Tuesday, 7 July 2026

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has granted Pacific Gas and Electric Company a 20-year license renewal to keep running Diablo Canyon Power Plant. It was the 100th operating license the NRC has renewed for a U.S. power plant.

Regulators found the plant safe and environmentally sound to run for another two decades, according to Power Engineering. Running the reactors past 2030 still needs the California Legislature to act.

The plant produces more than 2,200 MW and ranks as California's largest source of clean energy, according to Power Engineering.

Earlier federal money set the plant on this path. The Biden administration finalized a USD 1.1 billion aid package at the start of 2024 to keep Diablo Canyon generating to at least 2030, according to Power Engineering.

The NRC decision hands PG&E a federal license good for 20 years, yet state law still limits operations to 2030. Lawmakers in the state capital would have to vote again before the utility could run the twin-unit plant through the full federal term.

At more than 2,200 MW, the plant supplies the single largest amount of low-carbon capacity on the state grid, so a 2030 shutdown would leave that output to be replaced from other sources.

Brookfield and The Nuclear Company (TNC) will form a new company to develop Westinghouse nuclear reactor technology, Power Engineering reported.

The venture pairs Brookfield, a global investment firm, with TNC, a nuclear project development and delivery company, to specialize in building out Westinghouse reactor designs.

TNC first laid out its ambitions in 2024, when it came out of stealth mode with a plan to develop a 6 GW nuclear fleet by the mid-2030s.

The new partnership builds on that pipeline. In June 2025, Palantir Technologies and TNC announced a strategic partnership to launch an AI-powered software platform to modernize nuclear plant construction across the nation.

The 6 GW target would rank among the larger private nuclear build programs disclosed in the country, and the Westinghouse venture gives TNC a reactor line to anchor it.

Blue Energy and GE Vernova will jointly develop a 2.5 GW plant that pairs natural gas turbines with nuclear reactors, in what Power Engineering describes as the first gas-plus-nuclear project. Blue Energy builds prefabricated nuclear power plants.

The reactor at the core of the design is GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy's BWRX-300 small modular reactor (SMR), slated for Blue Energy's first site in Texas. A final investment decision is set for 2027.

Gas comes first. Under a slot reservation agreement, GE Vernova will deliver two 7HA.02 gas turbines in 2029 to energize the site early. Those turbines should supply roughly 1 GW as early as 2030. Once the BWRX-300s come online, the developers plan to switch the steam supply and lift output to about 1.5 GW of nuclear power as early as 2032.

Blue Energy says the staged sequence can bring time to power to 48 months or less, running turbines on a natural gas bridge that later converts to nuclear.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has signed off on Blue Energy's plan to resequence the major phases of plant construction, clearing the way for large-module and gas-to-nuclear delivery schedules.

"Together with our customers, GE Vernova currently generates nearly 50 percent of electricity produced in the U.S. today," said Scott Strazik, chief executive of GE Vernova.

The gas-first approach addresses long SMR construction timelines by locking in generation revenue from a site before reactor start-up.

Ontario ordered the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) to sign a cost-sharing and recovery agreement with Bruce Power to fund pre-development work on the proposed Bruce C Nuclear Project.

The deal is set to cover about C$300 million, roughly USD 220 million, in early-stage work the province says could finish by 2030. That work spans community engagement, workforce planning, pre-construction planning, and site preparation.

Bruce Power has not chosen a reactor design. The company said it is running a technology-neutral process to weigh multiple reactor options before a final pick.

Bruce Power entered the federal Impact Assessment process in 2024, an early step in approving large-scale nuclear projects in Canada, and expects that review to close in 2028.

The directive follows a rising provincial demand forecast. The IESO's 2026 Annual Planning Outlook projected baseline electricity demand growth of 65% by 2050, and up to 92% under a high-demand scenario.

Nuclear already supplies more than half of Ontario's electricity. Bruce Power runs Bruce A and Bruce B, which together hold eight CANDU reactors.

The U.S. Department of Energy selected eight companies to support near-term deployment of advanced light-water small modular reactors (SMRs) in the United States, Neutron Bytes reported. Together the firms will draw more than $94 million in Federal cost-shared funding aimed at three bottlenecks holding back Gen III+ SMRs: licensing, supply chain, and site preparation.

