NuScale Power’s Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Achieves Standard Design Approval from U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for 77 MWe

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250529334547/en/NuScale-Powers-Small-Modular-Reactor-SMR-Achieves-Standard-Design-Approval-from-U.S.-Nuclear-Regulatory-Commission-for-77-MWe

May 29, 2025 4:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time

NuScale Power’s Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Achieves Standard Design Approval from U.S. Nuclear

Uprated SMR design will support a wider range of off-takers and consumers seeking clean energy through small modular reactor technology

NuScale remains the only SMR technology company to have received approval from the NRC for its SMR technology design; today’s announcement marks NuScale’s second design approved by the United States’ nuclear regulator

CORVALLIS, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NuScale Power Corporation (NYSE: SMR), the industry-leading provider of proprietary and innovative advanced small modular reactor nuclear technology, today announced that it has received design approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for its uprated 250 MWt (77 MWe) NuScale Power Modules™.

The U.S. NRC’s uprate approval of the NuScale SMR technology now strengthens ENTRA1 Energy to produce and deliver energy as the most near-term American SMR power solution via ENTRA1 Energy Plants™ with NuScale SMR technology inside. ENTRA1 Energy is NuScale’s partner and independent power plant development platform, which holds the global exclusive rights to the commercialization, distribution, and deployment of NuScale’s SMRs.

The uprate approval by the U.S. regulatory authority increases the power output per module from NuScale’s previously-approved 50 MWe design, enabling ENTRA1 Energy Plants to provide a wider range of off-takers and consumers with reliable, carbon-free energy. NuScale remains the only SMR technology company with design approval from the NRC, and the company remains on track for deployment by 2030.

“We are thrilled that the NRC has approved our second SDA application, this time for our 77 MWe design. This marks a historic moment not only for NuScale, but the entire industry, as NuScale and ENTRA1 move closer to meeting the demands of clean energy users,” said John Hopkins, NuScale President and Chief Executive Officer. “For more than a decade, our team has proudly worked alongside the NRC to achieve the successful approval of our designs. The NRC is domestically and internationally recognized and respected for its rigorous safety standards, and this approval is a crucial step toward meeting our goal of providing clean, reliable, and, most importantly, safe energy to off-takers and consumers.”

NuScale’s first Design Certification Application (DCA) for its 160 MWt (50 MWe) SMR design was accepted by the NRC in March 2017. Subsequently, the NRC affirmed its approval of NuScale’s 50 MWe SMR design, marking the first design to receive its approval.

NuScale’s uprated design features the same fundamental safety case and passive safety features previously approved by the NRC with a power uprate and select design changes to support growing capacity needs. Originally slated for approval later this summer, today’s announcement marks the early completion of the NRC review process.

“NuScale is proud to have worked with the NRC and to have met its stringent regulatory application process as we continue to lead the way in the SMR industry with our second design approval,” said Carrie Fosaaen, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and Services. “With today’s announcement, NuScale continues to advance with ENTRA1 Energy in the commercialization of our SMR technology inside ENTRA1 Energy Plants while remaining steadfast in our mission to improve the quality of life for people around the world through safe, clean energy.”

About NuScale Power

Founded in 2007, NuScale Power Corporation (NYSE: SMR) is the industry-leading provider of proprietary and innovative advanced small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear technology, with a mission to help power the global energy transition by delivering safe, scalable, and reliable carbon-free energy. The Company’s groundbreaking SMR technology is powered by the NuScale Power Module™, a small, safe, pressurized water reactor that can each generate 77 megawatts of electricity (MWe) or 250 megawatts thermal (gross), and can be scaled to meet customer needs through an array of flexible configurations up to 924 MWe (12 modules) of output.

As the first and only SMR to have its designs certified by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NuScale is well-positioned to serve diverse customers across the world by supplying nuclear energy for electrical generation, data centers, district heating, desalination, commercial-scale hydrogen production, and other process heat applications.

To learn more, visit NuScale Power’s website or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube.

About ENTRA1 Energy

ENTRA1 Energy is an American independent global energy production platform dedicated to increasing energy security by providing safe, reliable, cost-effective, and environmentally responsible electric power. ENTRA1 Energy is NuScale’s exclusive global strategic partner and holds the global exclusive rights to the commercialization, distribution, and deployment of all NuScale’s products and services. ENTRA1 is the one-stop-shop and single hub for the financing, investment, development, execution, and/or management of ENTRA1 Energy Plants™ with NuScale SMRs-inside.

To learn more, visit ENTRA1 ENERGY’s website or follow us on LinkedIn and X.

Forward Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements (including without limitation statements containing terms such as "will," "believes," "expects," “anticipates,” "plans" or other similar expressions). These forward-looking statements include statements relating to our SMR design’s ability to support a wider range of off-takers, consumers and customers with energy, progress with respect to meeting the demands of clean energy users, our leadership in the SMR industry, our ability to deploy and the timeline for deployment, advancement of the commercialization of SMR technology, strategic and operational plans and expectations, the growth in demand for clean energy, capital deployment, future growth, new awards, backlog, earnings and the outlook for the Company’s business.

