Nuclear power is getting a second look across Southeast Asia to prepare for surging demand for power for artificial intelligence-focused data centers. Analysts say the Iran war energy crisis is also adding momentum to nuclear interest and action in the region. Countries are reviving mothballed nuclear plans and many have set ambitious targets. If met, nuclear energy will be added to national power grids across half of Southeast Asia in the 2030s. Nations like Malaysia say nuclear can satisfy the region's energy-hungry data center industry, which has caught the eye of tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Nvidia, without raising carbon emissions. But longstanding concerns around atomic energy remain.

Iran issues indirect threat as its media list Mideast electrical and water stations, including a UAE nuclear plant.

Iran says its Natanz nuclear facility has been hit in an airstrike.

A video taken by tiny drones sent into one of three damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant shows a gaping hole in the thick-walled steel container of the core, with lumps of likely fuel debris hanging from it, in a first sighting of a pressure vessel bottom since the meltdown 15 years ago. The rare footage was taken by micro-drones to collect visual, radiation and other data from inside of the Unit 3 reactor. It was released Thursday. The three reactors contain at least 880 tons of dangerously radioactive melted fuel debris whose details are still little known.

Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted has testified remotely in Akron, Ohio, in the high-profile corruption trial of two former FirstEnergy Corp. executives. As a defense witness for former CEO Chuck Jones and former lobbyist Michael Dowling, Husted confirmed his presence as lieutenant governor-elect at a key dinner with Jones, Dowling and then-Gov.-elect Mike DeWine held in 2018, shortly before DeWine appointed Sam Randazzo the state's new top utility regulator. Husted said FirstEnergy’s preferred candidate wasn't Randazzo, who prosecutors allege Jones and Dowling bribed in exchange for his help with a $1 billion nuclear plant bailout. He later acknowledged he wouldn't have known what the two men discussed privately.

Japan is marking the 15th anniversary of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster on its northeastern coast as the government pushes for atomic energy use. The magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami ravaged parts of the region, caused more than 22,000 deaths and forced as many as 160,000 people to flee their homes, some of them still unable to return. The country observed a moment of silence at 2:46 p.m. Wednesday marking the moment the quake occurred. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, at a ceremony in Fukushima, pledged to do the utmost to speed the region's recovery. She has been pushing to speed up restarts of reactors and bolster nuclear power even as the decommissioning of the plant wrecked by the tsunami continues.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued its first construction permit for a commercial nuclear reactor in eight years. The commission granted the permit Wednesday for a Bill Gates-backed company to build a sodium-cooled nuclear reactor in western Wyoming. The company filed for the permit in 2024. Construction of the reactor 130 miles northeast of Salt Lake City, Utah, is expected to begin within weeks, with a completion target of 2030. Gates is eyeing next-generation nuclear plants as a power source for the electricity-hungry data centers behind artificial intelligence. He is a founder of and primary investor in TerraPower, the company building the plant.

US issues first commercial construction permit for a nuclear reactor in 8 years to a Gates-backed Wyoming project.