The Energy and Environment, Science & Technology (EES&T) Directorate, one of five directorates at the Lab, focuses its research on understanding available energy sources and melding them into coherent and maximally effective systems. The Directorate’s R&D programs seek to take advantage of the special characteristics each energy source adds to the mix.

Dr. Shannon Bragg-Sitton is INL’s Associate Laboratory Director in charge of the EES&T. She is a nuclear engineer by education and experience who initially focused on what she refers to as “nano-reactors.” Those devices, the smallest of which are no bigger than a kitchen trash can, are designed to serve space applications, either as planetary – or Lunar – power supplies or as propulsion sources.

During our conversation, Shannon described her career trajectory from being a student to working at NASA to being a professor at Texas A&M focused on space nuclear power. She described moving to the Idaho National Laboratory as a way to broaden her technical and leadership scope. She mentioned how that move was partially motivated by the challenge of being a tenure track professor while also having three “very young” children.

At INL, she branched out from her special interest in very small reactors and eventually found herself in charge of a division that developed concepts for micro grids that incorporate a wide variety of power sources in ways that maximized effectiveness and economy while still ensuring continuing reliability. She learned to appreciate the value and contributions from non nuclear power sources while never losing her passion for nuclear energy and its capabilities.

Her career advice boils down to a set of recommendations for young professionals:

• Maintain a questioning attitude,
• Be open to new opportunities,
• Be willing to get outside of their comfort zone
• Be able to adapt in the face of changing circumstances.

Aside: Shannon has a special interest in the development of young professionals in the nuclear industry. When we first met, she was part of a group of seven passionate professionals who were founding a group they called NA-YGN – North American Young Generation in Nuclear. At the time, the industry organizations were dominated by people in the north of 45 category. NA-YGN was aimed at people who were 35 or younger, but they made an exception for a 40+ blogger who shared their passion. End Aside.

We talked about the utility of energy storage, both in the form of electrical energy stored in a chemical battery and thermal energy stored in a system like the molten salt tanks associated with TerraPower’s Natrium power plant. We talked a bit about the rapid successes being achieved in micro reactors as part of the Reactor Pilot Program and we also talked about the way that a number of exiting developments at INL are helping to contribute to a growing economy in Idaho Falls.

As a long-time resident of Idaho Falls, Shannon expressed mixed emotions about the increased traffic and higher costs of living associated with new activities at INL, but came down on the side of being happy about the economic development. She also spoke passionately about Idaho as a wonderful place to live and to raise a family, especially if you like activities like hiking and camping.

You’ll enjoy the show.

The Reactor Pilot Program (RPP) has been a rousing success.

The group of four reactor criticalities achieved during the early phases of the RPP mark a major step forward in the process of designing, developing, testing, iterating, refining and licensing new types of nuclear fission power plants that have not yet become commercially viable.

The program is not over; expect to hear additional announcements of major milestones during the next several months.

Perhaps the most important outcome of the RPP – measured over the long term – is that it provided the Department of Energy several opportunities to refine its processes for reviewing, approving, constructing and operating novel reactor technologies. That full authorization process has now been completed for four separate reactors with reviews continuing for participants in the RPP and Launch Pad that are at different stages of development. With experience and practice the process continues to improve. Exercising with real world projects is a terrific way to refine processes and procedures.

The existence of a well-supported and improving path between the development stages of ideas and computer models to the stage of constructing and testing physical pilots can enable access to a vast pool of private risk capital. The refined process retires a significant number of known risks. It lets the review pilot review process move at the speed of business. Even though more risks can be mitigated with additional actions, substantial progress should be made in parallel with continuing process improvements.

The pilot reactors that have achieved criticality are not commercial products. They need several iterative steps before they are even complete R&D products. Three of them are not yet ready to produce any fission power because they have not yet installed the heat transfer systems that will remove fission heat. The one that is producing power, the Valar 250, was built with a reduced power reactor and a correspondingly small heat rejection system, not a complete heat conversion or utilization system.

There is a reasonably clear path for installing the needed systems, both in a regulatory and physical sense. Once those steps are completed, an extensive series of tests will be completed. If electricity is produced during testing, it can be supplied to the reactor facilities and the hosting laboratories or it can be dissipated through heat rejection systems. Alternatively, it can be dissipated by producing electricity that is then discarded in added systems like resistor banks.

That’s as far as the pilot reactors can go under their DOE authorizations; those approvals do not allow for the sale of electricity or heat to outside customers. For micro reactors producing a megawatt or so, that limitation is not much more than an annoyance, but the RPP and the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad include participants with much more powerful reactors. A heat rejection system for a few megawatts is reasonably compact and doesn’t have too much local environmental impact; one that needs to reject 225 – 900 MWth is a different story.

Throwing away electricity generated during full power testing of a 75 MWe reactor wastes almost $200,000 per day. The specialized heat rejection system would also require a significant design, supply chain and manufacturing investment that would be one-of-a-kind because it would be different from the one that is part of a commercial product.

It would be more prudent for pilot or demonstration reactors to be built with fully functional power conversion systems that produce useful electricity or heat so they can sell those products when available during portions of the testing program. Some of the tests that help prove commercial viability will include sustained periods of high power operation for reliability and fuel performance evaluation. Selling the electricity produced as a byproduct of the testing won’t turn the test and demonstration reactor into a profitable installation, but the revenues can help reduce the amount of capital required for commercial product development.

It’s widely recognized that selling products like electricity and heat would require a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but it’s also well known that there is a chasm between a DOE authorization and a commercial power plant license from the NRC that takes a long time to cross. It also requires a lengthy process to modify a plant design once it has achieved a commercial Part 103 license.

Class 104c is an existing licensing step between DOE authorization as an R&D facility that is not allowed to sell products and NRC licensing as a Class 103 commercial reactor. It’s a licensing step that has not been exercised, but the NRC regulations associated with Class 104(c) licenses were recently updated and re-emphasized.

Reviews and approvals for Class 104(c) are, by law, somewhere between those required for a DOE authorization and those required for a fully commercial license under Class 103. The NRC page titled “Technology, License Class, and Regulatory Approach” includes the below quote:

Section 104(c) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, states that,

The Commission is directed to impose only such minimum amount of regulation of the licensee as the Commission finds will permit the Commission to fulfill its obligations under this Act to promote the common defense and security and to protect the health and safety of the public and will permit the conduct of widespread and diverse research and development.