Actual results may differ materially as a result of a number of factors, including, among other things, the Company’s liquidity and ability to raise capital; the Company's failure to receive new contract awards; cost overruns, project delays or other problems arising from project execution activities, including the failure to meet cost and schedule estimates; our expectations regarding obtaining regulatory approvals, and the timing thereof, to deploy our SMRs in the United States and abroad; forecasts regarding end-user adoption rates and demand for our products in the markets that are new and rapidly evolving; limitations on the effectiveness of our controls and procedures and our remediation plans related thereto; intense competition in the industries in which we operate; failure of our partners to perform their obligations; cyber-security breaches; foreign economic and political uncertainties; client cancellations of, or scope adjustments to, existing contracts; failure to maintain safe worksites and international security risks; risks or uncertainties associated with events outside of our control, including weather conditions, pandemics (including COVID-19), public health crises, political crises or other catastrophic events; macroeconomic conditions; the use of estimates and assumptions in preparing our financial statements; client delays or defaults in making payments; the failure of our suppliers, subcontractors and other third parties to adequately perform services under our contracts; uncertainties, restrictions and regulations impacting our government contracts; the inability to hire and retain qualified personnel; the potential impact of certain tax matters; possible information technology interruptions; the Company's ability to secure appropriate insurance; liabilities associated with the performance of nuclear services; foreign currency risks; the loss of one or a few clients that account for a significant portion of the Company's revenues; damage to our reputation; failure to adequately protect intellectual property rights; asset impairments; climate change and related environmental issues; increasing scrutiny with respect to sustainability practices; the availability of credit and restrictions imposed by credit facilities for our clients, suppliers, subcontractors or other partners; failure to obtain favorable results in existing or future litigation and regulatory proceedings, dispute resolution proceedings or claims, including claims for additional costs; failure by us or our employees, agents or partners to comply with laws; new or changing legal requirements, including those relating to environmental, health and safety matters; failure to successfully implement our strategic and operational initiatives and restrictions on possible transactions imposed by our charter documents and Delaware law. Caution must be exercised in relying on these and other forward-looking statements. Due to known and unknown risks, the Company’s results may differ materially from its expectations and projections.

Additional information concerning these and other factors can be found in the Company's public periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), including the general economic conditions and other risks, uncertainties and factors set forth in the section entitled “Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements” and “Summary of Risk Factors” in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024 and in subsequent filings with the SEC. The referenced SEC filings are available either publicly or upon request from NuScale's Investor Relations Department at ir@nuscalepower.com. The Company disclaims any intent or obligation other than as required by law to update the forward-looking statements.

Contacts

Media contact

Chuck Goodnight, Vice President, Business Development
media@nuscalepower.com

Investor contact

Rodney McMahan, Senior Director, Investor Relations
ir@nuscalepower.com

Trump’s executive orders could endanger America’s nuclear renaissance

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/5320458-trump-orders-nuclear-power/

Distribution of Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Plants, Supplement 10, Second Renewal, Regarding Subsequent License Renewal for Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station Units 2 and 3, Supplement 1, Draft Report for Comment

Greetings: The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff is issuing for public comment, “Generic Environmental Impact Statement for License Renewal of Nuclear Plants, Supplement 10, Second Renewal, Regarding Subsequent License Renewal for Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station Units 2 and 3, Supplement 1, Draft Report for Comment (NUREG-1437).” The draft supplement updates NUREG-1437, Supplement 10, Second Renewal, Final Report issued in January 2020. The supplement includes the NRC staff’s evaluation of the environmental impacts of Peach Bottom subsequent license renewal including new information obtained since issuance of the 2020 report. The draft supplement is available in the NRC’s Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) as ML25111A147. ADAMS is accessible from the NRC’s website at https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. To begin the search, select “Begin Web-based ADAMS Search.” For problems with ADAMS, please contact the NRC’s Public Document Room (PDR) reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, at 301-415-4737, or by email to PDR.Resource@nrc.gov. The draft supplement has been submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency via e-NEPA. The supplement is being distributed to interested Federal, State, Tribal, and local agencies, industry organizations, interest groups, and members of the public via this notice and other appropriate methods.  A notice of availability of the draft supplement including request for comment and opportunity to request a hearing and to petition for leave to intervene will be published in the Federal Register on or about May 30, 2025. When the comment period opens, comments on this draft supplement may be submitted by: going to https://www.regulations.gov and searching for Docket ID NRC-2024-0214; Emailing PeachBottom-SLRSEISS1@nrc.gov; or Mailing Office of Administration, Mail Stop: TWFN-7-A60M, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, ATTN: Program Management, Announcements and Editing Staff. Comments should be submitted by July 14, 2025, to ensure their consideration. For further information, contact Kevin Folk, Senior Environmental Project Manager, Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555–0001; telephone: 301–415–6944; email: kevin.folk@nrc.

