Nuclear Charges Ahead with New Opportunities in AI and Outer Space

News Rundown: Summaries for every major nuclear headline

The American nuclear industry saw multiple headlines these past couple weeks about new opportunities in outer space, major collaborations with the AI world, and two of the most significant new rules being issued by the NRC.

As a reminder to our readers: if you are looking for additional context on what we cover, all of the headlines (and anything else in the rundown that is underlined) are hyperlinks to the referenced content!

Reactor Developers

Aalo completes assembly of experimental reactor

Aalo Atomics finished the construction of their Aalo-X test reactor. Aalo-X is the test reactor platform that will be utilized to gain experience with constructing the reactor, test some of the core physics, and run through major operations like fuel assembly replacement. The company constructed the reactor and its housing facility in the span of just a few months, showing off the incredible speed enabled by the DOE licensing pathway. The DOE has taken advantage of its authorization to license and oversee the operation of non-commercial reactors, allowing companies like Aalo and the others involved in the Reactor Pilot Program to advance and iterate their multiple different reactor designs.

X-energy Submits Draft Registration Statement to the SEC for Initial Public Offering

X-energy has submitted paperwork detailing their intent to IPO onto the NASDAQ at some point this year under the ticker XE. The company will likely fetch an initial valuation over $1 billion. Unlike its competitors currently trading on the open market, XE has a significant pipeline of projects across the U.S. and Europe, as well as growing partnerships in Asia for its supply chain.

We will go much further into the company’s line of products later, but from a 10,000-foot view, their business has three main technologies:

• The XE-100 reactor, an 80-MWe high-temperature gas reactor (HTGR) that is designed to operate in packs of 4 to 12 units

• The TRISO-X fuel fabrication facility, which makes the unique TRISO-based fuel utilized in X-energy’s reactor designs

• The XENITH microreactor, designed to deliver 3-10 MWe in remote environments

Trump, Takaichi Unveil $40 Billion US Nuclear Project

A recent visit by Japanese leadership to the U.S. resulted in $40 billion being pledged by Japan in support of GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GVH) deploying BWRX-300 reactors across Tennessee and Alabama. Details around the latest announcement have been extremely scarce.

What we do know is GVH is currently working with the TVA to deploy one BWRX-300 reactor at the Clinch River site in Tennessee, and there are plans to deploy up to four of those SMRs at the site. There was a post on X by the U.S. Department of Commerce highlighting “3 GW of capacity” which would mean 10 total BWRX-300s. We can only assume four will be in Tennessee, as already planned, and then the six others will be either all in Alabama or split between the two.

Natura Resources Advances Reactor Physics and Safety Analysis Through High-Performance Computing Collaboration with University of Texas at Austin

Natura Resources is utilizing the advanced modeling tools at the University of Texas at Austin to simulate some of the fundamental physics of Natura’s molten salt reactor design. The information they gather from the modeling will “directly inform Natura’s safety analysis methodology”, which is information that can be used by the company to further their licensing efforts under the DOE and eventually the NRC. They’re currently pursuing licensing under the DOE and are working towards the completion of their Nuclear Safety Design Agreement (NSDA).

Blykalla advances planning for SMR park in Gävle

Blykalla is planning a reactor park in Sweden with the permitting process planned to initiate this year and operations to begin sometime in the first half of the 2030s. With six reactors at about 55 MWe each, the total plant output is expected to be just over 300 MWe. Blykalla is working on a fast-spectrum lead-cooled reactor similar in principle to Oklo’s Aurora design. The two companies even announced a transatlantic partnership last fall to collaborate on technology, supply chain, and regulatory progress. Oklo and Blykalla are also working with European reactor developer newcleo on fuel fabrication facilities in the U.S.

Constellation Exec Says Grid Operator Told Company Three Mile Island Can't Connect Until 2031

This incredible announcement was made during the recent CERAWeek conference as Constellation says the PJM grid is unable to get the Three Mile Island reactor plant reconnected to the grid until four years later than previously planned. While this may come as a surprise to the majority of observers, this is actually par for the course for a national grid that has been neglected for decades. Years and years of deferred maintenance and system-wide upgrades have resulted in the grid being completely unable to support the addition of anything, at any respectable speed.

