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Appears in 29 stories · Last updated Nov 1, 2026
Underwriting the demand side of the enrichment rebuild
Centrus shipped its first new centrifuge from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to Piketon, Ohio, on Thursday, October 29. It is the first new machine from the Oak Ridge plant since production restarted in December 2025, and the company beat its own year-end target. The machines will be grouped into cascades, which are linked sets of centrifuges that enrich uranium.
Updated Nov 1
Ordered to restore 18 awards so far and still defending the rest in court
A federal judge ordered the Energy Department to restore $82.1 million in clean energy grants it cancelled in October 2025, ruling the cuts violated the Fifth Amendment's equal protection guarantee by singling out grantees in states that voted for Kamala Harris. A year on, most of the money is still frozen: about 61% of the 321 cancelled awards remain in disputes with the agency, and projects the department said it would keep have received almost nothing.
Updated Oct 28
Designated helium as a critical material
The Energy Department designated helium a critical material on October 23, a step that opens federal financing to domestic producers and puts supply under closer government watch. It lands in what consultant Phil Kornbluth calls "shortage 5.0," the fifth helium crunch in recent memory.
Funder of the research grant
The Department of Energy gave a University of Utah-led consortium $7.5 million to hunt for rare earth elements in places miners usually skip: coal seams, mine waste and ash piles. Those metals go into electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and missile guidance systems.
Updated Oct 25
Primary regulator for Reactor Pilot Program
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission finalized a rule on October 22 that lets reactor applicants reuse analyses and test data from projects already authorized by the Energy or Defense departments. The agency targets about 18 months for a first-of-a-kind review and 12 months for later applications.
Updated Oct 23
Running the final 40-million-barrel exchange and a new 4-million-barrel hurricane exchange
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve held 282.7 million barrels on October 16, the lowest since 1982 and 30.8 percent below a year earlier, according to Energy Information Administration data. It has lost about a third of its volume since the March release began.
Updated Oct 22
Applications closed October 19; awardees not yet announced
The Department of Energy's $215 million contest to build a quantum computer reliable enough for real science closed to applications on October 19. The agency has not said which companies it will fund.
Updated Oct 21
Running the SPARK program; selected Three Corners Connector for funding negotiations
The U.S. Department of Energy selected the Three Corners Connector, a 300-mile high-voltage direct current (HVDC) power line between Oklahoma and Colorado, to negotiate for up to $250 million in federal money. Oklahoma regulators approved the state's portion in July. In Colorado, a Pueblo County land-use review has drawn questions from property owners along the proposed route.
Updated Oct 20
Funder of the SPARK program and Indiana grant
Indiana has won $175 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to widen a bottleneck where the Midcontinent Independent System Operator's grid meets PJM Interconnection. Officials announced the award at the Statehouse in Indianapolis on September 24.
Updated Oct 19
Provided $275 million in financing for Hermes 2
Kairos Power raised $643 million for its Hermes 2 reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee: $368 million from private investors including Google Ventures, DCVC and Samsung C&T, and $275 million from the US Department of Energy. Bloomberg reported the total in October 2026, quoting chief executive Mike Laufer. Kairos has not issued its own release on the round.
Has until December 10 to seek Supreme Court review of the D.C. Circuit's coal-plant ruling; continues to issue emergency orders.
On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14156, declaring a national energy emergency and saying the country faced a 'precariously inadequate and intermittent energy supply.' Federal data shows the opposite: oil and gas production are at record highs.
Updated Oct 17
Coordinating domestic nuclear fuel supply chain expansion through enrichment contracts, a new DPA consortium, and a firm 2028 waiver deadline
For decades, the U.S. outsourced its nuclear fuel supply to Russia. A May 2024 ban on Russian enriched uranium set a hard deadline: all waivers allowing continued imports expire January 1, 2028. In between, the country has been rebuilding the enrichment and fuel fabrication capacity it let slip away.
Updated Oct 16
As of October 2026: Partnering with DeepMind on Genesis AI-for-science platform
Science magazine named large language models doing frontier science a runner-up breakthrough of 2025. Within weeks, the prediction became reality: OpenAI's GPT-5.2 solved previously unsolved Erdős mathematics problems in 15 minutes, achieving 40% accuracy on expert-level mathematics that stumped earlier systems.
Updated Oct 10
As of October 2026: Approved the grant scope change from hydrogen-ready steel to coal furnace upgrade
The Department of Energy redirected a $500 million clean-steel grant into a coal blast furnace upgrade at Cleveland-Cliffs' Middletown Works in Ohio. The move drops a hydrogen-ready steelmaking plan that would have cut annual emissions by roughly a million tons.
Updated Oct 8
As of September 2026: Cancelled nearly $8 billion in clean energy grants
Since January 2025, companies and the federal government have cancelled or downsized 216 large-scale clean energy projects across the US. The abandoned projects represent $68.2 billion in capital investment and 468,000 jobs that are no longer supported, according to analysis by BW Research for the clean energy group E2.
