The Atomic Show

The U.S. military has a strong and growing interest in using small and micro nuclear reactors as a means of reducing logistics challenges and improving operational resilience. They like nuclear reactors for their ability to operate independently of the grid for years without needing any new fuel. Almost as important is their ability to be designed to retain byproducts and reduce heat signatures for improved stealth. Dr. Jeff Waksman Is the U.S. Army’s go-to guy for pioneering nuclear energy projects. Though no military-related project can be completed by a single person, program success often rests on the effective leadership provided by a singularly skilled leader who combines organization, inspiration and deep knowledge of how to get things done in a purposely hierarchical system. Before his current role for the Army, Waksman led Project Pele – the military’s first micro-reactor project in 50+ years – for the Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office. He did well enough at that assignment to have been selected to lead a more expansive program to finally deliver nuclear fission capabilities to bases and units that need clean, reliable power that comes with a low logistics burden. Fission’s characteristics are nothing new and the military’s interest dates to the earliest days of nuclear energy. The political, environmental and strategic situation has changed enough in the 50 years since the Army’s Nuclear Power development program was effectively cancelled to stimulate new efforts to address the economic and technical challenges that were never solved during the 1960s and 70s. Waksman’s current role has the mouthful title of Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (PDASA) for Installations, Energy and Environment (IE&E). Though only one of his responsibilities, he is the Army’s point person for a subsequent reactor development program called Project Janus. Dr. Waksman joined me on Atomic Show #347 to discuss the lessons taught by Project Pele and to provide insights on how those lessons are being incorporated into subsequent programs, both civilian and military. We covered a variety of topics, including: Reasons why he was picked to lead Project Pele Direction provided to the Department of Defense’s Strategic Capabilities Office regarding program outcomes Focus on building systems that work in the real world instead of just more models Challenges of fitting inside tightly constrained boundaries (C-17 transport plane) Limiting components – not surprisingly, it was the heat exchanger that transferred reactor heat from the coolant gas to the power conversion system Importance of balance of plant compared to reactor Streamlining Department of Energy approval process Economic value of competition Economic trade-offs with the potential to make TRISO a more economic fuel than other options Project Pele’s influence on Reactor Pilot Program Project Janus goals and status Stretch goal timeline that includes the first operating reactor supplying a military base by the end of 2028 Expansion of the project beyond the Army to the Air Force and possibly the Navy Unquantified description of the possible magnitude of military reactor program Desire for military reactor program to stimulate a larger commercial reactor market I learned a lot from the show. Dr. Waksman shares valuable experience, including ways to avoid some of the bruises that came with leading the first-of-a-kind project for a modern transportable nuclear reactor and the U.S.’s first nuclear project development project in decades. I hope this show will influence those who follow so that they can make their own mistakes instead of repeating those that have already been made and documented.

Shine Technologies is a unique nuclear fusion company. The conventional path for nuclear fusion projects is to raise and spend billions of dollars and decades of research and development in efforts to successfully find a path over, around or through the technical barriers that have prevented nuclear fusion from becoming a large scale energy production source. Until relatively recently, that path was almost completely dependent on government grants. In cases like the ITER – International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor – the effort has involved tens of billions of dollars (current estimate is $25 B), thousands of scientists, engineers, constructors and technicians and a construction schedule that stretches out over 29 years. The funding partnership includes six individual countries plus the European Union, which is supplying approximately 45% of the budget. Parts and materials for the project are being supplied by 35 different countries. Greg Piefer, Shine Technologies CEO and Founder, chose a different path. He is a technical expert and fusion researcher who was inspired by the same dreams of unlimited fusion energy that drive others to study and work in the field, but he also has a commercial side that knows that investors, even governments, do not have the patience and the depth of resources needed to undertake and successfully complete projects whose characteristics are similar to ITER and don’t produce profits along the way. He knew several known ways to stimulate and control a nuclear fusion reaction. The equipment used to produce those reactions doesn’t work fast enough to produce the energy needed to sustain the reaction and have enough left over to capture and sell to a commercial energy market. They are useful devices for teaching researchers about fusion and they are precise and reliable neutron generators for valuable tasks like remote logging of the materials in oil and gas wells. Piefer’s valuable insight was that neutrons from fusion had special characteristics that could produce commercial value long before the equipment could produce energy at a competitive cost. He and the team that he inspired became convinced that they could create a sustainable path to commercial fusion energy by building, using and refining equipment and techniques that use fusion to produce neutrons for successively larger markets that require ever lower unit costs. They established a four phase development program that remains their guiding development strategy. The first phase sells precise testing and measuring services that use Shine neutron generators where the neutrons supply their material penetrating power. Unlike the gamma rays used in conventional radiography – X-rays for materials and equipment – neutrons penetrate dense materials and are scattered by light elements. The critical nature of the components that benefit from neutron imaging leads customers to pay extraordinary prices for Shine’s specialized services. The neutrons produced by Shine’s imaging fusion devices sell for $100,000 – $1,000,000 per kilowatt-hour of energy released – which is a calculated metric derived from fusion reactions per second per dollar. (Those numbers do not have any misplaced zeros.) The second phase, with a far larger Total Addressable Market (TAM), is medical radioisotope production. Using a process of continuous refinement and practice, Shine has been able to improve its devices to the point where they can profitably enter the market with neutrons that cost the equivalent of $100 per kWh (a factor of 1000 improvement over the first phase) that can be reduced to $20/kWh as the process is scaled up using their NRC licensed Chrysalis facility. That facility, located in Janesville, WI, was carefully sited next door to a regional airport that enables Shine’s medical isotopes to be rapidly delivered throughout the United States and competitively delivered almost anywhere. Chrysalis is expected to be completed within the next two years. As Piefer describes during our conversation, it will be the highest capacity isotope production facility in the world. Piefer also described the invested effort that gives Shine the ability to produce isotopes that meet the stringent purity requirements for medical applications. The company’s radio chemistry skills are being exercised every day as they are already shipping isotopes created in a smaller facility. The third step, which is still in the R&D phase is to use more capable Shine fusion devices that can produce neutrons for about $1/kWh to help recycle used nuclear fuel. During the conversation, we spent quite a bit of time talking about how this application will work. There are some nuances that are worth hearing. The fourth step in the plan is to produce clean energy with a target price for neutrons of about $0.01-$0.02/kWh. That is the dream and the application that unlocks a TAM measured in the trillions of dollars. Here is the company’s distillation of their four phase plan: The framework: value per kilowatt-hour of fusion outputSHINE force-ranks fusion markets by unit economics, not market size — starting with the customers who pay the most per unit of fusion output, and using each market as commercial practice to drive costs down for the next. The metric: fusion reactions per second per dollar, a proxy for cost per kilowatt-hour.The cost curve, by the numbers >$1,000,000 per kWh — what one deployed SHINE fusion system is worth to its customer: it scans every nuclear fuel rod the customer manufactures, and hasn’t skipped a beat since deployment. ~$100,000 per kWh — typical value in the testing market (e.g., neutron imaging of F-35 turbine blade cooling channels that only neutrons can see). ~$100 per kWh — where SHINE had to get costs to make medical isotope production work. ~$20 per kWh — expected for Chrysalis at full capacity, coming online in the next 18–24 months. ~$1 per kWh — the target for spent fuel recycling, feasible because the business stacks four revenue streams: recycling service fees, recycled uranium/plutonium fuel, separated isotopes, and electricity sold at market rates. 10–20¢ per kWh — typical value of electricity, the final market. From recycling, SHINE estimates roughly a factor of 10 remains to put pure fusion energy economically on the grid. Disclosure: Nucleation Capital, the sponsor of Atomic Insights, is an investor in Shine Technologies. We believe their vision and their execution elevates their commercial prospects above a number of companies whose primary selling point is an attractive, but distant dream.