Reactors licensed under Class 104(c) should get reviews and approvals that are similar to reactors that are authorized under DOE regulation 1271. As is evident from the quote above, these reviews should be timely enough to permit effective development where refinements can be incorporated quickly. Because Class 104(c) reactors are still developmental, the vendor and the NRC may need to agree on additional safety features or operating restrictions that wouldn’t be necessary with a more complete license application and review.

Under Class 104(c), reactors that are still in the research and development – aka pre-commercial – phase can sell electricity, heat and non-energy services as long as less than 75% of their annual costs are dedicated to providing those activities. They are also allowed to sell training and research and development services without counting against the cost limitation.

Those who are well-versed in developing high tech products might think of Class 104(c) as a regulatory permission structure for beta product releases in high-impact, tightly-controlled markets.

The provision for licensing pre-commercial products under Class 104(c) licenses has been in the rules since 1970, but it hasn’t been widely exercised. It’s hard to determine the precise  reasons why something hasn’t been done before, but contributing factors include the assumption that all nuclear reactors had to be extra-large before they could be commercially competitive. The financially risk averse nature of monopoly electric utilities, established reactor vendors and their traditional financial partners also plays a role. It’s hard to imagine a successful financing model for a reactor costing $10 B or more that is restricted in its ability to generate sales revenues.

The rising prominence of smaller, lower-cost reactors, non-traditional electricity customers and the increasing importance of venture capital-backed vendors has changed the decision process. Modern reactor developers know that new and improved products with revolutionary proprietary features need several iterations before they can become competitive products. They know that initial units will produce losses, but they may prefer to minimize those losses by selling output when they can.

Venture capitalists are not like bankers or public service commissions; they understand that there are major risks associated with product development and refinement. History has shown them that there are major rewards when the product finds a fit with the needs of eager customers, making venture capital an increasingly capable source of financing.

The RPP has helped to restore the development process originally envisioned by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. That foundational piece of legislation provided a framework for Atomic Energy Commission reactor licenses that established appropriately differentiated rules and process requirements for licensing reactors that were still being developed and refined compared to the rules that govern licensing for reactors that were ready to compete in the commercial energy markets.

The next step is to begin exercising the transition between DOE R&D reactor authorization and NRC pre-commercial licenses under Class 104(c). Adequate rules are in place and do not need any immediate “act of Congress” or lengthy rule-making processes.

The RPP showed that the U.S. is capable of moving smoothly when building new nuclear power systems using appropriate levels of cooperation between government, government contractors and private enterprise. Major process steps have been developed and exercised. There is a daunting amount of work ahead but there are clear paths on which to take the next important steps in this rewarding journey.

—

This is a modified version of an article that first appeared on Fund News at Nucleation Capital. Atomic Insights is a publication of Nucleation Capital where Rod Adams is a Managing Partner. He attended the initial criticalities of the Deployable Energy Unity and the Aalo-X CTR. Both companies are in the Nucleation Capital portfolio.

After a five decade long hiatus in building new reactors while also implementing a significant level of diversification into other research areas, the INL is regaining strength in its original purpose as a place to test and demonstrate complete nuclear reactor power plants. (The term “plant” is not really applicable to micro-reactors, but it will serve as a general term for now.)

This time through, the design, approval, construction and testing programs are not being led by a federal monopoly called the Atomic Energy Commission. It is not focused on developing reactors that can be used to test the ideas of scientists who don’t really care if anyone wants to buy the system they are developing.

Instead, the reactor development efforts underway and in planning for the future are more cooperative, distributed and commercially driven.

Josh Gillespie is the Chief Operating Officer of the National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC). He visited the Atomic Show to talk about NRIC and its role in helping the Nuclear Renaissance gain traction and success.

NRIC was created in 2019 as a result of directives and authorizations contained in the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act (NEICA). Its purpose is to build bridges that enable private sector organizations to work with national laboratory scientists and physical resources to cross the “valley of death” between good ideas and commercially viable products. It is tasked with preparing facilities to serve as test beds for new reactor development and testing and to develop sites where new facilities can be built.

Though it can be a challenge for any government organization – like a national lab – NRIC has been tasked to be able to operate at the speed of a start-up. It is taking strides in that direction, though it is still limited in speed by the federal government budget cycle.

Josh described how NRIC is working closely with the Department of Energy Idaho Operations Office which is directly responsible for the DOE 1271 authorization process for both reactors and supporting facilities – like those that are in the fuel supply chain or involved in radioactive materials testing and evaluation.

NRIC helps private sector companies develop their plans, find suitable facilities, prepare required submittals and engage in readiness reviews. NRIC’s reach extends beyond the boundaries of the Idaho National Laboratory; has been contracted to support several of the Reactor Pilot Program developers that have built or are building their reactors in Texas or Utah.

Josh described DOME as the crowning jewel of NRICs facilities. It once served as the containment dome for the highly successful but prematurely retired Experimental Breeder Reactor II, the remains of which are encased in concrete and grout in the basement and foundations of the existing facility. DOME is designed to be able to host a test reactor that might be exercised to its limits while still preventing any release of radioactive materials. Radiant Nuclear was selected as the first tenant of the DOME. It is scheduled to complete its operational testing and to remove its equipment from the facility in a year to make room for the next tenant.

NRIC played an important role in the success of the Reactor Pilot Program. It helped to find and repurpose facilities for Antares (RACE – Reactor and Criticality Experiment), Deployable Energy (NRAD – Neutron Radiography Reactor)

Aside: Bit of INL Trivia – The building that is now RACE housed the Army’s ML-1 reactor development program from the late 1950s until the program was ended in 1964. End Aside.

Josh described NRIC’s role in the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad as similar to that of a subdivision developer. A 2,000 acre plot has been allocated. NRIC is responsible for developing basic infrastructure, including roads and common utility systems. It will arrange for site characterization studies in preparation for environmental assessments. Private sector developers will lease their sites and contract for any additional services desired from an available menu. These include additional security and fire services.

There will be similar services offered to developers who are building on sites that are not INL; that part of the program is called Launch Pad – USA.

Josh is an Idaho native who is happy to be involved in creating a winning partnership between private sector companies and government/national lab organizations. He believes that the new developments will help Idaho National Lab continue to thrive and lead in nuclear energy development. He is excited about helping to deploy abundant sources of clean electricity and heat that will contribute to a bright future for Idaho, the U.S. and the rest of the world.

