Sonal Patel is a national award-winning multimedia journalist and senior editor at POWER magazine with nearly two decades of experience delivering technically rigorous reporting across power generation, transmission, distribution, policy, and infrastructure worldwide.
POWER Magazine Jobs White Papers Webinars Events Store April 30, 2026 PJM’s First Reformed Queue Cycle Draws 811 Projects, 220 GW PJM Interconnection’s first interconnection “cycle” under its revamped, clustered review process has attracted 811 new generation projects representing roughly 220 GW of nameplate capacity. The effort now moves to […]
PJM Interconnection’s first interconnection “cycle” under its revamped, clustered review process has attracted 811 new generation projects representing roughly 220 GW of nameplate capacity. The effort now moves to a validation phase, under which the grid operator will confirm that applicants have met baseline technical and financial requirements—including site control and readiness commitments—before advancing qualified […]
Two days after naming its first four participants, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) on April 29 issued a request for applications (RFA) for its Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, formally opening the program to a broader pool of advanced nuclear developers and setting a July 8, 2026, deadline for initial […]
The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Nuclear Energy and the National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) have announced the first four developers selected for the freshly launched Nuclear Energy Launch Pad—a restructured deployment-support initiative that succeeds the DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program and broadens federal assistance to cover the full nuclear […]
POWER Magazine Jobs White Papers Webinars Events Store April 23, 2026 Duke Energy’s Robinson Nuclear Plant Gets NRC Approval to Operate Until 2050 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has approved a subsequent license renewal (SLR) for Duke Energy’s Robinson Nuclear Plant, clearing the 54-year-old reactor to continue generating electricity in […]
TerraPower’s Natrium reactor at Kemmerer, Wyoming, reached official construction start on April 23, 2026. Here’s a full timeline from ARDP selection to construction start. TerraPower on April 23, 2026, officially started construction on Kemmerer Unit 1, its flagship Natrium sodium-cooled fast reactor plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming—a milestone that marks the most consequential step yet in […]
The Air Force’s ANPI program has tapped Radiant, Antares, and Westinghouse to develop first‑of‑a‑kind nuclear microreactors at Buckley, Malmstrom, and Joint Base San Antonio, with initial deployments targeted as early as 2028. The Department of the Air Force (DAF) has named three microreactor vendors—Radiant Industries, Westinghouse Government Services, and Antares Nuclear—to develop and operate contractor-owned […]
A catastrophic boiler explosion at Vedanta Limited’s Chhattisgarh Thermal Power Plant (VLCTPP) in east‑central India has left scores of workers dead and injured, prompting questions over boiler safety enforcement and operator oversight at privately owned coal plants in the country. The explosion, which occurred on April 14, has triggered parallel criminal, technical, and administrative investigations […]
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has set a June 2026 deadline to act in a high-stakes rulemaking that could redefine how massive new power users—including AI-driven data centers—connect to the U.S. interstate transmission system. In an April 16 order in its “Interconnection of Large Loads to the Interstate Transmission System” docket (RM26-4-000), the commission […]
The White House has launched a coordinated federal initiative to deploy nuclear reactors in space, directing NASA and the Department of War (DOW) to run parallel design competitions for fission systems that could power lunar bases and in-space missions by the end of the decade, and tasking the Department of Energy (DOE) to support fuel […]
BWX Technologies (BWXT) has formally notified the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of its intent to seek a uranium enrichment license for a new production facility in Erwin, Tennessee, as a concrete step toward restoring a domestic supply of highly enriched uranium (HEU) for naval nuclear propulsion. The Erwin facility will be a centerpiece of […]
Westinghouse has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to renew and update the design certification for its AP1000 reactor, formally proposing Vogtle Unit 4’s as‑built configuration as the new standard reference plant for future AP1000 projects in the U.S. If accepted and docketed, the submittal—Revision 20 of the AP1000 Design Control Document (DCD)—would establish “a […]
A new think tank assessment argues that economics, proliferation concerns, and waste management barriers have shifted enough to make commercial nuclear fuel recycling viable in the U.S.—but only if Washington acts before the window closes. A think tank has warned the Trump administration that it has a narrow window to make the U.S. the first […]
POWER Magazine Jobs White Papers Webinars Events Store April 2, 2026 Exclusive: Texas Opens $350M Advanced Nuclear Grant Programs to Spur Reactor Buildout, Supply Chain The State of Texas has opened applications for $350 million in advanced nuclear grants through the Texas Advanced Nuclear Development Fund (TANDF), making the nation’s […]