Deployable Energy is a young company with a guiding principle. They believe that nuclear energy should be a product, not a project. Founded in 2025 after a period of intensive study and design work, the company has developed a product branded as the Unity Nuclear Battery (UNB). It’s a 1 MWe (3 MWth) micro reactor whose general features arise from a unique combination of nuclear fuel, reactor coolant and neutron moderator. The choices the company made arise from a desire to move fast using materials that are affordable and available for use today. That criteria requires the materials to be in commercial service from suppliers that can provide a price list or firm quote given delivery terms and conditions. Where appropriate, it also means that the materials are qualified for use in nuclear reactors and for exposure to neutron and gamma flux. Unity Nuclear Battery (UNB) Steps of Utah Capitol Salt Lake City UNB designers determined that they would use regular fuel – uranium enriched to < 5% U-235 and in the form of uranium dioxide (UO2) in sintered pellets mass manufactured by an established vendor. Zirconium alloy tubes separate the fuel from the coolant and moderator and retain fission products that might be released by the ceramic UO2 pellets during and after operation. The heat transfer fluid, more frequently referred to as reactor coolant, is inert helium gas that is blown through the core at high velocity and a pressure of approximately 50 bar (~725 psi). The neutron moderator is water at atmospheric pressure and a temperature that is roughly equal to residential hot water. The reactor vessel that is needed to contain the chosen combination of functional core materials is small enough and light enough to be transported in the back of a short-bed American pick-up truck with a crew cab. A full nuclear heat source system with transportation level shielding will fit into a 20 foot shipping container with a mass of about 20 tons. The additional shielding and physical protection layers added on site will add another 40 tons to the nuclear heat source portion of the system. The system will be shielded with sufficient materials to reduce neutron and gamma radiation to below regulatory standards both during and after operation. The pressurized helium will transfer the heat generated in the reactor to heat exchanger(s) where either water or supercritical CO2 will pick up the helium’s heat for either steam or hot sCO2 production. Steam or sCO2 will go to the balance of plant, which will be housed in a 40 foot transportation container. Depending on application, hot fluids can be used in industrial applications or used to turn turbine generators. The ultimate heat sink is the atmosphere with air coolers mounted on top of the balance of plant container. Many of Deployable Energy’s target customers and applications value low water use. Unity Battery conceptual layout Knowing that permissions required for construction, manufacturing, transportation and operating are key milestones, Deployable Energy began its pre-application engagement with the NRC in October 2025, within months of its corporate founding. The company also began engaging with the Department of Energy regarding its initial demonstration unit. It wasn’t ready to compete for the Reactor Pilot Program, but it was one of four companies selected for the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, which is the DOE’s follow-on to the foundational Reactor Pilot Program and Fuel Line Pilot Program. Deployable Energy plans to catch up to the Reactor Pilot Program participants and achieve initial criticality by July 4, 2026. To learn more about Deployable Energy and their Unity Nuclear Battery, I talked with Bobby Gallagher, Deployable Energy’s CEO and Chief Technical Officer. Bobby’s background in the Australian military, oil and gas, shipbuilding, offshore development and successful technology start-up founder might seem to be a rather odd path towards designing a product using a nuclear fission heat source, but he explains how he arrived at his current position rather well. During our discussion, Bobby described the decision criteria and process used to determine the UNB’s final combination of fuel, heat transfer fluid and moderator. He provided some of the historical background from other nuclear reactor designs that inspired the decisions. But more of our conversation’s content was on the company’s choices related to manufacturing and deployment. We talked about Deployable Energy’s choice to put the center of its operations in Houston, Texas where the local manufacturing base for vessels, tanks, valves, tubes, skids, and other key components is well established and has been honed and expanded during the past several decades of world-leading “unconventional” oil and gas development. Houston is an energy town with a deep understanding of the value and risks associated with providing power to the population. The city’s residents know how to manufacture, build and heavy equipment and they know how to create and finance innovative companies. We had a fascinating conversation. I’m confident that you will learn something by listening to the show at least once. We no longer accept comments here for a number of reasons, but you can ask questions and make comments to @atomicrod on X.

There are few industries in the world that have a greater need for skilled communications than the nuclear industry. It’s a challenging technology to understand and to explain to those who are not really interested in the nitty gritty details. There is a significant portion of the industry that believes in silently going about its tasks, partly because there are so many parts of the field that are classified. The influence of the Silent Service is deep and wide within the nuclear sector. There is a growing group that has a different point of view. They bring originality and experiences from outside of nuclear and are not constrained by the traditional tactics. Those newcomers aren’t starting from scratch, however. There are some experienced communicators who also have valuable thoughts and ideas that they are willing to share. Jarret Adams, the founder of Full On Communications, has been professionally explaining the nuclear industry for more than two decades. He has experienced and supported the ups while also figuring out how to respond and adapt to the downs. He started his career as a business journalist. He learned about the nuclear industry during a stint with the Nuclear Energy Institute. While there, he learned the value and the promise of nuclear energy and chose to realign his career to support and defend what was, at the time, a bruised sector with exciting potential for growth and for making positive contributions to humanity. He took advantage of his facility with the French language as he moved over to Areva, which had ambitious plans for international growth during the first phase of the nuclear renaissance that continues today. As prospects for immediate growth diminished as an extended period of low cost natural gas was combined with strongly negative public perceptions caused by the widely publicized damage at TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Jarret departed from Areva to become the Communications Director in the UAE for an international public relations firm. He was part of the program that enabled the UAE to expeditiously create a capable nuclear industry where there wasn’t one before. Following his time in the UAE, Jarret founded Full On Communications to provide services to a broader and more diverse set of customers in the nuclear industry. We discussed the importance of story telling, the value of purchased media time to enable companies to tell their own stories and the importance of techniques like press releases to keep the public, the press and investors informed about both progress and hurdles. Full On Communications recently celebrated its 10th Anniversary. Jarret and his team have contributed to many of the initiatives and actions that have combined to dramatically change the future prospects for nuclear energy development. They look forward to many more years of growth as the next stage of the nuclear renaissance continues to emerge.

