There’s news out of Washington’s most mysterious fusion company this week. Helion, a well-capitalized startup aiming by 2028 to bring a commercial fusion plant online and start selling power to Microsoft, announced that it has leased a plot of land from Chelan County, WA, and broken ground on its 50 MW Orion facility. “Today is […]
The new generation of US nuclear reactors faces a familiar question: What happens to the nuclear waste? Deep Isolation is a Berkeley, CA-based company developing a borehole-based long-term storage solution for spent nuclear fuel and radioactive material. Last week, it announced a $33M round of funding from private investors. “This merger and private placement financing […]
Fusion companies pulled in a grand total of $2.64B over the last 12 months—a 178% increase growth-wise from the year before—but it’s still not enough to get over the finish line. Every year, the Fusion Industry Association (FIA) surveys the breadth of the fusion industry to take stock. This year, the forecast shows sunny skies […]
Microsoft is putting its big brain energy toward the nuclear energy construction problem. Last week, Microsoft and the Idaho National Lab announced that they’d be working together to use AI to make it easier to collect and submit the documents needed to get nuclear construction projects approved by regulators. “Artificial intelligence technologies can enable a […]
You’ve heard plenty of news on nuclear to power AI. It’s only fair that AI gives back. This week, Google and Westinghouse announced that they’ll be working together to streamline the nuclear construction process. Google Cloud’s AI will add to two of Westinghouse’s existing AI-enabled software products, HiVE and bertha, to accelerate AP1000 reactor construction […]
A Japanese fusion firm just pulled in a new batch of funding to support the engineering and manufacturing phases of a steady-state fusion power plant based on its stellarator design. Helical Fusion, a fusion startup founded in Tokyo in 2021, announced a JPY ¥2.3B ($15.6M) Series A round of funding. “Until now, we have relied […]
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 […]
Authored by Justin Lee Porter, Jonathan Camello, Jon O’Connell, and Sam Edwards Just a few years ago, launching a nuclear energy start-up in the United States was an exercise plagued with uncertainty. Regulatory timelines were opaque, licensing costs were burdensome, and securing venture funding was challenging based primarily on the sheer lack of clarity. Recently, […]
The European Innovation Council’s job is to disperse funding to the companies pushing the bleeding edge of technology. This time around, it identified a Danish nuclear firm as one of its beneficiaries. Last week, the EIC announced a batch of 40 companies to receive funding under the most recent round of its accelerator program, which […]
A pair of microreactors are going to be getting cozy in the test bed at Idaho National Lab next year. The DOE picked Radiant and Westinghouse to provide the first machines to snuggle up. The upcoming generation of advanced nuclear companies has been deep in R&D for years, and it’s getting antsy to finally start […]
