DOE Opens Talks with Oklo About Plutonium Fuels
Three Reasons Why DOE’s Plutonium Plan Has Deal Breakers
Advanced Nuclear Startup Newcleo To Go Public Through Blank-Cheque Deal
BLSK Energy to Produce Advanced Reactor Fuel
Curio Begins NRC Application Process for a Used Nuclear Fuel Recycling Production Facility
Green River, UT. Nuclear Energy Plan Revived
Focused Energy Fusion Gains $240 Million for Series A Funding
Thea Energy Fusion Raises $100 Million Series B Funding
DOE Opens Talks with Oklo About Plutonium Fuels
Oklo Selected by U.S. Department of Energy for Advanced Negotiations Under Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program
Selection supports the use of existing surplus material as a bridge fuel for advanced reactors.
Oklo Inc. (NYSE: OKLO) an advanced nuclear technology company, announced that Oklo has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to open negotiations under the Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program. The program has the objective of making surplus plutonium material available to nuclear industry participants.
The goal is to enable the conversion of those transuranic materials into fuel for advanced nuclear reactors subject to U.S. security, safeguards and material accountability requirements.
The New York Times noted that this effort would mark the first time the U.S. government has made weapons-grade plutonium available to private companies. The Energy Department has more than 50 tons of surplus plutonium left over from nuclear weapons programs, and the agency had previously been planning to dilute much of that material and bury it.
Critics of DOE’s plan to turn over surplus plutonium pulled from nuclear weapons point out to the New York Times that working with plutonium is way more difficult than working with uranium. It requires highly specialized facilities to remotely handle the highly radioactive material. In addition, due to international nonproliferation treaties and protocols, the management of plutonium needs high, and expensive, levels of security.
Also, some of the plutonium the government wants to use may still be in weapons that have not yet been disassembled at PANTEX. Because the design of nuclear weapons is classified information, figuring out how to clear the materials for use by commercial firms will require a way to completely remove any weapons design information from the machined plutonium materials before shipment to a commercial fuel center.
What are the Plans of the Five Selected Firms to Produce Nuclear Fuel with Plutonium?
Oklo – The selection, alongside four other advanced nuclear companies, supports Oklo’s broader fuel strategy, which includes multiple pathways to source fuel to support advanced reactor deployment while domestic enrichment and fuel infrastructure continues to scale. In September 2025 Oklo announced plans to design, build, and operate a fuel recycling facility in Tennessee as the first phase of an advanced fuel center. The firm will organize an investment totaling up to $1.68 billion. The initial investment will be for the construction of a facility in Tennesse to recycle used nuclear fuel into fuel for fast reactors like Oklo’s Aurora powerhouse advanced reactor. The recycling facility will recover usable fuel material from used nuclear fuel and fabricate it into fuel for advanced reactors. (See special section below on how Oklo’s process would work)
In addition to Oklo, the Energy Department said it had also selected four other companies — Standard Nuclear, Exodys Energy, SHINE Technologies and Flibe Energy — to also enter into negotiations to receive the material to turn it into reactor fuel. Here’s what is known about their plans.
Exodys – According to information released by the Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Exodys has revealed extensive plans for using plutonium. While Exodys has remained quiet regarding the specifics of the current round of negotiations, the firm’s website and previous public testimonies (such as those by Co-Founder and CTO Edward Pheil before legislative committees) explicitly detail exactly how the company intends to utilize surplus plutonium.
Ultimately, Exodys Energy views the DOE’s surplus plutonium as a highly valuable asset that can be safely downblended into a liquid fuel stream, turning a costly federal liability into a domestic energy source for its fast molten salt reactors. Here’s what the firm has said so far.
The Fast Chloride Molten Salt Reactor (FC-MSR): Exodys is developing a liquid-fueled fast reactor that uses low-pressure, high-temperature liquid chloride salt. This reactor type is specifically designed to accept a wide variety of actinides as fuel, including spent nuclear fuel (SNF), depleted uranium, and excess plutonium.