Since May 2025, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has issued more than 40 emergency orders and extensions under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act—more than in any comparable period in the past two decades. The orders have fallen into two broad categories: retirement deferrals, which compel utilities and grid operators to keep specific generating […]
The State of Texas has opened applications for $350 million in advanced nuclear grants through the Texas Advanced Nuclear Development Fund (TANDF), making the nation’s largest state‑level nuclear package competitive for the first time across two programs aimed at reactor construction and supply chain development. In an exclusive interview with POWER, Texas Advanced Nuclear Energy […]
A once-predictable industry is moving at hyperscale speed. Here are five trends defining the biggest gas power buildout in a generation. Natural gas power is in the middle of its biggest buildout in a
European electricity infrastructure has become a target of sustained hybrid warfare, and a new report from Eurelectric, the region’s power sector trade group, finds that most of the continent’s utilities
Hatch and Hydrostor Partner to Deliver World’s Largest Advanced Compressed Air Energy Storage Project. Global engineering firm Hatch and long-duration energy storage (LDES) developer Hydrostor announced Feb
A new Texas-based startup has launched an effort to build what would be the first U.S. uranium conversion facility in more than seven decades to restore a domestic capability it says has become “an unacceptable chokepoint” in America’s nuclear fuel supply chain. FluxPoint Energy made its public debut this week at CERAWeek by S&P Global, […]
POWER Magazine Jobs White Papers Webinars Events Store March 19, 2026 Constellation to Sell 4.4 GW of PJM Gas Power Assets to LS Power for $5B in Regulatory Divestiture Competitive generation giant Constellation Energy has agreed to sell approximately 4.4 GW of natural gas–fired generation capacity in PJM Interconnection to […]
Competitive generation giant Constellation Energy has agreed to sell approximately 4.4 GW of natural gas–fired generation capacity in PJM Interconnection to LS Power Equity Advisors for $5 billion, marking the largest single tranche of divestitures required to resolve antitrust and market-power concerns arising from Constellation’s $26.6 billion acquisition of Calpine Corporation. The deal, announced on […]
GE Vernova and Japanese integrated heavy industry group IHI Corp. have demonstrated for the first time that full-scale combustor components for GE Vernova’s F-class gas turbines can operate on 100% ammonia at full-load conditions, clearing a critical technical barrier in their joint effort to decarbonize dispatchable power. The test was conducted at IHI’s Large-Scale Combustion […]
POWER Magazine Jobs White Papers Webinars Events Store March 12, 2026 DOE Unveils Initiative to Add 5 GW of Nuclear Capacity Through Uprates and Restarts The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has launched a new initiative to increase nuclear generating capacity—targeting 2.5 GW of additional nuclear capacity by 2027 and […]
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has launched a new initiative to increase U.S. nuclear generating capacity—targeting 2.5 GW of additional nuclear capacity by 2027 and 5 GW by 2029—by expanding output from operating reactors, restarting dormant facilities, and extending the lifespans of plants already on the grid. The Utility Power Reactor Incremental Scaling Effort—UPRISE—unveiled […]
POWER Magazine Jobs White Papers Webinars Events Store March 5, 2026 Cuba Suffers Widespread Power Outage After Guiteras Plant Failure: Timeline of the National Grid Restoration On March 4, the Cuban Electric Union (UNE) reported, through its official account on the social network X, that at 12:35 pm a partial […]
Seven of the nation’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) companies and hyperscalers signed a White House-brokered agreement March 4 committing to build, procure, or fund new generation capacity sufficient to cover the electricity demands of their data centers—and to pay for all grid infrastructure upgrades required to connect them, without passing those costs to residential or […]
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on March 4 authorized staff to issue a construction permit for TerraPower’s Kemmerer Power Station Unit 1 in Kemmerer, Wyoming—the first commercial reactor the agency has approved for construction in nearly a decade, and the first approval for a commercial non–light water reactor design in more than 40 years. The […]
A private equity–led consortium has agreed to take AES Corp. private in a $33.4 billion deal that—if completed—will shift one of the largest U.S.-listed power companies and a major data‑center renewables supplier into private ownership. AES’s board says the move, which comes as load growth and capital needs are rising across the sector, is designed […]
Major power outage events in 2025 reveal a broad spectrum of reliability risks, spanning voltage instability and protection failures to extreme weather and heat-related transmission stress. Compared with recent years, which were largely characterized by weather-driven disruptions and resource-adequacy events, 2025 incidents more clearly highlight vulnerabilities in interconnected system operations, including voltage management, reactive power […]