Updated Sep 26
As of September 2026: Administers the SPARK program
America's transmission grid is aging, and new power lines can take a decade to permit. On Sept. 24, the Department of Energy picked a faster route: 31 projects that upgrade existing lines, backed by $1.9 billion in federal money.
Updated Sep 25
As of September 2026: Issued the emergency order; lost this case on appeal
A federal appeals court canceled the Department of Energy's order forcing an aging Michigan coal plant to keep running. The unanimous decision said the agency used an emergency power meant for short-term crises to override a retirement plan approved by the plant's owner, Michigan regulators, and the regional grid operator.
Updated Sep 14
As of September 2026: Canceled 321 awards October 2025; restored LuxWall via cost-share agreement
LuxWall's Detroit glass factory was on track to open in late 2026. In October 2025, the Department of Energy terminated the $31.7 million federal grant behind it. Nine months of appeals and political pressure later, the agency confirmed it will keep funding the project under a negotiated cost-share agreement.
Updated Sep 10
As of August 2026: Primary funder of PacWave South
The first wave energy test site connected to the continental US electric grid opened off Oregon's coast this week. PacWave South took a decade to permit and build, backed by nearly $150 million in federal investment.
Updated Aug 27
As of August 2026: Sets national hydrogen cost targets
For a decade, hydrogen made from renewable power has cost far more than the hydrogen refineries pull from natural gas. In January 2026, researchers in China and Singapore built a solar-powered device that skips one of the two normal products of splitting water. Instead of making oxygen, it oxidizes sugar from crop waste, producing hydrogen plus formate, a chemical that sells, and that side income cuts the cost to $1.54 a kilogram.
Updated Aug 21
As of July 2026: Owns the land; signed a roughly 785-acre lease for the campus in July 2026
A coalition led by Brookfield and NextEra Energy is turning part of the former Paducah uranium plant into an AI computing campus with its own gas plants and batteries. The Department of Energy signed a lease for about 785 acres at the site in July 2026, and the campus is slated for full build-out by 2032.
Updated Jul 29
As of July 2026: Issued and now enforces the rule
Companies and universities that take Energy Department money now face a much bigger in-house fraud penalty. On July 13, 2026, a DOE rule raised the cap on administrative false-claims cases from $150,000 to $1 million per claim.
Updated Jul 13
As of June 2026: Initiated the directive
For decades, the cost of upgrading the power grid was spread across everyone's electric bill. On June 18, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) acted on a rule that could put much of that cost on the data centers that trigger it.
Updated Jun 18
As of May 2026: Federal projection authority for VPP capacity
For most of the twentieth century the U.S. power grid moved electricity in one direction: from large central plants to homes and businesses. A Pew Charitable Trusts report released April 28 documents how twelve states and Puerto Rico have now written rules letting aggregated rooftops, batteries, water heaters, and thermostats be dispatched together as a single power plant. The category is called a virtual power plant, or VPP, and for the first time, it's moving from utility pilots into mainstream state regulation.
Updated May 31
As of May 2026: Authorizes LNG exports to non-free-trade-agreement countries
When Cheniere Energy shipped America's first LNG cargo from Louisiana in February 2016, the U.S. was a net gas importer. A decade later, the country leads the world in LNG exports, with capacity set to more than double by 2029.
Updated May 27
As of May 2026: Issuing emergency orders to keep fossil plants online
Between 1977 and 2000, the Energy Secretary used Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act exactly zero times; since May 2025, it has been invoked more than 40 times. On May 22, Secretary Chris Wright added another, directing Talen Energy to run a 54-year-old oil-fired unit outside Baltimore beyond its environmental run cap from now through August 19.
Updated May 22
As of May 2026: Leading domestic nuclear fuel supply chain rebuilding
The United States performed less than 1% of global uranium enrichment when the Department of Energy announced $2.7 billion in contracts to three companies on January 21, 2026. Russia controls 44% of global enrichment capacity and supplied roughly a quarter of American reactor fuel until Congress banned imports in 2024. The last U.S.-owned enrichment facility shut down in 2013.
As of May 2026: Lead agency for Genesis Mission
The White House mobilized America's 17 national laboratories and major tech companies—OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA. The Genesis Mission aims to double US research productivity in a decade by connecting supercomputers, quantum systems, and AI into one discovery platform. Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced 24 corporate partners at a January 11 summit.
Updated May 20
As of May 2026: Opening federal land for nuclear-powered AI data centers
Alphabet just paid $4.75 billion for a power company, securing 10.8 gigawatts of capacity—enough to power 8 million homes. Tech giants spent 2024 locking down nuclear reactors and signing multibillion-dollar energy deals because there's not enough electricity for AI.
Updated May 16
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