You’ll enjoy this show. Listen carefully and comment via X if desired.

The current MARVEL program lead, Dr. Abdalla Abou-Jaoude, joined me for Atomic Show #348 to talk about the program and its historic accomplishments. Even though the MARVEL reactor has not yet been completed, he and his team – both superiors and subordinates – consider the program to be a research and development success story.

MARVEL is a micro reactor designed to produce 85 kilowatts of thermal energy. Using Stirling engines, it will be able to produce approximately 20 kilowatts of electricity. That’s about the same generating capacity as a whole house generator for a 4,000 square foot American suburban home.

The reactor uses uranium-zirconium hydride (UZrH) fuel rods with uranium enriched to less than 20% U-235 (HALEU). They are similar to those used in Triga research reactors. The reactor coolant is NaK (sodium potassium eutectic) that is naturally circulated through the reactor core and the system heat exchangers.

The early system design concept included directly-connected Stirling engines to convert reactor heat to electricity. That configuration was proven to be unworkable during a non nuclear thermal testing program called PCAT – Primary Coolant Apparatus Test. The Stirling engines vibrated enough to put the rest of the system at risk of rapid deterioration, so the design was changed to include a secondary, non radioactive NaK loop that then transferred its heat to a tertiary molten salt loop.

This choice allows the Stirling engines and the heat conversion system to be placed outside of the building. That design change had the added benefit of making it easier to use the MARVEL reactor system to test various direct heat applications; with the directly mounted engines, it would have been difficult to extract any product other than electricity.

A major benefit of a government funded research and development program like MARVEL is that it can provide widely accessible lessons learned. For a variety of commercial reasons, private sector programs are less likely to share what they have learned from their mistakes or dead end choices.

Private sector participants can be hesitant to be the first to move, especially in a field where everyone knows that the existing government approval process is a major barrier that needs to be improved. A government funded program has the ability to approach and overcome the barriers without incurring the risk that they are simply making the path easier and smoother for their competitors. The cliche “don’t fight city hall” applies; it’s a somewhat easier battle when you are part of the city hall machinery.

Abdalla explained how the MARVEL program leaders are happy to see how later projects are moving more quickly and even passing it to reach certain key development milestones. MARVEL leaders feel like they did their job by helping to exercise and improve the processes of review and approval. The program has also helped to give dozens of engineers more experience in the process of moving component and system designs off of computer screens and into real life fabrication.

Numerous entities from universities, governments and the private sector are queuing up to use MARVEL to test various concepts for taking advantage of nuclear fission heat. Some of the potential uses include desalination (especially produced water from oil and gas wells), hydrogen production, micro grids, remote operations and training AI for reactor control.

MARVEL is currently scheduled to achieve dry criticality in 2026. It should achieve full power operations in 2028. It is classified as a non capitalized asset, which limits its projected operating life to about 2 years. It has sufficient fuel to last longer if the decision is made to extend it past the two year point. Even if it operates a little longer, the plan is still to have it reach the decommissioning phase quickly enough to serve as a barrier breaker for that important life cycle phase.

You are sure to enjoy the show and to learn something in the process.

Each of the speakers chose walk-up music that they thought was appropriate for the occasion. The roster included John Wagner, the Director of the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) (AC/DC: Thunderstruck), Kyle Haustveit, the U.S. Under Secretary of Energy (Queen: Don’t Stop Me Now), Scott Bedke, Lieutenant Governor of Idaho (Waylon Jennings/Willie Nelson: Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys), and Chris Wright, U.S. Secretary of Energy (Brooks and Dunn: Only in America).

Aside: Lt Governor Bedke explained his song selection. He said, “Don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Push them towards the sciences.” End Aside.

At least one audience member said that the event reminded him of a Trump campaign rally with shorter speeches. The speaking program lasted less than 40 minutes.

The bases for declaring the start of a “Golden Era of Nuclear Power” are a set of achievements that only a few could imagine just a year ago. After 50 years without starting any novel reactors in the United States, a handful of exciting new projects have achieved substantial completion. Those projects reached their current state just 14 months after President Trump issued an Executive Order with the audacious goal of achieving criticality for three new reactors by July 4, 2026. The Reactor Pilot Program (RPP) participants were announced just 10 months ago.

Secretary Wright described the genesis of the program, “He [President Trump] said, ‘We’re not going to talk about it. We’re actually going to do it. We’re going to set very bold goals.’ Some people thought crazy bold goals that would lead to disappointment. But he followed up with all of the actions necessary to enable the achievement of those goals.”

The “Golden Era” appellation comes with the stated expectation that the achievements being celebrated are the start of numerous epoch-changing developments.

John Wagner declared, “We know it’s not the end, but rather an essential beginning. One that will enable so much more and that none of us should take for granted. The goal was never just criticality. The goal is 400 GW of nuclear capacity by 2050.”

Three new power and heat production reactors from three young ventures – Antares, Aalo and Deployable – have been constructed or installed at the Idaho National Laboratory. Antares’s Mark-0 successfully completed its initial startup, reaching criticality on June 1, becoming the INL’s 53 reactor. Aalo Atomics’s Critical Test Reactor and Deployable Energy’s Unity Nuclear Battery (UNB) are within days of achieving initial criticality. During the celebration, Sec. Wright gave a progress report on the imminent reactor startups:

“I’m very, very thrilled to announce today that I signed the authorization for Aalo Atomics (loud applause and cheers). Wait, wait what happens in the next few days. I think you can guess what’s gonna happen there. I should also mention Deployable Energy, also here today (more applause)  also on the cusp.”

Aside: Deployable Energy joined the race to criticality as one of the first four companies selected to be part of the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, the successor to the Reactor Pilot Program. End Aside.

Though the celebration event was INL-centric, the speakers also mentioned additional activity that is underway in other locations. Two more reactors are at a similar development stage in Lockhart, TX (Oklo Isotopes’s Groves) and Orangeville, UT (Valar’s Ward 250). After starting operations on June 18, Valar increased the Ward 250’s power to its rated level of 100 kWt and also tested the system at its short term maximum power of 250 kWt. It is conducting a carefully planned sequence of operational and safety tests. Oklo Isotopes’s Groves is complete and close to starting up.

The leaders of the Radiant Nuclear’s Kaleidos DOME testing program chose to skip the race for early criticality in favor of assembling a more complete, full scale power plant. Radiant’s plan is to go critical and then promptly move to full power operations. The final reactor that is under construction at INL, Oklo’s Aurora-INL, is a significantly larger reactor – 75 MWe – that should be ready to operate in 2028.

