. The experiment is evaluating the safety and physics of the molten chloride fast reactor that Southern Company and TerraPower are planning to build.
From left, INL’s Mark Nefzger, Raymond Clark, and John Jackson and DOE-NE’s and Diana Li pose with a MARVEL component.. (Photo: DOE-NE)
A team from Idaho National Laboratory and the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy recently visited Carolina Fabricators Inc. (CFI) in West Columbia, S.C., to launch the fabrication process for the primary coolant system of the MARVEL microreactor. Battelle Energy Alliance, which manages INL, awarded the CFI contract in January.
February 14, 2025, 2:58PMNuclear NewsAlexander Long and Sven Vogel Beamline scientist Sven Vogel installs a highly radioactive post-irradiated nuclear fuel sample into the sample chamber on Flight Path 4 (HIPPO) at the Lujan Center. The sample chamber is equipped with a robotic arm capable of precisely positioning and orienting samples within the pulsed thermal neutron beam originating from the spallation target. This advanced setup enables simultaneous neutron diffraction and Bragg-edge imaging, allowing researchers to analyze the structural and microstructural properties of irradiated nuclear fuels under controlled conditions. (Photo: LANL)
In materials science, understanding the unseen—how materials behave internally under real-world conditions—has always been key to developing new materials and accelerating innovative technologies to market. Moreover, the tools that allow us to see into this invisible world of materials have often been game-changers. Among these, neutron imaging stands out as a uniquely powerful method for investigating the internal structure and behavior of materials without having to alter or destroy the sample. By harnessing the unique properties of neutrons, researchers can uncover the hidden behavior of materials, providing insights essential for advancing nuclear materials and technologies.
Weak radio luminescence captured by a low light intensity camera from a synthetic diamond carbon film made from beta-emitting carbon-14 atoms. (Image: University of Bristol)
The world’s first carbon-14 diamond battery became a reality in a United Kingdom laboratory this past December when it was created by scientists from University of Bristol and the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority.
INL director John Wagner and University of Idaho president C. Scott Green at the SUPER agreement signing. (Photo: INL)
New Strategic Understanding for Premier Education and Research (SUPER) agreements signed by Idaho National Laboratory, Boise State University, and University of Idaho will foster collaboration among the institutions in advanced energy and cybersecurity projects. The five-year agreements are designed to open doors for research and development opportunities, while advancing existing research and development initiatives, including projects in nuclear energy and high-performance computing.
OPG and Nordion employees at Darlington’s recently refurbished Unit 1, which has been modified to produce cobalt-60 isotopes. (Photo: OPG)
Ontario Power Generation in Canada announced that Unit 1 of its Darlington nuclear power plant, which has returned to service from refurbishment, is now producing the medical isotope cobalt-60. During refurbishment activities, OPG made modifications to the unit to allow it to produce Co-60, which is used to sterilize 30 percent of the world’s single-use medical devices, such as syringes, gloves, and implants.
