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Holtec bets big on small nuclear reactors in its IPO filing

As it pivots from shutting down nuclear plants to building them, Holtec says small modular reactors can cut costs and speed construction. Now it has to prove it.

By Alexander C. Kaufman, 15 July 2026, https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/holtec-ipo-small-modular-reactors

Nuclear giant Holtec International is betting big that its 300-megawatt small modular reactors are the future of atomic energy.

On Friday, the Florida-headquartered firm filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission in order to sell shares in the company on the Nasdaq.

Across hundreds of pages, the disclosure document outlines the 40-year-old Holtec’s plans to transform itself from the industry’s undertaker — manufacturing canisters to safely store radioactive spent fuel and decommissioning shuttered nuclear plants — to its midwife, producing and operating new electrical stations. This transition comes as nuclear energy regains popularity in the U.S. as a way to meet booming power demand without creating more planet-warming pollution.

Developers have traditionally offset nuclear’s high up-front costs by building ever-larger reactors to capture the economies of scale. Since the early 2000s, however, a number of companies have proposed building small modular reactors that can be constructed identically and in batches. SMRs could generate about a third of the electricity of conventional large-scale plants, but, proponents argue, would bring down costs through assembly-line repetition rather than physical scale.

That cost reduction has yet to be proven out in the real world with actual plants. But in its S-1 filing, Holtec said, “SMRs will offer scalable, cost-effective solutions for new capacity with enhanced safety features, reduced construction timelines and reduced land and transmission infrastructure needs as compared to traditional, larger-scale reactors.” It noted that a single-unit SMR plant would only need 15 acres of land and take a mere three years to build. By contrast, the big reactors on the grid today can take up hundreds of acres, and construction typically drags on for nearly a decade.

Holtec’s SMR-300, as the pressurized-water reactor is named, “is expected to receive regulatory approval for deployment in 2029” and reach its first deployment “in the early 2030s,” according to the filing.

The company said it expects SMRs to play “a meaningful role in the expansion of nuclear capacity,” noting that they can “complement large-scale nuclear generation through lower upfront costs” and more flexible planning around how much power is needed.

For example, smaller reactors may be better suited for converting some old coal-fired stations into nuclear plants. The DOE has been researching the idea for years, given that nuclear and coal are both thermal resources that operate with similar rates of frequency and therefore use similar equipment to generate electricity from steam — which in nuclear plants is made from the heat created by splitting atoms and in coal plants is made from heat created by burning the black rocks. Converting a 400-MW coal plant into a similar-size nuclear reactor makes more financial sense than using a bigger reactor, which could require costly transmission upgrades and more space

“We believe that our SMR-300 plant can become a favored nuclear generation source over large reactors because of certain advantages,” the company said in its filing.

The future of restarts

The company will also operate at least one conventional reactor, the 800-MW unit it’s currently restoring at its Palisades nuclear station, in western Michigan. That project — the nation’s first effort to return a permanently shuttered nuclear reactor to service — could be completed within months, though its contract to sell power to the local grid won’t kick in until next year.

Holtec hopes to combine its plant-restart strategy with its SMR vision. It’s planning to deploy two SMRs at the Palisades site; if that works out, the company has said it may build SMRs at New Jersey’s Oyster Creek nuclear plant, which it’s been in the process of decommissioning for eight years.

Holtec owns three other defunct nuclear plants — Massachusetts’ Pilgrim, Michigan’s Big Rock Point, and New York’s Indian Point — that it could also try to rebuild. The Trump administration has called for reconstructing Indian Point, but Albany remains opposed to the controversial proposal.

Local opposition isn’t Holtec’s biggest hurdle, however. That would be competition from the nuclear behemoths in Russia and China. Virtually every Western nuclear developer is facing an uphill battle to compete with the Kremlin’s state-owned Rosatom, by far the biggest international vendor of nuclear technology in the world, and China’s two state-owned nuclear companies, which are building more than three dozen reactors at home and are expected to enter the export game soon.