The reactors include a diverse assortment of coolant, fuel configurations and enrichment levels. In alphabetical order: Aalo’s Critical Test Reactor is a thermal reactor with graphite moderation using fuel consisting of uranium dioxide pellets enriched to < 8%, stacked into cladding tubes and bundled to form fuel assemblies. Antares Mark-0 is a graphite moderated reactor using Triso based, HALEU fuel (uranium enriched to <20%). Deployable Energy’s UNB^TM is a water moderated, helium-cooled pressure tube reactor that uses regular UO2 fuel in pressed pellets stacked in zircalloy cladding tubes. Radiant’s Kaleidos is a gas-cooled, graphite moderated reactor using TRISO fuel pressed into cylindrical compacts that are then loaded into prismatic graphite moderator blocks. Oklo’s Groves reactor is an open-pool, water cooled, unpressurized isotope production reactor that uses regular enriched UO2 fuel and its Aurora-INL reactor is a sodium-cooled fast reactor using HALEU fuel in metal alloy fuel elements. Valar’s Ward 250 is a gas cooled, graphite moderated reactor using TRISO coated HALEU fuel embedded in graphite compacts.

Three of the new reactors at INL took advantage of existing facilities and buildings, the other two at INL and the two outside INL are building new facilities from scratch. It has been a very long time since five new reactors were simultaneously under construction at INL. It’s possible that it has never happened before.

INL Site Visit

Before the large gathering at the Mountain America Center, the INL public affairs staff conducted an event and site tour for the Secretary of Energy and his staff. Media representatives were invited to cover the event and tour.

During the event portion the companies that participated in the Reactor Pilot Program had trade show-style tables and displays. Deployable Energy earned its way to the gathering with its rapid progress. Several of the companies in the cohort – Last Energy, Deep Fission, Natura and Terrestrial Energy – had product development plans that did not include an effort to reach criticality before July 4.

Company executives were on hand to meet Secretary Wright and describe their products, their target markets, and the teams they had assembled. The company leaders thanked the Secretary and the Administration for the supportive cooperation provided by the RPP. Their accomplishments would not have been possible without the significantly improved approval processes.

While the Secretary was making his rounds, there was time for media representatives to talk with the founders and with members of the Department of Energy offices responsible for their segment of the program. Many of the senior leaders are part of the generation that has seen just two new reactors constructed during their nearly complete career. They are energized and motivated to keep going by being part of a supportive and encouraging government team. As one senior official stated, he is happy that the new default attitude is to say “yes” or to find a way to the point where “yes” is the right answer.

That same senior official also noted that these new reactors represented a completely different paradigm from the one that produced the first 52 reactors built at Idaho National Laboratory. Instead of government funded, government directed and private company supported projects, all of the new ones are privately funded and privately directed with the support of laboratory experts and the oversight of the government officials at the Department of Energy.

It was great to see founders and company leaders like Jake DeWitt (Oklo), Bret Kugelmass (Last Energy), Isaiah Taylor (Valar), Mark Mitchell (Valar), Doug Bernauer (Radiant), Tori Shivanandan (Radiant), Rita Baranwal (Radiant) Jordan Bramble (Antares), Liz Muller (Deep Fission), Jordan Robison (Natura), Matt Loszak and Yasir Arafat (Aalo), Robin Rickman (Terrestrial Energy) and Bobby Gallagher (Deployable) all in a relatively small room. It was even better to watch them interact and share collegial conversations.

After spending about an hour talking with the companies and hearing their stories, Sec Wright was taken on a tour where he could see the metal that had been formed, the concrete blocks that had been engineered to provide radiation shielding and physical protection, the facilities that had been repurposed and the control displays that had been created. He was also spent time talking to company leaders and briefly spoke to the builders and operators who were on hand. Sec Wright told everyone that he was excited to be able to see new reactors being built.

During the tour, he climbed to the top of the Aalo-X reactor, posed for a selfie with Radiant leaders, saw the concrete slab that forms the top of the shield for the Antares Mark-0 and climbed down to the shielded bunker that now houses Deployable’s Unity Nuclear Battery. He also visited the control rooms for each of the reactors, but those tour stops weren’t observable for the media due to space constraints.

The final stop on the tour – the construction site for Aurora-INL – is about a mile from the concentration of new reactors located in or near the Material and Fuels Complex. Oklo’s construction site is an impressively busy place with numerous large pieces of earthmoving equipment and trailers housing engineers and project managers. Jake DeWitt provided an overview of the site layout and a report on the construction project status. The major site attraction at this stage is the deep hole that will house the Aurora reactor vessel, coolant drain tanks and other key equipment that needs to be located near the lowest elevation of the plant.

Building several pilot micro reactors while establishing and exercising more efficient review and approval processes is a meaningful step forward in what promises to be a long journey full of detours and obstacles punctuated by occasional opportunities to celebrate accomplishments.

It never hurts to take some time to have fun and thank hard-working people. As soon as the celebration was over, it was clear that some of the audience headed back to work. They have to accomplish many additional steps on the way to creating viable commercial products.

The walk off song after the celebration was Kid Rock: American Rock ‘n’ Roll.

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.

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 output
SHINE 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.

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.

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.

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 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 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 that it will sell to its end customers under long term power purchase agreements (PPA).

The specific type of SMR that Oklo has chosen as the one with the best chance to economically meet its needs as a power and heat producer – over the long haul – is a liquid sodium cooled, fast neutron reactor designed to closely match the features and performance of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II). That impressively successful demonstration reactor, which produced about 20 MWe, ran reliably for 30 years (1964-1994).

Oklo has stated that it intends to produce 15, 50 and 75 MWe versions of the system in order to best meet the needs of the customers it is aiming to serve.

An integral part of the Oklo vision is to recycle used nuclear fuel, the material that is often referred to as spent nuclear fuel or even “nuclear waste.” The fact that the material still contains about 90-95% of its initial potential energy is finally becoming common knowledge. Oklo believes that fast spectrum reactors are the technology that is best suited for converting used fuel materials into useful energy, and it also believes that affordably recycling fuel is essential to meeting its long term economic projections.

