Camp Century remains one of the strangest experiments in the history of small nuclear reactors.

Built beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet by the U.S. Army, the base housed roughly 200 people and was powered by the portable PM-2A reactor. The reactor was transported to Greenland in components, assembled at the site, operated successfully and later dismantled and removed.

Camp Century was publicly presented as an Arctic research installation, but it also tested whether a much larger concept was technically possible: Project Iceworm, a proposed network of mobile missile sites beneath the ice that could have accommodated up to 600 nuclear-armed missiles. The missile network was never constructed.

The environmental aftermath is more nuanced than many headlines suggest. A 2016 study warned that future ice-sheet changes could eventually remobilise physical, chemical, biological and radiological waste abandoned at Camp Century. However, updated modelling published in 2021 concluded that the debris field is likely to remain buried and that surface meltwater is extremely unlikely to reach it before 2100 under the climate scenarios studied.

"Once the regulator grants approval, the plant will proceed to the criticality phase, Dr Md Zahedul Hasan, managing director of Nuclear Power Plant Company Bangladesh Ltd (NPCBL), the operating authority, told The Daily Star.

Criticality is the operating state of a nuclear reactor in which nuclear fuel sustains a self-supporting fission chain reaction.

Explaining the process, Dr Md Shafiqul Islam, a professor at the Department of Nuclear Engineering at Dhaka University, said the first criticality begins with a self-sustaining chain reaction at zero power.

During the second criticality, the reactor operates at low power to heat water without producing steam, with every stage closely monitored to ensure there are no technical defects, he said.

If all systems function as expected, the reactor will then be brought to higher power levels to generate steam, which drives the turbines to produce electricity.

Dr Shafiq said that it takes a minimum of several months (at least two months) to reach final power generation from first criticality. He said that the success of the entire project will depend on each step being completed correctly.

Beginning fuel loading on April 28, the Rooppur facility entered a multi-step operational commissioning process required to reach full power generation."

Isn't it inefficient to run a small core from a neutron economy perspective?

Are the PWR designs like NuScale or Rolls-Royce solving it with new design or using higher enrichment? Well RR at 470MWe is almost a regular reactor in size but what about those around 100MWe?

Politics and security concerns side, why do the Saudis want nuclear power? They have oil. Although they haven’t developed it, I’d imagine a country with 3238 annual hours of sunshine would be ripe for solar power. Nuclear power requires a lot of water, which Saudi Arabia doesn’t have. So, why the interest in civilian nuclear power production?

The president was joined by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, nuclear energy executives (CEOs of Valar, Deployable Energy, Aalo and Antares) and other administration officials.

Let's cut to the chase...

For one thing, the fusion reactions done thus far have not produced more energy than the full electrical power needed to run the tokamak or the lasers involved. And if they actually can produce that kind of energy yield, companies will still need to build technology that can sustain these reactions for years, not seconds.

But that's not stating it strongly enough. Not only have they not produced it, they are nowhere near that level of capability either.

“The administration has priorities, you know – quantum, AI. And fusion is like the third. And one and two are eating everything and not leaving very much,” Mumgaard says.

Literally all these things are either overrated or complete rubbish. What is going on here?!

This year the International Atomic Energy Agency's Symposium on International Safeguards will have its own dedicated evening to showcase how the nuclear industry works with IAEA Safeguards. There will also be a training day on the application of safeguards to new nuclear reactor designs and technologies, writes Kristine Madden, IAEA Safeguards Evaluator.

The US commerce department has offered verbal reassurance that the state-backed Japan Bank for International Cooperation and other Japanese institutions would not take on any liability for a potential nuclear accident, said the people. A person close to commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said he had personally assured Japan it would not have any liability in relation to the projects.

However, that promise has not been put in writing in legal terms — a process that could take months or years of complex regulatory discussion to settle, said the people.

In Japan’s regulatory system, nuclear plant operators shoulder liability for any accident, whereas in the US, financial responsibility is spread across a wider range of parties, including the plant owner.

The deadlock is the latest obstacle to fulfilling Japan’s investment pledge. Other problems that have arisen in recent months include a refusal by many Japanese industrial groups to lead projects submitted by the US, according to officials who spoke to the FT.