The World Bank’s board has agreed to end its ban on funding nuclear energy projects in developing countries to meet electricity needs, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
The change in position was outlined in an email from World Bank president Ajay Banga to staff after his meeting with the board on Tuesday, Reuters reported.
The World Bank previously banned funding for nuclear projects in 2013. The only time when the World Bank financed a nuclear project was for the Garigliano nuclear plant in Italy in 1959.
Fuse recently announced the addition of several new advisory board members to oversee the company’s mission to perform radiation effects tests and commercialize fusion energy.
The nuclear fusion-based company has added former retired U.S. Strategic Command commander Admiral Charles Richard, former deputy director of the National Security Agency Bill Crowell, former Secretary of the Army Greg Dahlberg and former Department of Justice deputy associate Attorney General Amy Kurren.
Radiant has appointed former Assistant Secretary of Donald Trump’s first term Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy Rita Baranwal as its first-ever chief nuclear officer on June 3.
Baranwal recently served in two executive roles at Westinghouse. She served as senior vice president of Westinghouse’s AP300 Small Modular Reactor program and previously served as its chief technology officer.
The El Segundo, Calif. based nuclear startup company adds Baranwal to its executive team subsequently after it closed off a $165 million Series C funding round on May 28 and was selected by the Department of Energy to receive nuclear fuel for its Kaleidos microreactor first test on April 10.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was thrown to the ground and handcuffed by FBI personnel after being forcibly removed from a press conference Thursday in Los Angeles with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
In a video shared across platform X by many lawmakers, including by former vice president Kamala Harris, Padilla introduces himself and says “I have questions for the Secretary” before being pushed out by people in plain clothes before the FBI takes over. Noem was in Los Angeles among demonstrations against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Southern California.
“I just saw something that sickened my stomach,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor Thursday. “The manhandling of a United States Senator, we need immediate answers to what the hell went on.” Padilla himself, in a statement on X, said “if that’s what they do to a United States Senator with a question, imagine what they can do to any American that dares to speak up. We will hold this administration accountable.”