Part of Oklo’s business model is focusing on community acceptance for its powerhouses. They are designed to be aesthetically pleasing to the point where Oklo powerhouse images are often used to illustrate articles about advanced nuclear energy that focus on other companies. The company has talked about designing the stations to be community gathering places and also talked about beneficially using waste heat for purposes like heating swimming pools or district heating systems.

For Atomic Show #338, I spoke with Craig Bealmear, Oklo’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO). Craig described his 30-year background in the energy industry, mostly working in finance and accounting for BP. He spent most of his career in their marketing arm selling gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to large customers, but also ran several commercial enterprises within the company.

We discussed Oklo’s experience as one of three publicly traded pure plays in advanced nuclear energy during a period when excitement about nuclear energy hit an inflection point and dramatically increased demand for a commodity in very short supply. (Note: The supply of publicly traded pure plays in nuclear has recently doubled, creating a situation that is testing the strength of the demand for those companies.)

We spoke about the company’s vision, its business model and the way that its business model drove the selection of liquid metal fast spectrum reactors. Oklo’s founders – Jake and Caroline DeWitt – were attracted to their ability to operate at near atmospheric pressure while achieving high enough temperatures to create steam at the conditions used by modern Rankine Cycle steam plants. They believed that characteristic, along with the impressive results of EBR-II passive safety tests, will allow them to reduce the portion of their systems that are classified as safety-related. Sodium has been proven to be chemically compatible with stainless steel over a long period of high temperature operation, a characteristic with cost reduction potential.

Of course, we also had to talk about the design and operating provisions needed to mitigate and minimize the impact of sodium’s well known chemical reactions with water and moist air. That characteristic requires almost as much attention to keeping the primary coolant system leak tight and reliably separated from the clean steam site of the plant as has always been invested in pressurized water reactors. Low pressures make fabrication of the primary coolant pressure boundary for sodium cooled reactors a little less challenging than it is for very high pressure water.

Early in its development, Oklo invested a substantial amount of time recovering data from the EBR-II and the Fast Flux Test Facility. Craig and I talked about the value that quality testing and design data and how Oklo’s investment in organizing, understanding and using that data gives it a valuable head start compared to others who also have access to the government’s results.

During its decade+ period of operation, Oklo has developed strong relations with the Department of Energy and its national labs. It has recently announced several partnerships with others that are interested in fuel recycling, uranium enrichment and fast spectrum/liquid metal cooled reactors. It is interested in the potential for supplying – or buying – materials and components when it is mutually beneficial.

As the CFO, Craig is working to mitigate some of the concerns he has with the “asset-intensive” nature of Oklo’s build, own and operate business model. We talked about several paths that Oklo might pursue to reduce the capital requirements.

Though Oklo has been interacting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 2016, it is planning to take advantage of a recently reinvigorated capability for the Department of Energy to authorize the construction, operation and testing of pilot reactors. We spoke about DOE authorization as an interim step that can speed the process while enabling a later relicensing by the NRC for commercial operation. Oklo’s long term plan is to use repeated COLs under Part 52 with reactors manufactured under a manufacturing license.

We also talked about Atomic Alchemy and how the acquisition of that company fits Oklo’s future plans.

Counting Atomic Alchemy’s VIPER reactor, Oklo has three reactors in the DOE’s recently announced Reactor Pilot Program. The other two are Aurora-INL and Pluto. Aurora-INL is a 15 MWe version of Oklo’s powerhouse design while VIPER is a reactor that is optimized to produce high-demand isotopes. Very little information has been released about Pluto, but the project name offers a hint about one of its major design characteristics.

The company is actively pursuing all three reactor projects, but they intend to push hardest on one of the three to achieve critical operations by July 4, 2026. Kiewit is serving as the engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the Aurora-INL project.

One of the final topics we discussed was the company’s employee base. Oklo employs more than 200 people and has 45 openings listed on its job board. Either Jake or Caroline interviews every potential hire before they are added to the team.

We ran out of time before we could discuss topics like the manufacturing facility plans, the current progress of recycling efforts or the politics involved in moving the US away from the 50-year old de facto policy of avoiding fuel recycling.

Disclosure: My wife and I have a small position in Oklo. As Nov 19, 2025, It represents less than 1% of our net worth.

(c) The Secretary of Energy shall halt the surplus plutonium dilute and dispose program except with respect to the Department of Energy’s legal obligations to the State of South Carolina. In place of this program, the Secretary of Energy shall establish a program to dispose of surplus plutonium by processing and making it available to industry in a form that can be utilized for the fabrication of fuel for advanced nuclear technologies.

According to recent news reports, the Department of Energy is drafting a request for proposals from industry. Here is a quote from a Reuters article on the topic.

The plutonium would be offered to industry at little to no cost — with a catch. Industry will be responsible for costs of transportation, designing, building, and decommissioning DOE-authorized facilities to recycle, process and manufacture the fuel, the memo said.

Several nuclear non-proliferation careerists have objected to the very idea of using plutonium as nuclear reactor fuel, even though plutonium fueled reactors would have the same clean energy characteristics that are helping nuclear energy regain its popularity. They almost invariably point the last attempt at reusing Pu, which officially ended in 2017 after costing more than $7.5 B. Some of them say that nothing has changed the economics of Pu recycling and that it would be cheaper to continue with the dilute and dispose program championed by people like Ernie Moniz, a former Secretary of Energy.

In reality, the economics of the current and future nuclear fuel cycle have changed dramatically in the nearly 10 years since the last attempt at recycling Pu from the weapons program was killed off.

• The price of natural uranium is roughly 8 times as high as it was then.
• Smaller reactors using alternatives to conventional water cooling achieve better performance using fuels with higher concentrations of fissile material. Worries about adequate supplies of high assay, low enriched uranium (HALEU) have been widespread and sometimes used to discourage excitement about advanced reactors. Pu-239 is as fissile as U-235. Fuel with <20% Pu and >80% U (or Th) is an additional option that can overcome some concerns about HALEU availability.
• Projections for the future of nuclear energy use 10 years ago showed that it would slowly decline as reactors closed. Some were reaching their end of life; others were being retired early as a result of political decisions. Reactor owners in restructured markets faced economic challenges caused by an overabundance of alternatives that lowered average prices and revenues. In most countries, closed reactors were not being replaced.
• Current projections show that nuclear energy use will double, triple or even quadruple by 2050. The amount of fissile material consumed in reactors per unit of electricity is roughly fixed, those projected energy production increase demand for mined uranium. Prices will have to rise considerably if mines are the only available source of fissile material. (Uranium investors don’t hate increased market prices.)
• The new recycling program would be conducted at DOE-authorized facilities. That’s a significant economic change from the convoluted regulatory paradigm of both NRC and DOE oversight used for the earlier program.

