The Illinois General Assembly passed a clean energy bill on October 30 that would, in part, lift a 30-year moratorium on new nuclear energy in the state and create incentives for more energy storage.

In the report Fusion Forward: Powering America’s Future issued earlier this month by the Special Competitive Studies Project’s (SCSP) Commission on the Scaling of Fusion Energy, it warns that the United States is on the verge of losing the fusion power race to China.

Noting that China has invested at least $6.5 billion in its fusion enterprise since 2023, almost three times the funding received by the U.S. Department of Energy’s fusion program over the same period, the commission report urges the U.S. government to prioritize the rapid commercialization of fusion energy to secure U.S. national security and restore American energy leadership.

SCSP is a nonpartisan, nonprofit initiative making recommendations to strengthen America’s long-term competitiveness in emerging technologies. Launched in fall 2024, the 13-member commission is led by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) and Jim Risch (R., Idaho), along with SCSP president and commission co-chair Ylli Bajraktari.

New York is going after nuclear in a big way. The New York Power Authority is releasing its first solicitations for plans to develop advanced nuclear reactors in the state’s upstate communities, the power authority announced on October 30.

In less than two weeks, the American Nuclear Society’s second annual conference of the year, the 2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo, will come to Washington, D.C.

Today, ANS is announcing that Energy Secretary Chris Wright will be joining the list of nuclear leaders slated to speak at the conference.

Click here to register for the meeting, which will take place November 9–12 in Washington, D.C., at the Washington Hilton. Be sure to do so before November 7 to take advantage of priority pricing.

The Department of Energy, Argonne National Laboratory, NVIDIA, and Oracle have agreed to a public-private partnership to deliver the DOE’s largest AI supercomputers, named Solstice and Equinox.

Australia-based Clarity Pharmaceuticals, a clinical-stage radiopharmaceutical company, has signed a supply agreement for copper-67 with Nusano, Inc., headquartered in California. Nusano produces radioisotopes for medical, commercial, and industrial applications.

Lee

Summers

The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, the independent agency responsible for ensuring that Department of Energy facilities are protective of public health and safety, announced that the board’s acting chairman, Thomas Summers, has concluded his service with the agency, having completed his second term as a board member on October 18.

Summers’ departure leaves Patricia Lee, who joined the DNFSB after being confirmed by the Senate in July 2024, as the board’s only remaining member and acting chair. Lee’s DNFSB board term ends in October 2027.

Nieh

Ho Nieh, the Trump administration’s nominee to be a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and four new board members of the Tennessee Valley Authority were approved in a vote today by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and head to the Senate floor for a final vote.

The committee also voted to advance to the Senate floor the Nuclear REFUEL Act of 2025 (S. 2082), which would smooth the regulatory pathway for recycling used nuclear fuel.

President Donald nominated Nieh on July 30 to serve as NRC commissioner for the remainder of a term set to expire June 30, 2029, which was held by former NRC commissioner Chris Hanson, who Trump fired in June.

Levinson early in his career and today.

As a member of the American Nuclear Society, I have been to many conferences. The International Conference on Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Analysis (PSA ’25), embedded in ANS Annual Meeting in Chicago in June, held special significance for me with the PSA ’25 opening plenary session recognizing the 50^th anniversary of the publication of WASH-1400, which helped define my career. Reflecting on that milestone sent me back to 1975, when I was just an undergraduate student studying nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, N.Y., focusing on my mechanics, fluids, and thermodynamic classes as well as my first set of nuclear engineering classes. At that time—and many times since—the question “Why nuclear engineering?” was raised.

Helical Fusion, a Japan-based fusion start-up that is developing a stellarator fusion power reactor, has announced it has successfully demonstrated its high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coil under relevant magnetic conditions.

A video highlighting the stellarator’s technology testing can be found here.