Tuesday, 18 August 2026

Executives at uranium producer Energy Fuels purchased stock in their own company days before Trump stripped 1.24 million acres from Bears Ears National Monument, opening the land to mining again, according to Grist.

Grist reported that board chair Bruce Hansen acquired 4,000 shares the day after a purchase by Bhappu. The monument reduction removed 1.24 million acres from Bears Ears, making the land available for mining.

Energy Fuels operates White Mesa Mill, which Grist describes as the last conventional uranium processing site in the nation. The mill sat about a mile from the Bears Ears boundary before the monument was cut by 90 percent, Grist reported.

The company's federal backing extends beyond uranium. According to Grist, the Department of Defense issued a USD 725 million loan to Energy Fuels on June 18 to support developing rare earth elements.

Deployable Energy has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Hornbeck Offshore to apply its Unity Nuclear Battery across five strategic maritime and offshore markets, according to Offshore Engineer OEDigital. Hornbeck Offshore has also taken a strategic investment position in Deployable Energy.

Offshore Engineer OEDigital reports the partners target a reduction of at least 20% in total cost of ownership against conventional marine diesel or grid-power alternatives. The same reporting describes a long-term opportunity for multi-gigawatt deployment over a 10-year horizon.

The Unity Nuclear Battery is a 1 MWe transportable microreactor, mass-manufactured and engineered for integration into existing vessels rather than requiring ships to be built around the reactor, per Offshore Engineer OEDigital. Refueling intervals are designed to exceed five years, and the unit is presented as emissions-free power, according to the same account.

The design choice matters for the offshore fleet economics the MOU addresses. A reactor sized at 1 MWe and fitted to a hull already in service avoids the newbuild cycle that has constrained earlier marine nuclear concepts. Fuel logistics shift on the same basis: an interval longer than five years removes the bunkering cadence that sets diesel operating cost.

The cost-of-ownership target is stated against two distinct baselines, marine diesel and grid power, which points at both vessel propulsion or hotel load and shoreside or platform supply. Neither the five markets named in the MOU nor the size of the Hornbeck Offshore investment was specified in the announcement.

Thea Energy has closed an extension of its Series B funding round, drawing support from Brevan Howard Macro Venture, Aloniq, ALJ Investments, Beyond Earth Ventures and further strategic investors, the fusion developer said in a statement distributed by GlobeNewswire.

The extension builds on a Series B the company had previously announced at USD 100 million, led by Thomas Tull's US Innovative Technology Fund, with proceeds directed at scaling magnet manufacturing capacity, according to the same statement.

Separately, Thea Energy said it received a USD 20 million award from the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The award falls under the Seeding Critical Advances for Leading Energy technologies with Untapped Potential (SCALEUP) program and is aimed at expanding domestic production lines for modular high-temperature superconducting magnets.

The company describes its Helios power plant preconceptual design as the most mature stellarator power plant architecture, and said the design was certified by the DOE under the Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program.

Magnet manufacturing sits at the centre of the funding case. Both the earlier USD 100 million raise and the ARPA-E award are tied to production capacity rather than to plant construction, with the SCALEUP money specifically earmarked for domestic modular HTS magnet lines. Stellarators rely on shaped magnetic fields to confine plasma, making magnet supply a hard constraint on any deployment schedule.

The DOE certification of the Helios preconceptual design places the architecture inside a federal milestone framework rather than a grant-only relationship. Thea Energy has not tied the Series B extension to a named amount.

Atomic Canyon has made the Nuclear Industry Virtual Assistant (NIVA) available fleetwide across the North American nuclear fleet, the company said in a GlobeNewswire release. The assistant was developed alongside collaborators including the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), EPRI, and the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI).

The rollout follows a pilot phase. According to the announcement, NIVA currently carries two core use cases, both tested over the past six months before the wider deployment.

Constellation Energy is among the end users, per the release. Its portfolio spans 26 nuclear reactors across six states and generates one-third of U.S. clean nuclear power.

Atomic Canyon, which describes itself as a developer of AI tools for the nuclear energy industry, disclosed new funding alongside the deployment. The backers named are NVIDIA, Plug and Play Ventures, and Mortimer "Tim" Buckley, the former chairman and chief executive of The Vanguard Group.

TerraPower has signed two agreements, one with Hyundai Engineering & Construction (HDEC) and one with SK Innovation, to develop and commercialize its Natrium reactor technology across the United States, Korea and select international markets, according to Power Engineering Nuclear.

The first of the two deals is a framework agreement naming HDEC as engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor for up to eight future Natrium reactors, Power Engineering Nuclear reported. That mandate carries completion, price and performance guarantees, a contracting structure that shifts schedule and cost risk onto the builder rather than the reactor developer.

The SK Innovation agreement is a term sheet advancing the two companies' intent to build Korea's first commercial Natrium plant, with plans to expand internationally, per the same report. TerraPower was founded by Bill Gates.

The reference project remains in Wyoming, developed through the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP) as a public-private partnership, and is expected to be completed in 2030, according to Power Engineering Nuclear.

That timetable already absorbed one slip. TerraPower announced a schedule delay in late 2022, pointing to insufficient commercial high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) manufacturing capacity and the loss of Russian supply options. Fuel availability, not reactor design, was the constraint the company named.

Demand-side commitments are running ahead of the first unit. TerraPower holds an agreement with Meta for up to eight Natrium plants by 2035, Power Engineering Nuclear reported. The HDEC contract covers up to eight reactors, matching the scale of that offtake ambition.

The Korean pairing gives TerraPower two distinct functions from one country: HDEC as the construction arm with guaranteed delivery terms, and SK Innovation as the domestic development partner for a first commercial unit in Korea. Both agreements point at markets beyond their home jurisdictions, with the stated scope covering the United States, Korea and select international markets.