Still, among its domestic rivals, Holtec may be the best positioned to hold its own on a global playing field. It is an established company with profitable enterprises in a dozen countries across four continents, and has experience managing infrastructure so sensitive it’s overseen by a dedicated agency, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The company has facilities with electrical equipment on-site that can be potentially used to deploy SMRs. It also has won significant support from the federal government, both in the form of a $1.52 billion loan the Department of Energy provided to finance the Palisades restart and the $400 million the agency gave the company to support construction of its first SMR-300s.

“We began work in 2011 on a small modular reactor solution, and drawing on our in-house capability to design, license, manufacture, construct, and commission nuclear systems, honed through decades of turnkey supply, we are now uniquely positioned to launch the development of our small nuclear reactor,” Krishna Singh, Holtec’s founder and chief executive, said in a letter to prospective investors.

July 19, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Insuring Small Modular Nuclear Reactors.

Deploying the next generation of nuclear technologies is likely to present a number of novel challenges, notably securing appropriate insurance coverage for both property and liability. Without early engagement developers could face significant obstacles to commercial roll-out.

Nuclear Engineering International, By Ron Rispoli, Senior Vice President, Energy Group, Stephens Insurance, LLCJuly 9, 2026

s small modular reactors (SMRs) move from concept to commercialisation, one of the least visible yet most critical enablers of deployment is insurance. Property and liability coverage for nuclear are not only a financial safeguard, they are also a regulatory requirement. However, nuclear insurance is highly specialised, capacity constrained, and dependent on early engagement with underwriters.

Insurance requirements for SMRs and microreactors may vary based on reactor size, design, fuel forms, coolant types, and power levels. Existing regulatory frameworks establish baseline liability and financial protection requirements, but these were developed for large, traditional light water reactors. As a result, regulators and insurers may apply a more risk-informed approach when determining appropriate insurance levels for smaller or non-traditional designs.

The US liability insurance framework

In the United States, nuclear liability insurance is governed by the Price-Anderson Act, a federal programme designed to ensure compensation to the public following a nuclear incident. The Act establishes a two-tier structure………

In addition to the Price-Anderson Act, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations in 10 CFR Part 140 establish detailed financial protection requirements based on reactor size and operating status. These regulations differentiate between nuclear power plants with a rated capacity of 100 MWe or greater and those with lower electrical output, a distinction that is particularly relevant for small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors. For smaller units, required liability coverage may be reduced or determined on a case-specific basis, reflecting their lower potential risk profile. The regulations also include provisions for multiple reactors located at a single site. This allows the NRC to evaluate financial protection requirements on a site-specific basis. This introduces additional flexibility for SMR deployments but also creates complexity in structuring appropriate liability coverage for multi-unit configurations.

…..In the United States, reactor licensees are generally required to maintain approximately $1.06bn in onsite property insurance per reactor site. ….

Globally, nuclear liability is governed by a set of international conventions, including the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC), the Paris Convention and Brussels Supplementary Convention, and the Vienna Convention and Joint Protocol. While implementation varies by jurisdiction, these frameworks share core principles: liability is channelled exclusively to the operator, with liability caps supplemented by public funds.

For SMR developers pursuing international deployment, this creates a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction insurance strategy that often requires coordination across multiple national insurance regimes…………

A constrained market and specialised brokerage

Existing insurance frameworks were developed for large, traditional reactors, creating added complexity for SMR deployment. Unlike conventional insurance markets, nuclear insurance is provided by a small number of highly specialised pools and mutual insurers. Global underwriting capacity is limited, and participation is tightly controlled.

