Thursday, 6 August 2026

Ansaldo Energia and RINA have agreed to build out Italy's nuclear supply chain by guiding companies through a structured certification pathway, World Nuclear News reported. Ansaldo Energia is an Italian power technology firm; RINA works in certification and engineering.

The two companies frame the pathway as a way for suppliers to seize opportunities in what World Nuclear News describes as a rapidly growing global nuclear market.

The target audience is not the existing nuclear vendor base. According to World Nuclear News, the initiative is aimed primarily at companies that are not currently active in the nuclear sector but hold transferable industrial capabilities, with the stated goal of widening and strengthening the national industrial base.

The division of labour is set out explicitly. RINA will accompany firms through certification and qualification, while Ansaldo Energia contributes sector industrial expertise, shares market requirements, and promotes initiatives backing certification through financial support from institutions and public instruments for internationalisation and industrial development, per World Nuclear News.

The commercial move lands against an unfinished legislative process. World Nuclear News reported that Italy's lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, approved a bill presented by the Meloni government paving the way for the country's return to the use of nuclear energy. That bill now goes to the upper house, the Senate, for a vote.

Certification and qualification are the gating requirements for any component or service supplier seeking nuclear work, which places the Ansaldo Energia and RINA arrangement ahead of the Senate decision rather than behind it. Industrial firms in adjacent sectors, from heavy fabrication to instrumentation, are the pool the two companies say they intend to draw from.

Technip Energies has signed a strategic framework agreement with EDF covering execution, construction management and delivery of EDF's EPR2 reactor construction programme, World Nuclear News reported.

The proposed programme covers six new EPR2 reactors, with an option for eight more to follow, according to World Nuclear News.

The first three pairs are proposed for the Penly, Gravelines and Bugey nuclear power plant sites, in that order.

World Nuclear News reported that the target commissioning date for the first reactor at Penly is now 2038, with subsequent units entering service at intervals of up to 18 months.

The EPR2 is a pressurised water reactor project developed by EDF and Framatome.

The Groves low-power test reactor reached criticality at 9:19 p.m. ET on Aug. 5, according to Power Magazine.

Groves is the first reactor under the DOE Reactor Pilot Program to achieve criticality on private land, Power Magazine reported. Power Magazine identified it as the fifth pilot reactor under the program to reach criticality.

California-based Deep Fission said an approval of its safety design confirms that its reactor warrants advancement under the DOE Reactor Pilot Program, according to Power Magazine.

The company, which is developing an underground small modular reactor, framed the decision as validation of the design's readiness for the next stage of the pilot program, Power Magazine reported.

Power Magazine identified Deep Fission as based in California.