Aalo Atomics is a three year old company that is focused on designing, manufacturing and deploying nuclear reactors. Their stated goal is to achieve an electricity production cost of less than $0.03 (3 cents) per kilowatt hour. It’s moving fast. It built a 40,000 ft² pilot scale manufacturing plant in Austin, TX in just one year. It plans to achieve initial criticality for Aalo-X, its first commercial scale reactor, in July 2026. That’s less than four months from now. The facility at the Idaho National Laboratory is completed, the reactor and primary systems have been installed. The reactor fuel is being manufactured by Global Nuclear Fuels in Wilmington, NC. The few remaining steps include the Department of Energy’s issuance of the final Documented Safety Analysis, fuel receipt and fuel loading. For many inside and outside the nuclear industry, Aalo’s pace seems to be almost impossible. Even for those who believe it is possible for nuclear systems to be designed, reviewed, licensed and constructed far faster than ever before, the accomplishments approach the incredible stage. For Atomic Show #343, Yasir Arafat, Aalo’s co-founder and Chief Technical Officer enthusiastically shares his company’s story. He tells us how the company and its products were designed and manufactured with efficiency, ease and availability at the center of decision making. The company also decided at a very early stage that it would do everything in its power to manufacture and assemble its machines, taking control of its own destiny wherever possible. He bragged – rightfully so – about the company’s ability to attract exceptional employees, stating their belief that a superstar can be as much as 10 times more productive than an average employee. He described how the company has avoided adding management layers, saying that the team they have assembled does not need anyone to manage their performance. He emphasized that Aalo had assembled a strong network of suppliers with shared motives that help to make the vision achievable. Raw materials, sensors, wiring harnesses and many other parts that aren’t at the top of mind are best purchased rather than built in house. During the discussion, Yasir told stories from his 15-year career as a reactor design engineer at Westinghouse and Idaho National Laboratory that helped to shape his technical and managerial decision making. It’s evident that he has done a lot of personal “lesson learning” and is now applying those learnings with a high performing team. Aalo’s inspiring vision and milestone execution track record have attracted a strong and growing number of risk-accepting investors. Nucleation Capital, the parent company of Atomic Insights and the Atomic Show podcast, has been one of those investors from a very early stage in the company.

LIS Technologies (LIST) is a young company with deep historical roots. CRISLA (Condensation Repression Isotope Selective Laser Activation), its laser isotope separation concept was developed and tested during the late 1980s and early 1990s under the leadership of Dr. Jeff Eerkens. Unfortunately, the path towards commercializing the technology hit a multi-decade detour as the result of terrible timing and a slow analytical process. At the same time that the CRISLA development effort began producing intriguing results, there was a major effort to consume excess enriched uranium from the former Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons complex. The solution was to convert that material into fuel so that it could be consumed in U.S. nuclear power plants. The enriched uranium consumption program, known as “Megatons to Megawatts“, arguably made the world safer and provided significant benefits to American electricity consumers. Megatons to Megawatts also flooded the world’s enriched uranium market and eliminated investor interest in improving existing processes. The CRISLA project was halted. Just before the project was abruptly cancelled, the development team conducted several test runs and sent the produced samples out to be tested. The team was disbanded before the results came back. When they were finally available, they were filed in a place that wasn’t accessible to the development team. More than 20 years after the 1993 tests were conducted Jeff Eerkens, the team leader, learned that the technology that he and his team had built worked far better than they realized. Christo Liebenberg, the current LIST President, visited the Atomic Show to share a more complete version of the above story. He tells us just how much better the enrichment results were compared to all other alternatives. He helps explain the importance and implications if successful commercial development can be achieved. He explains how the equipment from the 1990s test was stored and recovered and he describes the success efforts to restore and improve the low pressure CO lasers at the heart of the system. He explains how LIST was formed and how it attracted the attention of Jay Yu, its Chairman, CEO, co-founder and initial investor. Christo’s resume seems to have been designed to prepare him for the role of leading a laser isotope separation company. This is quoted from the LIST web site team page. Mr Liebenberg started his career in the 1980's at the Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa where he later spearheaded the optimization of enrichment parameters of the Molecular Laser Isotope Separation (MLIS) process. By the end of the 1990's his journey led him to Australia where he later joined Silex Systems Ltd as their Laser Manager, and continued this role at Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) in Wilmington, NC where he played a key role in the architecture of the Test Loop Facility. In 2012 he joined the research team at ASML where he was intricately involved with the R&D of state-of-the-art CO2 laser systems to generate EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet), used today to manufacture modern semiconductor chips. We talked about the changes in the enrichment market and its growing need for both technological improvement and additional production capacity. The situation is far different today compared to what existed at the time CRISLA was initially shelved. We ended our conversation with a personal inspiration story about Jeff Eerkens, the father of laser isotope enrichment. The great news is that he has lived long enough to participate in the process of developing his inventions. I have no doubt that you will find this show to be informative and entertaining.

