Advanced Reactors

Four nominees to serve on the Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that they support the build-out of new advanced nuclear reactors to meet the increased energy demand being shouldered by the country’s largest public utility.

A year ago this month, Amazon led a $500 million investment in X-energy, alongside Citadel founder Ken Griffin, the University of Michigan, and other investors. In addition to that financing, Amazon pledged to support the development of an initial four-unit, 320-MW project with Energy Northwest in Washington state.

The U.S. Army is moving forward with additional advanced reactor programs—building on multiple military efforts already underway as well as a separate pilot program at the Energy Department.

It’s been a good month for Nano Nuclear in the state of Illinois. On October 7, the Office of Governor J.B. Pritzker announced that the company would be awarded $6.8 million from the Reimagining Energy and Vehicles in Illinois Act to help fund the development of its new regional research and development facility in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook.

Radiant Industries will build its first portable nuclear reactor at the site of the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

The land for Radiant’s new factory includes portions of the K-27 and K-29 Manhattan Project sites. The company plans to test Kaleidos, a 1-MW nuclear microreactor, in 2026, with first deployments expected soon after.

Idaho National Laboratory under the Department of Energy–sponsored Microreactor Program recently conducted a comprehensive phenomena identification and ranking table (PIRT) exercise aimed at advancing heat pipe technology for microreactor applications.

New York City–based advanced nuclear technology developer Nano Nuclear and the Office of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced on Tuesday that Nano will receive $6.8 million in state funding to establish its new manufacturing and research and development facility in Illinois.

Following the same milestones from Aalo Atomics and Valar Atomics, Santa Clara, Calif.–based reactor start-up Oklo has become the third company participating in the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program to break ground on its fast-tracked project at Idaho National Laboratory.

El Segundo, Calif.–based reactor start-up Valar Atomics recently announced that it has broken ground on its test reactor, the Ward 250, at Utah San Rafael Energy Lab (USREL), becoming the second company participating in the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program to do so.

The nuclear regulators of Belgium, Italy, and Romania signed on this week to the first “prelicensing” project under the IAEA’s Nuclear Harmonization and Standardization Initiative (NHSI) during the opening day of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 69th General Conference, pledging to work with the EAGLES Consortium to clarify regulatory requirements for a lead-cooled reactor ahead of formal licensing.

Texas Tech University and Fermi America are now one step closer to realizing their massive vision for the Advanced Energy and Intelligence Campus in Amarillo, Texas, as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has accepted the first two parts of its combined license application (COLA) for four Westinghouse AP1000s.

The Tennessee Valley Authority and Houston, Texas–based energy production company Entra1 Energy recently announced the signing of an agreement to collaborate on the deployment of six new nuclear power plants equipped with NuScale small modular reactors.

Eight days after Aalo Atomics released the details of its securing of $100 million in Series B funding, the company announced that it has broken ground on the 10-MWe Aalo-X. Sited in the desert beside Idaho National Laboratory, it will be the company’s first nuclear power plant, and it remains on track to go on line by July 4, 2026.

GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s BWRX-300 small modular reactor and the British Rolls-Royce SMR have been downselected by Sweden’s state-owned Vattenfall as it evaluates the construction of new reactors for its Ringhals nuclear power plant site in Sweden.

It was near-certain that more good news was on the horizon for some of the 10 companies recently selected for the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program. Now, only one week later, one of those companies—Aalo Atomics—has become the first to make a major headline with its announcement that it has secured $100 million in Series B funding.

California-based microreactor developer Radiant Industries has announced the signing of what it calls “the first-ever agreement” to deliver a mass-manufactured nuclear microreactor to a U.S. military base. The contract was signed with the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the U.S. Air Force as part of the Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program.

Fabrication of the reactor core for the 1.5-MW Project Pele demonstration microreactor has begun, according to BWX Technologies. Pele is being developed at the BWXT Innovation Campus in Lynchburg, Va., for the U.S. Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office.

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency has published the third edition of the NEA Small Modular Reactor Dashboard, a comprehensive global review of SMR technology that defines criteria for assessing progress in the development of these advanced reactors. The assessments are based on six dimensions of readiness: licensing, siting, financing, supply chain, engagement, and fuel.

A reactor vessel has been installed by Kairos Power for its third Engineering Test Unit (ETU 3.0) at the company’s campus in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

For 2,300 hours, the molten salt pump Shaft Seal Test Facility (SSTF) operated at the University of Michigan’s Thermal Hydraulics Laboratory, according to an article from UM. The large-scale experiment was designed to evaluate shaft seal performance in high-temperature pump systems. Fewer than 10 facilities worldwide have successfully operated fluoride or chloride salts for more than 100 hours using over 10 kilograms of material.