“Life is a roller coaster. It’s best ridden with your hands in the air.”

Fri, Mar 14, 2025, 2:31PMNuclear NewsCraig Piercy

Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org

I find myself saying the expression above a lot these days—to my kids, my wife, my friends, and colleagues. Most recently, I said it to the person sitting next to me after the pilot of our plane—bound for Reagan National Airport a day after the collision of AA flight 5342 and a military Blackhawk helicopter—aborted the landing at the last minute.

I am not sure where I picked up this pronouncement, but I find it to be apropos to the topsy-­turvy moment where we find ourselves in 2025. In addition to the first U.S. commercial airline crash in 15 years, we are witnessing a new presidential administration in its infancy playing by the Silicon Valley rules of “move fast, break things.” We’ve seen DeepSeek, the low-cost Chinese AI that reportedly uses 50–75 percent less energy than its NVIDIA-powered counterparts, tank Constellation’s market value by more than 20 percent in one late-January trading day.

Lloyd’s Register supports Prodigy’s bring-your-own-reactor floating plant concept

Fri, Mar 14, 2025, 12:02PMNuclear News
Conceptual illustration of a Prodigy Microreactor Power Station TNPP. (Image: Prodigy Clean Energy)

Prodigy Clean Energy and Lloyd’s Register have announced a collaboration to support the deployment of Prodigy’s “transportable nuclear power plants” (TNPPs) in Canada by 2030. Prodigy’s goal is to build marine-based nuclear power plants that are compatible with different end uses and reactor suppliers. What the plants would have in common is offshore siting close to an end user, which could include offshore oil and gas platforms, commercial seaports, mining operations, remote communities, and desalination plants.

Fires extinguished at Chernobyl following drone strike

Thu, Mar 13, 2025, 8:00PMNuclear News
Dealing with the aftermath of the Russian drone attack on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. (Photo: State Emergency Service of Ukraine)

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service has finally gained full control over a blaze that started February 14 after a drone struck the protective dome over the destroyed reactor from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant accident.

U.S. and Japan collaborate on high-burnup fast reactor fuel safety tests at INL

Thu, Mar 13, 2025, 5:02PMNuclear News
Photo: INL

Idaho National Laboratory recently conducted a safety test on high-burnup fast reactor fuel from historic irradiation testing at the lab’s Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II). According to the Department of Energy, which announced the work March 12, it’s the first such safety test to be performed in over 20 years.

Industry Update—March 2025

Thu, Mar 13, 2025, 2:30PMNuclear News

Here is a recap of industry happenings from the recent past:

ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE

BWRX-300 SMR deployment partnership developed

Several U.S. utility companies and supply chain partners have formed a coalition to accelerate deployment of GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s BWRX-300 small modular reactor. The coalition, which has applied for $800 million in funding from the Department of Energy’s Generation III+ SMR program, is led by the Tennessee Valley Authority and includes GEH, Bechtel, BWX Technologies, Duke Energy, Electric Power Research Institute, Indiana Michigan Power, Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Sargent & Lundy, Scot Forge, other utilities and advanced nuclear project developers, and the State of Tennessee. TVA previously selected the BWRX-300 SMR for possible deployment at the Clinch River site, near Oak Ridge, Tenn. If the new coalition is awarded the requested DOE funding, TVA intends to accelerate construction of the first SMR at this site by two years, planning for commercial operation by 2033.

Nuclear education and training

Thu, Mar 13, 2025, 12:02PMNuclear NewsLisa Marshall

Lisa Marshall
president@ans.org

This year's ANS Conference on Nuclear Training and Education (CONTE), held in early February, tackled emerging approaches to nuclear skills and the workforce. How do we attract, retain, and qualify our future professionals? What technologies will enhance teaching and assessment methods?

In 2024, the Department of Energy called the following developments “wins for nuclear energy”:

  • Vogtle-4 had its commercial start.
  • The ADVANCE Act to accelerate deployment of advanced reactors.
  • Reactor recommissioning announcements and collaborations with tech companies.
  • Growing our domestic nuclear fuel supply chain and expanding domestic capacity by 200 GW.
  • Demonstration projects such as Natrium, Project Pele, and Hermes.

West Valley shares 3D model and lessons learned

Wed, Mar 12, 2025, 5:00PMRadwaste Solutions
A 3D model shows areas of West Valley's main plant process building demolition project that have been completed in yellow. Workers have removed 52 of the building’s 56 cells since the start of the demolition in September 2022.(Image: DOE)

A virtual meeting between representatives of the West Valley Demonstration Project (WVDP) in New York and the Oak Ridge Office of Environmental Management (OREM) in Tennessee was held recently to share lessons learned from the ongoing demolition of West Valley’s main plant process building.

Working where the rubber meets the road

Tue, Mar 11, 2025, 12:01PMSponsored ContentAmerican DND

American DND is working with Oil Quick®, and Caterpillar (CAT®) Equipment to deploy Cutting-Edge Technologies and innovations as SAFER methods of performing radiological / nuclear decommissionings and demolitions (D&D) that substantially reduce hours at risk and protect both the workforce and the environment. The OilQuick® system along with CAT® Products and American DND’s proprietary THL Dust Suppression system are proven contributors to American DND’s Safety achievement of working over 750,000 man-hours with a ZERO OSHA Safety rating over the past 21 years while performing open-air radiological demolitions with radiological (alpha, beta, gamma), and environmental constituents at numerous sites across North America.

TerraPower roundup: Progress for Natrium project

Mon, Mar 10, 2025, 5:00PMNuclear News

TerraPower has continued to make aggressive progress in several areas for its Natrium Reactor Demonstration Project since the beginning of the year. Natrium is an advanced 345-MWe reactor that has liquid sodium as a coolant, improved fuel utilization, enhanced safety features, and an integrated energy storage system, allowing for a brief power output boost to 500 MWe if needed for grid resiliency. The company broke ground for its first Natrium plant in 2024 near a retiring coal facility in Kemmerer, Wyo.

Document to preserve Swedish repository information across generations

Mon, Mar 10, 2025, 2:32PMRadwaste Solutions
The KIF document is meant to engage the reader to share, imagine, and renew nuclear waste information. (Photo: Per Wistbo Nibell)

The preservation of records, knowledge, and memory is recognized as an important component of nuclear waste management, preventing future generations from unnecessary interference with a waste repository and supporting future societies to make informed decisions about such sites.