Devoted opponents of the “plutonium economy” – often people who have prospered and captured significant levels of political power from the Hydrocarbon Economy or the Renewable Energy Economy – are up in arms. Some have worked throughout their entire career in efforts to prevent plutonium from becoming another energy fuel that would compete in “their” markets.

Since it’s been quite a while since the topic of plutonium reuse was last discussed with any new information it might be worth a few minutes to review the factors that came together to halt the last significant effort to use plutonium as a reactor fuel. The MOX project may have was officially ended in 2017, but the roots of its failure are much deeper and extend to the late 1990s when the program was being put together.

Introduction

The MOX (Mixed Oxide) program was designed to chemically convert weapons material – nearly pure fissile Pu-239, usually in the form of metal powder – into plutonium dioxide (PuO2). The next step of the process is to mix a small amount of that PuO2 with uranium dioxide (UO2) to produce <5% fissile fuel. The fuel mixture would be put through industrial processes to make pellets with the same size and shape as traditional LWR fuel pellets. Their nuclear properties would be close, but not identical, to the pellets they would replace. The MOX pellets would be stacked into cladding tubes that would be assembled into conventional light water fuel assemblies.

One fact that needs to enter the current discussion is that MOX is only one of many ways to create nuclear fuel using plutonium as the fissile material. Some of the other ways, like metal alloys for fast reactors or fluorides for molten salt reactors would need different, potentially less expensive equipment and processing.

When the MOX program was on its last legs and gaining political infamy as a failed, expensive government project, Atomic Insights published the below piece. We think it provides useful historical informations and lessons about how not to run a plutonium recycling program. It is republished in its entirety from the original, first published on May 17, 2017.

How Did the MOX Program Get So Expensive?

Over the past week or so, I’ve engaged in a “root cause analysis” project to determine why the US is having so much difficulty implementing a plan to take 34 metric tons of nearly pure plutonium 239 — a fissile isotope with virtually the same energy value as uranium 235 — out of our nuclear weapons program and beneficially use it as a source of fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.

It’s a fascinating tale with several branches, but here is the spoiler up front. The root cause seems to be encapsulated in the following quote from a recent article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists titled Can the US-Russia plutonium disposition agreement be saved?

Many experts were skeptical about the MOX option, not least because it would provide a significant boost to the plutonium economy, eventually leading to wider acceptance of plutonium in the civilian nuclear industry.

(Emphasis added.)

Resisting the Plutonium Economy

Long-time readers of Atomic Insights will recall several posts over the years about the pitched battle against the “plutonium economy” that started sometime in the early 1960s. The battle began after the Glenn Seaborg-led Atomic Energy Commission issued a report pointing out how fast breeder reactors–along with thermal breeder reactors using U-233 and Th-232–could provide enough fissile material to fuel nuclear power plants for hundreds to thousands of years. Those plants would be able to provide as much power as human society could ever desire.

For most of the scientists and engineers involved in producing the report, and for many of the far-sighted optimists that read it, that was a tremendously exciting and positive prospect.

It didn’t please everyone. Though Seaborg’s report did not predict fission would replace all combustion — recognizing that there are a number of specific power consumers that are not well suited to using fission reactors — its message still must have scared the bejesus out of people that were prospering in the existing Hydrocarbon Economy.

They had to recognize that a plutonium economy could both flood the energy markets they considered to be “theirs” and would relegate hydrocarbon fuels to shrinking niches of the lucrative enterprise of powering society.

Of course, resisting the plutonium economy by clearly stating that it would harm the fossil fuel business was, even in the early 1960s, a strategy that would fall on deaf ears. Though people appreciated the mobility, indoor climate control, refrigeration, manufactured goods and other capabilities enabled by the power released by burning hydrocarbons, they did not love the gigantic multinational corporations that already dominated the system.

Replacement strategies using various tactical elements needed to be devised and employed.

One ingredient used in fighting the plutonium economy was to demonize plutonium, characterizing it as one of the most deadly substances known to man. Though there is an element of truth to that statement if the plutonium is used explosively to rapidly destroy a large city, it is a false claim if simply comparing the material’s chemical or radiological toxicity.

Another ingredient was actively seeking to make plutonium as commercially unattractive as possible. That effort continues, especially among a certain aging clique of Northeast US nuclear “non-proliferation” academics headquartered at Princeton and MIT. Several of the usual suspects signed a letter in September 2015 expressing their continued opposition to using plutonium to produce power.

The latest was mailed Tuesday [September 8, 2015] by more than a dozen prominent former arms negotiators and senior diplomats supporting the conclusions of a report completed last month by the Red Team, a group of industry experts assembled by Moniz to evaluate cost projections and alternatives to the MOX project.

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The signatories included former nuclear arms negotiators Robert Einhorn and Robert Gal­lucci; former ambassadors Thomas Picker­ing and Joseph Nye; former White House director for arms control and former Pentagon and intelligence official Henry S. Rowen; former head of the Carnegie Endow­ment for International Peace Jes­si­ca Matthews; former Nuclear Regulatory Commission members Peter Bradford and Victor Gilinsky; National Medal of Science winner Richard Garwin, a designer of the first hydrogen bomb; and nuclear policy experts Henry Sokolski, Frank von Hippel, S. David Freeman and Plough­shares Fund president Joseph Cirincione.

Amusingly, the letter was addressed to one of the longtime thought leaders of the Northeast non-proliferation clique — Dr. Ernest Moniz. He is currently serving as the U.S. Secretary of Energy. Moniz, who has been testifying for the past several years that the MOX project is too expensive, was deeply involved in creating the framework that made the current MOX morass almost inevitable.

After his 2013 appointment, Dr. Moniz selected another Cambridge, MA based non-proliferation proponent, Kevin Knobloch, formerly the President of the Union of Concerned Scientists, to be his office gatekeeper, a job with the formal title of Chief of Staff. Between the two of them, they have found wonderful positions from which to ensure the realization of a self-fulfilling prophesy. Among their other tasks, they’ve spent part of the past 30-40 years asserting that turning Pu-239 from weapons into MOX for light water reactors is more expensive than simply enriching natural uranium and producing conventional low-enriched uranium fuel.