This dynamic is particularly relevant for SMRs, as developers may pursue multi-unit deployments, novel reactor designs, or non-traditional ownership structures – all of which introduce new risks from an underwriting perspective. In practice, access to insurance capacity – not reactor design – may become a gating factor for deployment. Given the complexity of the nuclear insurance market, engaging a broker with demonstrated experience in nuclear insurance is essential. Nuclear insurance is not transacted in a broad, competitive marketplace; rather, it is concentrated among a small number of insurers each with distinct underwriting requirements and processes…….

Emerging technologies, multi-unit deployment strategies, and evolving regulatory frameworks introduce uncertainties that must be translated into insurable risk. Without specialised expertise, projects may face delays, higher costs, or challenges in securing adequate coverage.

Insurance cannot be treated as an afterthought…..Delayed engagement with insurance markets can expose developers to significant risks, including coverage exclusions, insufficient limits, or, in extreme cases, an inability to secure required insurance. Coverage is not guaranteed to be available in the necessary amount, form, or timeframe. As the SMR market grows, competition for limited insurance capacity is likely to intensify….https://www.neimagazine.com/analysis/smrs-advanced-reactors/insuring-smrs/?cf-view

July 18, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | Leave a comment

Bangladesh’s Nuclear Power Play Is a Test for Emerging Economies

By Alex Kimani – Oil Price, Jul 14, 2026,

Bangladesh is betting on nuclear power with the $12.65 billion, 2.4-GW Rooppur plant to strengthen energy security and reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels and Indian electricity.
The Russian-built project has faced years of delays due to the pandemic, sanctions, currency pressures, and global conflicts.
While Rooppur will supply up to 15% of Bangladesh’s electricity, the country is already looking to smaller, cheaper SMRs for future nuclear expansion.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… The heavy financial burden and the political controversy are likely to render Rooppur the last large-scale nuclear plant Bangladesh builds. Moving forward, Dhaka is shifting its attention to Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), with the government already in talks with Western and Chinese firms, signaling a quiet realignment away from total reliance on Russian energy partnerships, Bloomberg reports.https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Bangladeshs-Nuclear-Power-Play-Is-a-Test-for-Emerging-Economies.html

July 17, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ASIA, business and costs | Leave a comment

Government U turn as Sizewell B is to get a fixed-price government contract.

Government awards the last UK nuclear power station a fixed power
contract, backing away from its shift towards a new model of funding.

The UK energy department has extended the life of the Sizewell B nuclear power
plant in Suffolk by 20 years with a fixed-price government contract, after
energy price shocks following the war on Iran.

Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Rachel Reeves, called the nuclear power project “a vital part of
Britain’s energy future”. French project owner EDF said it has secured
a 20-year fixed price power contract from the UK government that will last
from 2035 to 2055.

Previously EDF had planned to commence decommissioning
of the plant in 2035. The French power company said it is “funding a
refurbishment of the nuclear power station during planned outages over the
next fifteen years, costing around £800 million”.

British Gas owner Centrica also said it is investing an undisclosed amount in the extension
of the 1.2 GW operational nuclear power project in Suffolk. It is the first
time that the Sizewell B nuclear power project will operate under a fixed
government power contract, priced at £70.50 per megawatt, after delayed
project Hinkley Point C was awarded such a contract a decade ago.

The energy department has since moved to shift nuclear power projects onto a
regulated asset base (RAB) structure for funding, the model that will be
used to finance Sizewell C at the Suffolk coastal site, a replica of yet to
be finalised nuclear power station Hinkley Point C in Somerset.

Energy Voice 8th July 2026,
https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/600397/government-u-turn-as-sizewell-b-is-first-nuclear-plant-to-get-cfd/

July 15, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics, UK | Leave a comment

Great British Energy appoints Amentum and Cavendish in £360M SMR deal

06 Jul, 2026 By Gavin Pearson, https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/great-british-energy-appoints-amentum-and-cavendish-in-360m-smr-deal-06-07-2026/

Great British Energy – Nuclear (GBE‑N) has awarded a long-term Owner’s Engineer (OE) contract worth up to £300M to two contractors.