Most people, including lawmakers, have been quick to point at data center developers and claim the construction of their new facilities is to blame for the rising cost of electricity and poor performance of grids around the country. However, when a means of energy generation encounters the same grid connection problems as data centers and other large loads, the question has to be asked if the problem is with those that are trying to get on the grid… or the grid itself.

We strongly recommend our readers review an article on this exact point of view written by Emmet Penney for The Free Press (link here).

Fuel and Supply Chain

Japan, South Korea Nuclear Operators Get US Ex-Im Bank Support

Minutes after we published the last news rundown two weekends ago, a news headline out of Asia was pointed out to us detailing $4.2 billion in financing support for Japan and South Korea to purchase enrichment services from General Matter. So, this should have been included in the last issue, but, better late than never.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank issued letters of interest to support up to $2.4 billion for Japanese reactor owners and $1.8 billion for South Korean reactor owners. The chairman of the Ex-Im Bank highlighted the multiple supply chain related financial backing announcements that were made that day as “central to America’s long-term economic and strategic strength”.

This massive amount of funding interest, coupled with the $900 million in DOE awards for HALEU, provide General Matter all the support they’ll need to commence the rapid construction and startup of operations at their enrichment facility in Kentucky.

Uranium Energy Corp Receives Approval for Expanded Production at Christensen Ranch and Secures NRC Docketing for U.S. Conversion Facility

Uranium Energy Corps’ intention to construct a uranium conversion facility in the U.S. reached a meaningful administrative step with the NRC in receiving a docket number for their project. This signifies the start of a more formal engagement with the nuclear regulatory body, as the company will likely start submitting documents related to their ongoing engineering evaluations and feasibility studies for the new facility, which are currently being conducted by Fluor.

No dates have yet been given for when the facility is targeted to be operational by, but the estimate for capacity is approximately 10,000 metric tons of UF6 per year, which compares to Solstice Materials similarly-targeted production for this year.

Standard Nuclear breaks ground on new fuel production facility in Idaho

Standard Nuclear has broken ground on their third nuclear fuel facility in the U.S. with an existing facility in Oak Ridge and a second site at Standard Nuclear-West (SN-West) in Idaho. The company has yet to put out a press release for the specific purpose of this third facility, as their first two facilities reportedly have very separate purposes.

Oak Ridge is responsible for the actual fabrication and production of TRISO particles, whereas NEI Magazine states the SN-West facility is designed to “handle final fuel assembly and “hot” integration”, such as loading fuel into reactor cores and performing final safety checks. If the facility is designed to handle hot integration (usually a reference to irradiated material), then this could be where they intend to stand up other manufacturing capacity to handle recycled nuclear material. The company previously announced a partnership with SHINE Technologies to utilize uranium, plutonium, strontium, and americium for new nuclear fuel and compact power systems.

Nuclear Waste Innovator Deep Isolation Further Validates Borehole Technology for Safe Disposal of Recycled Fuel Waste

Deep Isolation has completed additional engineering and modeling work in coordination with ARPA-E and Oklo to “enhance key technologies supporting the recycling of used nuclear fuel through electrorefining”. The study models high-level waste being disposed in Deep Isolation’s borehole system, achieving long-term safety levels surpassing model targets.

It might sound strange that a recycling program for nuclear fuel needs a disposal system as the point is to reuse what is left over, but even recycling systems have byproducts that are unusable and require a long-term storage solution. Deep Isolation has now modeled the ability to successfully and safely dispose of the material deep below the Earth’s surface.

