The U.S. Department of Commerce announced Wednesday that South Korea would invest $120 billion in U.S. nuclear power projects, most notably the construction of eight large nuclear reactors at federal sites, as part of a $200 billion investment comprising three separate projects.

In the latest update to the ever-deepening connection between Big Tech and the nuclear industry, Constellation announced yesterday that it has entered into a long-term power purchase agreement (PPA) with Amazon.

This PPA will see Amazon supporting a 190-MWe uprate at the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Lusby, Md.

On the evening of September 30, as first reported by the Parkersburg News and Sentinel, West Virginia elected to terminate its MOU with the Department of Energy. A letter that the state's Office of Energy sent to the DOE expressed the state's commitment to supporting nuclear energy development in the United States. Lars Dalseide, spokesperson for Gov. Morrisey, also issued a statement, saying, "We want the power generation, manufacturing, investment, and jobs that come with it, but we are not prepared to proceed with the Host Agreement for the [NLIC] at this time."

The details of West Virginia’s request to be considered for the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses (NLIC) program were made public recently, in a September 25 article in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

In a surprise move, the DOE added West Virginia to the list of possible NLIC host states with a memorandum of understanding signed on September 2, over a month after it unveiled the five states initially selected as candidates for the initiative. However, when that MOU was announced September 8, neither the DOE nor West Virginia officials made public the text of the state’s response to the DOE’s request for information—essentially, the state’s application for the program.

Different shapes of the crystals in the precipitates. (Image: OSU)

Researchers at Oregon State University have published a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on a new method of separating zirconium and hafnium, both of which are important for nuclear energy, and which are generally quite challenging to separate due to the elements’ similarities.

According to the paper, more than 90 percent of Zr and Hf derived from zirconium silicate (zircon) is utilized by the nuclear industry, with high-purity Zr being widely used for nuclear fuel rod cladding. High-purity Hf is also used in the nuclear applications, typically for specialized control rods, such as those in nuclear submarines.

Fall may have officially kicked off only last week, but the American Nuclear Society’s 2026 Winter Conference & Expo is already just around the corner. This year’s Winter Conference will be held November 15–18 at the Arizona Grand Resort & Spa in Phoenix.

Registration is currently open, with early-bird pricing ending October 22. More details are available on the ANS website.

In Latin America, only Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico currently have operating nuclear power plants. Less than 2 percent of the region’s electricity is generated by nuclear energy, in contrast to the roughly 8 percent of electricity generation from nuclear energy globally. These statistics, however, are expected to change, with nuclear deployments set to increase substantially in Latin America in the coming decades.

The University of South Carolina and Westinghouse Electric Company have signed an agreement to jointly create a workforce development program to support the deployment of Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized water reactors. The partnership was announced at the Third Annual South Carolina Nuclear Summit, which was hosted by the Palmetto Nuclear Coalition in Columbia on September 28 and 29.

Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D., Calif.) and Rep. Jay Obernolte (R., Calif.) have led the introduction of a House bill, the American Leadership in Fusion Act. If enacted, it would provide $10 billion in direct investments for fusion facilities, research, and commercialization efforts and would authorize the establishment of an Office of Fusion within the Department of Energy and a National Science Foundation–led fusion workforce development program.

The bill aims to implement the recommendations given in a bipartisan commission report released in October by the Special Competitive Studies Project’s (SCSP) Commission on the Scaling of Fusion Energy.

Today, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the Tennessee Valley Authority’s construction permit application for its planned GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 at the Clinch River site in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has announced that it will begin review of Homestake Mining Company’s application to pursue alternative concentration limits (ACLs) and revised treatment options of groundwater contaminants at its Grants Reclamation Project site near Milan, N.M.

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing techniques to improve the purification of highly valued radioisotopes that are byproducts of californium-252 production. ORNL radiochemist Cristian A. Celis-Barros is leading the effort, with the goal of enhancing yields of very small amounts of berkelium-249, einsteinium-253 and -254, and fermium-257. These isotopes are valued for their applications in research, especially the search for new heavy elements.