[decomm_wkg] Trump’s “wins” on nuclear power are losses for taxpayers and public safety

https://thebulletin.org/2025/05/trumps-wins-on-nuclear-power-are-losses-for-taxpayers-and-public-safety/

Trump’s “wins” on nuclear power are losses for taxpayers and public safety

By Edwin Lyman | May 19, 2025

The Three Mile Island Unit 1 (right) in Pennsylvania is one of the first two shutdown US reactors, with Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in Michigan, to be on path of being restarted to generate electricity again. The dormant cooling towers (left) are from Unit 2, which was permanently damaged in the 1979 accident. (Credit: Constellation Energy, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)

The US nuclear power industry is justifiably apprehensive about its future under the second Trump administration. President Donald Trump’s predilection for taking a sledgehammer to both the federal budget and the administrative state would appear to be the exact opposite of what the industry crucially needs to move forward: a predictable, long-term expansion of the billions of dollars in public funding and tax benefits it received under Joe Biden, arguably the most pro-nuclear power president in decades.

With little attention to safety and security concerns, President Biden and Congress made available an array of grants, loans, and tax credits to both operating and proposed nuclear plants, hoping to make them more appealing to risk-averse private investors. Now, at least some of these programs, which stimulated the emergence of a vast bubble of nuclear startups funded by token amounts of venture capital, may be on the chopping block. But this would not be bad news for the industry in the long run. The Biden administration’s “all of the above” support for nuclear power was on shaky ground even before Trump took office, and it needed a critical evaluation and reset.

However, if made final, the draft White House executive orders meant to bolster nuclear power growth that were leaked earlier this month would be a huge lurch in the wrong direction. By focusing on the wrong issues—namely, by scapegoating the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)’s oversight over the industry’s own inability to raise sufficient capital and competently manage large, complex projects—the orders would undermine the regulatory stability that investors demand, not to mention create the potential for significant safety and reliability problems down the road.

Trump’s mixed messages. Many in the industry expected President Trump to be an even bigger booster of nuclear power than his predecessor. They must now be confused by the mixed signals coming out of the new administration.

On the first day of his second term, Trump ordered an immediate pause and review of all appropriations provided through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The decision initially swept up grants and loans for nuclear power along with other low-carbon energy projects, including a $1.52 billion loan guarantee that the Biden administration had awarded to Holtec International to restart the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, as well as billions in grants for the two so-called “advanced demonstration power reactor projects” proposed for construction: the TerraPower Natrium sodium-cooled fast reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming and the X-Energy Xe-100 high temperature gas-cooled reactor complex in Seadrift, Texas.

Despite giving lip service to the need to “unleash” nuclear power, the actions of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former fossil fuel industry executive, have not matched the rhetoric. As part of the Trump administration’s self-congratulatory celebration of its first 100 days, the Energy Department posted a list of “11 big wins for nuclear.” However, these were typically continuations of programs from previous administrations rather than radically new initiatives.

The first claimed “big win” was restarting the Palisades nuclear plant. It referred to a March announcement that the Energy Department’s Loan Projects Office was going to release additional installments of the Palisades loan guarantee. But this had already been approved under the Biden administration. Even so, the future of the nuclear-friendly office, which in the past had awarded $12 billion in loan guarantees to prop up the two new (and wildly over-budget) reactors at the Vogtle plant in Georgia, remains in doubt under the new administration’s effort to shrink federal agencies. After reports of major staff cuts at the Loan Projects Office—or maybe rather “at the loan office”—surfaced in April, panicked nuclear advocates wrote to Secretary Wright in protest, and there are indications that the department may be moving to shrink the office even though some level of support for nuclear projects could remain.

The second so-called “win” on the Energy Department’s list—“unleashing American-made SMRs” (small modular reactors)—was simply a reissuance of a 2024 solicitation making available $900 million in repurposed funding provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The funding redirection seeks to support the development of light-water SMRs, minus the Biden administration’s requirements for advancing societal goals, such as community engagement, that could help facilitate siting unpopular facilities. But this amount of funding is inconsequential considering the billions of dollars that likely would be needed to build even a single SMR facility. The first light-water SMR to receive a design certification from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), NuScale, was estimated to cost $9.3 billion for a plant with six modules of 77 megawatts of electric power each.

The third nuclear so-called “win” was the submission in March by X-Energy and Dow of a construction permit application to the NRC to build the Long Mott plant (four Xe-100 reactors) in Seadrift, Texas. This can only be considered a win for the Trump administration if one forgets that the application was filed at least a year later than originally anticipated.

