nuclear energy

Italy's parliament has approved legislation paving the way for a return to nuclear power, nearly four decades after Italians voted to abandon it following the Chernobyl disaster. The move is part of a broader push to secure low-carbon energy supplies, and it has reignited debate in Italy over safety, cost and the country's energy future.

Iran has put forward a seven-day plan that would reopen the Strait of Hormuz and see nuclear talks resume within a week, according to a report carried by Al Jazeera. The proposal ties freedom of navigation through the strategic waterway to a restart of diplomacy over Iran's nuclear programme. The Strait of Hormuz is a critical chokepoint for global oil shipments, so any move affecting it draws close attention from energy markets and world governments.

Donald Trump says he expects further talks between the United States and Iran to take place this week, with diplomacy between the two countries continuing. The comments point to ongoing efforts to reach an agreement despite long-standing tensions, and are being closely watched for their impact on regional stability and oil markets.

Italy's parliament has approved a law allowing the country to restart nuclear energy production, nearly four decades after a referendum banned it following the 1987 vote. The move marks a major shift in Italy's energy policy and opens the way for new nuclear projects. Reaction has focused on what it means for the country's energy supply and climate goals.

The Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to supply plutonium from dismantled Cold War-era nuclear warheads to companies that would convert the material into fuel for nuclear power plants. The proposal has generated debate and unease among nonproliferation experts and others who question the safety and wisdom of recycling weapons-grade material into commercial energy production.

Politico reports on a startup aiming to bring the approach popularized by SpaceX — rapid iteration, aggressive engineering timelines and heavy private funding — to the nuclear power industry. The piece examines how that playbook could shake up a sector long defined by slow, over-budget reactor projects, though no specific details about the company or its technology are available beyond the headline.

The US Navy's W93/Mk7 nuclear warhead program has moved into a new development phase. The W93 is intended as a future replacement warhead for the Navy's submarine-launched ballistic missile arsenal. The milestone signals continued progress in the Pentagon and Department of Energy's long-term effort to modernize the US nuclear weapons stockpile, a costly and politically sensitive undertaking.

Scientists are highlighting a proposal to use particle accelerators to transmute long-lived radioactive waste from nuclear energy, potentially reducing its hazardous lifespan from around 100,000 years to just a few centuries. The idea, known as accelerator-driven transmutation, is being discussed as a way to ease one of nuclear power's biggest drawbacks: the need to store spent fuel safely for many millennia.

The first commercial nuclear-powered satellite has been launched aboard a SpaceX mission, according to the American Nuclear Society's Nuclear Newswire. The milestone marks the first time a nuclear-powered spacecraft has flown on a commercial basis, combining private spaceflight with nuclear energy technology in orbit. Details about the satellite's operator, reactor design and mission goals remain limited in the available reporting.

The Albuquerque Journal takes readers inside Sandia National Laboratories' Z machine in New Mexico, the world's most powerful pulsed-power facility. Originally built to study materials under nuclear weapons conditions, the device is now central to research on fusion energy, exploring how the same physics that powers warheads could one day deliver clean, abundant power.

The National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ) is leading a study of neutrino scattering at the Large Hadron Collider. The work examines how neutrinos interact with matter at the highest collision energies available, a regime previously inaccessible to dedicated neutrino experiments. Researchers say the findings could sharpen understanding of the weak force and improve modelling of particle collisions at CERN's flagship accelerator.