Ho Nieh, Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, visited the Atomic Show for a wide ranging discussion about the agency, its role in enabling the safe use of nuclear energy, the importance of its mission to the energy future of the United States, the benefits of having organization led by a five person commission of decision makers and the ways in which the NRC is evolving to better serve the needs of the United States in an era of rapid technological change. Chairman Nieh’s father worked as a nuclear qualified welder. His experiences during spring and fall outages were part of the inspiration for Nieh’s decision to pursue a career in nuclear engineering. He studied marine engineering at the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy. That major was the closest thing to a nuclear engineering program available at the sometimes overlooked 5th service academy. Chairman Nieh at Aalo Atomics Pilot factory – March 2026 (Used with permission from USNRC) Aside: (Everyone remembers the Military Academy, the Naval Academy (my personal favorite) and the Air Force Academy. Many know about the Coast Guard Academy. It’s less common to recall that the Merchant Marines play a vital role in the defense establishment and that they have their own service academy. End Aside. Chairman Nieh told us about how he started his nuclear career as an instructor/operator at the S8G prototype at the Navy’s prototype site in West Milton, NY. He spent more than 4 years as a shift worker at the facility, likely having contact with 16 or more classes of trainees in the Navy’s Nuclear Power Program. After four plus years on rotating shifts, he was open to a suggestion from a former colleague to apply for a job as a resident inspector with the NRC. (Chairman Nieh is the first NRC Commissioner to have served as a resident inspector.) At his service academy, Nieh was trained to seek roles of increasing responsibility where he could put his leadership training to its most effective use. His career on the NRC staff contains abundant evidence of choices made to deepen and broaden his capabilities as a leader in a complex and vital field. Chairman Nieh described his appreciation of the skills, work ethic and depth of experience of his four fellow commissioners. It’s almost de rigueur for NRC commissioners to praise the collegiality of their Commission, but it sounded like he was describing an especially useful version of that descriptor is applicable to the current group. We spoke about the agency’s evolving understanding of its role in enabling the safe use of nuclear energy and its growing understanding that the guiding language on that topic has always been included in Article 1 of the Atomic Energy Act. He acknowledged that there have been past leaders on the Commission and on the staff who felt that enabling was too “promotional” and wasn’t part of the NRC’s mission. We spoke about the NRC’s very recent release of 10 CFR Part 53, the long-anticipated, new licensing framework whose creation was directed by the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act of 2019. Though analysis of the final, 701-page rule is still in progress, the early returns show that it has generally succeeded in becoming a risk-informed, performance-based, technology-inclusive framework for designing and licensing new nuclear reactors. Though the rule is still under review and the draft has not yet been made public, the Chairman Nieh described how NRC is close to completing another assigned task, this one directed by Executive Order 14300. The Commission is reconsidering the use of the linear, no threshold (LNT) radiation protection model and the associated regulatory requirement to take action to keep radiation doses as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA), even when the doses involved are already many multiples below the regulatory limit. Chairman Nieh emphasized that the agency is maintaining its historic independence and that there are no external forces that are going to detract it from its role in maintaining safety. He also describes how keeping reactors safe does not mean preventing them from being built and operated. The nation needs abundant, affordable, reliable, clean power. It needs nuclear plants that can be built on time and within budget and a regulator that will not inhibit the accomplishment of the goal for safe and abundant nuclear energy. I think you will enjoy the show.

Energy is Life begins with an alternative timeline – Zion Lights describes what her life would be like if her parents had not made the decision to emigrate from their village in India to become factor workers in the burgeoning Manchester manufacturing area before she was born. It’s a sobering and enlightening depiction of the daily struggle for sustenance and survival in a place that is plagued with dire energy poverty. During her education and early career, Zion was deeply embedded in the environmental movement and accepted many of its tenants. But as she repeatedly heard her colleagues and associates idealize simple existence and express a desire to return to the land and the traditional ways, she began to ask hard questions. Did they have any idea what it was like for those people who were still living on the land using traditional, primitive technologies? Her path of asking hard questions and looking for the best scientifically supportable answers to those questions soon led her to become a closeted nuclear energy supporter. She learned how useful the technology was, especially as a way to provide abundant energy while virtually eliminating immediately harmful air pollution and climate changing emissions. But she still traveled in the environmental circles and was sure that she would be ostracized if she openly expressed her conclusions. She tested that thesis several times and received the response that she expected. One of her colleagues once asked “you aren’t pro-nuclear are you?” At a key point in her journey of discovery she was employed as a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, an aggressive antinuclear NGO taking direct action to capture the public’s attention. Its illogical but unfortunately common position was to be both opposed to emission-free nuclear energy while also focused on fighting climate change. After finding herself in situations where her choice was to speak truthfully or to do her assigned job, she left the antinuclear group to become a pronuclear advocate, speaker and author. We talked about her life trajectory, her recent book, and her pursuit of an abundant future where all people have access to the energy resources that give them agency and enable them to flourish. I expect that you will enjoy this episode.

Abandoned uranium mine waste has been a big deal for decades, but almost no one had an inkling about what we should do to solve the problem. The scale of the challenge is huge, with various estimates ranging between 1 and 8 billion tons of uranium mining waste rock spread over more than 10,000 sites, nearly all of which are in western states and Native American sovereign nations. The Navajo Nation is the jurisdiction with the biggest burden – a substantial portion of the waste is on Navajo lands and spread over 500 or more sites. Some have dismissed or minimized the problem by pointing to the relatively low material concentrations and the low radiation doses emitted. But low concentrations multiplied by tens of millions of tons and thousands of sites calculates to distressingly large numbers. It’s also important to remember that the contaminating minerals of concern are heavy metals that might be lightly radioactive, but they also have a level of chemical toxicity that also causes negative health impacts on humans and animals. Though billions of dollars have been allocated for cleaning up the waste piles, there hasn’t been much progress because the available solution set has been limited to on-site burial in engineered landfills or moving the material “somewhere else.” The landfill option doesn’t remove the potential threat to groundwater and the barriers are designed to last about 100 years. The vast majority of the contaminating minerals will still be there after the designed barriers have deteriorated. There has been little or no success in finding suitable or agreeable places to take the waste and even if there were, the mass of material means that most of the available clean up funds would be consumed in transportation. Not surprisingly, there has not been a shortage of large established contracting companies willing to be paid tens of millions of dollars to study the issue and move some dirt around. Enter John Lee and Greyson Buckingham, a pair of innovative entrepreneurs. They recognized the scale of the problem and the importance of effective solutions. They developed a patented technology called High Pressure Slurry Ablation that separates the contaminating minerals – mostly uranium and radium 226 – from sand and rock and concentrates those minerals into about 20% of the mass of the input stream. The clean fraction can meet stringent NRC unrestricted release criteria while the fraction containing the minerals will have a high enough concentration to turn a pile of contaminated material into valuable ore. John Lee, with deep experience and education in mining and materials processing, developed the initial idea for HPSA. Greyson Buckingham added his legal training, business acumen and political experience. They formed a company called Disa Technologies in 2018 and patiently began the process of refining their ideas into useful and reliable machinery. Additionally, they entered into a plodding process of obtaining permission to deploy their problem-solving technology in an environmentally beneficial and cost effective manner. Starting with a state regulatory engagement in 2018, Disa Technologies was recently – September 30, 2025 – awarded a service provider’s license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That license comes with a significant, but reasonably achievable condition to demonstrate HPSA on a commercial scale before entering into wide deployment of multiple units. Though it took about half a decade of staff engagement and Commission decision-making to determine the proper licensing framework, the NRC was able to review Disa’s service provider license application in six months (March–September 2025). During the regulatory engagement process, Disa Technologies developed strong alliances with political representatives from affected states, with leaders among the Native American nations and with communities that have been seeking solutions to the waste issue for decades. They also produced solid scientific evidence of the efficacy of their inventions and demonstrated it to the satisfaction of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The saga is fascinating. For Atomic Show #339, I spoke with Greyson Buckingham about his company, its technology, the importance of cleaning up abandoned uranium mine (AUM) waste, the utility of HPSA in processing other critical mineral ores, the sometimes frustrating interactions with the NRC during period from 2020-2024 and the refreshingly competent and mission-oriented NRC that has been evolving during the past year. Neither I nor Nucleation Capital, the sponsor of the Atomic Show and Atomic Insights, have any financial interest in Disa as of January 5, 2025, the date that this post and the associated audio recording are released.