Amentum Clean Energy and Cavendish Nuclear were signed to the role in a 14‑year contract which formally runs from 23 April 2026 to 23 April 2040.

The contract notice also states the possibility for an extension that could take it to October 2041.

The total value for the contract including VAT is listed as £360M and £300M without VAT, although GBE‑N said the contract’s final value is uncertain and depends on how the project progresses.

This will include timetables and milestones agreed with the SMR technology partner but the procurement notice envisages the OE supporting the client up to the completion of the first fuel cycle for the initial reactor.

The OE role will provide independent technical assurance and oversight to GBE‑N’s “Intelligent Customer” and “Intelligent Client” teams as the SMR programme moves through design stages and towards a final investment decision.

Responsibilities will include specification, audit, review and advice on design, scope, budgets, risk, delivery and contract compliance and acting as a subject matter expert delivering “Line of Defence 2” assurance on major design and build contracts.

Amentum and Cavendish are both established contractors in energy and nuclear services. Cavendish Nuclear is part of Babcock International Group, known for nuclear construction and engineering work in the UK and Amentum is an international engineering and technical services company.

The contract includes monthly reporting against key performance indicators such as deliverable quality, core team availability and social value measures, including targets for female apprenticeships.

July 14, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear power costs billions. Here are seven better ways to use that money – Martin Roche

Given Scotland’s renewables capacity and reserves of oil and gas, opting for expensive nuclear is daft, argues Martin Roche

There’s an energy project in Britain that will take twice as long to build as originally planned. It will at least double its forecast construction costs and require a UK bill-payer subsidy of £1 billion a year.

. Given Scotland’s renewables capacity and reserves of
Toil and gas, opting for expensive nuclear is daft, argues Martin Roche.
There’s an energy project in Britain that will take twice as long to build
as originally planned. It will at least double its forecast construction
costs and require a UK bill-payer subsidy of £1 billion a year

. It’s the nuclear power station being built by the French state-owned company EDF at
Hinkley Point in Somerset. Begun in 2017, its opening date has been pushed
back to 2030. The plant’s cost, unadjusted for inflation, stands today at
£35bn but the final total may reach £50bn.

The argument of the nuclear
power lobby is that we must have wholly reliable ‘baseload’ energy for
when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. I saw one
nonsensical argument that nuclear would be there when renewable energy went
into decline. This is desperate nonsense. The wind will continue to blow
off Scotland’s coast and high places on most days of the year, for as
long as there is a Scotland.

That’s not to say we should rely entirely on
renewables. We must have wholly dependable sources of power. Scotland has
options for both reducing its energy demand and building an energy economy
that can have much more impact over decades than nuclear. We should be
working to reduce energy costs for households and create a far bigger
energy employment sector than anything nuclear can offer.

And we can start
now. No need to wait decades for new nuclear stations. Nuclear generation
may enrich some giant companies and provide jobs in operation and
construction, but the numbers are modest when compared with smarter
thinking.

Labour’s policy may be good for US tech giants that want to
gobble up Scotland’s abundant energy to drive data centres, but it’s
not yet clear what’s in these facilities for the Scottish economy, jobs
or the public purse. Nuclear is a naïve 20th-century solution to complex
21st-century problems.

Nuclear power stations are also big targets and at
the mercy of drones, as we know from Ukraine. So much for energy security.
There is a far better way to spend our money than shovelling public cash
into the board rooms of energy giants or the pockets of California tech
bros billionaires.

It’s called the broader public good. Here are some
thoughts: One, a ten-year programme to bring Scottish homes up to the
highest possible thermal performance standards, so they are more efficient
and cheaper to run in deep winter and high summer. Better homes at less
cost and using less energy. Two, all new buildings – homes, schools,
offices, factories – to be built to the world’s most exacting energy
performance standards.

Three, grid connection costs to be slashed so that
small generation projects in rural areas, like mini-hydro and biogas,
become economically viable.

