The US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management is marking thirty years of cleanup work at the Idaho National Laboratory site to ensure the protection and safety of the underlying Snake River Plain aquifer in compliance with state and federal regulations.

NuScale Power's small modular reactor power plants are to be named VOYGR, the company has announced. The company is working towards commercialising the technology and aims to be ready to deliver the first VOYGR plant to public power consortium Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems' Carbon Free Power Project by the end of the decade.

The US Department of Energy has issued a request for information to help it create a consent-based approach to siting an interim storage site for US used nuclear fuel. The move represents a re-start of the federal programme after plans for a repository at Yucca Mountain were dropped in 2009.

The premature shutdown of Diablo Canyon units 1 and 2 will "inflict grave harm to California's economy and environment," according to the American Nuclear Society. The closure of California's last remaining nuclear power plant will cause more grid instability and rolling blackouts for the state because Diablo Canyon reliably supplies about 10% of in-state power, it says. Former US energy secretaries Steven Chu and Ernest Moniz have also called for the decision to shut down the plant to be reassessed.

Support for nuclear energy is on the rise in the USA, according to the latest study of US attitudes to energy carried out by environmental non-profit ecoAmerica. The American Climate Perspectives Survey found notable shifts in understanding and support for several energy sources, the group said, with strong support for clean energy coupled with the need for education on the energy-climate connection.

The US Department of Energy has awarded funding to the Nuclear Alternative Project to study the potential siting of small reactors in Puerto Rico. Funding also goes to address hurdles to the use of small reactors in commercial shipping and to support the development of advanced reactor designs. 

Holtec International has finalised an agreement with Hyundai Engineering & Construction of South Korea for the turnkey supply of Holtec's SMR-160 small modular reactor plant worldwide. Holtec is considering deploying the first SMR-160 at Oyster Creek in New Jersey, where it is currently in the process of decommissioning a former boiling water reactor.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a draft safety evaluation report indicating its initial acceptance of Kairos Power's source term methodology for its Kairos Power fluoride salt-cooled high temperature reactor. The topical report, which Kairos submitted to the regulator in June 2020, is the first of its kind to be reviewed by the NRC.

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration is seeking proposals from nuclear and space industry leaders to develop innovative technologies for a fission surface power system for lunar power applications. It hopes to deploy such a system by 2030.

GSE Solutions has been contracted by Talen Energy to support the development of the infrastructure needed to bring power from Talen's two-unit Susquehanna nuclear power station to the flagship Susquehanna Hyperscale Data Center Campus which is being developed by Talen subsidiary Cumulus Data. The Pennsylvania campus will be home to a carbon-free cryptocurrency mining facility as well as a data centre.

Southern Company and the US Department of Energy have signed an agreement to design, construct and operate the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment - a proof-of-concept critical fast-spectrum salt reactor. Southern will lead a collaborative effort to build the MCRE - which it says will be the world's first fast-spectrum salt reactor to achieve criticality - at Idaho National Laboratory.

Oklo Inc and Centrus Energy Corp have signed a non-binding Letter of Intent to cooperate in the deployment of a production facility for high-assay low-enriched uranium to support the commercialisation of advanced fission plants, such as Oklo's Aurora. The companies say they are "committed" to working towards establishing domestic US HALEU production capabilities.