There are a whole lot of companies vying to deploy advanced nuclear reactors in the US, and they all have one thing in common: a need for fuel. Problem is, the US has very limited capacity for domestic fuel production. Almost all of the nuclear fuel powering the American reactor fleet is imported, and there […]
Critical technology development in the US is riding high, but that doesn’t come without challenges. Selling to the government is no easy feat. Tommy Hendrix founded Decisive Point in 2018 to help solve that problem by making strategic investments into defense, energy, and infrastructure startups building critical tech. The firm helps startups navigate regulatory pathways […]
The US has a nuclear fuel problem. It’s just not very good at producing it. There are few to no domestic options for uranium conversion and enrichment, and the development of advanced fuels for new reactors is limited to small batches and upstart operations. Standard Nuclear aims to fix the production deficit. This week, the […]
Months after picking the team that will supply domestically produced high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) to the highly anticipated fleet of advanced reactors, the DOE has picked the first recipients of the bounty to come. HALEU is the fuel of choice for numerous companies developing SMRs and microreactors, but the US is sorely lacking in its […]
Kazakhstan has long been one of the world’s top producers of uranium to fuel nuclear reactors around the globe. Now it’s gearing up to reap the benefits at home. This week at the National Kurultai, an assembly of the country’s leadership, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a decree establishing a national nuclear energy agency. The […]
With the resurgence in nuclear power development comes a surge in fuel demand. Around the globe, once-abandoned uranium mining and enrichment projects are gaining steam, and companies are on the hunt for untapped uranium deposits to exploit. This search is driven, in part, by an increase in the spot price of uranium over the last […]
X-energy has officially closed its Series C-1 funding round, which was announced publicly in October when Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund and partners committed ~$500M. The grand total for the round is a whopping $700M, which is expected to go toward reactor development and licensing, building the TRISO-X fuel facility, and pursuing commercialization opportunities for the […]
Sweden is moving forward with plans for a nuclear-powered future after breaking ground on a final storage site for spent nuclear fuel. The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) got started last week on a spent fuel repository (SFR) near the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant. Once complete, the repository will be the second-of-its-kind […]
The results are in: The spot price of uranium at the end of 2024 rang in at $72.63 per pound. If you’ve been tracking the uranium market’s highs and lows over the last year or so, that seems like a significant drop. At the beginning of 2024, short-term prices were coming in at more than […]
The US is gearing up for another nuclear revolution, but there are a few snags in those plans. Over the last year, concerns have been rising over the continued availability of uranium to power the existing and future fleets of American reactors, and the DOE has been working to ensure that the domestic supply chain […]