Denaturing Proliferation Risks: According to company disclosures, Exodys intends to blend the surplus weapons-grade plutonium directly with stored nuclear waste or depleted uranium into its liquid salt mixture. By combining these materials, the plutonium becomes “denatured,” making it highly resistant to state or terror-driven arms proliferation.
No Material Separation: A core pillar of Exodys’s fuel strategy is that it “maintains a mixed-actinide stream that never separates plutonium.” This enables continuous material balance and real-time safeguards, bypassing the traditional chemical reprocessing steps that historically raised nuclear proliferation alarms.
Powering Advanced Infrastructure: Exodys plans to use this fuel cycle to power both small-scale demonstration reactors (such as a planned 10MWth prototype) and future commercial-scale reactors capable of producing massive amounts of baseload electricity and high-temperature process heat.
Shine Technologies said it wants to recover americium, a decay product that accumulates in stored plutonium over time, for use in radioisotope applications. According to trade press reports, SHINE’s plan pairs its own fuel cycle and chemistry capabilities with americium-recovery work by partner Zeno Power and separation technology developed with French nuclear company Orano.
In July 2025 SHINE Technologies LLC and Standard Nuclear, announced a strategic partnership to develop mehtods of nuclear fuel recycling, The agreement reportedly establishes a framework and lays the groundwork for domestic nuclear fuel production. SHINE expects to begin construction of its first commercial recycling facility in the early 2030s, with an initial capacity to process 100 metric tons per year.
Under the agreement, SHINE will provide recycled nuclear materials from its planned used nuclear fuel recycling facilities to Standard Nuclear for use in TRISO fuel production and to provide isotopes for its radioisotope power systems. SHINE will supply recycled uranium, plutonium for advanced reactor fuels, as well as heat-generating isotopes like strontium-90 (Sr-90) and americium-241 (Am-241) for use in compact power systems. These recovered materials support the production of TRISO fuel.
Flibe Energy told the ANS Newswire the surplus plutonium is ideal for the lithium fluoride thorium reactor technology being developed by the company. Trade press reports and interviews by Flibe engineers indicate that because thorium requires an initial source of neutrons to jumpstart the breeding process into U-233, a LFTR needs a fissile “driver” or starter fuel. Flibe has stated that the DOE’s surplus PU-239 is ideal in terms of chemistry and nuclear factors to act as this initial ignition source.
The firm states that dissolving plutonium into the FLiBe molten salt mix provides the necessary neutrons to kickstart the thorium fuel cycle. Flibe’s plutonium strategy directly pairs with a separate DOE award granted in February 2026, where Flibe was funded to research and develop electrochemical methods to process spent nuclear fuel (SNF). Flibe intends to utilize electrochemical processing (pyroprocessing) to chemically convert the government’s surplus plutonium oxides and metals into fluoride forms PuF3 and PuF4 so they can be seamlessly blended into the liquid salt mixture.
Oklo Claims to Have a Fuel Recycling Process. How does it Work?
Oklo’s nuclear fuel recycling process is a type of pyroprocessing that uses an electrochemical process to separate usable fuel from spent nuclear waste. This technology, which is being developed in collaboration with U.S. national laboratories, allows Oklo to extract more than 90% of the remaining energy from used fuel and turn it into new fuel for its advanced fast reactors, like the Aurora powerhouse.
How the Process Works: Oklo’s process differs from traditional aqueous reprocessing methods because it’s a dry process that doesn’t use large amounts of water or chemical solvents. Instead, it involves electrorefining, a technique that has been demonstrated at the Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL) Fuel Conditioning Facility.
Electrorefining: In this process, used nuclear fuel is submerged in a bath of molten salt. An electrical current is then applied to the salt, which causes the usable elements in the fuel, like uranium and transuranics (e.g., plutonium), to migrate and collect on a cathode. This process separates the reusable material from the highly radioactive fission products, which remain in the molten salt.
