The US Department of Energy has completed an environmental assessment clearing the way for the fabrication of high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel for advanced nuclear reactors at the Idaho National Laboratory. Meanwhile, the US Department of Defense has issued a Request for Information for a small mobile reactor using HALEU fuel to provide electrical power in rapid response scenarios.

Westinghouse Electric Company has received USD93.6 million of funding from the US Department of Energy for its EnCore accident-tolerant fuel programme.

Berkeley, California-based private company Deep Isolation has successfully placed and then retrieved a prototype nuclear waste canister hundreds of metres underground via a borehole, in a test the company described as the first of its kind.

Bipartisan legislation modernising US nuclear regulation and supporting the establishment of a licensing framework for next-generation advanced reactors has been signed by US President Donald Trump. The Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernisation Act became law on 14 January.

NuScale Power and Ultra Electronics Energy have unveiled a new safety display and indication system for NuScale's small modular reactor which they say is the first application of field programmable gate array technology for real-time display and monitoring in the US commercial nuclear industry.

The US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has announced six new collaborations with industry on projects to advance commercial nuclear energy technologies. Meanwhile, the DOE has announced separate funding solicitations for research into fusion energy and transformative energy technologies.

Bruce Power and Framatome have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on innovative modernisations for the Bruce A and Bruce B power plants as part of the Canadian facility's Life Extension Programme.

Centrus Energy Corp and X-energy are to proceed with the preliminary design of a facility to fabricate advanced nuclear fuels based on X-energy's uranium oxycarbide tristructural isotropic fuel forms.
 

Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has called for an enhancement of public awareness of the benefits brought about by nuclear science, technology and their applications.

Sarens has unveiled the world's largest crane which will be used for all major lifting at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, England. Meanwhile, PaR Systems will make a crane for NuScale's small modular reactor in Idaho, USA.

Similar incentives to those used over the last decade to help deploy renewable technologies in the USA could lead to a strong return on investment if used for the deployment of small modular reactors, a new report prepared for the US Department of Energy has found.

Idaho National Laboratory has selected GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy's PRISM technology to support the US Department of Energy's Versatile Test Reactor programme. The project is looking at what would be needed to establish a reactor-based fast-spectrum neutron irradiation capability for the USA by 2026.