The US Supreme Court is to consider whether federal law pre-empts Virginia's ban on uranium mining after finding in favour of a petition by Virginia Uranium, Inc against an earlier appeal court ruling. The court is expected to consider the question later this year.

Dominion Energy is to provide funding that could lead to commercialising the BWRX-300 small modular reactor, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy announced today. The 300 MWe reactor is derived from GEH's 1520 MWe Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor design.

US utility Dominion Energy has awarded Framatome a contract to provide steam generator services for its fleet of six nuclear power reactors. The inspection and maintenance work - scheduled to take place during outage over the next two years - will partly be carried out using robots.

The US Department of Energy has approved the start of construction of a new underground ventilation system at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The USD288 million Safety Significant Confinement Ventilation System is one of a number of infrastructure projects planned for the New Mexico facility.

US Energy Secretary Rick Perry has written to Congress informing it that he has effectively ended the project to construct a mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication facility at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The facility, about 70% complete, was intended to dispose of 34 tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium by turning it into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors.

The US House of Representatives yesterday passed a bill that would expedite licensing of the Yucca Mountain repository and provide for centralised interim storage of the country's used nuclear fuel. HR 3053 - the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2018 - was passed by 340 votes to 72.

The US Nuclear Energy Institute has called on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to move quickly to define, foster and retain resiliency on the country's electricity grid before further nuclear generating capacity is lost through premature plant retirements. Meanwhile, the independent, non-partisan Center for Climate and Energy Solutions has issued a new report outlining how US policymakers can preserve the emission benefits of nuclear energy.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has completed a multi-year series of major construction works to protect the Sequoyah and Watts Bar nuclear plants from the most extreme of weather events. The final project, a new seven-foot (2.1 metre) high concrete flood wall at Fort Loudoun Dam, would hold back the waters of the Tennessee River in the event of an extreme flood.

Azarga Uranium Corp and URZ Energy Corp have announced they are to merge to form a new US-focused in-situ leach (ISL) uranium development company. The merger will allow the companies, which are both based in Vancouver, Canada, to consolidate their US uranium assets which together include measured and indicated resources of 30.7 million pounds U3O8 (11,809 tU) plus additional inferred resources of 8.7 million pounds U3O8.

US enriched uranium supplier Centrus Energy Corporation has signed a long-term agreement with French company Orano to provide it with separative work units from 2020.

A study by US regional transmission organisation PJM Interconnection on the effects of the proposed closure of four nuclear units on grid reliability ignores the units' contribution to fuel diversity and zero-carbon emissions, FirstEnergy Solutions said on 30 April.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration yesterday announced the successful testing of a uranium-fuelled Stirling engine for use in possible future missions to Mars. Testing of the Kilopower reactor - which could be used to provide power to missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond - began at NASA's Nevada National Security Site in November 2017 and was completed in March.