Fuel Fabrication: The separated material, which is a mixture of uranium and transuranics, is then fabricated into new metal fuel for Oklo’s fast reactors. The process is designed to be proliferation-resistant because it keeps the transuranic materials together and doesn’t create a pure stream of plutonium.
Waste Reduction: By recycling the fuel, Oklo significantly reduces the volume of high-level radioactive waste that needs to be stored long-term, making disposal more economical and efficient. This recycling technology is a key part of Oklo’s business model, aiming to provide a secure domestic fuel supply, reduce costs, and convert what is currently a liability—used nuclear fuel—into a valuable resource for generating clean energy.
Technical Challenges to Commercialization: While pyroprocessing has a strong historical foundation, its demonstration at the EBR-II was at a laboratory scale. Scaling this process to an industrial level for commercial operation is a major technical and financial hurdle. The process operates in an extremely harsh environment, with high temperatures of 500-700°C and highly corrosive molten salts. The entire operation must be conducted remotely within heavily shielded “hot cells” due to the extreme radioactivity of the materials, adding significant complexity and cost to the facility’s design and operation.
Economic Viability and Cost: Oklo’s narrative of “reducing costs” stands in contrast to a broader academic and expert debate about the economic viability of reprocessing. Research indicates that reprocessing is not currently cost-competitive with the “once-through” fuel cycle, particularly with today’s low uranium prices. Oklo’s economic model does not appear to be based on the immediate market value of the recovered uranium, but rather on a long-term strategic value proposition. The model implicitly places a significant value on a closed fuel cycle and the elimination of a long-term waste management liability, making it a bet on future market conditions and regulatory frameworks rather than on present economic realities.
Oklo Partnership with newcleo
Insofar as Oklo is concerned, it has established a partnership with newcleo, a European developer of advanced nuclear reactors, bring relevant fuel experience and potential project capital. Oklo will lead the fuel devlopment process.
Oklo and newcleo view the program as a pathway for disposition through use: converting material that already exists into fuel for advanced reactors, using it to generate reliable electricity, and consuming it through fission under applicable security, safeguards, and material control requirements. In DOE’s frame of mind the the program is expected to turn a long-term material management challenge into a domestic energy source.
In October 2025, Oklo announced a strategic partnership with newcleo to develop advanced fuel fabrication infrastructure in the U.S., including potential work related to surplus plutonium. The partnership includes an investment of up to $2 billion, subject to mutually acceptable documentation and industry conditions, via a newcleo-affiliated vehicle for such a project. (See story below)
In February 2026, newcleo initiated its pre-application engagement with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for both an advanced fuel fabrication facility and a lead-cooled fast reactor design to support the future deployment of its fuel fabrication and reactor facilities in the U.S. market.
Is Plutonium an Interim Fuel?
Oklo said in its press statement that the use of plutonium supports the use of existing surplus material as a bridge fuel for advanced reactors. However, most of the advanced reactor developers need HALEU for first fuel loads by the end of the 2020s. Oklo’s plan won’t produce plutonium derived fuel until the mid-2030s at the earliest. Oklo’s claims are at odds with the real schedules developers of advanced reactors have to meet for their first fuel loads in terms of time to market.
There is no way at this time to predict whether the plutonium based fuel will be cost competitive with other types of HALEU fuel that will become available much sooner than fuel produced by reprocessing plutonium. Since 2024 DOE has let multiple contracts for enrichment of uranium and HALEU fuel fabrication to meet urgent demands for first fuel loads for developers like X-Energy, TerraPower, and others between 2026 and 2030. See the table below. Oklo will not have fuel from plutonium until mid 2030s or later. See table below.
SRS to Make HALEU from Surplus Plutonium
In March 2026 The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM) announced the decision to restart HB-Line operations at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.