Oklo is rapidly becoming a household name, at least among households with members who pay attention to energy industry developments and/or the headliners in the financial press. Oklo is in the process of designing and permitting a family of small modular reactors that it plans to own and operate to produce electricity, heat and isotopes...

NexGen Energy is a uranium mining company that is nearing the end of a long transition from a successful exploration entity to a uranium producing company. The company is in the final stages of hearings and approvals needed from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to allow it to begin constructing the mine infrastructure for its...

Dr. Hash Hashemian has been an inspiring leader in the nuclear industry for half a century. He was recently inaugurated as the President of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) after serving for a year as the Vice President/President Elect. His company, AMS Corporation, provides key services and products to nearly every nuclear power plant in...

Blue Wave AI Labs has been creating and supplying artificial intelligence tools – mainly in the form of machine learning – to operating nuclear power plants since 2016. Their initial set of tools focused on improving boiling water reactor core reload designs. The company was formed to address the chosen problem because it was a...

Standard Nuclear emerged from the start-up stealth mode in early June 2025 with the announcement of successfully raising $42 million from a group of venture capitalist led by  Decisive Point with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Washington Harbour Partners, Welara, Fundomo and Crucible Capital. Though Standard Nuclear is young enough to have a single page web site, it owns and operates the largest...

Copenhagen Atomics is an ambitious Danish company with a bold, potentially world-changing vision. They're driven by a goal of manufacturing one reactor per day from a high quality, certified factory. If they achieve that goal, they would be adding an additional 37 GW/year of heat to the global energy supply. They want to help make...

The University of Illinois-Urbana Champagne (UIUC) is planning to build a uniquely capable micro reactor project on its campus. For decades, the university hosted a traditional research reactor that supported important research projects and provided operating experience. But, like the majority of university research reactors, it did not produce any useful heat or electricity. Kronos...

The Nuclear Company (TNC) describes itself as “a fleet-scale American nuclear deployment company.” TNC is a young, visionary company driven by what business author Jim Collins describes as a BHAG – “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” – in his best-selling book titled Built To Last. TNC's intermediate goal is to deploy 6 large nuclear reactors in...

The Honorable Dr. Kathryn Huff is an associate professor in the nuclear, plasma and radiological engineering department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She is the director of the Advanced Reactor Fuels laboratory and currently specializes in nuclear reactor core neutronics and multi-physics modeling. She served as the Assistant Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Energy...

Aalo Atomics is a two year old micro reactor company founded by Matt Loszak, a serial entrepreneur, and Yasir Arafat, a skilled nuclear engineer who previously lead the DOE's MARVEL advanced micro-reactor demonstration project. Note: At Nucleation Capital, we were impressed enough with the company and the team to add it to our growing portfolio...

Deep Isolation is one of Nucleation Capital's more impactful portfolio companies because its technology can enable greater success for most of the rest of the companies – and for the entire nuclear energy sector. The company has been developing, testing and refining its systematic approach to nuclear waste disposal for a decade. Despite the fact...

Jigar Shah has had a lengthy career as an energy industry entrepreneur and strategic thinker. He founded Sun Edison and helped to create a new model for deploying solar power systems. He was part of the Carbon War Room and then founded Generate Capital to provide loans to proven technologies that had not yet achieved...

After many years as an independent journalist with an antinuclear bent, Marco Visscher began questioning his long-held beliefs. He realized that the accepted alternatives to fossil fuel were not actually reducing fossil fuel use so much as they were limiting the rate at which it was increasing. He began acknowledging that nuclear energy was a...

Jay Hakes, an accomplished author and historian, visited the Atomic Show to talk about his recently published book, Presidents and the Planet: Climate Change Science and Politics from Eisenhower to Bush. Sometimes referred to as “the untold story of climate change,” Hake's book is an enlightening jaunt through a history discovered during long days in...

Julie Kozeracki was the lead author for a U.S. Department of Energy strategy document titled Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Advanced Nuclear published in September 2024. The document was the result of a multi-agency, multi-lab effort to update a previously issued report. During our conversation, Kozeracki described how the report was informed by changes in the...

Westinghouse's eVinci is a 15 MWth, 5 MWe micro reactor. Westinghouse often refers to it as a nuclear battery. Unlike conventional nuclear power plants, eVinci uses no water and doesn't produce steam. The eVinci is not “just another way to boil water.” There are no pumps in the system that moves heat out of the...

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a construction permit on September 16, 2024 to Abilene Christian University (ACU) to build a molten salt research reactor. This marked the first university research reactor approval in 30 years. It is the first liquid fuel reactor ever approved for construction by the NRC and only the second advanced...

Urenco is one of the few companies in the world that enriches uranium. It's one of an even smaller group of enrichers that aren't owned by the Russian, Chinese or Iranian governments. It plays a key role in the western world's nuclear fuel cycle. That role became even more important after February, 2022. With the...

The Nuclear Company exited a period of operating in “stealth mode” about a month ago. That exit was sufficiently well planned and executed that it is likely that Atomic Insights readers have already heard of the company. The Nuclear Company was incorporated a year ago. Its founding team has been working diligently to build the...

Brian Gitt, the Business Development lead at Oklo, visited the Atomic Show to describe his employer's business model and current prospects. Oklo is an advanced fission and fuel recycling company with an expansive vision for becoming a competitive clean energy supplier. It plans to provide heat and/or electricity as a service from a fleet of...

Atomic Canyon is a six month old company that is developing AI tools to improve the efficiency of routine tasks associated with developing, licensing, building, owning and operating nuclear plants. Their first product, called Neutron, uses AI to modernize searching the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's 52 million page collection of publicly available documents that are currently...

Emmet Penney is an unlikely, but effective pronuclear advocate. He earned his degrees in fine arts and great books and worked for several years as a professional poet – along with working in a bookstore as a way to keep paying the bills. He gradually transitioned from poetry into writing thoughtful essays on a variety...

Doug Sandridge is a lifelong oil and gas guy whose father was a geological engineer. While he was growing up, Doug lived a significant portion of his life overseas as his father's job took the family to several different locations. When it was time to go to college, Doug returned to the United State to...

James Krellenstein is a physicist, consultant and nuclear energy historian. He is currently employed as a senior advisor to Global Health Strategies. He started up their decarbonization practice with an emphasis on nuclear energy along with renewables. He was the lead author on GEH's report on ways to reduce global dependence on Russia for necessary...

