Tag: nuclear power

In Major Win For Nuclear Energy, Nearly Half Of Senate Democrats Join GOP To Advance Permitting Overall

The Senate voted 73-25 on Monday evening to invoke cloture and open debate on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA), the sweeping permitting overhaul written by Republicans Shelley Moore Capito and Mike Lee with Democrats Martin Heinrich and Sheldon Whitehouse.

Supporters were hoping for 15 to 20 Democrats, good for around 70 votes, and TD Cowen had cut its odds of success to about 25% from 40%.

Instead, 51 Republicans, 21 Democrats and one independent voted yes. That’s 22 of the 47 senators who caucus with Democrats, nearly half, backing a bill Trump has endorsed.

Piper Sandler’s policy team boils the nearly 500-page bill down to four parts: permit deadlines and limits on yanking permits, a narrower NEPA, more FERC power over transmission lines and data center rules:

  • Including a limit of no more than 2 years for federal decisions on environmental approvals and restraints on agencies’ abilities to withdraw permits once granted.
  • Amending the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by reducing the scope of its applicability, i.e. who can sue and on what grounds, and shortening the litigation window.
  • Accelerating the buildout of transmission lines by enhancing FERC’s backstop authority, which gives the federal government more authority to approve major lines and helps projects move through the permitting process much faster.
  • On data centers, the bill is a step up from the Ratepayer Protection Act in that it forces more energy behind the meter and establishes rules to ensure data centers are responsible for energy costs until all incremental costs are fully recovered (even after contract terminations).

Shutting the courthouse door

One of the most important changes involves stripping environmental activist groups of their favorite weapon.

Today, most NEPA challenges have six years to be filed. BAAJA cuts that to 150 days, and only people who commented during the review and can show direct harm get standing.

Even a winning NEPA challenge gets a remand “without vacatur or issuance of an injunction,” per the Bipartisan Policy Center, so the project keeps moving while the agency fixes its paperwork.

Sue-and-delay activists don’t need to win in court, and they often know they won’t. They just need to tie a project up until financing costs pile up and investors walk away. A 150-day window with no injunctions takes that weapon away.

Data centers get the bill, again

Data centers already agreed to this in an informal way with the Ratepayer Protection Pledge pushed by Trump.

The BAAJA bill pushes for harder requirements to actually enforce it, considering some recent pushback data center operators have exhibited with actually paying for the associated grid upgrades.

The September text made data centers and crypto miners drawing 20 MW or more pay the full cost of the generation, storage, transmission and distribution built to serve them. The weekend rewrite “expands ratepayer protections to data centers of all sizes,” per BPC.

They’d also pay for the existing grid on top of new upgrades, a “double tap” that FERC’s 1994 pricing policy doesn’t allow, and stay on the hook even if they exit a contract early.

Behind the meter until the grid catches up

Piper’s read is that the bill “forces more energy behind the meter,” and states could even require data centers to bring their own generation.

Pay twice for a grid that can’t connect you for years, or build your own power plant?

Goldman already sees behind-the-meter supplying 25% of all data centers by 2030. The median power project built last year waited more than five years from interconnection request to operation, per Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

As we reported in March, PJM said the Three Mile Island restart might not get full deliverability until 2031, at a plant that fed the same grid until 2019.

Fully connecting a large data center “can take 5 to 10 years,” a16z’s Ryan McEntush wrote last month, but “every site I’m aware of intends to connect to the grid as soon as it can.”

Until grid owners and operators can bolt on new plants and big loads in under five years, behind-the-meter will be the default for anyone who can afford it.

Four House nuclear bills along for the ride

The weekend rewrite also added a nuclear title folding in four of the six bills that cleared House Energy and Commerce in September without a single “no” vote, per a summary from Heinrich’s office.

They scrap the mandatory hearing on uncontested reactor and enrichment licenses, let enrichment plants start building before getting an NRC license, raise senior NRC pay and make DOE announce nuclear facility actions.

Fuel recycling (the REFUEL Act) and an NRC advisory committee bill didn’t make it.

