Thursday, 16 July 2026

Radiant has moved its Kaleidos microreactor toward full-power trials, sending the first fuel batch to the Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments facility run by the National Reactor Innovation Center at Idaho National Laboratory, according to World Nuclear News. The shipment clears the way for full-power, full-temperature testing of the reactor.

Standard Nuclear produced the tri-structural isotropic fuel to Radiant's specifications earlier this year, World Nuclear News reported.

The test sequence steps through zero-power criticality, 1 MW thermal, full power and full heat, then requires the reactor to run at full power for at least 150 hours with no operator intervention, according to World Nuclear News.

"We are de-risking a commercial product that will be manufactured and delivered within 18 months," said Rita Baranwal, Radiant's Chief Nuclear Officer, who added that customer deployment is targeted by 2028.

Kaleidos is a high-temperature gas-cooled design that runs on TRISO fuel with helium coolant and prismatic graphite blocks, according to World Nuclear News. The unit fits inside a single shipping container and is rated at 3MW thermal or around 1MW electrical.

The test bed reuses the containment structure of the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II, which ran from 1964 to 1994, World Nuclear News reported. The facility stands 100 feet tall and measures 80 feet across.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has run pre-application work on the reactor with Radiant since 2022, according to World Nuclear News.

Fermi America intends to cool its planned AP1000 reactors with air-cooled condenser systems rather than wet cooling towers, a design the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) says is untested at scale in the United States. According to IEEFA analyst Dennis Wamsted, no large reactor in the U.S. has ever operated using anything other than water for its cooling systems.

Fermi stated the AP1000 units will not rely on wet cooling towers, and that air-cooled condenser systems significantly reduce consumptive water use, limiting demand to system makeup, domestic supply, and incidental process needs. In its initial licensing filings to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Fermi acknowledged that the specifics of the cooling system have not yet been designed, according to IEEFA.

Building the four reactors is already estimated to cost USD 41 billion, according to IEEFA, which said the project is likely to take much longer and cost far more than current forecasts.

The project also faces leadership upheaval. Co-founder Toby Neugebauer was removed as chief executive, and chief financial officer Miles Everson resigned, according to IEEFA.

Investors have marked the company down. IEEFA reported that Fermi's stock has traded below USD 10 a share since early March, before the executive shakeup, and is down more than two-thirds from its initial opening price last October.

Taipingling Unit 2, a 1,116 MWe (net) pressurised water reactor, connected to the grid for the first time on 4 July and generated its first kilowatt-hour of electricity, according to China General Nuclear (CGN).

The unit is the second of six planned Hualong One (HPR1000) reactors at the site in Guangdong province. CGN expects it to officially commence power generation in the second half of 2026.

The reactor received an operating licence from China's National Nuclear Safety Administration on 30 April, and the loading of 177 fuel assemblies was completed on 3 May, according to World Nuclear News. It attained first criticality on 25 June.

Unit 1 at the site attained first criticality on 3 February and was connected to the grid on 13 February, according to World Nuclear News. It entered commercial operation on 19 April.

The Taipingling plant will eventually have six Hualong One reactors, with a total investment exceeding CNY120 billion (USD 17 billion).

Once all six units are operational, annual generation will exceed 55 billion kWh, CGN said. The plant will reduce standard coal consumption by about 16.65 million tonnes and carbon dioxide emissions by about 50.82 million tonnes annually, according to CGN.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has proposed a major rewrite of its National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rules, according to Power Magazine.

The agency proposed the rule on July 7, Power Magazine reported.

Power Magazine reported that the rewrite is directed by a series of recent executive orders, statutory NEPA amendments, and a Supreme Court precedent.

Arizona's environmental regulator is set to grant Energy Fuels Resources Inc. a 10 percent increase in permitted arsenic thresholds at a uranium mine, lifting both a monitoring well's alert level and the aquifer limit under a revised Aquifer Protection Program permit, according to Inside Climate News.

The permit change moves the well's alert level to 0.05 mg/L from 0.04 mg/L, and the allowable aquifer arsenic concentration to 0.055 mg/L from 0.05 mg/L, Inside Climate News reported.

The well sits at a mine inside a national monument nine miles from the Grand Canyon's south rim, where arsenic readings have climbed since 2025 and topped the permitted alert level four times, according to Inside Climate News.

Randall Matas of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality said permitted facilities are not accountable for naturally occurring arsenic, describing the readings as arsenic drawn toward the mine by a hydraulic sink pulling off-site water inward rather than contamination leaving the site.

Energy Fuels runs the only operating uranium mill in the United States, the White Mesa facility in Utah, which turns ore into yellow cake, according to Inside Climate News.

Last month, the Department of Defense committed a $725 million conditional loan to Energy Fuels to expand domestic rare earth processing at the mill site, Inside Climate News reported.

The company's proposed Roco Honda mine in New Mexico has entered the Trump administration's fast-tracked permitting queue, even though it falls inside the Mount Taylor Traditional Cultural Property, sacred to several regional tribes, according to Inside Climate News.

The United States broke a long stretch without new nuclear power plant construction in April, when two next-generation nuclear developers broke ground on their debut plants, according to Canary Media.

The country had spent a yearslong dry spell without building new nuclear plants before that point, Canary Media reported.