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Final vacuum vessel sector arrives at the ITER site
France Nuclear power
Europe has completed and delivered its fifth and final vacuum vessel sector for ITER, marking the end of a 16-year manufacturing programme involving Fusion for Energy (F4E), Ansaldo Nucleare, Westinghouse Electric Company and Walter Tosto. The component was manufactured at Westinghouse’s facility in Monfalcone, Italy, before being transported by DAHER to the ITER site at Cadarache, France. F4E said it is the last large ITER component to be delivered to the site.
The vacuum vessel will contain the fusion plasma inside ITER, providing a controlled environment while superconducting magnets generate the fields needed to keep the plasma away from the vessel walls. The complete vessel will comprise nine sectors, with Europe supplying five and South Korea four. Once assembled, it will measure 19.4 metres across, stand 11.4 metres high and weigh about 5200 tonnes. The sectors were produced in sections at facilities in Monfalcone and Chieti before assembly and welding. Each completed sector was then transported by sea and land to Cadarache. The components also underwent detailed inspections to meet requirements set by France’s nuclear safety authority.
Sector 2 during final machining at the Westinghouse workshop in Monfalcone. Image credit: F4E
F4E said all five European sectors were delivered during the past two years, supported by detailed project planning and manufacturing controls. Artificial intelligence was also used to cross-check data collected by technical teams at production facilities.
Luca Oriani, president of New Plant Delivery at Westinghouse, said the delivery was “a significant achievement” and that the experience gained could be applied to future projects of similar scale.
The completed sectors represent a major European contribution to ITER, the international fusion experiment being constructed in southern France to investigate the feasibility of fusion as an energy source.
Dynamis and Siemens to create 1.7 GW of mobile power
United States Mobile power Siemens Energy and Dynamis Power Solutions have signed an agreement for the supply of 119 gas turbine cores to be integrated into Dynamis’ mobile power generation solutions, which will be used for a range of different applications to support power needs in the United States. The SGT-400 cores, each with an output of approximately 15 MW, will be supplied over several years, with the first batch to be delivered in 2027.
The Siemens Energy cores will be integrated into the Dynamis DT18, the company’s newest next-generation hypermobile power package. With a total planned generation capacity of more than 1.7 GW, the mobile power packages are intended to meet the growing needs of data centres, oil and gas operations, utilities, and other industrial customers requiring flexible generation capacity with accelerated deployment timelines.
Bechtel out as
Natrium EPC USA Nuclear power
US-based TerraPower is replacing Bechtel as the lead engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor for its $4bn Natrium advanced nuclear reactor project near Kemmerer, Wyoming. TerraPower and Bechtel were unable to reach an agreement on the terms and pricing for the next major phase of the project. The Kemmerer project, heavily backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and co-funded by a Department of Energy (DOE) commitment, is promoted as a milestone for next-generation nuclear energy. Natrium consists of a 345 MWe sodium-cooled fast reactor with an integrated molten salt-based energy storage system that can ramp up the plant’s output to 500 MWe for over five hours to meet peak grid demand. TerraPower named Bechtel as its plant design, licensing, procurement, and construction partner in 2020. Bechtel was integrated directly into TerraPower’s federal grant application for the DOE Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. The project was awarded $2bn in federal funding, which TerraPower matched. From 2021 Bechtel worked side-by-side with TerraPower during the early design stages. The goal was to build a nuclear island separate from an energy storage island using modular construction methods and Bechtel’s digital suite of tools to lower costs. In August 2025, Bechtel and TerraPower began constructing the Kemmerer Training Centre (KTC). In June 2024, the partners celebrated the groundbreaking ceremony at the Kemmerer, Wyoming site. Bechtel began executing early infrastructure work. NRC issued the formal construction permit in April 2026 – the first ever issued for a commercial non-light-water reactor in the USA. After several years, negotiations stalled when trying to lock down the exact financial and structural scope of the full, long-term EPC contract. While Bechtel is stepping away as the overall lead contractor, they are not abandoning the site instantly. They are staying on-site to finish building the exterior enclosure of the Sodium Test & Fill Facility to guarantee an orderly handover.
The split Image credit: Dynamis Power Solutions.
Karim Amin, member of the Executive Board of Siemens Energy, said: “The demand for reliable and flexible power generation continues to grow as industries expand and energy needs evolve. Together with Dynamis, we are helping customers access generation capacity quickly by combining proven gas turbine technology with innovative deployment concepts. This agreement … demonstrates how collaboration can help address growing demand for efficient and dependable power across a wide range of applications.” The GT cores will be manufactured by Siemens in Lincoln, UK.
10 | October 2026 |
www.modernpowersystems.com
The split between TerraPower and Bechtel stems from an inability to reach an agreement on commercial terms and pricing for the next major phase of the demonstration project. While initial development milestones were completed under a limited early scope, the two companies reached an impasse when attempting to contractually lock in risk allocations and pricing for the heavy nuclear construction phases. Large-scale, first-of-its-kind nuclear infrastructure projects carry huge financial and execution risks. The split suggests that Bechtel wanted to price those risks into the contract to protect itself from cost overruns, while TerraPower wanted a lower price or a different distribution of liability.
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