The House didn’t wait. On Monday night it passed the REFUEL Act 397-2 and the enrichment bill 394-3. As we wrote earlier, nuclear is the one energy source Washington still agrees on.

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Radiant Wins First-Ever DOE OK For Full-Power Microreactor As Nuclear Stocks Crash To Multi-Year Lows

For the first time ever, Washington has signed off on a commercial nuclear microreactor running at full power. On Wall Street, nobody seems to care.

On Thursday, the Department of Energy approved the Documented Safety Analysis (DSA) for LA-based Radiant’s Kaleidos, a 1-megawatt, truck-transportable reactor that is now sitting inside the DOME test bed at Idaho National Laboratory. According to the company, it is the only microreactor design to secure DOE safety approval covering operation at power, as opposed to the zero-power criticality tests that every other entrant in the DOE pilot program has run so far.

And yet the stocks most levered to the small modular reactor story are trading like the industry is going out of business: Oklo (OKLO) closed Friday at $25.25, down 86% from its October 2025 peak and at its lowest since April 2025, while NuScale (SMR) is down 89% and sitting at a price last seen in April 2024.

Regular readers know we have been tracking the microreactor buildout since well before it was a meme (and long before it stopped being one), so let’s take a closer look at what Radiant actually got, where the rest of the pack stands, and why the market has decided none of it matters, at least for now.

What Radiant Actually Won

The DSA approval is the step that comes after DOE signed off on Radiant’s preliminary safety analysis back in February. With it in hand, Radiant moves into DOE’s Readiness Review, which will check whether the reactor and the crew operating it are ready to go nuclear. Once that is done, Radiant fuels Kaleidos and kicks off a five-phase test campaign at the National Reactor Innovation Center’s DOME facility.

The campaign goes from first criticality through progressively higher power, and ends with at least 150 hours of continuous full-power operation with no operator intervention. Radiant also plans to run the same unit for 60 effective full-power days over several months, using essentially the same design and custom fuel that customers will get. DOE’s acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Reactors Chimi Zacot called it “another important step forward in President Trump’s vision for an American nuclear renaissance.”

Which, to be fair, is a meaningful upgrade from what we have seen so far. As we covered in “The Rebirth Of America’s Nuclear Industry” (Jun 5) and then in “Four By The Fourth“, Antares, Valar Atomics, Deployable Energy and Aalo all hit criticality at INL ahead of Trump’s July 4 deadline, and Oklo’s Groves test reactor in Texas followed on August 5. But those were zero-power demonstrations: proof the physics works, with nothing plugged into the other end. Kaleidos is being cleared to actually make power, for weeks at a time.

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Inside the U.S. Army’s $2.2B plan to build microreactors at five bases

The U.S. Army recently announced plans to add nuclear microreactors at five military bases from New York to Texas as a reliable energy source independent of the commercial electric grid.

The decision comes as the Trump administration pushes hard to develop the next generation of nuclear power, including issuing billions in loans for large nuclear reactors to meet skyrocketing power demand from data centers and a pilot program to boost advanced reactor designs and projects for military and civilian use. No nuclear microreactors are supplying power to the commercial electric grid in the United States today.

Five companies selected by the Army will be awarded up to $2.2 billion over five years to own, construct, and operate the microreactors, provided they meet set performance milestones along the way. The Army expects that more than 20 nuclear microreactors will be built and operated.

Army and industry officials say microreactors offer a resilient power source for critical infrastructure at military installations in case the grid fails. Reactors can run for years without refueling.

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Savannah River Site Lifts Emergency After Lab Fire And Reported Radiological Release

A fire in a single room at the Savannah River National Laboratory triggered a Site Area Emergency at the US Department of Energy complex on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River from Augusta late this Wednesday. Site officials reported the fire had been brought under control, with no contamination reported outside the affected building, and said the operational emergency was over by 9:18 p.m.

WRDW reported that the site described an “unfiltered ground-level radiological release” from that room. WRDW reports that dispatch traffic and an SRS release have found no indication of contamination beyond the site boundary. Officials at the lab have told the station that there is no danger to the public outside of the reservation.