Restarting HB-Line provides the capability to power America’s nuclear future by recycling surplus plutonium and partnering with industry to produce uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel for advanced nuclear reactors.
The facility is an integral part of H-Canyon, the only chemical separations facility of its kind in the United States.
With the shortfall of supply of HALEU fuel for advanced reactors, DOE has decided that a faster path to uranium fuel with enrichment levels of 9-19% U235 will be to supply advanced reactors developers with MOX fuel.
Prior coverage on this blog
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Three Reasons Why DOE’s Plutonium Plan Has Deal Breakers
The five firms selected for negotiations with DOE to contract for delivery of surplus plutonium for the purpose of turning it into HALEU fuel may want to take a closer look at the program before leaping into a decision to accept the material. Here are three reasons that could be deal breakers.
DOE Wants a Free Ride to Get Rid of Surplus Plutonium
Reason 1: Last December this blog called out the DOE plan to provide commercial firms plutonium derived from nuclear weapons to turn into HALEU fuel as being a “free ride” for the agency to dispose of the plutonium.
What this looks like is that DOE has de facto outsourced a plutonium fuel and disposition R&D program under the guise of offering fuel for advanced reactors in return for solving DOE’s seemingly intractable problem of what to do with the agency’s surplus of weapons grade materials.
Even more interesting is that DOE’s plan requires that applicants may be required to pay a “cost recovery fee” for getting the plutonium in the first place. In the RFA DOE was vague about how the fee would be calculated and under what conditions it might be imposed.
DOE calls this “unlocking the next level of private funding,” as part of its requirement that “selected companies must meet costs of carrying out their proposal.”
In other words, DOE is offering plutonium to applicants and is requiring them to accept 100% of the financial and operational risks and obligations of working with surplus plutonium.
As an added requirement, DOE wants a non-exclusive but free license to use the details of any successes for its own purposes. So not only will firms gett the transuranic materials at their cost, but they also will be required to serve up any valuable intellectual property derived from working with it without compensation.
In short, DOE’s plan is to get a free ride to receive the results of some of the most hazardous and complex R&D that any organization could take on. DOE is, in effect, shifting the burden of plutonium disposition, along with all the risks, from the public sector to private firms.
Nonproliferation Issues Are in the Forefront of Reasons Not to Proceed
Reason 2: Executive Order 14302, ‘Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base,‘ called for the federal government to pursue policies to maximize the value of nuclear fuel and expand the domestic nuclear fuel supply chain.
Consider the view of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) which is an organization with decades of experience dealing with nuclear nonproliferation issues. The New York Times reported last week that Scott Roecker, a vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group dedicated to reducing the spread of nuclear weapons, told the newspaper, “Countries have tried this before, and they concluded that, as nice as it would be to use that plutonium as fuel, it’s really just a liability and we need to dispose of it permanently.”
This isn’t a recent position by NTI. In a white paper published in May 2025, following the release of the executive order calling for the use of plutonium as nuclear fuel, NTI wrote,
“Plutonium-based fuels and reprocessing have a poor track record when introduced in civilian nuclear energy programs. Reviving them through executive order would likely:
Lead to the creation of additional stocks of weapons-usable materials
Encourage states without nuclear weapons to develop and deploy technologies that are usable in nuclear weapons programs
Produce new radioactive waste streams that must be managed, at considerable cost and risk
Increase the cost of deploying nuclear energy, which already faces economic challenges in key markets, including the United States
Introduce new fuels to the nuclear energy enterprise, requiring new regulatory safety analysis and approvals
Elevate the risk of a safety or security incident at a nuclear facility.
NTI writes that none of these concerns have been addressed convincingly by new technology, and reviving ideas that have not worked in the past is particularly ill-timed now. As momentum builds and coalitions form to advance innovative approaches to nuclear energy, attempts to introduce plutonium fuels and reprocessing would be counterproductive.