The biggest single share, $27,864,860, went to Nebraska Public Power District, which will use it to obtain a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved Early Site Permit for a location in Nebraska for future Gen III+ SMRs.

A parallel siting effort landed at Constellation SMR Development, awarded $17,264,292 to pursue an approved Early Site Permit for a location in New York.

Two awards target manufacturing rather than permitting. Scot Forge Company received $12,267,000 to procure and install a large vertical turning lathe and gantry style milling machine at a Spring Grove, Illinois facility, enabling domestic production of large Gen III+ SMR components.

Framatome U.S. Government Solutions won $8,800,000 to expand a fuel fabrication facility in Richland, Washington, adding roughly 200 metric tons of uranium of annual capacity through more ceramic pellet production lines.

The US Department of Energy has signed off on the Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis for Oklo's Aurora powerhouse, a reactor slated for construction at Idaho National Laboratory, according to World Nuclear News.

The review examined the preliminary safety basis for the plant, which Oklo has designated Aurora-INL and lined up as the first in its planned fleet of fast fission reactors, World Nuclear News reported.

"This approval represents an important milestone for Aurora-INL and helps establish a foundation for future Aurora deployments," said Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte.

The Aurora reactor draws on the operating record of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II, a metallic-fuel unit that generated electricity and usable heat in Idaho from 1964 to 1994, according to World Nuclear News.

Oklo broke ground on Aurora-INL in September 2025.

Crews have set a 120-tonne core catcher into place for the third VVER-1200 reactor unit at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, World Nuclear News reported.

Teams from construction firm Titan-2 Holding directed the lowering of the device into the concrete shaft of the reactor containment building, the third unit in the plant's second phase.

That shaft now holds equipment weighing close to 900 tonnes and stands 55% complete, according to Titan-2's Konstantin Khudyakov.

The plant carries an installed capacity of 4,400 MWe.

First concrete for unit 7 was poured in March 2024, opening the main construction phase, per World Nuclear News. Unit 8 reached the same milestone in March 2025.

Two ship classification societies have signed off on conceptual designs for cargo vessels powered by nuclear reactors, according to World Nuclear News. Lloyd's Register cleared a car carrier built around a molten salt reactor, granting approval in principle for the concept.

Separately, the American Bureau of Shipping approved in principle the plan to build a nuclear reactor into a cargo vessel's propulsion system. That approval came through the MIT Maritime Consortium, whose founding members include the American Bureau of Shipping, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (HD KSOE) and Capital Maritime Group, and it is the first approval in principle to pass through the consortium.

The reactor concept behind the American Bureau of Shipping approval, developed at MIT, circulates a synthetic fluid to move heat away from the reactor core. Because it runs at near-atmospheric pressure, the vessels can be thinner and lighter.

Lloyd's Register said it is running a joint development project with Hyundai Heavy Industries, HD KSOE, Hyundai Glovis, G-Marine Service and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI), studying an advanced small modular reactor (SMR) installed on a pure car and truck carrier.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has cleared Xcimer Energy's preconceptual design and technology development roadmap milestone for Athena, the company's fusion power plant architecture, according to power-eng.com.

The green light came after Xcimer met earlier targets during the program's first 18-month budget period, power-eng.com reported.

Xcimer plans for Athena to operate continuously at a repetition rate reaching 1 Hz, using a liquid wall chamber to shield solid structures from fusion reaction emissions across the plant's lifetime, according to power-eng.com.

The company's Phoenix prototype sits in a 74,000-square-foot Denver laser facility, power-eng.com reported. Phoenix runs on a krypton fluoride (KrF) excimer laser paired with Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS), compressing a microsecond-long pulse down to the nanosecond timescales that fusion demands.

The design draws on an earlier result at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility, where researchers reached scientific breakeven on December 5, 2022, releasing more energy from fusion than the laser energy fed in to drive it, according to power-eng.com.

China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) has set the 270-tonne outer dome of the containment building on top of unit 5 at the Ningde Nuclear Power Plant in Fujian province. With the dome in place, the HPR1000 (Hualong One) reactor moves from civil construction into equipment installation, CGN said.

Crews finished the manoeuvre at 08:02 local time after two hours and forty-five minutes of work to raise and seat the 45-metre-diameter structure.

