Companies are racing to provide radioactive fuel for America's nuclear renaissance, and are powering debate along the way. Even as the government continues to oppose Iran's efforts to enrich uranium for power plants, projects to do just that are under way in the U.S.
The Middle East may now be entering the most precarious era of its history, with the sudden rush by Arabs, Iranians and Turks to master nuclear technology and one day unlock the secrets to the atomic bomb.
President Bush has decided to permit extensive U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia for the first time, administration officials said yesterday, reversing decades of bipartisan policy in a move that would be worth billions of dollars to Moscow but could provoke an uproar in Congress.
The Bush administration's plan to deploy a high-tech fuel to power a new generation of nuclear reactors worldwide has a potentially explosive problem: It is too easy for terrorists to grab and turn it into a nuclear bomb.
A classified report by nuclear experts concludes that the U.S. government does not fully understand the risks involved in allowing commercial nuclear facilities to store large quantities of radioactive spent fuel in pools of water.
The Bush Administration's policy towards Iran indicates an attempt to re-negotiate the terms of the non-proliferation treaty by denying certain states the right to develop their own nuclear power programs.
A portable nuclear reactor that can meet the energy needs of developing countries without the risk that they will use the by-products to make weapons is being developed by the US Department of Energy.
The U.S. Energy Department announced an overhaul of its program to retrieve weapons-grade uranium from foreign research reactors after an internal audit warned that much of the material was "out of U.S. control" and could be stolen by terrorists.
The successful "Megatons to Megawatts" program buys weapons-grade uranium extracted from Russian nuclear warheads and sells it to commercial nuclear power plant providers. Some officials have argued that the future success of the program will depend on the future of nuclear power.
The US has agreed to help India with its nuclear energy and space technology in return for India's promise to use the assistance for peaceful purposes and to help block the spread of dangerous weapons.