The chairman of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Senator John Barrasso, has called on the US Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw a proposed rule requiring uranium recovery operators to conduct up to 30 years of groundwater monitoring following in-situ leach uranium production.

Toshiba has completed the early payment of $3.225 billion, reflecting the remaining outstanding amount of its $3.68 billion parent company guarantee obligation to the owners of the Vogtle nuclear construction project in the USA. The company is negotiating the settlement of the full guaranteed amount due to the owners of the VC Summer project.

A 20-year ban on the mining of uranium near the Grand Canyon has been upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The court ruling effectively confirmed that the ban is lawful and the government has the power to impose it.

US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry yesterday announced $30 million of funding to support the development of advanced nuclear energy technology. The Department of Energy is soliciting proposals for cost-shared projects to develop innovative, industry-driven reactor designs and accompanying technologies with high potential to advance nuclear power in the USA.

A new agreement with Toshiba will see the owners of the Vogtle nuclear construction project receive all remaining scheduled payments under the project's parent guarantee by 15 December. To date, Georgia Power, Oglethorpe Power, MEAG Power and Dalton Utilities have received scheduled payments worth $455 million in total, with $3.2 billion still to be paid.

The next stage of Georgia Public Service Commission hearings on the Vogtle nuclear power plant construction project will begin on 11 December, in which the PSC will hear from public witnesses. It will also conduct a hearing on the testimony of its public interest advocacy staff who have recommended the project should only proceed if Georgia Power, rather than its customers, bear the risk for costs that the PSC deems to be unreasonable.

The state of New York's Zero-Emissions Credit programme, which will compensate nuclear plants for continued operation, is a logical extension of similar renewable energy credit programmes, the US Nuclear Energy Institute  has told a federal appeals court. Meanwhile, Michael Shellenberger - head of the Environmental Progress environmental research and policy organisation, which campaigned to support the New York initiative - has announced his intention to run for governor of California.

The Jordan Atomic Energy Commission has signed a memorandum of understanding with X-energy to assess the US company's small modular reactor (SMR). They will look at the potential deployment of X-energy's Xe-100 high temperature gas-cooled pebble bed modular reactor in Jordan.

Honeywell is temporarily to suspend uranium hexafluoride production at its Metropolis, Illinois plant pending an improvement in business conditions, the company announced yesterday. The USA's only uranium conversion plant has been in a scheduled outage since October.

US uranium production for 2017 to date is down 17% from the same period in 2016, according to the US Energy Information Administration's latest quarterly Domestic Uranium Production Report. Meanwhile, the US Geological Survey has found uranium-bearing calcrete formations in the USA for the first time.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will this month start testing uranium-fuelled Stirling engines for use in possible future missions to Mars. The technology has been developed as part of the Kilopower project.

South Carolina Electric & Gas Company has unveiled a proposal that would see some of the capacity that should have been provided by the VC Summer nuclear power plant project replaced with gas and solar generation. The company's shareholders would absorb the net construction costs of the abandoned nuclear project.