Uranium & Nuclear Energy Corner
Wednesday, 2026-09-16 · covering the last 24h
Upstream — mining & supply
No material supply-side news broke this window — no fresh production guidance, restarts, disruptions or country-policy moves distinct from what prior editions have already covered.
Midstream — conversion, enrichment & fuel
Nusano's metallic-feedstock HALEU line picked for DOE's Nuclear Energy Launch Pad. Idaho National Laboratory's National Reactor Innovation Center selected Nusano, a Utah-based physics company, to advance its direct-metallization HALEU production platform through the Launch Pad program, giving it access to DOE authorization pathways, national-lab expertise and project support. Nusano's process converts uranium to metal before enrichment rather than to uranium hexafluoride gas, which it says lets a single 1,200-sq-ft unit produce HALEU in one enrichment pass without fluorine chemistry; the company targets 5.9 tonnes of HALEU per unit annually, with a first unit targeted for 2031 — one more entrant in the push to build a domestic HALEU supply chain for advanced reactors. Nusano release · INL/NRIC release
Nuclear energy — reactors, industry & demand
Westinghouse's eVinci microreactor sets a criticality-test temperature record. Testing at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center in Nevada on 3 September reached zero-power criticality at 663°C and took a subcritical reactivity measurement at a peak core temperature of 1,011°C, the highest ever recorded for that type of measurement at the facility; Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Nevada National Security Site supported the work. The data lets Westinghouse check its reactor models against real high-temperature behaviour as the microreactor design moves toward deployment. Westinghouse release · World Nuclear News
UK regulators open Generic Design Assessment of X-energy's Xe-100. The UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero directed the Office for Nuclear Regulation, Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales to begin a roughly three-year GDA of the Xe-100 high-temperature gas-cooled SMR, following Centrica and X-energy's UK submission; the review is expected to draw on collaboration already under way between UK regulators and the US NRC on the design. It's another Western HTGR design entering formal licensing outside the US, alongside Centrica's own domestic deployment ambitions. Centrica/X-energy release · World Nuclear News
NRC clears early excavation work at Holtec's Palisades SMR site. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted Holtec an exemption allowing installation of permanent support-of-excavation and cutoff-wall systems for the proposed Pioneer Units 1 and 2 small modular reactors at the Palisades site in Michigan, ahead of a full Limited Work Authorization; the walls will stabilise excavations and manage groundwater during site preparation. It's an incremental but concrete step toward construction at one of the more advanced US SMR projects. Holtec release · World Nuclear News
The Chatter
Otherwise quiet: this window's usual line-up (FNArena's Uranium Week, Neutron Bytes) had already run in Monday and Tuesday's editions, and nothing else turned up a distinct, freely accessible independent argument on the sector by press time.
Informational only — summaries of public sources and third-party commentary; not investment advice.