The fourth so-called “win”—high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for advanced reactor developers—would be better characterized as an admission of failure. HALEU is the fuel that most non-light-water reactors under development with Energy Department funding would use, which means it must be available if these reactors are ever going to operate. But because the United States has failed to date to enable industrial-scale enrichment of HALEU to support the new reactor projects, the Energy Department must instead draw from stockpiles of “unobligated” enriched uranium that is not constrained by peaceful-use agreements. These stockpiles were originally preserved for other uses, such as fueling operating reactors that produce tritium for the nuclear weapon stockpile. The decision to tap into this reserve is essentially a loan to the commercial sector, but it will likely have to be repaid in the future.

The remaining seven “big wins” are primarily incremental technical milestones in ongoing research programs: interesting, perhaps, but hardly major achievements.

What is missing from the Trump administration’s “nuclear wins” list, unfortunately, is any mention of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) study that was announced in the final days of the Biden administration by former National Nuclear Security Administrator Jill Hruby to assess the proliferation risks of HALEU. Hruby ordered the study in response to an article in Science magazine last year in which my colleagues and I raised concerns about the potential usability of HALEU for nuclear weapons. The study was suspended by the Trump administration, and its future remains uncertain.

The cost of “winning.” With the Trump administration determined to cut trillions of dollars from the federal budget, the mere survival of any program might be considered a “win” by the program’s supporters. But simply staying the course is not going to be nearly enough to see the nuclear projects already underway to completion, much less pay for all the new reactors that nuclear advocates hope will spring up to meet the huge increases in demand, such as from the deployment of data centers.

Since 2020, the costs of the Xe-100 Seadrift and Natrium projects have ballooned due to inflation and supply chain problems. In 2023, X-Energy revised the cost of its four-reactor Long Mott plant upward to $4.75 to $5.25 billion, and in 2024, Bill Gates, the founder of TerraPower, estimated the cost of the Natrium project as “close to ten billion” dollars. Yet, these estimates were made before factoring in the potential impacts of the Trump tariffs on commodity prices and the supply chain. In total, the cost of these two projects has more than doubled, even as the original authorized amount of $3.2 billion of government support has not changed.

If the pipeline for providing previously appropriated funding continues and Congress does not provide billions of additional dollars for these projects, the remaining cost burden will fall on the companies themselves. It is not at all clear if TerraPower is going to be willing to pony up.

Similarly, the tax credits provided by the Inflation Reduction Act for new nuclear plants (if they survive) are not likely to be enough to make them commercially viable. Even factoring in the tax credits, NuScale’s “Carbon Free Power Project” was still too expensive, and the project was cancelled in 2023.

To really “unleash” nuclear power, far greater subsidies would be required.

But this is not looking too likely in the current frenetic cost-cutting environment. In its proposed budget for the next fiscal year, the White House plans to cut funding for the Office of Nuclear Energy by $408 million (over a quarter of its current annual budget), which it says corresponds to “non-essential research on nuclear energy.” The future of other incentives, such as the tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, also remains uncertain, causing consternation within the nuclear industry.

Looking at the “nuclear loss” side of the ledger is the Trump administration’s assault on independent federal agencies, including the NRC. Only last year, there was bipartisan concern as to whether the NRC would have enough experienced personnel to efficiently handle a projected onslaught of new applications. Now, the succession of attacks on the NRC’s workforce—from DOGE’s fork-in-the-road e-mail offering voluntary departure to federal workers, to the end of remote work, to the termination of its collective bargaining agreement—will have predictably devastating effects on employee morale, retention, and recruitment. Moreover, Trump’s burdensome and confusing executive orders—including requirements that agency actions be reviewed in secret by White House political appointees, and all energy permitting regulations be periodically reissued or scrapped—are recipes for delays and chaos.

Being serious about supporting safe and economical nuclear energy. What would a genuine “win” look like for the US nuclear energy industry and the public, then?

A good start would be a comprehensive and objective reassessment of the technical viability and realistic costs versus benefits of the Energy Department’s ambitious nuclear power and fuel cycle programs. The focus of these programs must be on their safety, security, proliferation, and waste management implications. While the leaked draft executive orders display a predictable hostility to science-based analysis and environmental protection, President Trump—as a self-proclaimed savvy businessman—may appreciate when taxpayers are getting a bad deal. After all, during his first administration, he terminated the $100 billion “mixed-oxide” (or MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility project in South Carolina. Trump terminated the MOX fuel program despite the entreaties of some of his most loyal supporters, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina. Trump would be right to question, for example, whether a company founded by Bill Gates—one of the richest people in America—needs to continue receiving countless billions of dollars of federal subsidies.

A nuclear power program based less on hype and more on fiscal realities and genuine safety improvements could ultimately be a win not just for the corporate recipients of government largesse, but for the public at large.

NRC Accepts for Review Construction Permit Application for Long Mott Generating Station

Nuclear Regulatory Commission - News Release
No: 25-031 May 13, 2025
CONTACT: Scott Burnell, 301-415-8200

NRC Accepts for Review Construction Permit Application for Long Mott Generating Station

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted for review a construction permit application from Long Mott Energy LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dow Chemical Company. The application requests permission to build Long Mott Generating Station, a multi- unit advanced reactor facility at Dow Chemical’s Seadrift site in Calhoun County, Texas. The companies submitted the application on March 31.