SRS closed entrance barricades to incoming traffic. Rail, river, and air traffic was also temporarily restricted. Employees not involved in the incident were told to go to shelter. Workers in the lab, located in Area A, were kept behind the barricades for approximately 30 minutes before some were allowed to leave, WRDW reported. A temporary flight restriction (TFR) was put in place by the FAA until midnight Thursday. The restriction is for a 15-nm radius around SRS with a flight ceiling of 10,000 feet.

All-clear posted on the SRS status page at 9:18 p.m. There are no operational emergencies or scheduled delays. Incoming and outgoing traffic has resumed at all barricades, and oncoming shift workers should report to work as usual.

Savannah River Site is a 310-square-mile reservation in Aiken, Barnwell and Allendale counties on the SC side of the Savannah River which forms the Georgia line. Augusta sits on the Georgia side. The complex is home to the Department of Energy’s national laboratory conducting nuclear materials research in support of its environmental cleanup and nuclear waste management mission as well as the production of tritium in support of the country’s nuclear deterrent. The site was built in the early 1950s to produce plutonium and later tritium for nuclear weapons, WRDW reported.

SRS has not yet issued a follow-up press release to describe the extent of radioactive material release from the single room where the fire occurred. Their initial release states that the fire has been extinguished and that there has been no report of contamination outside of the lab building. The operational emergency ended Wednesday night.

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Google Signs 20-Year Nuclear Deal with Constellation Energy to Power Data Centers

Google and Constellation Energy announced a 20-year nuclear-power agreement this week that will boost output at 11 existing reactors across Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey to feed the incredible power needs of AI data centers.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the deal centers on an 890-megawatt power-purchase agreement. Upgrades at the plants amount to adding a new large reactor to the grid, and Constellation, the country’s largest owner of nuclear-power reactors, is calling it the largest-ever “uprate” project between a nuclear-power provider and a tech company. The company plans to invest more than $4.3 billion in the plants. The first uprate project is expected in 2028, and construction on the rest will continue through 2032 or 2033.

Google and Constellation also struck a separate 15-year supply deal for an additional 2,700 megawatts of electricity in the PJM power market, which covers the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. The companies plan to work together on new power generation, battery storage and demand response programs as well.

“These are expensive things to be done, and we’ve known that we could do this for a number of years now,” said Joe Dominguez, Constellation’s chief executive. “But it’s really Google stepping up to the plate and providing the financial backing for us to be able to bring on what is effectively a new reactor.”

Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s global head of energy and power, said the company wanted power that could come online quickly without compromising its environmental goals. “The speed to firm, clean power in a responsible way was incredibly important to us,” she said, adding that the deal comes “in a moment where data centers are under a lot of criticism.”

The agreement is the latest in a run of moves by Google to lock in nuclear power. Last month, the company said it would support nuclear-plant upgrades in Georgia. It’s also working with NextEra Energy to restart the Duane Arnold Energy Center, a nuclear reactor in Iowa, and has partnered with reactor developer Kairos Power to buy electricity from its projects.

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West Virginia Wants Nuclear’s Benefits, Somebody Else Can Handle The Waste

When West Virginia first announced that they had joined the race to host Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses (NLICs), the central bargain was already clear: nuclear investment comes with responsibility for used fuel. 

We’ve covered this concept a couple times now, highlighting states like Texas and New Mexico that back nuclear investment while fighting storage of out-of-state spent fuel.

Now, West Virginia has joined the club of pro-nuclear pretenders.

Governor Patrick Morrisey signed an exploratory agreement with DOE and announced West Virginia’s entry as the sixth contender in the first week of September. The governor claimed he and his staff went above and beyond to be considered for an NLIC.

It’s not surprising, considering over half the states in the country applied for the program with the knowledge that the campuses could attract up to $50 billion in investment and create nearly 25,000 jobs, each.

The frustrating part is that the expectation to take in used nuclear fuel wasn’t some secret buried in the fine print. West Virginia’s submitted NLIC proposal made temporary used fuel storage a top priority, alongside research into longer-term disposal. Its September agreement explicitly anticipated addressing out-of-state spent fuel and other radioactive waste.

