Wednesday, 22 July 2026

Deep Fission has shipped its prototype reactor canister to the Parsons site in Kansas for its pilot project, according to World Nuclear News. The California-based startup is developing small modular reactors intended to sit in boreholes a mile below ground.

Groundbreaking at the Great Plains Industrial Park in Parsons took place in December, World Nuclear News reported. Deep Fission intends to follow the test reactor demonstration with a full-scale commercial plant on the same ground.

The canister's arrival moves the project from design toward deployed hardware, said Mark Peres, Deep Fission's Chief Nuclear Officer.

Each Gravity unit is engineered to run at the bottom of a borehole one mile, or 1.6 km, deep, generating 15 MWe from pressurised water reactor technology fed by low-enriched uranium, according to World Nuclear News. The company puts a single site's output at 150 MWe with ten reactors and 1.5 GWe with 100.

The US Department of Energy picked Deep Fission in August last year as one of 10 companies backed under its Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program, World Nuclear News reported.

Father-daughter founders Elizabeth and Richard Muller started the company in 2023.

Holtec International has appointed a group of nuclear industry leaders to the safety leadership team at Palisades ahead of the plant's restart, according to a GlobeNewswire release.

Fadi Diya will begin serving as Chief Nuclear Officer on July 27, 2026, the company said. Holtec described the appointments as preparation for the plant's restart.

The Palisades Nuclear Safety Review Board will be established on August 3, 2026. It will comprise three executives, with Michael W. Rencheck as Chair alongside members Edward Callan and Joel Gebbie.

Rencheck served as Executive Vice Chairman of Bruce Power L.P. from July 2024 to June 2026, according to the release. Before that he was the company's President and Chief Executive Officer from August 2016 to June 2024.

Holtec said Rencheck is also expected to join the company's Board of Directors and chair its Nuclear Oversight Committee.

Holtec describes the restart of Palisades as the first-ever reopening of a U.S. nuclear facility.

A 1,100 MWe pressurised water reactor at the Changjiang nuclear plant, Unit 3, reached first criticality at 18:00 local time on 10 July, according to World Nuclear News. The reactor was constructed by CNNC Engineering.

Unit 3 is one of two Hualong One (HPR1000) reactors going up in the plant's second phase. Crews poured first concrete for Unit 3's nuclear island base slab in March 2021, followed by Unit 4 in December of the same year.

China Huaneng, which holds a 51% share in Changjiang Phase II, puts the combined investment for Units 3 and 4 at CNY40 billion (USD5.9 billion). Both units are due to be fully operational in early 2027.

First criticality means the reactor has started a sustained chain reaction, according to CNNC, which said the unit now moves toward grid connection and commissioning.

The same site hosts a demonstration ACP100 small modular reactor, a 125 MWe unit known as Linglong One, that is running pre-commissioning tests, World Nuclear News reported.