China's State Council cleared Ningde units 5 and 6 for construction on 31 July 2023. Workers poured first concrete for the unit 5 nuclear island on 28 July 2024, with the reactor targeted to start operation in 2029.

Four CPR-1000 reactors of 1,018 MWe each already run at the site, having entered commercial operation across a window that ran from April 2013 to July 2016.

Urenco is adding 4.6 million new separative work units (SWU) of uranium enrichment capacity through expansion plans spanning its facilities in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany, according to World Nuclear News.

Urenco USA's facility in New Mexico, currently the only commercial uranium enrichment capacity in the United States, is set to see its capacity increased by 2.1 million SWU, World Nuclear News reported. The extra capacity across the company's plans will come online over the next six years or so.

Urenco is one-third owned by the UK government, one-third by the Netherlands, and one-third by German utilities RWE and Eon, according to World Nuclear News.

The expansion marks a reversal from earlier planning. Laurent Odeh, Urenco's chief commercial officer, said that in 2020 the company had planned to be smaller by 2030 because of overcapacity and depressed prices in the enrichment market. Odeh said the company had been planning for as soft a landing as it could in terms of capacity.

Odeh cited the pledges signed at COP28 to at least triple global nuclear capacity by 2050 as evidence of political willingness to re-engage with nuclear. He also linked growth in electricity demand, especially in the United States, to data centres for artificial intelligence being built that need baseload power and 24/7 decarbonised electricity.

Most nuclear reactors need fuel containing between 3.5% and 5% U-235, known as low-enriched uranium (LEU), according to World Nuclear News.

Helion received two licences from the Washington Department of Health for its Orion nuclear power plant project, according to World Nuclear News. The company says it is the first in the world to hold the regulatory approvals needed to build and operate a fusion power plant.

The two licences are the Radioactive Materials licence and the Radioactive Air Emissions licence. According to World Nuclear News, these confirm Helion has the facilities, trained personnel, and safety programmes in place at the Orion facility to meet the safety standards required for fusion operations.

The Washington Department of Health is the licensing body for fusion power in the state, following the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission's decision to regulate fusion under the byproduct material framework, alongside particle accelerators and hospitals, unlike fission reactors, which the NRC regulates itself.

Helion is also working toward a transmission interconnection agreement with Chelan County Public Utility District, which would be the first such agreement for a fusion power plant, according to World Nuclear News.

The company began construction of buildings to support the Orion fusion plant last July, on land leased from the Chelan County Public Utilities District, and construction of the assembly and office building is now complete.

Helion uses deuterium and helium-3 as fuel, and its system is built to directly recover electricity rather than heating water to turn a turbine, according to World Nuclear News.

The Province of Overijssel has received an initial siting study, prepared by Tractebel, pointing to spots where small modular reactors might be built in the Dutch province, according to World Nuclear News.

Reactors up to 100 MW could fit across wide stretches of Overijssel, the study found. Options narrow sharply for units between 100 MW and 500 MW, with candidate sites clustered along the IJssel.

To screen the terrain, Tractebel's team applied the International Atomic Energy Agency's siting criteria, weighing population density, natural risks, cultural heritage, critical infrastructure, cooling water and distance to the grid.

Provincial Executive Member Gert Harm ten Bolscher framed the work as a technical scoping exercise built on independent analysis. "No choices have been made yet," ten Bolscher said.

Nuclear power remains a small slice of Dutch supply. One pressurised water reactor at Borssele, rated 485 MWe net and run by EPZ, has operated since 1973 and covers roughly 3% of national electricity generation, World Nuclear News reported.

Preliminary plans envisage two new reactors finished around 2035, each between 1,000 and 1,650 MWe. Together they would supply 9-13% of the country's electricity in 2035.

Sweden's Riksdag approved a government bill on 11 June that amends the country's Nuclear Activities Act, according to World Nuclear News. Under the change, uranium mines will no longer count as a nuclear facility.

That reclassification carries a practical effect for permitting. Because uranium mines fall outside the nuclear-facility rules, extraction will no longer need explicit municipal consent.

The amendments take effect on 15 July, World Nuclear News reported.

