Research & Applications

One of the executive orders issued by President Trump in November —“Launching the Genesis Mission”—focuses on a national effort to accelerate the use of AI in scientific research. The Genesis Mission EO preceded a reorganization of the Department of Energy and further tightens links between science and security under the administration’s quest for “global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced that it has received the first portion of a construction permit application from Oklo subsidiary Atomic Alchemy that requests permission to build four nonpower reactors for a radioisotope production facility at Idaho National Laboratory. The submission is now available for public inspection on the NRC website.

A new type of material has been demonstrated to greatly enhance the ability to recover uranium from seawater, according to a study published recently in Sustainable Carbon Materials. The research, which could lead to a new way of obtaining uranium for nuclear reactor fuel, was conducted by scientists from Weifang University and North China Electric Power University.

The “space race” is once again making headlines, with technology worthy of the 21st century. Like the Cold War–era competition, this race too is about showcasing power—but this time it's nuclear power.

A new article in Power Technology examines the competing efforts of the United States, Russia, and China as they strive to be the first to put a nuclear reactor on the moon to power a lunar base, detailing the technical challenges and international rivalries.

In a letter to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the Source Security Working Group (SSWG) is urging the U.S. government to withhold from imposing tariffs on Canadian-orgin cobalt-60 and to preserve the duty-free treatment of the radioisotope.

A new AI software tool for monitoring and controlling the plasma inside nuclear fuel systems has been developed by an international collaboration of scientists from Princeton University, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Chung-Ang University, Columbia University, and Seoul National University. The software, which the researchers call Diag2Diag, is described in the paper, “Multimodal super-resolution: discovering hidden physics and its application to fusion plasmas,” published in Nature Communications.

Zeno Power, a developer of nuclear batteries, is to receive americium-241 recovered from Orano’s La Hague nuclear fuel recycling site in Normandy, France, under a strategic agreement announced by the companies on September 24.

The Department of Energy announced on Wednesday that it has awarded $134 million in funding for two programs designed to secure U.S. leadership in emerging fusion technologies and innovation. The funding was awarded through the DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program in the Office of Science and will support the next round of Fusion Innovation Research Engine (FIRE) collaboratives and the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) awards.

As interest and investment grows around AI applications in nuclear power plants, there remains a gap in standardized benchmarks that can quantitatively compare and measure the quality and reliability of new products.

Nuclear-tailored AI developer Atomic Canyon is moving to fill that gap by entering into a new strategic partnership with Idaho National Laboratory to develop and release the “first comprehensive benchmark suite for evaluating retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and large language models (LLMs) in nuclear applications.”

The Department of Energy announced recently it will provide more than $35 million for 42 projects to help move emerging energy technologies from DOE national laboratories, plants, and sites related to grid security, artificial intelligence, nuclear energy, and advanced manufacturing to the marketplace. The selected projects will leverage over $21 million in cost-share from private and public partners, bringing total funding to more than $57.5 million.

A full list of the FY2025 selections is available here.

After the Trump administration’s new push to get a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030 was first reported by Politico last month, media played up the shock value for people new to the concept. Few focused on the technical details of the new plan for lunar fission surface power (FSP), which halts and replaces a program that began under the first Trump administration with an early hope of getting a reactor on the moon by the end of 2026. Now, the focus is on streamlining NASA’s internal processes to support commercial space companies that can build a reactor with more than twice the power and mass and have it ready for launch by 2030.

As global interest in nuclear energy surges, the United States must remain at the forefront of research and development to ensure national energy security, advance nuclear technologies, and promote international cooperation on safety and nonproliferation. A crucial step in achieving this is analyzing how funding and resources are allocated to better understand how to direct future research and development. The Department of Energy has spearheaded this effort by funding hundreds of research projects across the country through the Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP). This initiative has empowered dozens of universities to collaborate toward a nuclear-friendly future.

On April 22, 1959, Rear Admiral George J. King, superintendent of the Maine Maritime Academy, announced that following the completion of the 1960 training cruise, cadets would begin the study of nuclear engineering. Courses at that time included radiation physics, reactor control and instrumentation, reactor theory and engineering, thermodynamics, shielding, core design, reactor maintenance, and nuclear aspects.

Researchers announced earlier this month that they have completed major construction of the Gamma-Ray Energy Tracking Array (GRETA), a precision tool for gamma ray spectroscopy that, according to Paul Fallon, a researcher at University of California–Berkeley and GRETA’s project director, will be 10 to 100 times more sensitive than previous nuclear science experiments. Fallon was quoted in an August 8 article published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)—where GRETA’s project leaders are based and GRETA was assembled.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science has committed $20 million to the University of Missouri that—with a matching $20 million from the state government—will support construction of a Radioisotope Science Center (RSC) at the university’s Discovery Ridge research park in Columbia, Mo., projected for completion in early 2029. The new facility will pair the DOE’s Office of Isotope R&D and Production (IRP)—formerly known as the DOE Isotope Program—with the decades of expertise developed at the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR).

For the uninitiated, Dubai chocolate is a candy bar filled with pistachio and tahini cream and crispy pastry recently popularized by social media influencers. While it’s easy to dismiss as a viral craze now past its peak, the nutty green confection has spiked global pistachio demand, and growers and processors are ramping up production. That means more pistachios need to be tested for aflatoxins—a byproduct of a common crop mold.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright will attend the opening of the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative in Aiken, S.C., on August 7. Wright will deliver remarks and join Savannah River National Laboratory leadership and partners for a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

A report just released by Idaho National Laboratory reviews decades of radiation protection standards and research on the health effects of low-dose radiation and recommends that the current U.S. annual occupational dose limit of 5,000 mrem be maintained without applying ALARA—the “as low as reasonably achievable” regulatory concept first introduced in 1971—below that threshold.

Noting that epidemiological studies “have consistently failed to demonstrate statistically significant health effects at doses below 10,000 mrem delivered at low dose rates,” the report also recommends “future consideration of increasing this limit to 10,000 mrem/year with appropriate cumulative-dose constraints.”

The United States has tight new deadlines—18 months, max—for licensing commercial reactor designs. The Department of Energy is marshaling the nuclear expertise and high-performance computing assets of its national laboratories, in partnership with private tech companies, to develop generative AI tools and large-scale simulations that could help get nuclear reactor designs through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing process—or the DOE’s own reactor pilot program. “Accelerate” and “streamline” are the verbs of choice in recent announcements from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory, as they describe plans with Atomic Canyon, Microsoft, and Amazon.