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Today, President Donald J. Trump took a series of executive actions to unleash nuclear energy in the U.S. as part of the administration’s effort to secure the energy future of America and unleash American energy dominance.Joining President Trump were some of the top leaders in nuclear energy:“We have some of the largest companies in the world — the hyper-scalers — who need this energy for AI, who are now working with us to fund the development and construction of the next-generation nuclear,” said Constellation Energy CEO Joseph Dominguez. “Nuclear is a 24/7 resource. These datacenters run 24/7. Some of them...

Home | Politics Tags: trump | nuclear | license Trump Seeks to Fast-Track Nuclear Licenses, Overhaul Regulatory Agency Trump Seeks to Fast-Track Nuclear Licenses, Overhaul Regulatory Agency (AP) Friday, 23 May 2025 02:57 PM EDT Comment| Print| A A President Donald Trump ordered the nation's independent nuclear regulatory commission to cut down on regulations and fast-track new licenses for reactors and power plants on Friday, seeking to shrink a multi-year process down to 18 months. The requirement was part of a batch of executive orders signed by Trump on Friday that aim to boost U.S. nuclear energy production amid a...

BALTIMORE -- Philip Berrigan, the former priest whose fight against the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons helped ignite a generation of anti-war dissent, has died of cancer. He was 79. Berrigan's family said he was diagnosed with cancer two months ago and decided to stop chemotherapy last month. He died Friday night at Jonah House, the communal residence for pacifists that he founded. His brother, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, officiated over last rites ceremonies Nov. 30, attended by friends and peace activists, family members said. Berrigan led the "Catonsville 9," a group that staged one of the most dramatic protests...

Workers at the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant construction site in the UK have reported a significant rat infestation, raising health and safety concerns. The rat problem is causing disruption to the major energy project and prompting calls for immediate action from trade unions to address the issue. ... The U.K. has ambitious nuclear power plans and is developing several small- and large-scale projects. While opposition, high costs, and other factors have slowed development in the past, EDF has been facing another problem at its Hinkley Point C construction – a rat infestation. In early April, the Unite and...

A new report from GlobalData, a data and analytics group, projects global nuclear power capacity will hit 494 GW by 2035. The group’s “Nuclear Power Market, Update 2025–Market Size, Segmentation, Major Trends, and Key Country Analysis to 2035” said capacity gains will be tied to advancements in deployments of small modular reactors (SMRs), along with the continuing worldwide shift to cleaner forms of energy. The report released April 21 said recent gains in nuclear power have been driven by moves toward more low-carbon baseload power. Measures promoting energy security, in addition to interest in decarbonization of industrial sectors, also is...

The Trump administration's drive to revive American manufacturing and power a growing artificial intelligence industry is accelerating with a new nuclear energy project in Texas, The Washington Times reported.A manufacturing facility in Texas is preparing to switch from natural gas to nuclear power as the Trump administration pushes to expand the use of small modular reactors, or SMRs, to meet rising electricity demand and bolster the U.S. manufacturing base.This week, Dow Chemical and nuclear engineering firm X-energy submitted a federal construction permit application for a next-generation SMR at Dow's 4,700-acre plant in Seadrift, Texas. The site produces plastics and chemical...

The atomic energy of betavoltaic batteries can power a variety of devices, from aerospace and robots to your future smartphone, for up to a century without recharging. ================================================================== In the world of batteries, duration is king. Whether nestled in the smallest wearable or providing back-up power for the electric grid, a battery that provides reliable energy for longer will always outlast the competition—figuratively and literally. The U.S. led the way in nuclear battery innovation over the past 70 years—and even developed the first battery that ran on nuclear radiation in the 1950s. But in the 21st century, China has become...

Plans are underway to create “Freedom Cities” — privately controlled corporate enclaves that would operate outside federal oversight — across the United States.According to Wired, a coalition of tech billionaires, venture capitalists, and corporate advocacy groups is drafting congressional legislation and meeting with the Trump administration to bring these experimental cities to U.S. soil.The outlets reports that these cities would be “free from certain federal laws,” allowing unregulated human longevity trials, nuclear reactor startups, and unrestricted infrastructure projects to move forward without government approval. As Wired puts it:The goal of these cities would be to have places where anti-aging clinical...

The stock market's response to emerging technologies can sometimes be as volatile as the innovations themselves. A recent example of this occurred on January 27, 2025, when a sharp sell-off hit the nuclear energy sector. This sudden downturn was triggered by news surrounding DeepSeek, a new artificial intelligence (AI) model touted for its potentially lower energy consumption compared to existing AI technologies. The market, seemingly fearing that a less power-hungry AI could diminish the need for energy production, reacted negatively, impacting companies across the energy sector. However, a closer examination suggests that this market dip represents a significant overreaction, obscuring...