Aura Energy Executive Chairman Phil Mitchell tied the vote to an earlier legislative shift, saying the removal of the uranium mining ban in January 2026 has now been followed by the declassification of uranium mining as a nuclear facility.

The United Kingdom is aiming for 24 GWe of nuclear generating capacity by 2050, a level that would cover roughly 25% of projected electricity demand, under a roadmap the government issued in January 2024, according to World Nuclear News.

That target sits against a shrinking fleet. Nuclear now supplies about 16% of UK energy, and every existing reactor bar one is scheduled to close by 2030, World Nuclear News reported.

To help fill the gap, the government named Rolls-Royce SMR in June 2025 as its preferred technology for the country's first small modular reactor project. In November it picked Wylfa on the island of Anglesey to host three Rolls-Royce SMR units, a decommissioning Magnox site that could take up to eight reactors, with a final investment decision due in 2029.

In the United States, TerraPower began building its first Natrium plant, Kemmerer unit 1 in Wyoming, in April, according to World Nuclear News.

The Natrium is a 345 MWe sodium-cooled fast reactor paired with molten-salt storage that can lift output to 500 MWe for short periods to follow daily load changes. The same design cleared entry into the UK's Generic Design Assessment process in February.

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power has chosen Yeongdeok in North Gyeongsang Province as the site for two new large-scale nuclear reactors, according to World Nuclear News.

Those two units will hold a combined 2.8 GWe, according to World Nuclear News. South Korea's 11th Basic Plan, spanning 2024 to 2038, sets a separate goal of 700 MW of small modular reactor (SMR) capacity, with both the large reactors and the SMR fleet due for completion by 2038.

Korea's National Assembly passed the Special Act on the Promotion and Support of SMR Development in February 2026, World Nuclear News reported. The law builds a framework that includes a five-year basic plan and an SMR Development Promotion Committee.

Backing the technology push, the Ministry of Science and ICT intends to spend KRW1200 billion (USD830 million) by 2030 on core technology designs for three domestically developed SMR types, according to World Nuclear News.

One of those efforts is the Innovative Small Modular Reactor (i-SMR), an integrated pressurised water reactor rated at 170 MW electrical output, according to World Nuclear News. A consortium led by KHNP and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute is behind the design.

South Korea currently runs four APR1400 units, according to World Nuclear News: Saeul units 1 and 2 alongside Shin Hanul units 1 and 2.

Antares Nuclear's Mark-0 advanced reactor completed a zero-power fueled criticality demonstration at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Idaho National Laboratory on June 4, 2026, under the DOE Reactor Pilot Program, according to the DOE.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright said it was the first time in more than four decades that a new privately developed non-light-water reactor reached criticality in the United States. The DOE described the Mark-0 as the 53rd reactor built at the Idaho National Laboratory site since 1951.

The Mark-0 is the first of multiple advanced reactors the DOE anticipates going critical by the July 4th deadline set by President Trump in his May 2025 executive order.

A second reactor followed. Valar Atomics' Ward 250 completed a zero-power fueled criticality demonstration at the Utah San Rafael Energy Lab in Emery County, Utah, marking the first DOE authorized reactor built outside of a national laboratory, according to the DOE. Valar Atomics CEO Isaiah Taylor said the site was empty nine months ago and now holds a critical reactor built and operated by the Valar team.

The DOE said it established the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad to further accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear technologies, building on the Reactor Pilot Program's success.

Concrete pouring has begun for the reactor shaft at what will become the eighth unit of the Leningrad nuclear power plant, according to World Nuclear News.

The reinforced concrete structure will ultimately stand 34 metres tall, World Nuclear News reported. The first stage of the reactor shaft work will require 175 tonnes of steel reinforcement and 612 cubic metres of concrete mix, according to Konstantin Khudyakov of Titan-2.

Evgeny Milushkin, deputy director at Leningrad, said installation of the reactor itself will begin in the second half of 2029. The core catcher for the unit will be delivered to the site in early July, with installation later that month, according to World Nuclear News.

First concrete was poured for the eighth unit in March 2025.

The Leningrad nuclear power plant has an installed capacity of 4,400 MWe and supplies more than 55% of the electricity demand of St Petersburg and the Leningrad region, World Nuclear News reported.