DOE

The Department of Energy selected eight U.S. companies for $94 million in Tier 2 awards targeting site permitting and domestic supply chain gaps for Gen III+ small modular reactors.

At an April 16 House Appropriations hearing, Energy Secretary Chris Wright pledged that the first five to ten new planned US nuclear reactors will almost certainly receive financing from the DOE lending office, directing the agency's renamed loan authority toward first-of-a-kind projects.

Austin-based Aalo Atomics unveiled its completed Critical Test Reactor at Idaho National Laboratory on March 20, built in just 36 days, as the startup races to achieve criticality ahead of the DOE's July 4 deadline.

The US Department of Energy has opened a $1.9 billion funding round under its SPARK program to accelerate grid modernization by replacing aging transmission wires with advanced conductors, a strategy that can double line capacity at half the cost of building new infrastructure.

A DOE-backed proof-of-concept integrates cryogenic control chips directly into ion traps, potentially removing a key bottleneck blocking large-scale quantum computers.