FluxPoint Energy Enters Race to Build First New U.S. Uranium Conversion Plant in Nearly 70 Years

The newest entrant to the nuclear fuel cycle introduced themselves at the recent CERAWeek conference. FluxPoint is entering the fuel cycle at the conversion stage, which is after mining and milling and before enrichment. The linked article is a phenomenal breakdown of what the company intends to do, the technology they intend to utilize, and in comparison to existing facilities and underway projects. We encourage everyone to take the few minutes to read the article.

FluxPoint is targeting an initial capacity of 2,500 metric tons of uranium per year of UF6 processing, with the potential for adding additional production trains at the same capacity, depending on market conditions. First production is targeted for 2030 or 2031. For comparison, the existing facility owned by Solstice Materials is targeting over 10,000 metric tons for this calendar year.

Policy, Regulation, and Industry

Trump Administration Announces Deals Totaling $56 Billion During Indo-Pacific Energy Security Summit

There’s a long list of announcements and partnerships that were presented at the Energy Security Summit, including several “Nuclear Energy Leadership” deals:

• Holtec entered into an MOU with Mitsubishi Electric and Hyundai Engineering and Construction to jointly deliver Holtec’s SMR-300 design at the Palisade Site in Michigan. Including the hundreds of millions they were awarded from the Department of Energy and their multiple international manufacturing partners, Holtec has all the support they could possibly need on the engineering and manufacturing side of the house to develop and deliver these units as Pioneer 1 & 2.

• X-energy and Doosan Enerbility signed a binding agreement to manufacture 16 main power systems for the Xe-100. As part of the agreement, Doosan also committed to construct the world’s first dedicated SMR fabrication facility.

• New Korean partners joined DL Engineering and Construction and Doosan Enerbility as strategic investors in X-Energy’s $700 million Series D financing round, bringing X-energy’s total private capital raised to $1.8 billion. This complements $1.26 billion in DOE funding awarded to X-energy.

• X-energy and IHI Corporation signed an MOU to expand X-energy’s supplier base for safety-critical, long-lead components of the Xe-100.

• Two other announcements that were wrapped into this summit included the almost $5 billion in potential support from the Ex-Im Bank and an agreement between GE Vernova and Hitachi to assess opportunities for deployment of the BWRX-300 in Southeast Asia.

NRC's Categorical Exclusions from Environmental Reviews and risk-informed, technology-inclusive regulatory framework for advanced reactors

Two significant final rules were issued by the NRC recently. The first was a categorical exclusion from environmental reviews, significantly broadening the number of conditions that allow actions to be excluded. The environmental assessments have been known to take significant periods of time to perform and have resulted in significant delays and even canceling of major projects.

The reviews also allow for significant intervention by anti-nuclear activists looking to hamper nuclear energy in any way possible. While this will certainly bring on different avenues for legal challenges, it will significantly lower the opportunities previously presented to environmental activist groups.

The second rule was the long-awaited implementation of Part 53, which is a new licensing pathway for reactors seeking to commercialize their designs. Originally there was only Part 50 and 52.

Part 50 is a two-step process that first has the reactor developer permit the construction of the facility, and then at a separate later date get a permit for actually turning on and operating the facility. Part 52 combined the construction and operation portions of the license into one, allowing for a more streamlined process that reduced the potential for projects to get shut down halfway through.

Part 53 takes Part 52 a step further and becomes technology inclusive and more streamlined. With Part 53, reactors that are other-than-large-light-water designs (different sized reactors or gas/metal coolant) will have to ask for significantly less, or no, exclusions from the more rigid requirements of Part 50 and 52, which are more tailored towards traditional reactor designs.

NASA Unveils Initiatives to Achieve America’s National Space Policy

Multiple new potential uses for nuclear energy were announced by NASA in a recent major unveiling of plans for Mars and elsewhere. NASA is looking to launch Space Reactor 1 (SR-1) to Mars by the end of 2028 to demonstrate the use of nuclear energy for space propulsion. NASA is also looking to utilize nuclear power for use as an energy system on the Moon and Mars in the form of traditional reactors, radioisotope thermolytic generators, and radioisotope heater units.