Stefano Buono is a physicist and the successful founder of Advanced Accelerator Applications, a multibillion dollar company that pioneered the use of several therapeutic medical isotopes. After making several people very rich, including himself, he sold the medical isotope business and returned to his early 1990s field of study – nuclear fission reactors using molten...

Zeno Power makes cost-effective radioisotope power systems (RPS) for some of the most challenging environments in the solar system. Its systems use a proprietary package that allows a wider variety of isotopes to perform functions previously reserved for Pu-238, a rare isotope that is slowly produced at great expense. What is the value of RPS?...

Mary Jo Rogers is a trained clinical psychologist who developed her interest workforce safety cultures and leadership in the nuclear power sector while consulting and working for ComEd (later Exelon). At the time she began her work, ComEd was a perennially under-performing utility with new leaders that were committed to turning it into the best...

In the past few years, there has been a strong revival of interest in using nuclear fission energy to power space travel and planetary exploration. There have also been new developments in radioisotope thermal generators that will make them more widely available with greater energy density. Though there has been interest in using nuclear energy...

Matt Huber is a professor of geography at Syracuse University. He writes about energy, economies and the way that energy sources have influenced modern societies and economies. One of his first books was Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital (2013) which is very briefly described as follows: Looking beyond the usual culprits, “Lifeblood”...

Alyssa Hayes is a leader in the pro-nuclear movement. She is a PhD candidate in nuclear engineering at the University of Tennessee and she has been interested in policy making and politics since interning with her local representative when she was 14 years old. She was involved in the successful efforts to save four nuclear...

Mark Nelson has been traveling the world in an effort to help create a sustainable pronuclear movement. His focus includes both saving existing plants and encouraging the construction of new reactor in areas that have operating reactors, those that have shut down their nuclear plants and in countries that have never operated nuclear plants. We...

Westinghouse, one of the world's first nuclear power plant vendors, recently announced a new small modular reactor (SMR) design called the AP300. It is described as a simplified version of the AP1000, four of which are currently operating in China and two of which are in the final stages of operational testing in Georgia, United...

On Apr 28, the much anticipated film, Nuclear Now, will premier in selected theaters in New York, Sedona and Los Angeles. It will remain available in those venues for a week. On May 1, 2023, the film will be shown at 350 theaters across the US and Canada. The film is co-written by Oliver Stone...

Dr. Leonard Rodberg spent most of his adult life being opposed to nuclear energy. A half a dozen years ago, he abruptly changed his mind. Ever since, he has been a strong and vocal advocate for the increased use of nuclear energy. On Atomic Show #304 Len and I discuss his education, career, his changing...

Rendering of Last Energy's 20 MWe installations (Last Energy) Last Energy is an innovative new company governed by a philosophy of avoiding the invention of anything that has not been done before. They have created a business that is laser focused on building, owning and operating small (20 MWe), modular pressurized water reactors and selling the electricity they produce under long term power purchase agreements. On Atomic Show #303, Bret Kugelmass, the founder, president and CEO of Last Energy describes the path he took from earning a masters degree in robotics at Stanford, through the founding and operation of a successful drone company, to a highly respected podcast, through a non profit think tank and into a utility company that has designed a nuclear power plant that can begin operating as early as 2025 with commercial scale repetition starting almost immediately. Where some believe that nuclear fission requires highly specialized equipment, Last Energy has found that pressure vessels, pumps, piping, heat exchangers and valves of similarly high quality standards are widely available from experienced, commercial suppliers. Their systems, structures and components (SSC) use well-accepted ASME codes and standards and are often identical to the SSC that have been used for decades in chemical processing, oil and gas, and other industrial applications. Last Energy has chosen a small number of initial deployment locations, specifically in the UK, Romania and Poland. They are aiming to supply power to major industrial consumers that need somewhere between 20 and 100 MWe. They will connect to their customers "behind the meter". From the customer point of view, Last Energy power will look and act like the electricity they currently purchase from their local utility company. Last Energy systems will have approximately 2 m diameter pressure vessels that can accommodate full length fuel assemblies and standard control rods with proven drive mechanisms mounted on the reactor head. There will be fewer assemblies in the core, and they will be replaced as a whole unit every 6 years. Each plant will have a single steam generator and coolant pump. Kugelmass explains the reasons behind the company philosophy and design choices. He provides a good summary of their business model and their driving motivations. One aspect of Last Energy's plans should motivate US politicians to modify our current export control regime. Even though their plants are designed to be well within the production capability of US manufacturers, the company is studiously avoiding the production of any nuclear component in the US. Export control processes are too burdensome to be economically justifiable. I hope you enjoy the show and participate in the conversation.

Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon, the Director General of the World Nuclear Association Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon, the Director General of the World Nuclear Association, visited the Atomic Show to provide an international perspective on the revival in interest in nuclear energy deployment. As the head of the organization that represents the global nuclear industry, provides education about all matters related to using nuclear technologies, and lobbies for recognition of the value that nuclear energy provides, she is uniquely able to describe what the world is thinking about building and operating a wide variety of nuclear energy generating systems. Dr. Bilbao y Leon shared valuable messages from her conversations with world leaders during the recent Conference of the Parties in Egypt (COP27) . "A very important dimension of decarbonization tends to be forgotten. When we are looking at the global north as in developed countries obviously we are focused on decarbonization, reducing emissions, energy efficiency, being more cost effective and more effective in how we use the energy that we do have.That is the transition that we are looking towards – cleaner energy. But when we are looking to the global south, their energy transition goes from no energy to energy." "You have a lot of countries saying, ok people. Yes, we want to decarbonize, yes we want to use our resources as effectively as possible, but we also – and foremost – want to achieve the standard of living that you guys are already enjoying." "More and more countries, particularly in the global south, are realizing that nuclear is truly – or could be potentially – a game changer when it comes to providing abundant, clean, affordable 24 x 7 energy – not electricity, energy – for everybody." Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon, the Director General of the World Nuclear Association We talked about the utility of small modular reactors (SMR) in bringing nuclear energy benefits to a broader selection of energy consumers – a term that includes all of us. Aside: Our conversation took a personal side trip to a time when Sama Bilbao y Leon, then a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, was intrigued by a "crazy" talk describing the benefits of nuclear systems small enough to be called atomic engines. End Aside. We talked about the process that countries undertake when they choose to develop the capability to own and operate nuclear power plants. We speculated on nuclear energy's potential to provide the kind of "leapfrog" advance demonstrated by mobile phone technology. We also talked about ways to respond to inaccurate arguments claiming that there are no small modular reactors operating or that they are untested and unproven technologies. Dr. Sama Bilbao y Leon brings a diverse resume to her job. She started her professional career as a nuclear safety engineer with Dominion, a major utility with a large nuclear plant operating arm, became an associate professor of nuclear engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University – where she played a leading role in establishing a new nuclear engineering degree program – and served in a variety of leadership positions at international organizations like the IAEA and the NEA. She holds a PhD and master's degree in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Wisconsin Madison,, a master's (Energy Technologies) and bachelor's (Mechanical Engineering) degrees from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. I hope you enjoyed the show. Please participate in a conversation about the topics discussed. It would also be helpful and appreciated if you could take the time to provide a review of the Atomic Show on your podcast app of choice.