Prior Failed Efforts in the U.S. to Reprocess Plutonium into Nuclear Fuel
Reason 3: None of the firms named by the Department of Energy have experience reprocessing chunks of plutonium metal into nuclear fuel assemblies. While France and Japan have long experience making mixed oxide fuel (MOX) from plutonium derived from spent nuclear fuel, these activities are state owned enterprises which carry with them accountability for materials and the ability to pay for all phases of the reprocessing work including management of waste streams.
DOE tried a decade ago to build a facility to convert 34 tonnes of plutonium into 1,700 commercial MOX fuel assemblies with enrichment levels equivalent to 5% U235. The project was cancelled due to runaway costs that sent the estimated costs of completing the plant soaring to near $50 billion. No group of private sector investors will put up that kind of money to build a factory, which is what Oklo proposes, for $1.5 billion to do more or less that same thing for HALEU fuel.
The last private sector effort to process spent fuel, which took place in West Valley, NY, near Buffalo, NY, ended in a decades long multi-million dollar effort to clean up the mess left behind after the firm that owned the plant walked away from it.
The project is a 100% precursor of what DOE is proposing to do in the current era. Nuclear Fuel Services was a subsidiary of the W.R. Grace Company in 1963, when the Atomic Energy Commission granted the company the necessary permits to reprocess spent fuel at the West Valley site. The first shipments of spent fuel arrived at the site in 1965, and reprocessing began the next year. In 1969, Nuclear Fuel Services was acquired by Getty Oil.
The West Valley Demonstration Project is a nuclear waste remediation site in West Valley, New York in the U.S. state of New York. The cleanup effort focuses on the remediation and containment of radioactive waste left behind after the abandonment of a commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in 1980. The project was created by an Act of Congress in 1980 and is directed to be a cooperative effort between the United States Department of Energy and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.
Despite over 30 years of cleanup efforts and billions of dollars having been spent at the site, the West Valley Demonstration Project property was described as “arguably Western New York’s most toxic location” in 2013.
One possible outcome of DOE’s delivery of plutonium to these five firms is that all five discover that the chemistry of the plutonium material is all over the map and that one size, e.g., a single once through chemical process, does not fit all forms. This problem sank the prospects of DOE’s MOX fuel plant in South Carolina as the contractors there struggled to find efficient ways to deal with the varieties of plutonium material mixed in with other transuranic isotopes.
A risk is that after failing to find cost effective ways to make HALEU fuel from the material, these firms will toss the resulting mess back on DOE’s corner creating the equivalent of five West Valley sites requiring decades of cleanup work and costing taxpayers billions of dollars over time.
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Advanced Nuclear Startup Newcleo To Go Public Through Blank-Cheque Deal
Merger will support European company’s push into US market
(NucNet) Nuclear power developer Newcleo said on 27 May that it plans to go public through a merger with a blank-cheque company in a deal valuing it at about $2.4 billion (€2.06 billion).
The Paris-based company, which operates in seven countries, said the merger would support its entry into the US power market and fund existing projects in Europe.
In a statement Newcleo said it generated approximately $80 million in revenue, other income and financial income in 2024 from its nuclear equipment supply chain operating companies.
Newcleo has made substantial R&D investments since its founding in 2021 by physicist Stefano Buono and has a patent portfolio covering 31 patent families across both its lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR) design and mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel processing.
According to the Wall Street Journal, in an interview with the newspaper, Stefano Buono, Newcleo CEO, said his company planned to build a fuel fabrication facility in Savannah River, S.C., near the site of the canceled MOX project. He said Newcleo could succeed where previous efforts had failed.
Buono told the Wall Street Journal the decision to use a SPAC merger was driven by a desire for speed to establish a U.S. presence. The company aims to have a fuel factory operational by 2031 and a commercial reactor by 2032, but Buono said it is possible those dates could accelerate. In March, it started pre-licensing talks with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its first domestic reactor and fuel fabrication facility.
The company has raised approximately $780 million in private funds to fund this growth as well as its licensing and siting progress.
