We started covering the fission industry with Ignition’s launch back in February. At that point, we had no idea (OK, maybe an inkling) that this year would hold so many pivotal moments in fission development for the US market.
Here’s our recap of the moments and trends that mattered most in the US fission sector.
Opening new doors: In April, the long-awaited Vogtle 4 reactor finally began commercial operations after 15 years of development and billions of dollars spent. The unit was only the third new US reactor to open its doors this century, after Vogtle 3 in 2023 and Watts Bar Unit 2 in 2016. Now that the two Vogtle reactors are up and running, zero new light water reactor construction projects are active in the country.
- That’s a big difference from the rest of the nuclear-generating world, where there are 66 new reactor construction projects active, including 30 in China alone.
- Rather than take the risk of building new reactors, many US entities are looking to add nuclear capacity by reopening shuttered reactors—including Three Mile Island and the Palisades plant.
The hyperscaler hype: This year, the leaders of the industry expected to generate a massive increase in power demand over the next decade finally got hip to nuclear power’s potential for meeting the power needs of the AI revolution. We couldn’t stay away from the news of hyperscalers starting up nuclear power partnerships and projects across the country to fuel data centers.
- Amazon in March purchased a $650M data center campus with a direct link to the Susquehanna nuclear generating station. It also invested $500M in X-energy.
- Google picked Kairos Power as its nuclear partner in October and plans to procure ~500 MW of capacity from the SMR developer by 2030.
- Microsoft is the virtual brains behind the plan to reopen the Three Mile Island plant (i.e., the Crane Clean Energy Center, as it will henceforth be called).
- Meta rounded out the year of data center power news, announcing this month that it would seek nuclear energy partners of all types to add 1–4 GW of capacity by the early 2030s.
I got new rules: The nuclear industry has oft complained about the lengthy regulatory timelines and high costs of getting new reactors licensed by the NRC—and the commission has heard those woes. This year, Congress directed the federal nuclear regulator to take a more proactive approach to licensing under the ADVANCE Act, which also expands the commission’s resources and limits applicant fees.
Elsewhere in the policy world, the US officially banned imports of Russian uranium to fuel the fleet of US reactors (and Russia responded in kind with a ban on uranium exports). The US decision triggered the release of $2.7B in federal funding for a domestic high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) supply chain. Since then, the DOE has picked its teams for supplying HALEU and LEU domestically.
A market recap: Two new faces hit the public markets this year. Oklo ($OKLO) de-SPAC’d in May, securing $306M in gross proceeds. Its stock is trading up ~75% YTD. NANO Nuclear Energy ($NNE) IPOed the same week, earning about $10M in proceeds. Its stock price sits at ~$24 after going public at $4.
Raking it in: As a startup- and business-focused publication, we’d be remiss not to mention the millions of dollars in investor capital secured by the nuclear fission sector this year. Some notable raises include Radiant’s $100M Series C, newcleo’s $151M round, Aalo Atomics’ $27M Series A, Last Energy’s $40M Series B, and Antares’ $30M Series A.
Lead Reporter of Ignition