The breakneck speed at which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been moving for the past year-plus showed no sign of slowing down last week, with a slew of new updates being announced. The environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact for the Crane nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania was officially issued, Indiana became an NRC Agreement State, and a new Executive Order 14300–related rulemaking was proposed.

In power generation facilities, scale is more than a maintenance issue. It is an efficiency issue, a reliability issue, and ultimately a profitability issue.

Mineral deposits such as calcium carbonate create an insulating barrier on heat transfer surfaces. As scale accumulates inside condensers, feedwater heaters, boilers, cooling systems, and auxiliary heat exchangers, thermal efficiency declines. The result can be higher operating costs, increased condenser backpressure, greater energy requirements, reduced generating capacity, and longer maintenance outages.

Removing these deposits is critical, but traditional chemical descaling has often required facilities to balance cleaning performance against worker safety, environmental impact, and operational complexity.

Goodway® ScaleBreak®-000 changes that equation.

On September 22, Deep Isolation shared the results of a three-year project examining deep borehole disposal of waste produced by recycling spent fuel. The results could have bearing on plans proposed for managing the nation’s nuclear waste, including the DOE’s Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses (NLIC) program.

Researchers at Oregon State University have developed an aqueous reprocessing technique that could provide a new way to recycle used nuclear fuel or simplify existing reprocessing methods.

As published in Communications Chemistry, the technique uses differences in solubility between actinide fluoride clusters and used nuclear fuel contaminants in a concentrated ammonium fluoride solution to remove a majority of fission products from samples simulating used nuclear fuel.

The ranking members of the congressional subcommittees on energy and water development are seeking more information from NRC Chairman Ho Nieh on the agency’s approach to fulfilling Executive Order 14300, “Ordering the Reform of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” and whether transparency, public input, safety, oversight, and other items have been impacted by the overhaul.

In a letter sent to Nieh on September 18, Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, and Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Ohio), ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, listed 17 items they wanted more information on. The two gave Nieh 15 days to respond to the letter.

Jamie Coble

This is a really interesting question that we’re already grappling with both in research and industry. A lot of the discussion around the practicality of implementing AI in nuclear includes concepts of trustworthiness, transparency, and explainability. Conceptually, these are all intertwined: An AI that generates explainable results through a transparent process is inherently easier to trust through careful verification, validation, and guardrails. Developing this trust goes beyond simple measures of the accuracy, precision, or recall of the final result. Even when results are incorrect, as human experts we must be able to inspect the “thought process,” judge the evidence that was relied on, and draw conclusions about the validity of the AI tool overall. This allows us to develop trust in the process without requiring everyone to be an expert in AI algorithms and structures.

The American Nuclear Society recently hosted a webinar with Earnestine Johnson, principal mechanical engineer at Nano Nuclear and author of The Nuclear Empowered Workforce, to discuss both her book and opportunities for those entering the nuclear workforce today.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Legacy Management (DOE-LM) is using cutting-edge technology to give its scientists a virtual look underground at its Monument Valley processing site in Arizona, where a uranium mill once operated.

By tracking the size and movements of a nitrate plume below the site, DOE-LM is assessing the effectiveness of a plant-based treatment plan.

Plants are also key to environmental remediation at a former uranium mill site in Rifle, Colo. There, DOE-LM is planting and seeding vegetation with the aim of reducing the amount of groundwater that reaches a buried disposal cell.

Recent news from the international nuclear community includes progress across Europe. In Italy, the Senate passed a bill allowing the government to build a framework to bring back nuclear power. Plans for Poland’s first nuclear power plant are moving forward, with a partnership between Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe and a Bechtel-Westinghouse consortium now in place. Partners have crafted a memorandum of understanding for the potential deployment of GE Vernova Hitachi’s BWRX-300 in Europe and the United Kingdom. And earlier this month, the Roadmaps to New Nuclear conference was held in Paris, France, where OECD Nuclear Energy Agency Director General William Magwood IV gave the opening address.