Wrap Up: DOE kicks of pilot program; NEA tracks SMRs, Lawmaker defends GAO; Rocky Flats doc plays this weekend

The Department of Energy has announced a new pilot program to strengthen the U.S. supply chains for nuclear fuel and support the expedition of the development of new advanced reactors.

The initiative is intended to reduce the country’s reliance on foreign sources of enriched uranium and critical materials, while allowing the private sector to invest into the U.S. nuclear resurgence, according to DOE’s Wednesday press release.

DOE has issued a Request for Application and is seeking U.S. companies to develop and operate nuclear fuel production lines exercising DOE’s authorization process. The applications are due by Aug. 15 and early submittals will be accepted.

The Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), a branch of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), used an online webinar and press conference to show off its new digital dashboard for tracking small modular reactors (SMRs).

Internationally, NEA is tracking more than 120 SMR projects and at least 74 of these are “not simply on the drawing board, not simply concepts” in a lab but under development, said NEA Director-General William Magwood, IV.

Those figures reflect the situation as of mid-February, said Diane Cameron, NEA’s head of nuclear technology development. The 74 under active development are not mere “paper reactors,” Cameron said. The NEA interactive dashboard is being updated  regularly with details on the project’s technology, location, licensing and financing, Cameron said. The development pipeline is steadily growing.

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) used a House Armed Services Committee hearing on a must-pass national defense policy bill Tuesday to bemoan proposed cuts to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) budget.

The House Appropriations Committee last month advanced a fiscal 2026 funding bill that could cut GAO’s appropriation by nearly half. This is bad news for Congressional efforts to monitor the Department of Defense and related agencies, Garamendi said during a Tuesday amendment session on the House Armed Services Committee’s fiscal 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

“I cannot commend the General Accounting Office enough for the work they have done to keep the department honest,” Garamendi said. 

A documentary about the old Rocky Flats Plant, which made plutonium triggers for the Department of Energy, will be screened Saturday July 19 at the Boulder Film Festival in Colorado.

“Half-Life of Memory: America’s Forgotten Atomic Bomb Factory,” will be screened at 4:30 p.m. Mountain Time at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder.

Rocky Flats operated from the 1950s through the 1980s. In 1989, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Environmental Protection Agency raided the facility, following a government probe. DOE declared the site cleaned up in 2005. A website about the documentary can be found here.