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.

Chad Wolf

When I began my nuclear career, I was coached up in the nuclear energy culture of the day to “run silent, run deep,” a mindset rooted in the U.S. Navy’s submarine philosophy. That was the norm—until Fukushima.

The nuclear renaissance that many had envisioned hit a wall. The focus shifted from expansion to survival. Many utility communications efforts pivoted from silence to broadcast, showcasing nuclear energy’s elegance and reliability. Nevertheless, despite being clean baseload 24/7 power that delivered a 90 percent capacity factor or higher, nuclear energy was painted as risky and expensive (alongside energy policies and incentives that favored renewables).

Economics became a driving force threatening to shutter nuclear power. The Delivering the Nuclear Promise initiative launched in 2015 challenged the industry to sustain high performance yet cut costs by up to 30 percent.

President Trump will arrive in the United Kingdom this week for a state visit that promises to include the usual pomp and ceremony alongside the signing of a landmark new agreement on U.S.-U.K. nuclear collaboration.

Mike Harkin

When ANS first announced its new Nuclear 101 certificate course, I was excited. This felt like a course tailor-made for me, a transplant into the commercial nuclear world. I enrolled for the inaugural session held in November 2024, knowing it was going to be hard (this is nuclear power, of course)—but I had been working on ramping up my knowledge base for the past year, through both my employer and at a local college.

The course was a fast-and-furious roller-coaster ride through all the key components of the nuclear power industry, in one highly challenging week. In fact, the challenges the students experienced caught even the instructors by surprise. Thankfully, the shared intellectual stretch we students all felt helped us band together to push through to the end.

We were all impressed with the quality of the instructors, who are some of the top experts in the field. We appreciated not only their knowledge base but their support whenever someone struggled to understand a concept.

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 startup of a new cascade of gas centrifuge at Urenco USA’s (UUSA) uranium enrichment facility in Eunice, N.M., came ahead of schedule and on budget, according to the company.

A new career guide for the nuclear energy industry is now available: The Nuclear Empowered Workforce by Earnestine Johnson. Drawing on more than 30 years of experience across 16 nuclear facilities, Johnson offers a practical, insightful look into some of the many career paths available in commercial nuclear power. To mark the release, Johnson sat down with Nuclear News for a wide-ranging conversation about her career, her motivation for writing the book, and her advice for the next generation of nuclear professionals.

When Johnson began her career at engineering services company Stone & Webster, she entered a field still reeling from the effects of the Three Mile Island incident in 1979, nearly 15 years earlier. Her hiring cohort was the first group of new engineering graduates the company had brought on since TMI, a reflection of the industry-wide pause in nuclear construction. Her first long-term assignment—at the Millstone site in Waterford, Conn., helping resolve design issues stemming from TMI—marked the beginning of a long and varied career that spanned positions across the country.

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.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management said the Idaho Cleanup Project (ICP) has recycled more than 2,100 tons of noncontaminated metal debris since 2022 as it works to demolish three legacy Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program prototypes at the Idaho National Laboratory Site, saving taxpayers nearly $2 million in disposal costs while advancing the project’s environmental goals.

Kansas in now one of 11 U.S. states and territories that is free of cesium-137 irradiators—the others being Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and Wyoming. The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced on September 10 that it had completed the removal of all of these medical devices from Kansas as part of its ongoing effort to reduce radiological threats in the United States.