The nuclear energy policy landscape in the US has changed significantly during the past 5 years. Once seen as an issue with enormous differences between the political parties, it has become one of the few topics on which both parties can have a civil discussion and agree on many key provisions in supportive legislation. Matt Crozat: NEI, Executive Director for Strategy and Policy Matt Crozat is the Nuclear Energy Institute's Executive Director for Strategy and Policy Development. He and his supporting team have played a role in helping Representatives, Senators and their key staff members to understand the value supplied by operating nuclear plants and the advanced nuclear power systems that are being developed. Some of the progress began with efforts at the state level and then proceeded to capture the attention of the national level politicians and leaders. We talked about the strong financial support provided to operating plants to keep them economically viable and about the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that will encourage and reward the deployers of new nuclear power plants. We talked about the results of an NEI survey of companies that own and operate the existing nuclear fleet that provided an intriguingly large number of expected new capacity additions between now and 2050. (Spoiler alert: Though representing a limited portion of the potential buyers, those companies expect to add enough reactors to double current nuclear generating capacity by 2050.) From: "The Path to Decarbonization:Overview of the Demand for New Nuclear." With permission from NE Efforts to ensure capable supply chains and workforce development for that kind of growth have begun, but there is a lot of work remaining to be done. We discussed the importance of committed orders to convince suppliers that investments will produce product sales and the importance of jobs to ensure that workers are convinced to invest in developing their skills and education. An important topic in our discussion was the importance of a consistent, steady effort and the extreme cost and vulnerability that can be imposed by wide swings in support that lead to bumpy, halting efforts. We talked a bit about the potential that one or more of the companies that already own issued and active combined licenses for AP1000s may recognize that their decision matrix has changed in the past 2 years, with dramatic movements upon Russia's invasion of Ukraine and then again upon passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. I'd wager that construction on those project could be organized to begin within about two years from the time the corporate board is convinced that is an investment worth the time and resources involved. For reasons of fairness and not leaving anyone out of the mentions, we did not discuss the numerous organizations and individuals that helped achieve the successful change in the policy landscape. I hope you enjoy the episode. Please participate in the discussion here with comments, questions and suggestions.

Modeled waste volumes for selected reactor designs (From "Nuclear Waste from Small Modular Reactors") Dr. Lindsay Krall is a geochemist currently working on projects characterizing the behavior of radioactive isotopes that will eventually be stored in a deep geologic repository being designed in Sweden for construction within the next decade. During a three year post doctoral period she worked under a MacArthur Foundation grant program to study the projected production of waste from small modular reactors. She received mentoring and guidance from Dr. Allison Macfarlane and Dr. Rodney Ewing, but performed most of the work as an individual researcher. As we discussed during this episode of the Atomic Show, the study topic was only marginally related to her academic and professional field. During her post doc period, she presented various stages of her work at conferences and in journal articles. She told me that those progress reports generated few questions and apparently little interest. But the final paper documenting her study results produced a minor eruption inside the world of people that are interested in the development and deployment of small modular reactors and advanced nuclear energy production systems. The paper, titled "Nuclear Waste from Small Modular Reactors" was published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. It included the discussion-provoking conclusion that "SMRs will produce more voluminous and chemically/physically reactive waste than LWRs." Aside: I question the author's choice to use the word "will" instead of "might". There are far too many uncertainties and technology-specific conditions for such certainty. End Aside. Unlike most of the thousands of study papers published in scientific journals each year, this one stimulated immediate attention with articles in mainstream outlets like Bloomberg, Reuters, The Globe and Mail, and the Register, presumably written by journalists that had access to a pre-print version of the paper. That active promotional effort was a bit of a surprise to the study's primary author, though she had been advised by her coauthors to be ready for media inquiries. Dan Yurman at Neutron Bytes published a detailed review of the paper. The study focused on three SMR designs out of the dozens that are currently under development. The three selected systems included the 160 MWth version of the NuScale Power Module, a version of the Terrestrial Energy Integrated Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) and the Toshiba 4S. Developers of the NuScale Power Module and the IMSR published prompt responses to the PNAS paper, the Toshiba 4S has not been under active development for at least half a decade. Both of the responses challenged the study's decision to use obsolete versions of designs that are still evolving and have not yet been built. They challenged some of the paper's assumptions about neutron leakage and stated that it cannot be computed with simple volume-related equations. One statement from the paper received particular attention from Terrestrial Energy. “Molten salt- and sodium-cooled SMRs will use highly corrosive and pyrophoric fuels and coolants that, following irradiation, will become highly radioactive.”Correction of Factual Errors in PNAS Article “Nuclear waste from small modular reactors” No reactor design proposes to use pyrophoric fuels and sodium coolant activity levels are generally low enough to allow it to be handled as low level waste. One of the key study decisions received little attention in the widespread coverage about the study's critical conclusions. For reasons of simplification, resources and study duration, the authors chose to ignore recycling, reuse, dilution and reprocessing, even though all of those waste reduction techniques are being actively researched as part of the DOE's advanced reactor development program. This study also neglects to consider reprocessing, recycling,

