MARVEL, a creative acronym meaning Microreactor Applications Research Validation and EvaLuation, is a trail blazing reactor development program designed to help the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the nuclear industry remember how to build and operate small nuclear reactors for testing and demonstration. The program was initiated in 2020 and has created many opportunities to…
The dawn of the Golden Era of Nuclear Power in the United States was celebrated on June 25, 2026 with music, lights and inspirational speeches. A crowd of several thousand people at Idaho Falls’s Mountain America Center included nuclear professionals from the Idaho National Lab, representatives from the Department of Energy, local dignitaries and entrepreneurs….
The U.S. military has a strong and growing interest in using small and micro nuclear reactors as a means of reducing logistics challenges and improving operational resilience. They like nuclear reactors for their ability to operate independently of the grid for years without needing any new fuel. Almost as important is their ability to be…
Deployable Energy is a young company with a guiding principle. They believe that nuclear energy should be a product, not a project. Founded in 2025 after a period of intensive study and design work, the company has developed a product branded as the Unity Nuclear Battery (UNB™). It’s a 1 MWe (3 MWth) micro reactor…
Aalo Atomics is a three year old company that is focused on designing, manufacturing and deploying nuclear reactors. Their stated goal is to achieve an electricity production cost of less than $0.03 (3 cents) per kilowatt hour. It’s moving fast. It built a 40,000 ft² pilot scale manufacturing plant in Austin, TX in just one…
Oklo is rapidly becoming a household name, at least among households with members who pay attention to energy industry developments and/or the headliners in the financial press. 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…
Blue Wave AI Labs has been creating and supplying artificial intelligence tools – mainly in the form of machine learning – to operating nuclear power plants since 2016. Their initial set of tools focused on improving boiling water reactor core reload designs. The company was formed to address the chosen problem because it was a…
On June 23, New York’s Governor Hochul announced that she had directed the New York Power Authority to build a new nuclear energy facility with at least 1 GWe of capacity. During the announcement speech, she provided several bits of information leading to an informed prediction that the facility will initially include 4 BWRX-300’s on…
Copenhagen Atomics is an ambitious Danish company with a bold, potentially world-changing vision. They’re driven by a goal of manufacturing one reactor per day from a high quality, certified factory. If they achieve that goal, they would be adding an additional 37 GW/year of heat to the global energy supply. They want to help make…
The University of Illinois-Urbana Champagne (UIUC) is planning to build a uniquely capable micro reactor project on its campus. For decades, the university hosted a traditional research reactor that supported important research projects and provided operating experience. But, like the majority of university research reactors, it did not produce any useful heat or electricity. Kronos…
Aalo Atomics is a two year old micro reactor company founded by Matt Loszak, a serial entrepreneur, and Yasir Arafat, a skilled nuclear engineer who previously lead the DOE’s MARVEL advanced micro-reactor demonstration project. Note: At Nucleation Capital, we were impressed enough with the company and the team to add it to our growing portfolio…
Westinghouse’s eVinci is a 15 MWth, 5 MWe micro reactor. Westinghouse often refers to it as a nuclear battery. Unlike conventional nuclear power plants, eVinci uses no water and doesn’t produce steam. The eVinci is not “just another way to boil water.” There are no pumps in the system that moves heat out of the…
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