Nuclear Energy Updates #1

Chronicling the nuclear renaissance.

Welcome to the first Nuclear Energy Updates, where we split what’s happening in the world of nuclear energy into bite sized pieces, and fuse it all into the bigger picture of the ongoing nuclear renaissance.

Apologies again on timing, I’m hoping to be more consistent getting these out on a Saturday. As I noted for the AI & Robot updates, this info is slightly dated; originally being scheduled to go out with the previous edition the main Techno-Optimist newsletter. But next month’s will contain all the up to date news.

I do feel that grouping all this news together in one place gives me, and therefore you my readers, a somewhat unique overview of what’s happening in nuclear energy. I call it the nuclear renaissance, but increasingly I think that name is more descriptor than something aspirational. The world really is accelerating forward with both fission and fusion, and it can’t come soon enough.

Alright, let’s dive in.

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“If a nuclear future appears frightening, the alternative is a return to the dark.”

—Sir Arthur Eddington

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Nuclear Fission

China is not sitting on its hands when it comes to nuclear, including SMRs. They just completed a test of their ACP100 “small modular reactor demonstration project.” It’s being built in the island province of Hainan, and will have 125 MW (electric) capacity when completed.

Back in America, Oklo broke ground on their first Aurora SMR as part of the DOE’s new Reactor Pilot Program. The company plans to demonstrate the completed power plant next year.

Up in the Great White North (Canada), ARC Clear Technology and Nucleon Energy have launched a new partnership called NuARC, intending to deploy ARC’s “ advanced small modular reactor technology with an initial focus in Alberta, Canada.” Another company, X-energy, also wants to build their power plants in Alberta. They just completed a study which showed them to be a good fit for the province, as their reactors make both electricity, and lots of heat for use in industrial and potentially oil sands applications.

The U.S. Army is getting in on the action too, unveiling what they call the Janus Program, “a more than six year effort by the Army and the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit with the goal of developing and constructing hundreds of state-of-the-art small nuclear reactors to power military bases across the United States.” All of these will be microreactors, generating “less than 20 megawatts of electricity,” but perfect for military bases—and they should be small enough to be transportable too. The first should be up and running in 2028.

Politicians in individual states are getting in on the action as well, with an announcement that “Governors from 11 states: New York, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Wyoming, Louisiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia, have agreed to collaborate in nuclear power development.” The idea is to “create a standardized and scalable approach that will lead to lower costs and build times,” creating an “order book” they can all use.

Maybe the coolest concept for a new nuclear company out there is Deep Fission, which intends to place their reactors a mile deep into the Earth for reasons of increased safety. I may have mentioned them before, but now they have a letter of intend from a customer who wants 12.5 GW of capacity. Those are some big numbers.

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Fusion Energy

The DOE recently announced the Fusion Science and Technology Roadmap, designed to accelerate commercial fusion power. The plan is to “align public investment and private innovation to deliver commercial fusion power to the grid by the mid-2030s,” a timeline I think is very reasonable.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems released news that they’d signed a power purchase agreement with Eni, an Italian energy (but mostly oil and gas) company. The deal is worth over $1 billion, and shows increasing confidence in the burgeoning fusion industry.

Another big (though newer) fusion company had some new recently too. Pacific Fusion has said that they’ll build “their first Research and Manufacturing Campus” in New Mexico. The company plans to demonstrate net gain there by 2030.

China wants to not just demonstrate net gain by 2030, but actually be generating electricity from a compact tokamak machine called BEST (very on the nose name).

Germany is also boosting its funding for fusion energy, with plans to invest €2 billion ($2.3 billion) by 2029 in a variety of fusion infrastructure and pilot projects. A Germany company, Gauss Fusion, just published it’s conceptual design blueprint for a power plant they’ll call GIGA. They plan to have it up and running by the mid-2040s, which is great but may be a little behind the curve.

Japan’s newly elected prime minister Sanae Takaichi is a huge supporter of nuclear generally, and fusion specifically. She wants to “accelerate the development of fusion & make the country 100% energy self-sufficient by deploying next-generation reactors.”

Type One Energy has announced a plan along with the Tennessee Valley Authority (a massive utility company) to develop and build a stellarator fusion power plant. Not to be outdone, Helion has received a permit to move forward on the next phase of their Orion power plant, which they hope will be the world’s first (yes, they’re already building it).

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That’s it for now, but Nuclear Energy Updates will be back four weeks from now. In the meantime, check your inboxes next Saturday for the 33^rd edition of Techno-Optimist!

Thank you all for reading — and until next time, keep your eyes on the horizon.

-Owen