The Dow Chemical reactor project’s application includes a preliminary safety analysis report and environmental report for the four-unit facility using X-energy’s Xe-100 reactor design. Each Xe-100 reactor in the facility would generate approximately 80 megawatts of electricity, as well as heat to enhance the Dow Chemical plant’s efficiency. Each reactor would use helium to cool its core. The construction permit, if approved, would not authorize the operation of the units. The Dow project will have to submit a separate application for operating licenses in the future.

The agency’s acceptance, or “docketing” the application, starts the detailed safety and environmental review. More information about new reactor licensing is available on the NRC website.

25-031.pdf

Nuclear Regulatory Commission - News Release
No: III-25-014 May 19, 2025
Contact: Viktoria Mitlyng, 630-829-9662 Prema Chandrathil, 630-829-9663

NRC Begins Special Inspection at Curium

 
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has launched a special inspection to review the circumstances surrounding the loss of control of licensed material impacting two workers at the Curium US LLC radiopharmaceutical facility in Noblesville, Indiana.
 
The NRC inspection follows an April 8 incident involving two employees who entered an area inside the production facility to perform routine radiological work and found an unaccounted for source of radiation. The company secured the area and was able to recover and regain control of the material.
 
The facility is safe and all material was contained within the facility with no release to the environment. However, the event led to both workers receiving a higher-than-expected radiation dose, potentially causing one of them to exceed an annual occupational limit.
 
The NRC determined a special inspection was needed to develop a clear understanding of the circumstances, assess the company’s response and evaluate their abilities to track and control radioactive material while ensuring worker safety. Inspectors from the agency will conduct observations, interviews and document reviews onsite at the facility and in the office.
 
“We expect license holders to ensure workers are protected and maintain appropriate control of licensed material,” said Region III Administrator Jack Giessner. “Our inspectors will look closely at the company’s radiation safety program to assess their compliance with NRC requirements.”
 
The team will document their findings and conclusions in an inspection report, which will be publicly available on the NRC website.

25-014-iii.pdf

US nuclear sector goes on spending spree to fight subsidy cuts

https://www.ft.com/content/c243fd15-bef8-4c98-b06b-8b13ddd0a701

US nuclear sector goes on spending spree to fight subsidy cuts 

Sam Altman-backed Oklo increased lobbying budget by 500 per cent year-on-year 

 The US nuclear industry is intensifying its lobbying blitz to save the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits it says are vital for meeting artificial intelligence-fuelled energy demand. 

On Monday lawmakers from the House ways and means committee, which is responsible for writing tax law, released draft legislation that would phase out nuclear energy subsidies starting in 2029, in a move that caught the sector by surprise. 

 Lobbyists are now racing to persuade lawmakers to rescind or moderate cuts to nuclear industry subsidies, which until recently had more bipartisan support than other low-carbon energy technologies such as wind and solar. 

 “You’re going to see an aggressive push,” said Frank Maisano, a partner in the policy and resolution group of Bracewell, a law and lobbying firm. 

 In the first quarter of 2025 nuclear companies and industry bodies have upped their spending on lobbying. Oklo, the nuclear technology company backed by OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman spent $424,000 an increase of more than 500 per cent year-on-year. 

 Oklo chief executive officer Jacob DeWitte said that the ways and means proposal “undermines the momentum” in the US nuclear sector. 

 “It’s hard to overstate the value of the tax credits on helping to de-risk early-stage capital and project developments . . . if the idea is to lead and dominate in this space, we need to use all the tools in the tool belt.” 

 NuScale Power and TerraPower, nuclear reactor developers, as well as the Nuclear Energy Institute, also increased their spending. Constellation Energy, which has partnered with Microsoft to restart the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, spent over $1.7mn in the first quarter on lobbying across its portfolio, a 16 per cent increase. 

 Industry advocates said they aim to appeal to moderates such as Lisa Murkowski, the senator from Alaska, and Henry McMaster, governor of South Carolina, who already host nuclear facilities in their states. They also hope to spur intervention from President Donald Trump, who has praised nuclear development. 

 Next week the administration is expected to release an executive order to speed up the construction of nuclear power plants by amending federal safety regulations.

 “What came out of ways and means is concerning and disappointing,” said Heather Reams, president of Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, a centre-right energy lobby group. “It isn’t hitting the marks on what the president’s nuclear goals are . . . when he [weighs in] that will have a lot of sway.” 

 Lobbyists are also expected to object to the timeframes suggested in the draft, which they say threaten the development of nascent technologies like small modular reactors (SMRs) that are critical for meeting the AI fuelled energy demand. 

 “We want to encourage the nuclear industry,” said Eric Levine, a Republican lobbyist. “If we’re not bringing energy to grid, all the AI technology in the world is useless if we can’t power it.” 