They’ve also cooperated in the effort to push a potential more valuable reuse option — metal alloy fuel for fast reactors — off the table.

Since they have made sure that their often-repeated predictions over the years have come true they are now claiming that the only remaining plutonium disposition option is similar to one that they have wanted to pursue for more than two decades. Instead of abiding by the mantra of reduce, reuse and recycle, they want to mix the material with a diluent whose composition is classified and bury it deep underground without allowing any of the potential energy to enter into the world market.

Getting rid of the 34 tons covered by the 2000 vintage Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA) in this manner is just a beginning; it will establish a precedent for throwing away all plutonium, at least in the U.S. Obviously, the anti plutonium clique wants us to conclude that if it is too expensive to use plutonium that is already nearly pure before it is even put into a fuel cycle, then it would be even more expensive to devise and implement a fuel cycle that begins with used fuel.

Recycling used fuel would require several additional steps compared to using material that is already separated.

In 1998, DOE Adamant About NRC Regulation

Using the logic that the MOX facility would be producing fuel for NRC regulated commercial reactors, the Clinton Administration’s DOE leadership — specifically DOE Secretary Bill Richardson, Deputy Secretary Elizabeth Moler, and Under Secretary Ernest Moniz — made the case that a MOX facility should be built and operated to NRC standards and should undergo an NRC licensing process.

On April 3, 1998, they sent Howard Canter, Director of DOE’s Office of Fissile Materials Disposition, to a meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to explain the proposal. An experienced project manager would run and hide from an assignment to attempt to build anything under the regulatory framework that was discussed that day.

No contractor would touch it on anything but a “cost plus fee” pricing basis. Here are a few illuminating quotes.

Canter: Based on a great deal of internal discussion in the Department, which has included the Under Secretary and the Deputy Secretary, there is one major unresolved issue, and it really centers around whether or not we will get legislation this year. How do we get going in the event we do not have legislation, and do we need legislation? So there are many questions.

DOE wants to issue this RFP and desires to moves towards NRC regulation and licensing. The Deputy Secretary was very adamant upon this yesterday, that this will be a licensed facility. But we are in some difficulty because we can’t issue the RFP without reaching some agreement on the NRC regulatory role and how it will start. The RFP has been prepared and it was totally approved, ready to go out the end of February on the basis of NRC being the regulator on this. However, we have got to make sure that we allow for this period of transition in the start-up period, so we will have to make some changes to that.

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The Department does want to go to NRC regulation on this. And the other things is we don’t want to mix it up with the much wider issue of external regulation of DOE. It is not — this is not a pilot project or something having to do with that program, although there will be a lot that is learned out of this from that program.

There are significant differences. Some of the reasons are that it is a private contractor, not a M and O contractor. We have even looked at such issues as who would own the facility. We have some options there. We can even consider the idea of leasing the facility, once it is created, back to the contractor, and a number of things to make this very clear how this would work, and very clear who has the NRC authority.

I agree with Commissioner McGaffigan that we do not want to end run the Congress on this thing. There is significant interest in the Congress. A number of the staff members have contacted me and they may be off writing their own legislation on this. In fact, I know, I think, of one case on the Senate side where they may be doing that right now.

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One of the things that we are concerned about is dual regulation and dual oversight. In fact, there is even the potential for triple oversight here if we are not careful and plan this out properly between DOE exercising a degree of oversight, the NRC staff providing some oversight, and maybe even the Defense Board. And I think that would be a lot of confusion and, essentially, a disaster if we had that.

After substantial questioning by commissioners and attempts to answer by Mr. Canter, Commissioner Diaz summed it up pretty well.

COMMISSIONER DIAZ: And a second comment — you know, just for the record — there is probably, you know, one regulatory structure that can be created that is more cumbersome and more complex than the DOE and the NRC, and that is a mix — DOE and NRC.

As a matter of historical record, the construction permit for the MOX facility was issued in March 2005 and construction began in 2007 with a completely different contractor consortium than the one that won the design contract based on the 1998 solicitation.

MOX Project Status

No reasonable observer reviewing the current status of the MOX project could fail to conclude that the project is in trouble. Nearly $5 billion has already been expended; it costs about $350 million per year to keep the project treading water. Even at that level, the workforce is perpetually worried about continued employment.

Secretary Moniz likes to imply that the contractor has mislead the government about costs, that it continues to underestimate completion costs, and that the only remaining alternative to increasing spending to the level of a billion dollars per year for the next several decades is to terminate the project.

There have been a number of studies, some funded by the government, others funded by MOX services, the consortium of contracting companies building the facility. Here is a quote from the Executive Considerations section of the Plutonium Disposition Program Red Team Report.

The current lack of sustained funding for the MFFF project illustrated in Table 1, which shows planned (based on the MOX Services 2012 BCP) versus actual funding, has created an environment of intense uncertainty, ultimately manifesting itself through project inefficiencies and strained relationships between DOE and the contractor. This uncertainty has in-turn led to a lack of workforce confidence in program stability, resulting in low levels of staff retention (exacerbated by loss of the most qualified

workers), and low morale in the remaining workforce.

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The downward performance spiral is accompanied by an upward cost escalation spiral that would eventually make DOE’s path-forward decision for them, but only after a great deal of money has been wasted. Project surety would instead lead directly to increased staff retention, resulting in reduced recruitment and training costs, increased ownership, and enhanced overall project performance. Should the MOX option be chosen for continuation, it is vital to create and sustain an adequate and stable funding profile. Indeed, consistent support will be vital for any path forward.

Aside: Dr. Moniz commissioned the Red Team (pg. A-3). It was largely made up of contractors employed in the DOE’s national laboratory system (pg. B-1) whose continued income depends partly on providing the answers that the Secretary wants to hear. Their August 2015 report is marked with “For Official Use Only,” which means that non governmental observers like me are not supposed to see it. I’ll leave it to the questioning attitudes of Atomic Insights readers to pose guesses about the source of the leaked document. Hint: Look at the URL where it is posted. End Aside.

Though DOE summarizes the Red Team’s conclusions by asserting that it supports their assertion that continuing the MOX program under the currently projected funding profile of ~ $500 million per year is significantly more expensive than the hypothetical costs of the dilute and dispose option, it doesn’t seem to recognize its own responsibility for creating the mess, first by establishing an onerous and complex licensing process.

