Westinghouse Electric Company has announced its intention to invest in nuclear technologies in Poland, following a meeting in Warsaw between Westinghouse CEO Patrick Fragman and Polish Secretary of State for Strategic Energy Infrastructure Piotr Naimski.

The US National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has called for urgent investment by the government and private sector to enable a pilot fusion plant to be operational in the 2035-2040 timeframe.

While the UK remains committed to making the Iran nuclear deal a success, Tehran must stop all activity that breaches the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and come back into compliance, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during their telephone call yesterday. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly said the Biden Administration is unwilling to compromise further on efforts to encourage Tehran to hold talks with the USA.

The US Department of Energy has awarded BWXT Nuclear Operations Group two contracts worth a total of USD35 million. The first is for the recovery and conversion of uranium, while the second is for the completion of a new research reactor fuel line at its Lynchburg, Virginia facility.

Becoming a more modern, risk-informed regulator remains a key goal of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, its chairman Christopher Hanson said during his opening address to the regulator's 33rd Regulatory Information Conference. Hanson, who was sworn in as a commissioner in June 2020, was designated chairman of the NRC by President Joe Biden in January this year.

The diplomatic notes Poland and the USA exchanged last year on cooperation in the development of Poland's civil nuclear power programme have officially entered into force, Poland's Secretary of State for Strategic Energy Infrastructure Piotr Naimski told the TOK FM radio station yesterday. This means the USA now has 18 months to prepare both a technology and a financing offer to build nuclear power plants in Poland, he said.

X-energy has signed the cooperation agreement which officially begins its participation in the US Department of Energy's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, a project the company says will enable it to build a commercial scale advanced nuclear reactor with Energy Northwest in Washington state.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, says "the time is not ripe" for an unofficial meeting proposed by Josep Borrell, EU foreign affairs chief and coordinator of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. His statement follows Iran's commencement last week of restrictions on some site inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Jennifer Granholm has been sworn as the 16th US secretary of energy. The former governor of Michigan said the US Department of Energy has the solutions to tackle the climate emergency and the tools to put America on an "irreversible path" to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Exelon Corporation plans to separate its regulated utility and competitive energy businesses into two publicly traded companies, creating the USA's biggest fully regulated transmission and distribution utility, as well as its largest carbon-free power producer.

Virginia's nuclear industry will focus on four key areas of advanced generation technologies, economic development, workforce education, and research and development in order to help meet its carbon-free goals, according to a newly released strategic plan which has been drawn up at the direction of the Virginia government.

Days after terminating a three-year investigation into the resilience of the USA's bulk power system, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has announced it will examine the threats to electric reliability posed by extreme weather and climate change. It is also investigating US wholesale natural gas and electricity market activity during last week's extreme cold weather to determine whether any market participants engaged in market manipulation or other violations.