 However some nuclear companies see the cuts as an opportunity to bring private capital to the sector. 

 “Industries that rely on federal subsidies tend to get stuck in ruts and less favourable towards innovation,” said Isaiah Taylor, CEO of Valar Atomics. “I like the direction that the administration is taking on this, in allowing it to be private and faster.”

NRC to Hold a Regulatory Conference with Entergy Operations May 21 to Discuss a Proposed Violation

Nuclear Regulatory Commission - News Release

No: IV-25-002 May 13, 2025

Contact: Victor Dricks, 630-829-9662 Tressa Smith, 817-200-1172

NRC to Hold a Regulatory Conference with Entergy Operations May 21 to Discuss a Proposed Violation

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a regulatory conference on May 21 with officials from Entergy Operations to discuss the safety significance of a proposed violation. The proposed violation, identified in an inspection report, involves the company’s failure to properly maintain an emergency diesel generator, used to supply power to safety-related systems in the event of a loss of offsite power at the Waterford nuclear power plant in Killona, Louisiana.

The enforcement conference will be held at the NRC’s Region IV Office at 1600 East Lamar Blvd., Arlington, Texas, beginning at 9 a.m. Central time.

Company representatives will have the opportunity to provide their perspective or additional information, including any actions planned or completed to prevent recurrence of the issues, before the agency makes its final enforcement decision.

The meeting notice has information detailing how the public can participate in the meeting by phone or online. Members of the public will have an opportunity to ask questions of the NRC staff or provide comments about the issues discussed following the business portion of the meeting; however, the NRC staff is not soliciting comments pertaining to regulatory decisions.

No decisions on the final safety significance or any potential NRC actions regarding the proposed violations will be made at the meeting.

25-002-iv.pdf

New essay, "Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity: Managing the Risks"

This provocative independent essay was just posted for free download at ai-electricity.stanford.edu. That URL takes you to a header. Clicking on the URL in the header then takes you to the paper. Apologies for the extra step, which lets us count visitors (anonymously).

Please enjoy, spread, and react. Thank you! And thanks again to my many thoughtful referees, informants, and Stanford colleagues who kindly gave this essay a nice home. 

For more flavor, here’s the two-page press release that Hastings is disseminating 16 May:
051625 Lovins AI Essay news release ver9.docx

Cordially — Amory

Amory B. Lovins        盧安武      एमोरी लिवन्स
Adjunct Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering (2020–24), Lecturer (2025–  ), and Precourt Scholar, Precourt Institute for Energy, Stanford University

Cofounder and Chairman Emeritus, RMI (founded as Rocky Mountain Institute), amory@rmi.org
President, Aspen Fly Right, aspenflyright.org
Member, Lovins Associates LLC

[decomm_wkg] The US buried millions of gallons of wartime nuclear waste – Doge cuts could wreck the cleanup

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/15/us-government-nuclear-waste-doge

TMI-1 Acceptance of Request to Use Provisions of a Later Edition of the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, Section XI (EPID L-2025-LLR-0040)

Subject: Acceptance of Request to Use Provisions of a Later Edition of the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code, Section XI (EPID L-2025-LLR-0040)

ADAMS Accession No.: ML25128A052

ADAMS Hyperlink: https://adamswebsearch2.nrc.gov/webSearch2/main.jsp?AccessionNumber=ML25128A052

Using Web-based ADAMS, select “Advanced Search”

Under “Property,” select “Accession Number”

Under “Value,” enter the Accession Number

Click Search.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission - News Release

No: III-25-013 May 12, 2025

Contact: Viktoria Mitlyng, 630-829-9662 Prema Chandrathil, 630-829-9663

NRC Begins Special Inspection at Quad Cities Nuclear Power Plant

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has launched a special inspection at the Quad Cities Generating Station to review the inoperability of safety-related vacuum breakers. The two-unit plant, in Marseilles, Illinois, is operated by Constellation Energy.

Plant operators discovered that vacuum breakers designed to ensure structural integrity of the containment during significant plant events were inoperable because certain valves were not reopened after testing during a recent refueling outage.

The NRC determined a special inspection was warranted because the event resulted in the system’s inability to regulate containment pressure. The system has been restored.

“While this did not affect safe plant operation, an independent review of the issue by the regulator is warranted given questions related to the performance of plant personnel that compromised the ability of a safety system to fulfill its function,” said Region III Administrator Jack Giessner. “Our inspectors will evaluate Constellation’s response, its understanding of the event and the scope of its assessment actions; they will independently review the adequacy and implementation of processes and procedures related to the event; and evaluate the system’s design.”

Once the inspection is completed, NRC inspectors will document their findings in a publicly available inspection report, which will be distributed electronically to listserv subscribers and available on the NRC website.