Dr. Chris Keefer is one of the busiest and most successful nuclear energy advocates working today. He is a Canadian emergency room doctor, the founder of Doctors for Nuclear Energy, the founder and host of the Decouple podcast, the founder of Decouple Media, and the founder and President of Canadians for Nuclear Energy (C4NE). And to think, just a few years ago, Chris was a free thinking progressive who had only thought negatively about nuclear energy if he bothered to think much about it at all. We talked about his journey from a tribal antinuclear thinker – one who thought negatively about nuclear because most of the people they knew did – to an openly and consistently pronuclear advocate who believes that nuclear energy plays an important role in our present and an increasingly vital one in our future. As the Crown corporation's sole shareholder, the province of Ontario requested Ontario Power Generation (OPG) to determine if it could safely continue operating the Pickering nuclear power plant. On September 29, 2022, OPG announced that planned to keep the Pickering nuclear plant operating for at least one more year. It also announced that it would conduct a new evaluation to determine if refurbishing the plant for an additional 30 year period was justified. Chris and his team at C4NE declared that September 29 should now be called Pickering Day. OPG requires approval from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for its revised schedule. The CNSC, which employs a rigorous and transparent decision-making process, will make the final decision regarding Pickering's safe operating life. OPG will continue to ensure the safety of the Pickering facility through rigorous monitoring, inspections, and testing.Province of Ontario news release titled "Ontario Supports Plan to Safely Continue Operating the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station" Over the past several years, C4NE fought what was initially a lonely battle to save Pickering and to prevent Ontario from dramatically increasing its use of natural gas to supply electricity to Canada's most industrialized province. As it continued to show up to various meetings, events and even parliamentary sessions, C4NE accumulated a following that included other advocates, plant workers, union organizers and local business leaders. They reminded people that the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission had approved a plan to refurbish Pickering before the 2009 closure decision. They pointed out that the energy market had changed dramatically since that decision, which was made in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2008 and at a time when "cheap natural gas" seemed to be clean and infinitely available. We also discussed the coincidence that OPG announced it was open to keeping Pickering for 30 more years just three days after it announced a dam-breaking deal with Microsoft to begin selling clean energy credits sourced from its nuclear and hydro-electric fleets. That deal should be the first of many announcements from major tech companies that have made pledges to power their data centers with clean power on an hour by hour basis, constantly matching demand with supply. This is an evolution and an improvement over the trading system of exclusive "renewable" energy credits where companies purchase enough credits so that their total energy demand is matched by the total energy production of sources like wind or solar that are not likely to be producing power to supply demand at the time that the demand occurs. Aside: Atomic Insights has an article in the works to more completely describe the clean energy credit deal and the system that Ontario is developing to track and trade the credits. Look for that article to appear here in the near future. End Aside. Chris and I then ranged into a number of other topics focused on Canada's nuclear energy leadership and its opportunities to prosper in the continuing Nuclear Renaissance. (Please remember,

Reactor Internals by Marcus Seidl Marcus Seidl is a German nuclear professional who received his PhD in nuclear physics in 2002, a year after his home country decided that it would exit nuclear energy in favor of investing in a large roll out of renewable energy sources. He has worked for German utility companies, for a vendor erecting a state-of-the-art high neutron flux research reactor, and is now employed by PreusseneElektra as a nuclear physicist. He also teaches part time at Technische Universität München | TUM · Department of Nuclear Engineering. During our discussion, any opinions he expressed were his alone. He does not represent his employers. As a researcher, he recently started a project called Unique Safety Features and Licensing Requirements of Small Modular Reactors | Frontiers Research Topic (frontiersin.org). A self-described "traditional utility guy" he considers any reactor that generates considerably less than 4,000 MWth to be a smaller reactors. During our pre-show correspondence, Marcus shared the following commentary explaining his interest in researching safety and licensing of smaller reactors and reasons why they address particular challenges associated with conventional extra-large reactors. I am a traditional utility guy – which means that every reactor which generates noticeably less than 4000MWth is a “small” reactor. Especially in the US there is a distinction between small modular reactors, micro reactors and advanced reactors. From my perspective they are all “small”. In part this adjective is also justified because most of these designs are expected to be mass produced or consist of prefabricated modules and hence cannot be of the same size as a traditional LWR. The reason why I initiated the ‘special research' topic: the issue of energy security and climate change are two important factors which currently favor nuclear: it is a compact source of energy (you can easily build up strategic fuel reserves) and it has a small CO2 footprint. So, why are we waiting? Why are there still doubts that nuclear power can help solve these issues? It is not the sole solution, it is not a silver bullet, but it can be part of the solution. From a conservative utility perspective traditional LWRs would be the most reliable bet. For some reasons big, complicated infrastructure projects are out-of-favor today. SMRs have many new design details and confidence must be built that they are safer, more reliable and easier to license.   Therefore the “research topic” intends to put current research into perspective: we have great experience from many years of traditional LWR operation, we have learned from earlier, advanced reactor concepts and today we have many modern engineering tools. This should be a good basis to fulfill the promises of the next generation of reactors. In my opinion it is important to understand the history of reactor development, to demonstrate that compared to earlier designs and methods we justifiably can be more confident to bring the technology to its next level. And SMRs are not just scaled down versions of bigger plants. They are small in order to make the core damage frequency much smaller than that of their bigger brothers. As a scientist I am a fan of radical honesty and transparency: reactors are just machines which are an optimized solution for a specific problem. Certainly, there will be failures and setbacks. If a machine encounters conditions for which it was not optimized, it likely will fail. Compared to the risks our fathers took more than 50 years ago, we are now in a much better position. This is why I am optimistic that a new generation of reactors and higher safety standards are possible. Nevertheless, these are complex technological products and they are full of surprises and also “small” reactors will not fully fulfill expectations. No reason to worry, this is the way evolution works: engineering is a sequence of problems,

Krusty Core showing heat pipe arrangement Patrick McClure and David Poston successfully developed, obtained funding, constructed and operated a new atomic fission power source that produced useful quantities of electricity during the period from 2014-2018. That puts them into a rarified, perhaps unique position. Few US-based technologists have been through that process in the past 40 years. Aside: Without some way to frame the statement so it excludes the US Navy it isn't accurate to say no one else has accomplished this feat. End Aside Patrick and David – and their supporting team – developed and operated the Kilopower reactor, also known as KRUSTY. That name comes from a creatively framed acronym – Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling TechnologY. The proposed application for the system is to produce power for space missions that cannot be accomplished using either solar collectors or radioisotope thermal generators. The former imposes operational constraints with both intermittency factors and increasing distance from the sun. The later uses rare isotopes with limited heat production that constrain individual power devices to a thermal output of approximately 300 W when the device is new. In brief, Krusty was a tiny reactor that was operated at a power level of 5 kWth to produce the equivalent of 1 kWe using Stirling Engines qualified for space travel. Heat pipes arranged around a solid UMO alloy annular core transferred heat from the reactor to the hot end of the Stirling engines. The cold side of the engines were designed to radiate heat into the vacuum of space. Reactor reactivity was adjusted using a movable beryllium reflector on the outside of the core. A boron carbide rod in the center of the annular core provided a second means of controlling the reactor. The core was 10 inches tall and had an outside diameter of 4 inches. The center annulus for 2 inches in diameter. Aside: Past tense is the accurate way to describe Krusty. The system, including the core used, no longer exists. End Aside. The program cost $18 M and took 3.5 years from initiation to final testing. It was funded partly by NASA and partly by NNSA. We will be publishing a more detailed description of the technology and the development process in the near future, but for now, please listen to the show. If the audio program stimulates questions or comments, please join in a conversation here. If you are intensely curious and cannot wait for our coming post, you can learn more about Krusty by visiting Space Nukes Technical Papers.