Beginning last week, the two Department of Energy offices responsible for the environmental cleanup of the department’s Hanford Site have been combined under a new name: the Hanford Field Office. Previously, management of the 586-square-mile site near Richland, Wash., was split between the Richland Operations Office and the DOE Office of River Protection (ORP).

In October 2012, Dominion Energy announced it was closing the Kewaunee nuclear power plant, a two-loop 574-MWe pressurized water reactor located about 27 miles southeast of Green Bay, Wis., on the western shore of Lake Michigan. At the time, Dominion said the plant was running well, but that low wholesale electricity prices in the region made it uneconomical to continue operation of the single-unit merchant power plant.

As evidenced by the well-attended Climate Week NYC, there is a growing awareness that nuclear energy must be incorporated into national energy strategies if net-zero goals are to be achieved. In recent years, green bonds have found solid footing in the world of energy finance. These eco-friendly issuances have evolved from supporting just wind and solar projects and are increasingly being used to power much-needed growth in the civil nuclear sector. Green bonds that have been issued over the past several years in Canada, France, Finland, and the United States are now being used to support investment in nuclear projects, from breathing new life into old reactors to in certain instances supporting nuclear new build projects. However, a question remains: Can this liquidity be deployed where and when it is needed most—to support ambitious new nuclear project buildouts?

TerraPower Isotopes, a subsidiary of Bellevue, Wash.–based TerraPower, announced it is now producing actinium-225 at commercial scale, making the medical isotope available to the pharmaceutical industry through weekly production runs. As a result, TerraPower Isotopes said its actinium, after further manufacturing, is now used in multiple drug developers’ radiopharmaceuticals in human clinical trials across the globe.

Between reactor restarts, a hoped-for tripling of nuclear energy by 2050, and advances in permanent solutions for radioactive waste disposal, the time is ripe for a close yet holistic look at the state of the nuclear industry. The present is informed by both future hopes and the inherited past—that is a key point in the upcoming workshop “Nuclear Revival and Legacies: Insights from Humanities and Social Science,” to be held October 21–22 in Champs-sur-Marne on the outskirts of Paris, France.

Westinghouse Electric Company has announced that it will create two new global business units from its Operating Plant Services business. Effective January 1, 2025, the new units will be Long-Term Operations and Outage & Maintenance Services.

Kairos Power broke ground yesterday on a Salt Production Facility at the company’s newly dedicated Manufacturing Development Campus during an event at a sprawling site in Mesa del Sol, N.M., just south of Albuquerque. The new facility will produce the FLiBe (a mixture of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride salts) needed to cool the advanced reactors Kairos Power plans to build, starting with its Hermes nonpower demonstration reactor in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and could be operational and producing salt in 2026, according to an October 3 Department of Energy news release.

The Government Accountability Office has recommended that the Department of Energy put a hold on construction of its High-Level Waste Facility at the Hanford Site near Richland, Wash. The GAO said design and construction of the facility, part of Hanford’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant, also known as the Vit Plant, should be paused until several actions are taken, including considering other alternatives for managing the site’s high-level radioactive liquid waste.

Uranium prices reached $81.9 per pound on October 1, the highest level in more than a month, according to online information source Trading Economics. The company reported that the last time prices were this high was on August 23, when they passed $82 per pound. Since the beginning of 2024, uranium prices have seen a decrease in price of about $9.10 per pound, or about 10 percent. Those statistics are based on trading on a contract for difference (CFD) that tracks the benchmark market.

President Biden has announced the appointment of six new members to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent federal agency that evaluates the technical and scientific validity of the Department of Energy’s activities related to managing and disposing of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.

Ann Stouffer Bisconti has been surveying and analyzing the American public’s attitudes and knowledge about nuclear energy for more than four decades. Her research company’s 2024 survey proved to be especially revealing. “The 2024 National Nuclear Energy Public Opinion Survey contained such a wealth of information that I prepared nine reports” to cover all the collected data, she said.

Nearly six years after it was first announced, the Department of Energy has transitioned landlord responsibilities at the Savannah River Site from the Office of Environmental Management to the National Nuclear Security Administration. The shift will align with the start of federal fiscal year 2025.

World leaders outlined an ambitious push and targeted plans for increasing nuclear energy capacity at the Roadmaps to New Nuclear conference, held September 19–20 in Paris, France.

The only nuclear reactor in Australia has returned to power after a monthslong shutdown for planned essential maintenance and upgrades. The OPAL (for open-pool Australian light water reactor) research reactor at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) campus in Sydney successfully went through the most significant engineering maintenance and upgrade project in its 17-year history.

BWX Technologies subsidiary Nuclear Fuel Services Inc. suspended operations last Friday at a Tennessee facility to assess conditions following Hurricane Helene. A company spokesperson said the site remained "in safe and secure condition."

By combining two techniques, analytical chemists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have for the first time simultaneously detected fluorine and different uranium isotopes in a single particle. Quickly detecting both elements together may help International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors determine if and when undisclosed enrichment has taken place. The findings, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, “push the limit” of how fast single particles can be characterized in terms of their chemical, elemental, and isotopic compositions, according to a September 26 news release from ORNL.

A mix of nuclear professionals and advocates gathered las week to discuss public policy, workforce needs, and regulatory matters at a meeting of the North Carolina Nuclear Energy Industry Advisory Council.

With a $1.52 billion loan from the Department of Energy and $1.3 billion in grants to rural electric cooperatives near the plant, the ambitious plans to restart Michigan’s Palisades nuclear plant next fall are moving ahead.

Atomic Canyon is developing a generative AI search for the nuclear energy sector and is working with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to get it done. On September 26, Atomic Canyon announced its initial results about six months after the collaboration was first announced in March.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is soliciting public comment on the agency’s guidance for addressing discrete radioactive particle (DRP) contamination resulting from the decontamination and decommissioning of nuclear facilities. According to the NRC, the draft guidance is intended to avoid any inconsistencies in how the agency approaches DRP contamination.