In October 2025 Newcleo announced plans to form a partnership with US-based advanced nuclear technology company Oklo to build advanced nuclear fuel manufacturing infrastructure.
Newcleo says it is pioneering the next generation of nuclear technologies through its advanced modular LFRs, which use MOX fuel.
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BLSK Energy to Produce Advanced Reactor Fuel
BLSK Energy, LLC, emerged last week from stealth mode following the signing of an agreement with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) for BLSK Energy to lead the commercialization of a technology that produces fuel for advanced fast nuclear reactors by recycling the used fuel from existing nuclear power plants.
Formed in early 2025, BLSK Energy’s founders have used their experience and relationships in nuclear power and finance to establish significant momentum toward placing a pilot recycling facility that will produce fuel for advanced, fast reactors into operation in 2034.
“The path ahead is ambitious but achievable,” said Bruce Landrey, managing director and co-founder. “It also is absolutely necessary to address both the past and the future of the use of nuclear energy as a source of clean, safe electricity for our communities.”
The U.S. has accumulated an estimated 95,000 tonnes of used nuclear fuel at more than 75 sites around the country. Plans for permanent disposal have been stalled for decades. Meanwhile, both the availability and the cost of HALEU fuel for advanced reactors are becoming bottlenecks in their development.
“BLSK has the rare opportunity to address the two critical issues facing nuclear power; answering the question, ‘what about the waste?’ while delivering a reliable cost-effective supply of fuel for advanced reactors,” said Landrey.
The Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) established between BLSK and ANL provides it with exclusive access to the intellectual property behind pyroprocessing, the technology it will use for recycling nuclear fuel, as well as access to ANL’s established technical team of world class nuclear reprocessing scientists, engineers and laboratory facilities.
ANL’s support under the CRADA will be led by Dr. Yoon Il Chang, Senior Nuclear Project Director and ANL Distinguished Fellow, who is recognized as the father of pyroprocessing technology. Dr. Chang detailed the potential for the combination of pyroprocessing and integral fast reactors to provide abundant clean energy in his book, Plentiful Energy, co-authored with his late colleague, Dr. Charles Till.
In addition, the CRADA grants BLSK Energy exclusive access to a mature reprocessing facility design specification developed over years of extensive work between ANL and Merrick & Company, a preeminent U.S nuclear architect-engineer.
“Having the IP and facility design as a starting point places our effort at a high level of maturity, improving certainty through reduced technical, regulatory, and investment risk,” Landrey said.
Landrey helped launch NuScale Power and lead it through its early stages with responsibility for business development and strategy, and government affairs. He was an executive with the Tennessee Valley Authority and served as director of investor relations and chief of staff to the CEO of the owner of the Trojan Nuclear Plant. Directors and co-founders Murphy Poindexter and Ross Yehia Hubbard are veterans of numerous start-ups in technology and clean energy development.
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Curio Begins NRC Application Process for a Used Nuclear Fuel Recycling Production Facility
Letter of Intent Submitted May 27, 2026, Asks NRC to Establish 10 CFR 70 Docket Ahead of Formal Application
Curio, a leader in advanced nuclear recycling technologies, announced it has submitted a letter of intent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to establish a 10 CFR 70 docket for pre-application engagement activities and ultimately the submittal and review of an operating license application for the NuCycle used nuclear fuel recycling production facility. Once a docket is established, the license application will be developed to meet all applicable regulations for a nuclear fuel recycling facility.
The facility is designed to process up to 4,000 tonnes of commercial light water reactor used nuclear fuel (UNF) annually. The products of the proprietary NuCycle process – recently validated by four DOE national laboratories – will be enrichable uranium hexafluoride (UF6), trans-uranic TRUFuel, and valuable isotopes.
