Here is a recap of industry happenings from the recent past:

ADVANCED REACTOR MARKETPLACE

Partnership formed for Idaho microreactors

Aalo Atomics has partnered with Idaho Falls Power to focus on the deployment of seven Aalo-1 microreactors that would provide a total of 75 MWe of power. The sodium-cooled microreactors—each with a 10-MWe capacity—are to be built at Aalo Atomics’ new headquarters and manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas. The reactor’s safety system, incorporating uranium zirconium hydride fuel, is designed to automatically shut down the reactor should it overheat. Aalo Atomics, which is currently constructing an Aalo-0 nonnuclear test reactor in Austin, intends to build an Aalo-X experimental reactor at Idaho National Laboratory before shifting to the Aalo-1 commercial unit. The Aalo-1 is not expected to come on line before 2030.

Finland’s regulatory authority, the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK), announced that it was further delaying issuing a statement on the safety case for the Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository until 2025, saying that Posiva’s license application material is not yet ready.

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency’s Global Forum on Nuclear Education, Science, Technology, and Policy has developed the Nuclear Workforce Survey to explore how and why individuals decide to join the nuclear field and how their experiences impact decisions to stay or leave.

Technology giant Meta this week issued a request for proposals from nuclear developers to support its AI innovation and sustainability objectives.

The California-based company, parent of social media site Facebook, is targeting between one and four gigawatts of nuclear generation capacity in the United States.

Ax man. Scram. Trip. Yes, this is Throwback Thursday, but no—we aren’t revisiting the slang of American countercultures from decades past. We are, however, pondering a term central to a very important day in nuclear history: December 2, 1942—the anniversary of controlled nuclear fission, first achieved with CP-1 at the University of Chicago.

Following approval in October from the American National Standards Institute, ANSI/ANS-3.11-2024, Determining Meteorological Information at Nuclear Facilities, was published in late November. This standard provides criteria for gathering, assembling, processing, storing, and disseminating meteorological information at commercial nuclear power plants, U.S. Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration nuclear facilities, and other national or international nuclear facilities.

Advanced reactor developer Terrestrial Energy and Utah-based waste management company EnergySolutions announced they have signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on the siting and deployment of Terrestrial Energy’s integral molten salt reactor plants at EnergySolutions-owned sites.

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency in late November reported on a range of “New at the NEA” activities.

New York City–based analyst firm Trading Economics has reported that uranium prices have fallen $13.20 per pound, or 14.51 percent, since the beginning of 2024, with the price on December 3 down to $77.80 per pound. A graph of prices for the year shows a jagged downward slide since a peak of about $107 per pound in early February. The all-time high for uranium prices was $148 per pound in May 2007, according to the firm.

Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) has acquired a 665-acre parcel of land for its planned Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility (PLEF) in Kentucky.

COP29 was good for nuclear energy, but not so good for anything else.

That was one of Seth Grae’s takeaways from this year’s Conference of the Parties—or, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)—held for two weeks in November in Baku, Azerbaijan. Grae, chief executive of Lightbridge Corporation and chair of the American Nuclear Society’s International Council, attended with four other ANS delegates: ANS President Lisa Marshall, Gale Hauck, Shirly Rodriguez, and Andrew Smith.

Studsvik Scandpower (SSP) is the leading global provider of vendor-independent, state-of-the-art nuclear fuel management software and world-class engineering services. SSP offers a full suite of software product offerings, training, and engineering services, to support operating utilities, fuel vendors, safety authorities, and research organizations around the world.

While the United States was celebrating Thanksgiving Day, Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) announced that it has selected a site in northwestern Ontario for a deep geologic repository to hold the country’s spent nuclear fuel

Nearly 60 eighth graders from schools across the central Savannah River area recently gathered at the Ruth Patrick Science Education Center in Aiken, S.C., for the Savannah River Site’s “STEM Like a Girl—Introduce a Girl to Engineering and IT” event. This initiative is designed to inspire the next generation of female engineers and STEM leaders.

DeepGeo, a Rhode Island–based company seeking to develop multinational spent nuclear fuel repositories, and Denmark-based thorium reactor developer Copenhagen Atomics have signed a collaboration agreement that will see the companies work together on the management of nuclear fuels and waste streams associated with a thorium breeder reactor.

A new complaint filed by Constellation asks the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to order the PJM Interconnection to provide rules for co-located generation to serve large facilities, such as data centers.

As of last week, crews with Department of Energy cleanup contractor Idaho Environmental Coalition (IEC) processed more than 142,000 gallons of radioactive sodium-bearing tank waste at Idaho’s Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) this year.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management will soon, for the first time, begin using drones to internally inspect radioactive liquid waste tanks at the department’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Inspections were previously done using magnetic wall-crawling robots.

The July 2024 issue of Nuclear News focused on fusion. Editor-in-chief Rick Michal highlighted in his column (p. 4) Los Alamos National Laboratory’s open access special issue of the American Nuclear Society journal Fusion Science and Technology, titled The Early History of Fusion. This article provides a brief summary of the issue—and we encourage readers to explore all of the full papers.^a

The annual day of celebrating nuclear energy is right around the corner. On December 2, World Nuclear Energy Day will be recognized internationally through workshops, panel discussions, dinner meetings, and special performances focused on educational outreach, emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking that can restore the world’s ecosystems with nuclear energy.