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.

A test reactor at the US Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory was restarted yesterday after more than 20 years on standby. The Transient Reactor Test Facility, used to test nuclear fuels and materials under extreme conditions, had not operated since being shut down in 1994.

Dominion Energy Virginia yesterday notified the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it intends to relicense the North Anna nuclear power plant for a second time, as part of its strategy to maintain lower carbon emissions in Virginia. The additional 20-year term would give North Anna's two reactors an operating period of up to 80 years.

The recent mitigation of some of the risks connected with the construction of Vogtle 3 and 4 have further strengthened the case for proceeding with the project, its owners told the Georgia Public Service Commission this week. The PSC will make a decision on the project's future as part of the 17th Vogtle Construction Monitoring Report, for which it is currently holding public hearings.