The first-of-a-kind facility design will accommodate UNF feedstock ranging from low-enriched light-water reactor fuel and high-assay, low-enriched uranium to high-enriched Department of Energy-managed fuel. It will also include a UNF feedstock staging facility to allow for a controlled process for moving the UNF into the front end of the recycling process. Site selection for the NuCycle facility is ongoing.
“The initiation of this application process marks a key and decisive moment for Curio and our nation as we commercially deploy what will be the world’s most advanced and capable used nuclear fuel recycling facility based on our game-changing NuCycle technology,” said Ed McGinnis, President & CEO of Curio.
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Green River, UT. Nuclear Energy Plan Revived
A decade ago the Blue Castle company proposed to build two large nuclear reactors on the banks of the Green River, which is a major tributary of the Colorado River. The project failed make any significant progress after 2017.
This time instead of twin 1,150 MW Westinghouse AP1000s, the project is focused on small modular reactors which are less expensive, and, more importantly, use a lot less water.
Fulcrum Point Holdings, founded by the head of Hi Tech Solutions, announced that it will team with Blue Castle Holdings to develop its nuclear project in Green River. UT. The Blue Castle nuclear power plant proposal prompted a legal fight over a decade ago due to concerns over its proposed water use. While Blue Castle won the water rights fight, the project never moved beyond the talking stage. The new joint initiative between Blue Castle and Fulcrum Point does not have a timeline for development.
“Fulcrum Point is stepping into this project as a true development partner to help move the Blue Castle Project from years of groundwork into the next phase of execution,” Chris Hayter, the Fulcrum Point founder and head of Hi Tech Solutions, said in a statement.
“Blue Castle has done important work to position this site for success, and we now bring the technical, operational and project development capabilities needed to help advance it through licensing, deployment planning and eventual construction.”
The proposal calls for the use of small modular reactors (SMRs), designed by Holtec International. Holtec’s SMR-300 units are planned to be deployed in pairs for a total of 600 MW. The Utah proposal also envision the development of a manufacturing facility to make the SMR-300 units for U.S. and global markets.
Blue Castle’s Water Woes
Water is life in Green River. The climate for Green River is high desert with summer temperatures that can crack 100F from May to September. Average rainfall is less than an inch a month and eight inches for the year. The town, named after the river, has a population of about 1,00 people according to the 2020 census.
In December 2016 the Blue Castle Company plan to build the twin large reactors ran into trouble paying its bills. The firm said it was months late in making payments that are due to the San Juan and Kane county water conservancy districts, Blue Castle Holdings added at the time it was renegotiating its financial obligations, which currently amount to $80,000 a year to San Juan and $100,000 to Kane in exchange for 53,000 acre feet of water to cool the project’s nuclear reactors.
Environment groups opposed to the project pointed to the firm’s financial troubles. In filings with the State Engineer’s Office, they argued that the state should retire the water rights because decades have passed without the counties putting this liquid asset to “beneficial use” as required under Western water doctrines. And they said there appears to be little evidence Blue Castle will put this water to use anytime soon, according to John Weisheit, the Moab-based conservation director for Living Rivers.
“Blue Castle Holdings has not provided the money for this water so it’s a nebulous water right and should not be renewed,” he said. Nor has the company demonstrated “due diligence” necessary to justify extending the counties’ claim to the water, he said.
Aaron Tilton, CEO at Blue Castle, told the Salt Lake City Tribune that the firm had notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its intent to apply for an Early Site Permit and eventually a COL in 2008, but the project never appeared on the listing of active or expected license applications. The NRC said in 2016 that “the filing date is uncertain” for the project.”
Tilton responded to environmental critics that The project’s naysayers are misreading the situation, Tilton contends. “These guys’ facts never play out. This is their last-gasp attempt to raise money or stir up trouble,” Tilton said.
“The financial aspects have improved. We have put $20 million into this. It is nonsensical to say we would let it go away over a couple hundred thousands dollars.”
For a deeper dive into the history of the Blue Castle Project and its revival in the present day, see this report from World Nuclear News.
