The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has made significant progress in recent years to update the regulations to adapt to the incoming wave of new reactor designs from small modular reactors and microreactors to advanced reactor designs. There are new licensing frameworks being developed to enable the licensing of new reactors to meet demand needs

As the US Government moves to support nuclear fission and fusion strongly, new public-private partnerships agreements have been made that reflect performance-based, fixed-price milestone contracts. Initially demonstrated with significant success in the space industry between NASA and SpaceX, these milestones based contracts can enable significant advancements in nuclear reactor demonstration projects as well as nuclear

Nuclear energy has gained unprecedented international focus. The conversation around nuclear has changed fundamentally towards finding pathways to enable nuclear. Previously, conversations were still centered around whether nuclear would be the right technology choice for the energy needs of the future, but it has largely been accepted now that nuclear will be a significant key

Nuclear power contributes significantly to a country’s national security, economic security, energy security, as well as geopolitical influence. The US has identified nuclear as a key technology solution to meeting security and geopolitical goals, but in the last decade, the US has slowly lost its leadership to nuclear supplier countries such as Russia and China

In the coming decades, HALEU fuel will be required for the new generation of reactor designs that are currently in development. However, the anticipated cost of HALEU for advanced reactors will be 4-5x the cost of current LEU price, suggesting that HALEU costs will be significant. Recycling, particularly pyroprocessing, is a technology that could offer

Currently there are challenges to developing energy security in the US from a fuel security perspective as there is a higher demand than available capacity. Russia had previously dominated the global market from its large available capacity relative to its small demand, but without the Russian supply, supply challenges will remain. In order to ensure