Nuclear Fission
Reactor design advances, safety milestones, fuel technology, and construction progress in nuclear fission power.
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The Twelve Supplier Contracts Keeping Wyoming’s Reactor on Schedule
TerraPower signed 12 new supplier contracts this week for its Natrium reactor, hardening the supply chain behind America’s first commercial sodium-cooled fast reactor.
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The Steel Alloy That Finally Made Lead-Cooled Reactors Work
Lead-cooled reactors have chased commercial viability since the 1960s without ever selling one. A new corrosion-resistant steel alloy may be the fix that finally gets a reactor built in rural Sweden.
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The 3D-Printed Fuel Kernel That Could Make Thorium Reactors Cheaper
LLNL and startup Ampera are 3D-printing thorium fuel kernels with liquid metal-jetting, the same manufacturing trick that could finally make TRISO fuel cheap enough for a small utility to afford a reactor.
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The Reactor That Came Back From the Dead
Holtec International has started loading fuel into the Palisades reactor, putting the plant on track to become the first US commercial reactor revived after full decommissioning.
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The Nuclear Barge That Could Make Coastal Desalination Cheaper
Newcleo is leading a consortium to design a floating nuclear reactor barge, a factory-built approach that could cut years off deployment timelines for coastal industrial power.
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The Printer That Could End Nuclear’s Forging Bottleneck
A 3-by-5-foot prototype, printed with robotic welding arms in July 2026, aims to end the yearslong wait for custom-forged reactor components. Could this manufacturing shortcut finally clear the bottleneck standing between the US and quadrupling nuclear capacity by 2050?
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The Reactor Test That Skips Straight to Zero Power (On Purpose)
Westinghouse’s eVinci microreactor passed zero-power criticality testing in Nevada, a safety milestone on the path to real-world deployment.
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The Program That Could Get Fuel Convoys Off the Road
Five companies will now build five different reactor designs at five separate Army posts, none using weapons-grade uranium. Officials project more than 20 microreactors across Department of War installations if the program scales successfully.
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The Reactor Cooling System With Zero Moving Parts
Canada’s Nuclear Laboratories is now validating whether NuCube’s pump-free heat pipes can hold up above 900 degrees Celsius, the threshold that would let this reactor rival natural gas for factories and mills.
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The Reactor Redesign That Could Someday Power a Remote Island
Afrikantov OKBM has already built 15 of these compact reactors, with 13 more in production: an assembly line, not a prototype. That scale could someday bring reliable power to remote islands and mines far from any fuel supply chain.