Enrichment company Urenco USA has announced a new programme covering the production of high-assay low enriched uranium (HALEU), and is considering the construction of a dedicated HALEU unit at its US uranium enrichment facility.

Work to stabilise a 1688-foot (515-metre) long tunnel containing contaminated equipment from historic plutonium production activities at the US Department of Energy's Hanford site in Washington State is over 75% complete.

Exelon has thanked its employees for "braving the cold" to keep its nuclear power plants in Illinois, New Jersey and New York operating at full power as extreme weather conditions hit the USA last week.

The US Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy has confirmed it awarded a total of USD111.2 million in funding to three industry partners to develop accident tolerant fuels. The awards were made to General Electric, Framatome and Westinghouse in late 2018.

Solving the USA's energy and climate challenges is more complex than replacing carbon-emitting sources with intermittent renewables, Nuclear Energy Institute president Maria Korsnick told the US Energy Association's 15th State of the Energy Industry Forum earlier this week.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the publication of its final rule on lessons learned from the 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan.

The return to service of all seven uranium conversion production lines enabled the US Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management to convert over 5000 tonnes of depleted uranium hexafluoride - more than half its yearly target - to a more stable form within the first three months of fiscal 2019.

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.

Framatome has received a USD49 million, 28-month grant from the US Department of Energy to accelerate the development and commercialisation of enhanced accident tolerant fuel.