This all only came to light on September 25th when the Charleston Gazette-Mail reported what the administration had actually proposed, using documents obtained through a public-records request. The sales pitch suddenly had an inconveniently readable paper trail.

Multiple lawmakers, even pro-nuclear Republicans, raised concerns about constituents being blindsided. Delegate Josh Holstein said Boone County’s elected representatives had not been informed that the former Hobet mine was among the proposed sites.

By September 27th, Morrisey put out a formal statement declaring a hard flip from his previous posturing: “West Virginia will not be a dumping ground for nuclear waste. Period.“

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Whatever Happened to the 150,000 Tons of Radioactive Waste Stored Under the Atlantic Ocean? 

More than 200,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste were stored on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean between 1949 and 1982, reports ScienceAlert.

Whatever happened to those barrels?Scientists have descended to the wreckage in a crewed submersible to investigate — and found many of the barrels corroded and degraded, their contents spilling across the seafloor. Surprisingly, this isn’t necessarily a subversion of the original plan… The International Atomic Energy Agency recommends that low-level waste be disposed of in robust containment in isolation for at least a few hundred years — but back in the mid-20th century, the recommendations were a little different. The contemporaneous guidelines recommended that containers needed to reach the seafloor intact and remain sealed only long enough for the short-lived radionuclides to decay. After that, the remaining waste was expected to slowly escape and disperse through the surrounding ocean. Not everything in the barrels would conveniently decay away, however. They contained a radioactive hodgepodge, including cesium-137, plutonium isotopes, and tritium, some of which can persist for thousands of years…

[A] few years ago, nuclear engineer Patrick Chardon and marine geologist Javier Escartín of the French National Center for Scientific Research started to wonder what had become of the dumped waste. That question eventually became NODSSUM — Nuclear Ocean Dump Site Survey Monitoring — an interdisciplinary project bringing together nuclear physics, geology, oceanography, biology, and marine chemistry to find the barrels and investigate what, if anything, they were doing to the surrounding environment…. [T]he barrels also appeared to function as tiny oases on the otherwise sparsely populated sandy seafloor. Anemones had attached themselves to the barrels. Sponges, sea cucumbers, fish, and crustaceans lived around them, with crabs apparently particularly fond of the artificial shelters…

Instruments aboard the ship detected significant signals of cobalt-60 and niobium-94, which the researchers could specifically link to the dumped waste… [Samples are now being analyzed] There is precedent, however, to suggest that even striking levels of radioactivity around a source don’t necessarily spread very far. A recent study of the sunken Soviet submarine Komsomolets found radionuclide levels hundreds of thousands of times above background immediately around the leaking reactor — but those levels dropped sharply within just a few meters as the material dispersed through the seawater. The NODSSUM team similarly found that, despite the significant radioactive signals around the barrels, activity levels weren’t high enough to pose major radiation-protection problems for the scientists handling the samples. [Their three-person submersible] Nautile and the instruments it carried showed no signs of contamination.
The real achievement was mapping the exact location of the barrels. “None of this means the waste is harmless,” the article concludes — but it also doesn’t mean we’re about to be overrun by radioactive crabs.”

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‘It’s been too long – Trump’s still in power’: Texts reveal wife of nuclear scientist accused of selling foreign power submarine secrets wanted to flee US due to TRUMP and not because she feared arrest

A teacher accused of selling nuclear submarine secrets with her Navy engineer husband only wanted to flee the country because she hated Donald Trump, a court has been told.   

Lawyers for Diana Toebbe, 45, claim she only wanted to exit the US because of her disdain for the former president, and not because she was worried about getting caught for allegedly trying to sell the classified information.

They made the claim in court papers filed Wednesday, complete with an exchange of messages said to have taken place between Toebbe and her husband Jonathan in March 2019. 

Those texts also allegedly saw Diana Toebbe discuss fleeing to France. The country they tried to sell the secrets to has never been mentioned, and is said to be a US ally, although officials told NBC News that France was not the country targeted. 

Diana begins: ‘We need to get out.’ Jonathan appears bored with her statement, answering: ‘*sigh* where? To do what?’

His wife then says: ‘To anywhere. To do something else. To teach in international schools. To take Macron up on his offer to harbor scientific refugees.’