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Focused Energy Fusion Gains $240 Million for Series A Funding
Focused Energy, a laser fusion company, has raised $240 million in a Series A financing roundmaking it one of the the largest Series A financing in the global fusion industry to date. In addition to RWE, the investors include the Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation SPRIND, the European Innovation Council Fund, and the previous lead investor, Prime Movers Lab.
With RWE, Focused Energy gains both a strategic investor and an industrial partner that enables use of the Biblis site, located near Frankfurt am Main, for laser fusion and contributes regulatory expertise. Focused Energy’s new capital is to be invested into the former RWE power plant site in Biblis, Hesse. The firm will use the existing infrastructure at the Biblis site and RWE’s power plant expertise.
Focused Energy’s press statement made additional claims. The firm said the project in Biblis can serve as a blueprint for the industrial scaling of fusion technology, while also representing a clear commitment to Germany and Hesse as a business location.
“The emerging fusion industry ecosystem has the potential to become the nucleus of a new high-technology industry “Made in Germany” – with tens of thousands of skilled jobs, strong export prospects, and high strategic importance for the industrial location.”
About Focused Energy
Focused Energy is a German American fusion company headquartered in Darmstadt, with offices in Berlin, Austin, and San Francisco. Founded in 2021 as a spin-off of Technical University Darmstadt, the company develops laser-based fusion technology. The goal is to transfer fusion technology from research into industrial application in Germany and to build the world’s first laser fusion power plant in Biblis together with partners from industry and science by the mid-2030s.
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Thea Energy Raises $100 Million Series B Funding
Thea Energy, Inc., a technology company advancing the stellarator for the commercialization of fusion power, announced it has raised $100 million in Series B funding that draws support from Thomas Tull’s US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), General Innovation Capital Partners (GICP), Linse Capital, Calm Ventures, Climate Capital, Divergent Capital, Emerald Technology Ventures, Gaingels, Idemitsu Kosan, Overlay Capital, Timescale Ventures, and Whatif Ventures. The funding will expand the Company’s magnet manufacturing capacity, fast-track the construction of its integrated fusion system, and ultimately accelerate progress toward commercial deployment.
Existing investors Alumni Ventures, Hitachi Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Mercator Partners, Orion Industrial Ventures, Prelude Ventures, and Starlight Ventures also participated, among others.
This funding will expand the Company’s magnet manufacturing infrastructure, including the addition of a second facility in Northern New Jersey. The capital will also support the siting and construction of “Eos”, a large-scale integrated stellarator that will create power plant relevant, steady-state fusion enabled by Thea Energy’s simplified architecture as well as its ability to build fusion systems on shorter timescales and at lower costs. The Company is set to select a site for Eos later this year.
Thea Energy expects to start construction of the first “Helios” power plant before the end of the decade. The Company says its is in discussions with over a dozen power offtakers, hyperscalers, and utility partners interested in tapping into this scalable, high-availability source of fusion power.
This funding round follows the DOE’s certification of Thea Energy’s Helios preconceptual design milestone, making the company the first awardee to receive this distinction.
Key Recent Milestones
De-risked its core fusion technologies, including the full-scale planar shaping magnets utilized in the upcoming Eos system.
Built and operated the world’s first superconducting magnet array capable of making the complex and precise magnetic fields required for commercial stellarator systems.
Assembled a team of engineers, scientists, and operators capable of building and scaling fusion power plants across the world, on time and on budget.
About Thea Energy, Inc.
Thea Energy, Inc. is commercializing scalable and economical fusion energy systems via its planar coil stellarator architecture. The Company has utilized arrays of mass-manufacturable magnets and dynamic software controls to reinvent the stellarator.
Thea Energy spun out of Princeton University and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in 2022 to commercialize the stellarator, a mature magnetic confinement fusion architecture. The Company was selected for funding by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program and is also supported via six Department of Energy INFUSE awards.
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