25-013-iii.pdf 

 Molly Taft, Apr 29, 2025, 10:59 AM

States and Startups Are Suing the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Critics of the NRC say its red tape and lengthy authorization timelines stifle innovation, but handing some of its responsibilities to states could undermine public trust and the industry’s safety record.

Photograph: Andrew Harrer/Getty Images

American nuclear is in 25-year-old Isaiah Taylor’s blood: his great-grandfather worked on the Manhattan Project. In 2023, Taylor, who dropped out of high school to work in tech, started his own nuclear company, Valar Atomics. It’s currently developing a small test reactor, named after Taylor’s great-grandfather. But the company says that overly onerous regulations imposed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the country’s main regulatory body for nuclear reactors, has forced Valar Atomics to develop its test reactor overseas.

In early April, Valar Atomics, in addition to another nuclear startup, Deep Fission, as well as the states of Florida, Louisiana, and Arizona’s state legislature, signed onto a lawsuit against the NRC. The lawsuit, originally filed in December by Texas, Utah, and nuclear company Last Energy, blames the NRC for “so restrictively regulat[ing] new nuclear reactor construction that it rarely happens at all.”

Science Newsletter

Your weekly roundup of the best stories on health care, the climate crisis, new scientific discoveries, and more. Delivered on Wednesdays.

By signing up, you agree to our user agreement (including class action waiver and arbitration provisions), and acknowledge our privacy policy.

The US has historically been the global powerhouse of nuclear energy, yet only three reactors have come online over the past 25 years, all behind schedule and with ballooning budgets. Meanwhile, other countries, like China and South Korea, have raced ahead with construction of reactors of all sizes. Some nuclear advocates say that the US’s regulation system, which imposes cumbersome requirements and ultra-long timelines on projects, is largely to blame for this delay—especially when it comes to developing new designs for smaller reactors—and that some reactors should be taken from the NRC’s purview altogether. But others have concerns about potential attempts to bypass the country’s nuclear regulations for specific designs.

The NRC has long been criticized for its ultra-slow permitting times, inefficient processes, and contentious back-and-forth with nuclear companies. “The regulatory relationship in the US has been described as legalistic and adversarial for nuclear,” says Nick Touran, a licensed nuclear engineer who runs the website What Is Nuclear. “That is kind of uniquely American. In other countries, like France and China, the regulators are more cooperative.”

The lawsuit takes these criticisms one step further, claiming that by regulating smaller reactors, the NRC is misreading a crucial piece of nuclear legislation. In 1954, Congress passed the Atomic Energy Act, which created modern nuclear regulation in the US. That law mandated regulations for nuclear facilities that used nuclear material “in such quantity as to be of significance to the common defense and security” or that use it “in such manner as to affect the health and safety of the public.”

“We would love the NRC to respect the law that was written,” says Taylor, who believes the reactor his company is working on sits outside of that mandate. “What it would do for us is to allow innovation to happen again. Innovation is what drives the American economy.”

“The NRC will address the litigation, as necessary, in its court filings,” agency spokesperson Scott Burnell told WIRED in an email.

While we generally think of nuclear reactors as huge power plants, reactors can be made much smaller: Models known as small modular reactors, or SMRs, usually produce a third of the energy of a larger reactor, while even smaller reactorsknown as microreactors are designed small enough to be hauled by semitruck. Because of their size, these reactors are inherently less dangerous than their large counterparts. There’s simply not enough power in an SMR for a Three Mile Island–style meltdown.

The lawsuit argues that by mandating a cumbersome licensing process for all types of reactors—including those that are safer because of their size—the NRC is both violating the Atomic Energy Act and stifling progress. A company called NuScale, the only SMR company to get NRC approval for its model, spent $500 million and 2 million hours of labor over several years just to get its design approved. In late 2023 it pulled the plug on a planned power plant in Idaho after customers balked at the projected high price tag for power, which soared from an estimated $58 per megawatt-hour in 2021 to $89 per megawatt-hour in 2023.

The lawsuit comes at a unique time for nuclear power. Public sentiment around nuclear energy is the highest it’s been in 15 years. Dozens of new nuclear startups have cropped up in recent years, each promising to revolutionize the American nuclear industry—and serve power-hungry industries like data centers and oil and gas. Private equity and venture capital invested more than $783 million in nuclear startups in 2024, doing twice the number of deals in the sector as they did in 2023.

The lawsuit “is about getting steel in the ground. This is about getting nuclear on the grid,” says Chris Koopman, the CEO of the Abundance Institute, a nonprofit focused on encouraging the development and deployment of new technology. The Institute, which was founded last year, has no standing in the lawsuit and does not represent any plaintiffs but has served as a “thought partner,” per Koopman, who coauthored an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in January announcing the lawsuit.

Deep Fission, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, seeks to generate electricity using small modular reactors placed a mile underground—a model its CEO, Liz Muller, says is both safer and cheaper than traditional construction. Even though Deep Fission is a party in the lawsuit, the company has also begun pre-licensing its design with the NRC. Muller sees the lawsuit as bringing a new approach to the agency regarding SMRs: helping it to develop “a regulatory sandbox, where we’re allowed to explore approaches to regulations while we’re moving forward at the same time.”