Partly as a result of that process, the contractors produced an almost unworkably complicated design. The on-off-on-off mission and funding has helped to create a hostile, uncertain work environment that has been abandoned by many of the best workers. According to the Red Team report, the remaining workforce seems to spend more effort in oversight and project controls than in completing constructive tasks.

Contractual enhancements may also enable a reduction of burdensome oversight and indirect costs associated with this kind of counterproductive relationship between DOE and the contractor.

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Implementing project management reforms, providing for incentive fees (based upon jointly negotiated performance outcomes) and ultimately reducing the amount of daily oversight and transactional interactions between the DOE field element and the MOX Services contractor could result in meaningful cost savings.

Final thoughts: As currently funded and overseen by DOE, the MOX Project is expensive and is at a high risk of failure. It might be salvageable, but only with a tripling or quadrupling of annual appropriations in the near term along with a major overhaul of the project management structure and environment to get the project completed and operating expeditiously. Small annual funding requests might be easier to get through Congress, but they invariably add cost and stretch project completion.

The Department of Energy helped to establish a situation that would guarantee that the project could not succeed.

The problem for the people who have to determine where to go from here is that the alternative solution being proposed would depend on the same kind of management, requires changes in law that have not yet been submitted, would require the agreement of at least two state governments that have no real incentive to accept the new plan and would require the Russian government to agree, in writing, to a disposal method that they have been opposed to accepting for the past 20 years.

Since the money that is being expended on MOX comes from the defense budget, the Russians have strong incentives to reject a new deal whose primary selling point is a lowered cost for the U.S.

Paraphrasing Senator Graham in his most ironic voice, other than those obstacles the alternative plan seems okay.

There are alternative courses of action that have the potential to provide a better outcome, but I’ll save those for another day.

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 Rook 1 project. In a term that might be familiar to petroleum energy geologists, Rook 1 is a supergiant resource.

Aside: In the petroleum business, a supergiant field is one that contains at least 5 billion barrels of oil. There are more than 250 million pounds of uranium in the measured and indicated mineral resources in the Rook 1 project. Google’s Gemini says that one million pounds of natural uranium contains 31 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE). It follows that 250 million pounds contains more than 7.5 billion BOE. End Aside.

The ore in the Arrow deposit part of Rook 1 has an exceedingly rare uranium concentration that is as high as 69% uranium oxide. On average, the deposit measures out at well over 3%.

Leigh Curyer, NexGen’s founder and CEO, visited the Atomic Show to talk about his company’s successful and continuing exploration program. We talked about the growing need for uranium fuel as the nuclear energy market expands, the tightness in the current supply chain and the impacts of a new production source that is planning to supply between 22% and 25% of the current annual uranium supply.

Curyer spoke about NexGen’s investments in planning and engineering a mine that balances the needs for profitable extraction, minimum environmental impacts and maximum community benefits. He described the company’s strategy of remediating impacts as the mining continues so that there is less to do once the mine closes.

If you are interested in uranium mining or if you are concerned about the sustainability of nuclear energy in terms of ensuring an adequate fuel supply, you will find this to be a fascinating conversation.

His company, AMS Corporation, provides key services and products to nearly every nuclear power plant in the United States and a growing portion of those located outside of the United States. He founded AMS with a partner in 1977 and became the sole owner in 1986. Even though it is a relatively small company with an average head count of 100 people, AMS maintains a strong research and development organization. AMS employees, including Dr. Hashemian, have published hundreds of papers in academic journals and produced a significant body of original research.

Hash is a nuclear energy industry expert with an enormous breadth and depth of experience.

On this episode of the Atomic Show, we skimmed over a sampling of his knowledge of the industry. We talked about his visions and plans for the next year as the President of ANS, his view of the future of nuclear energy and our slightly differing views of the role that the government should play in getting a nuclear power plant building effort off of the ground.

We discussed Dr. Hashemian’s successful, inspiring effort to obtain not one, not two, but three PhD’s over a 10 year period while running a business and raising a family. Besides his incredible work ethic, he shared another tactic – he devoted the hours of 9:00 pm to 2:00 am to study each day during that decade.

Dr. Hashemian is a proud graduate of the University of Tennessee. His business is headquartered in Knoxville, not far from Oak Ridge. He is an active member of the East Tennessee nuclear industry, which currently includes 156 companies. We talked about Tennessee’s leadership within the industry, the investments that the state is making in maintaining its leadership and the special advantages of having Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Y-12 and legacy defense-related nuclear sites that are being cleaned and leveled. These sites provide large tracts of land that are available to nuclear-focused companies at attractive prices.

Colleges and universities in East Tennessee, including the University of Tennessee, Tennessee Tech and Roane State Community College are academic assets that are training engineers and technicians in fields relevant to the nuclear industry.

Dr. Hashemian reminded us that states like Texas and Virginia are also racing to be nuclear industry leaders.

We took advantage of Dr. Hashemian’s special knowledge of nuclear power plant instrumentation and control systems to discuss the reasons why the U.S. nuclear power plant fleet almost exclusively still uses analog protection and alarm systems.

We talked about some of the changing I & C needs for advanced reactors and the usefulness of a wide variety of sizes and configurations for nuclear energy facilities. Dr. Hashemian is a believer in an “all of the nuclear plant sizes above” catalog.

Dr. Hashemian also shared his nuclear energy origin story. Like several other prominent nuclear industry leaders, he grew up in Iran during the period when it was still ruled by the Shah of Iran. Throughout almost all of the 1970s, the Shah was pursuing a plan to build 20 large nuclear power plants to provide electricity to his rapidly modernizing country.

That plan was openly aimed at reducing Iran’s domestic oil and gas consumption so that more of those valuable products could be exported into the world market.

Aside: As Atomic Insights has said many times, nuclear fission heat can replace other sources of thermal energy including oil, gas and coal. That gives those whose wealth and power is sourced from combustion fuels a powerful incentive to shape public and political attitudes about their most capable competitive technology. End Aside.

The Shah’s government supported thousands of students – including Hash Hashemian – in programs to study nuclear science and engineering and other related fields in some of the best universities in the world. The expectation was that those student would return to Iran and help develop the Shah’s expansive nuclear power program.

After the Shah was overthrown, some of the students returned to Iran, but many – like Dr. Hashemian – chose to remain in the United States and build their lives and careers here.

Those enterprising, hard-working immigrants – first generation Americans – continue to play an important role in nuclear energy development. The second generation is also contributing their skills, work ethic and intellect.

You’ll enjoy this show. We’re sure of it.

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