"Underway on nuclear power"

NASA also shared a video on social media for some of the new projects. The video ends with the reuse of the historical message sent by Commander Wilkinson in 1955 as the USS Nautilus first used nuclear power for propulsion, signifying the continuation of taking humanity to new heights with atomic energy.

AI for nuclear energy: Powering an intelligent, resilient future

Microsoft and NVIDIA have announced a collaboration for utilizing AI in nuclear permitting, design acceleration, and operation optimization across the industry. The companies will work to apply generative AI and other tools across multiple segments of the nuclear life cycle to significantly cut down development timelines and make work as repeatable and traceable as possible.

Aalo Atomics was one of the early adopters of Microsoft’s AI technology for use in the nuclear industry and have reported a 92% reduction in the time for the permitting process, resulting in a savings of about $80 million per year. The platform is also in use by Southern Nuclear to improve consistency and support better decision-making, and INL to “automate the assembly of complex engineering and safety analysis reports”.

A recent announcement from the Department of Energy provides a profound example of how the platform can be used (emphasis ours):

• “Everstar’s Gordian AI solution, built on the Microsoft Azure platform, was recently used to convert the Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis for DOE’s National Reactor Innovation Center’s (NRIC) Generic High Temperature Gas Reactor (HTGR) into sections equivalent to an NRC license application.”

• “The final 208-page document took one day to generate. Typically, the process takes a team of people between four and six weeks to complete the same task. The AI tool also comprehensively identified missing or incomplete information needed to successfully complete an NRC application.”

• “Gordian was engineered for nuclear-grade technical work and is equipped with physics and engineering tools, as well as the ability to understand and integrate data through semantic ontology mapping, to ensure that the final output is computed and verified, not inferred.”

• “Gordian’s output was subsequently evaluated by an expert for accuracy, missing information, consistency, as well as grammar and structure to ensure that its results were correct and adhered to rigorous professional standards. The output was found to demonstrate quality, rigor, and depth, as well as the tool's ability to identify and qualify its own gaps in data knowledge.”

Exclusive: AI power demand cracks resistance to nuclear power

One of the biggest recent headlines was the announcement from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) that they support the restart of the Duane Arnold nuclear plant. The NRDC is one of the biggest players in the anti-nuclear “environmentalist” game that has destroyed new nuclear projects and brought down existing plants over the past couple decades. The NRDC is well known for their leading role in shutting down the Indian Point plant in New York.

The article from Axios details that the activists can no longer avoid admitting the role nuclear power has to play in supporting the rapid expansion of electricity demand across the world with low-emission power generation methods. Hopefully, there is much more to come from the other anti-nuclear activists out there.

NRC Launches Faster, Smarter Environmental Review Program

The NRC is piloting a new process for developing the draft environmental impact statement (EIS) for new reactor construction projects. The draft EIS is traditionally prepared by the NRC based on inputs from the project developer, but under this new pilot program the draft EIS will be prepared by the developer, Fermi America.

The NRC states this could reduce review times by approximately 50% and deliver resource savings of about 30%.

Something Missing?

Looking for the other major headlines announced this week? Well, they’re probably covered in our other bi-weekly report, the Nuclear Sector Newsletter, that focuses on the publicly-traded side of the nuclear industry. It’s $10/month for coverage of all the public nuclear companies and comes with coverage for quarterly earnings and major announcements. Don’t forget the huge trove of these reports we’ve stacked up for our subscribers to read through as well!

You’ll find all the major announcements from the core nuclear companies: Cameco, BWXT, Mirion Technologies, Graham Corp, Oklo, NuScale, Nano Nuclear, Terra Innovatum, Terrestrial Energy, Hadron Energy, Centrus Energy, Silex Systems, and Lightbridge.

Coverage is also included for all the nuclear-related headlines coming from 30 nuclear-adjacent companies such as Constellation, Vistra, GE Vernova, Rolls-Royce, Curtiss-Wright, Flowserve, Solstice Materials, ASPI, Energy Fuels, Fluor, Amentum, and Fermi.