A South Carolina utility wants to restart construction on a power plant that was mothballed eight years ago after running over budget and pushing an iconic American company into bankruptcy. Hoping to capitalize on the data center power boom, state-owned utility Santee Cooper is looking for partners to help finance and complete the two reactors at the Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Power Station, the Wall Street Journal reports. Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Power Station is a single reactor power plant. Santee Cooper was spearheading the construction of two new reactors, an expansion that began in 2008. The unfinished project was...

A lawsuit recently filed by Utah, Texas, and Last Energy (a microreactor company) is challenging a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rule requiring all nuclear power-producing entities—including those that do not generate enough electricity to turn on a lightbulb—to obtain an operating license from the commission before turning on. If successful, the lawsuit could diminish the federal government's role in the heavily regulated nuclear energy industry. The requirement, known as the Utilization Facility Rule, can be traced back to the McMahon Act of 1946. This law gave the government a monopoly on nuclear power by granting federal regulators licensing authority over...

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Constellation Energy has been awarded a record $1 billion in contracts to supply nuclear power to the U.S. government over the next decade, the company said on Thursday. Constellation, the country's largest operator of nuclear power plants, will deliver electricity to more than 13 federal agencies as part of the agreements with the U.S. General Services Administration. The deal is the biggest energy purchase in the history of the GSA....

Welcome to Germany’s green economic miracle. The year is 2025! Germany’s so-called Energiewende (transition to renewable energies) has had one unmistakable result: Germany now finds itself rapidly nearing the brink of a third world country where the power supply is no longer reliable and brownouts becoming more and more a daily routine. What’s happening is the opposite of what was once promised by the know-it-all climate wisemen: “Green energies would lead to a clean and prosperous country that would be the envy of the world. So much for their fantasies. The reality, as reported yesterday by Germany’s leading daily, Bild...

Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life is one of cinema’s most enduring classics, a sentimental yet profound exploration of how one person’s contributions ripple through a community. The story’s alternate timeline, where George Bailey never existed, paints a grim picture of what life would be like without his sacrifices. Inspired by this tale, let’s imagine an alternate reality of a different sort—a world where fossil fuels never existed. Could we, like George’s Bedford Falls, find ourselves in a global Pottersville? Let’s explore how the absence of fossil fuels might affect the very fabric of our lives, from economic systems to...

As tech companies reboot nuclear energy, the site of the famous meltdown represents both the industry’s demise and its rebirth.Jane Fonda isn't a nuclear expert, but she played one on TV. In the 1979 film The China Syndrome, Fonda portrayed Kimberly Wells, a vivacious news reporter who discovered a cover-up at a nuclear power plant. The conspiracy involved the possibility of a meltdown that could "render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable." The movie's timing and location were both impeccable. Twelve days after Fonda's film hit theaters, a reactor at Three Mile Island (TMI) in central Pennsylvania...

The Department of Energy’s estimated overall liability for failing to dispose of the country’s commercial spent nuclear fuel jumped as much as 10 percent this year, from a range of $34.1 billion to $41 billion in 2023 to a range of $37.6 billion to $44.5 billion in 2024, according to a financial audit of the DOE’s Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF) for fiscal year 2024. The estimated liability excludes $11.1 billion already paid out to nuclear power plant owners and utilities for the DOE’s breach of the standard contract for the disposal of spent fuel (10 CFR Part 961), which required...

The power needs of artificial intelligence and cloud computing are growing so large that individual data center campuses could soon use more electricity than some cities, and even entire U.S. states, according to companies developing the facilities. The electricity consumption of data centers has exploded along with their increasingly critical role in the economy in the past 10 years, housing servers that power the applications businesses and consumers rely on for daily tasks. Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, data centers are growing so large that finding enough power to drive them and enough suitable land to house them...

President-Elect Donald Trump enacted pro-nuclear policies during his first term and has supported an “all-of-the-above” energy policy during the campaign. At a campaign rally in Michigan on Aug. 29, he stated, “Starting on day one, I will approve new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new power plants, new reactors and we will slash the red tape. We will get the job done.”This is exactly the posture needed to meet energy power demands — especially on the national security front, where the threats to energy infrastructure are all too real. We worked with our colleagues at the Pentagon, the Department of...

The U.S. nuclear energy sector’s dependence on Russian uranium created during a failed Obama-era reset with Moscow is coming back to bite Americans as the Kremlin moves to block future exports of the vital fuel. Vladimir Putin’s new restrictions on uranium exports to the U.S., announced last week, come as the country’s war in Ukraine continues to heighten tensions with the United States and the West. His announcement created an immediate impact, as uranium prices soared and worries grew that American utilities might have trouble meeting electric demand next year. It's the latest fallout from a series of foreign policy...

Google announced a deal on Monday to purchase energy from small nuclear reactors that the startup Kairos Power plans to start bringing online in the U.S. by 2030. Why it matters: It's Google's first nuclear foray as the tech giant — and its peers — hunt for zero-carbon power to fuel energy-thirsty AI data centers. Google says it's the world's first corporate agreement to buy power from multiple small modular reactors. Driving the news: If successful, it will bring 500 new megawatts of power to U.S. grids, with the first SMR targeted to come online by 2030 and more through...