The lawsuit posits that individual states “are more than capable of regulating” smaller reactors. Thirty-nine states are already licensed by the NRC to handle and inspect nuclear material, while Koopman points out that the states involved in the lawsuit have recently passed legislation to speed the construction of nuclear projects in-state. “All of the states involved in the case have already entered into agreement with the NRC, in which the NRC has recognized that they know their stuff,” he says.

Taylor believes allowing states to compete on regulation would help boost safety within the field of small modular reactors. “Innovation is what drives the safety ball down the field, and the only way to do that is to have different regulators with different ideas,” he says. “That’s federalism 101.”

Adam Stein, the director of the Nuclear Energy Innovation program at the Breakthrough Institute, an eco-modernist policy center, sees some serious flaws with this approach. He says that while some states, like Texas, may have the resources and the knowledge to create their own effective regulatory body, other states may struggle. Stein likens a patchwork of different regulations as being akin to car seat laws, where the age of the child required to be in a car seat varies across states, making it tough for a parent to plan a road trip.

“Some states are less consistent in applying safety standards than others,” he says. “Some states would prefer their standards to be stricter than national standards. Some states have reduced safety standards from nationally recommended standards.”

Muller says she understands these concerns. “There is a risk if we get wildly different regulatory processes, that would not be a great result,” she says. “But I think there’s also an opportunity for states to move forward and then for other states to piggyback on what has been developed by the earlier adopter.”

Stein also foresees a possibility for continued red tape, as even with state-level regulation, the NRC would still be forced to review individual reactor designs to see if they were safe enough to pass off for state review. “A developer couldn’t just assert that their design is so safe, that it’s below the line,” he says. “It’s still going to have to go through a review to

determine whether the NRC should review it.”

Just because a nuclear reactor can’t cause massive damage to big populations doesn’t necessarily mean it’s fail-safe. The only deadly nuclear accident on US soil occurred at a tiny reactor in Idaho, which killed its three operators in the early 1960s. Designs for small reactors have made leaps and bounds in safety since then—a development Touran says is thanks in part to regulations from the federal government.

“I believe a well-designed small reactor, subject to reasonable nuclear design standards based on years of lessons learned, would be very safe,” says Touran. “I do not believe that this means anyone should be able to go out and build a small reactor with minimal oversight.”

There have been efforts in recent years to speed up the NRC’s permitting process. In 2019, during his first term, President Donald Trump signed the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act; among its many reforms, it mandated that the NRC shift around key licensing processes and create a new process for licensing smaller, more technologically varied reactors. Last year, President Joe Biden signed the ADVANCE Act, which made even more changes to the NRC process; both of these pieces of legislation passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

“At this point, the NRC says pretty willingly that they’re working hard to be more efficient, that they understand they need to be more efficient, that they have been more efficient with recent licensing applications,” says Klein.

For developers like Taylor, this progress is too little, too late. “Do we really want China and Russia to be the global nuclear developers for the world?” he says. “I don’t. I would like the United States to be the nuclear developer of the world.”

Permitting reform alone, especially in the SMR space, may not solve the issue of competing with other world powers. Nuclear energy might be overregulated, but it is also expensive to build, even for smaller reactors, requiring big up-front investments and a large amount of labor. NuScale did lose valuable time and money on a cumbersome regulatory process—but its energy was also competing in price against gas and renewables, which are, on average, cheaper than nuclear power from plants that have been running for decades.

After decades of battling public fear of nuclear plants, nuclear acceptance has reached a pivotal moment. When compared to the massive health toll from fossil fuels, which research shows are responsible for 1 in 5 deaths around the world, nuclear power is exorbitantly safe. But there’s a sense from some advocates that some of the hard-won trust nuclear energy now has from the public—supported by decades of careful regulation—is in danger if the movement becomes too cavalier about safety.

When Valar announced it would join the lawsuit, Taylor published a blog post on the company’s website that claimed that the company’s reactor was so safe that someone could hold the spent fuel in their hands for five minutes and get as much radiation exposure as a CAT scan. Touran questioned this claim, leading Taylor to post the numbers behind the company’s analysis on X. Another nuclear engineer ran his own calculation using these inputs, finding that holding fuel under the conditions provided by Valar would give a “lethal dose” of radiation in 85 milliseconds. (Taylor told WIRED that Valar is working on a “thorough analysis” in response that will be public in a few weeks and that the initial claims around the spent fuel were simply “a thought experiment we did for our own internal illustration purposes” and not part of the lawsuit materials.)

“We’ve operated reactors so well for so long that a whole new breed of advocates and even founders mistakenly believe that they’re fail-safe by default,” says Touran. “The reality is they’re made fail-safe by very careful and well-regulated engineering and quality assurance.”