In an apparent attempt to calm Diana, Jonathan says: ‘Biden/Warren will curb stomp Trump/Pence.’

But Diana was undeterred, and replied: ‘WE NEED TO GET OUT. Hilary (sic) was going to curb stomp trump. I’m done.’ 

Jonathan touted then then-unpublished Mueller Report into alleged collusion between Team Trump and Russia, which ended up posing no threat to Trump’s presidency.

He wrote: ‘The Mueller report is coming real soon.’

But Diana remained angry, answering: ‘It’s been too long. Nothing has changed. He’s still in power.’ 

Jonathan replied: ‘Nothing in government moves that fast — believe me, I speak from personal experience.’

Diana then said: ‘(Trump crony) Manafort got a slap on the wrist. It’s a signal that the entire system is rigged.’

The chat then turned to escaping, with Jonathan saying: ‘We’ve got passports, and some savings. In a real pinch we can flee quickly.’

And Diana answered: ‘Right. Let’s go sooner than later.’ 

The pair were arrested in October and charged with selling secret information about nuclear submarines to an undercover FBI agent who posed as an operative for a foreign country.

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Ukrainian Drone Hits Russian Nuclear Plant Days After Trump Energy Truce Plea

President Trump raised eyebrows when on Monday he declared that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop attacking each other’s oil and energy infrastructure, amid global crude and diesel supply problems related mostly to the Hormuz Strait crisis.

But then within days later it became clear that the default reality on the ground has persisted, as energy sites continue to get pummeled. And it’s not only refineries and ports which have continued getting hit, but as of Thursday morning a Russian nuclear plant was apparently targeted in a Ukrainian drone attack.

A drone hit the cooling tower of a reactor unit at Russia’s Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency has announced Friday.

The unit was operating at the time, but its operating mode was unchanged and no fire broke out. 

The UN agency’s director Rafael Grossi declared in a statement that “all attacks on nuclear facilities are unacceptable as they could endanger nuclear safety and security, irrespective of where they occur.”

He urged “maximum military restraint to prevent the risk of a nuclear accident” – which remains a top dangerous reality of the battlefield in the context of the Ukraine war.

In early July the same site had suffered a prior drone attack from Ukraine. One industry source reviews:

The Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (Kursk NPP) has been the target of several military actions and drone strikes. The most notable incident occurred in August 2025 when a drone detonated and damaged an auxiliary transformer, sparking a structural fire that had to be contained by emergency teams. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitored the event and confirmed that radiation levels remained normal.

The Kremlin going back to 2024 has accused Ukrainian forces of seeking a ‘provocation’ at the Kursk nuclear plant.

The Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) lies about 25 miles west of the city of Kursk, which is the administrative center of the oblast by the same name.

The plant continues to be a major electricity producer for Russia. Kremlin officials have long voiced alarm that Ukraine may seek to use some major provocation to draw its backers in NATO deeper into the conflict.

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Trump sends U.S.-Saudi civilian nuclear deal to Congress, tied to Abraham Accords

The Trump administration has reportedly sent a civilian nuclear agreement signed last month with Saudi Arabia to Congress, kicking off a lengthy review process.

Per media reports using unnamed sources, the agreement was formally sent to Congress on Monday, setting up a months-long review period by the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs Committees.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the civilian nuclear pact will:

  • “Expand American nuclear technology exports
  • Create high-paying U.S. jobs and long-term economic growth
  • Strengthen America’s energy and national security posture
  • Reinforce global nonproliferation standards
  • Deepen the strategic partnership between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”

The Wall Street Journal reported on the deal being sent to Congress on Tuesday.

The agreement falls under Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, which provides a review period for Congress totaling 90 days of continuous session. However, this includes a period of 30 days of continuous session for the president to consult with the committees. It is unclear if this process has already been completed.

An official told ABC News that the deal remains contingent upon Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords.

On July 23rd, a day after the deal was signed, Trump announced that the agreement would be subject to the kingdom joining the accords, which would require the majority-Muslim country to normalize relations with Israel.

Saudi Arabia has reportedly opposed normalizing relations with Israel without the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

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