Some 30 nuclear engineering departments at universities across the United States graduate more than 900 students every year. These young men and women are the present and future of the domestic nuclear industry as it seeks to develop and deploy advanced nuclear energy technologies, grow its footprint on the power grid, and penetrate new markets while continuing to run the existing fleet of reactors reliably and economically.

FLiBe—a mixture of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride—is not an off-the-shelf commodity. The Department of Energy suspects that researchers and reactor developers may have a use for the 2,000 kilograms of fluoride-based salt that once ran through the secondary coolant loop of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Uranium prices have fallen to their lowest level in more than a month, to just under $79 per pound, on Friday, November 1, according to analyst website Trading Economics. The lower prices, according to the site, are related to recent evidence of increased supply. This contrasts with the longer-term expectations of bullish demand and higher prices.

In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains on the outskirts of Fort Collins, Colo.—home to Colorado State University—work began this month on a new laser facility funded by a public-private partnership. The private portion is $150 million from Marvel Fusion, announced in August 2023, while $12.5 million—the latest funding for CSU from the Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (FES)—will support the new facility as part of LaserNetUS, a laser research network operated by DOE-FES to provide access to laser facilities for multidisciplinary researchers from the United States and abroad.

Deep Isolation announced that it hosted its third technical workshop for the UPWARDS project, a Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) initiative aimed at developing a universal canister system (UCS) for the disposal of radioactive waste streams from advanced reactors. The workshop, held at R-V Industries in Honey Brook, Pa., focused on the large-scale manufacturing and commercialization of the UCS.

Legislative proposals focused on streamlining the U.S. nuclear energy export process have circulated on Capitol Hill for several years, notably aimed at establishing a single point of contact in the government to simplify global nuclear projects.

The most recently introduced International Nuclear Energy Act (INEA) proposal (S. 826) promotes engagement with partner nations to develop a civil nuclear export strategy and to offset China’s and Russia’s growing influence on international nuclear energy development.

Interest in new reactor deployments and existing reactor life extensions is surging, encouraged by production and investment tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act and led by electricity demand from tech companies. Last week alone saw Google and Amazon investing in Kairos Power’s fluoride salt–cooled reactor and X-energy’s high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor, respectively. On October 16, the DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations issued a solicitation to award $900 million to support the initial domestic deployment of light water–cooled small modular reactor technologies.

BWX Technologies announced that the Department of Energy has approved Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure (H2C) to begin work under a contract valued at up to $45 billion to clean up tank waste at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. H2C is a limited liability company made up of BWXT Technical Services Group, Amentum Environment and Energy, and Fluor Federal Services.

If we needed more proof that this is a “nuclear week”—in the words of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Wednesday, as she announced small modular reactor funding while celebrating tech company investments in advanced reactors—the Department of Energy came through late yesterday when, just nine days after announcing six contracts for high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) deconversion, it announced four contracts for HALEU enrichment services worth up to $2.7 billion. Those contracts are going to Centrus Energy’s American Centrifuge Operating subsidiary, General Matter, Orano Federal Services, and Urenco USA’s Louisiana Energy Services.

The Department of Energy is proposing to fully decommission the Submarine 5th Generation General Electric (S5G) prototype at the Naval Reactors Facility on the Idaho National Laboratory site. Along with the Environmental Protection Agency and the state of Idaho, the DOE has initiated a 30-day public comment period (ending November 14) on the planned end state for the facility and its defueled reactor vessel.

Yesterday morning as Amazon, X-energy, Energy Northwest, and Dominion Energy were sharing a spotlight celebrating their investment in X-energy’s high-temperature gas-cooled reactor technology, the Department of Energy opened up the application process for up to $900 million in cost-shared funding to support the initial domestic deployment of a different type of reactor—light water reactors generating about 300 MWe that the DOE calls Gen III+ small modular reactors.

Oklo Inc. announced yesterday that a safety design report for the Aurora fuel fabrication facility the company plans to build at Idaho National Laboratory has the approval of the Department of Energy. At the facility, Oklo plans to use high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) that has been recovered from used Experimental Breeder Reactor-II fuel to produce fuel for its first planned microreactor—dubbed Aurora—which is also set for deployment at INL.

On October 8, the Department of Energy’s Idaho Operations Office released the draft environmental assessment (EA) Demonstration of Microreactor Experiment (DOME) Test Bed Operations. The draft EA assesses the potential environmental impacts of plans to use the containment dome of the former Experimental Breeder Reactor-II at Idaho National Laboratory’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) to test multiple TRISO-fueled advanced reactor designs on a micro scale.

The Department of Energy announced yesterday a total of $49 million in funding for 19 projects in the Foundational Fusion Materials, Nuclear Science, and Technology programs that span functional and structural materials R&D for heating technology, magnet technology, blankets, fuel cycle, and first wall research.

The Department of Energy announced contracts yesterday for six companies to perform high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) deconversion and to transform enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) to other chemical forms, including metal or oxide, for storage before it is fabricated into fuel for advanced reactors. It amounts to a first round of contracting. “These contracts will allow selected companies to bid on work for deconversion services,” according to the DOE’s announcement, “creating strong competition and allowing DOE to select the best fit for future work.”

The Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Advanced Nuclear report that was released in March 2023 by the Department of Energy called for five to 10 signed reactor contracts for at least one reactor design by 2025. Now, 18 months have passed, and despite the word “resurgence” in media reports on the U.S. nuclear power industry, 2025 is fast approaching with no contracts signed.

The Government Accountability Office has recommended that the Department of Energy put a hold on construction of its High-Level Waste Facility at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. The GAO said design and construction of the facility, part of Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, also known as the Vit Plant, should be paused until several actions are taken, including considering other alternatives for managing the site’s high-level radioactive liquid waste.

President Biden has announced the appointment of six new members to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent federal agency that evaluates the technical and scientific validity of the Department of Energy’s activities related to managing and disposing of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.

By combining two techniques, analytical chemists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have for the first time simultaneously detected fluorine and different uranium isotopes in a single particle. Quickly detecting both elements together may help International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors determine if and when undisclosed enrichment has taken place. The findings, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, “push the limit” of how fast single particles can be characterized in terms of their chemical, elemental, and isotopic compositions, according to a September 26 news release from ORNL.

With a $1.52 billion loan from the Department of Energy and $1.3 billion in grants to rural electric cooperatives near the plant, the ambitious plans to restart Michigan’s Palisades nuclear plant next fall are moving ahead.