Four, every tenement building in Scotland to be
made suitable for solar panels, with owners benefiting from their share of
the income to help maintain properties. Our tenement homes can become our
own energy production factories.

Five, localised generation such as
tenement solar means that a network of small battery storage facilities can
be created across Scotland. Connected to the National Grid, they can be the
first line of defence on the odd days when wind can’t do the job.

Six,
some 12 per cent of Scotland’s energy comes from hydro power. We can
double that. Seven, all this will cost money. There are opportunities here
to create new long-term projects and consumer finance products, perhaps
with state guarantees (rather than being a cash cow for nuclear). Better
ways can be found of encouraging community energy firms. A new Scottish
private sector capital markets organisation can be established to provide
start-up and growth capital for new energy sector businesses.

Scotsman 9th July 2026, https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/nuclear-power-costs-billions-here-are-seven-better-ways-to-use-that-money-8786542

July 14, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

NATO vassals buy Trump ‘unity’ with $160 billion bribe

The NATO arrangement works from the Europeans buying American weapons and equipment for Ukraine. What the latest pledge means is that the 31 NATO members are handing a massive subsidy to the U.S. military-industrial complex.

NATO’s Rutte has evidently persuaded Trump that Europe is a lucrative cash cow for American corporations

Finian Cunningham, July 10, 2026, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/07/10/nato-vassals-buy-trump-unity-with-160-billion-bribe/

One can only imagine the scenes of obsequiousness and utter debasement as European politicians lined up to kiss Trump’s ring.

What a turnaround. The NATO summit this week was heading for an almighty crash, its leaders were bracing for impact, and then, suddenly, at the last moment, the alliance pulled out of a nosedive, and everyone was happy ever after.

What happened? U.S. President Donald Trump came to Ankara in a fury over bashing the Europeans. Then the mood swung like a person who just got his rocks off. He was bought off with a $160 billion pledge from the European and Canadian NATO vassals. Money talks for this American president, whose administration is a byword for graft and grift.

The final declaration from the Ankara summit states that the European and Canadian members are to donate $80 bn for military aid to Ukraine in 2026 and 2027. That is a total of $160 bn.

Under Trump, the United States has apparently stopped sending money to Ukraine. The NATO arrangement works from the Europeans buying American weapons and equipment for Ukraine. What the latest pledge means is that the 31 NATO members are handing a massive subsidy to the U.S. military-industrial complex.

There’s a lot more from where that came from, too. Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary-general, and total Trump flunky, was waxing lyrical about how Europe and Canada were due to spend an additional $300 bn on military next year. Much of this money will be spent on buying U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets and Patriot air defense missile systems. In other words, another huge subsidy to American corporations.

This flaunting of money explains the dizzying turnaround in Trump’s behavior over the two-day summit. Going into the conference in Ankara, Trump was berating the NATO alliance as “useless and ridiculous”. He was griping about how it was a one-way street of American military spending and “protection” for European “wasters”.

NATO members were expecting a disastrous display of disunity. Then suddenly, on the second day, Trump and the 31 other NATO leaders went into a behind-closed-doors session from which the media was excluded.

Trump emerged hailing NATO “unity” and a “lot of love in the room.” He claimed that all the heads of state declared their love for him and begged him to remain as their leader.

One can only imagine the scenes of obsequiousness and utter debasement as European politicians lined up to kiss Trump’s ring. Flattery and ego-stroking are one thing. But the money talking is another.

NATO’s Rutte has evidently persuaded Trump that Europe is a lucrative cash cow for American corporations. It’s an opportunity to squeeze, not walk away from, as the grumpy Trump had threatened to do on numerous occasions, with his perception that the U.S. was doing all the heavy lifting in NATO. Yes, American soldiers and warplanes tend to do the war fighting as in Iran currently. But there’s a new role developing, where the Europeans are turning their economies over to fuel the American war machine.

Rutte has pointed out that since Trump became president for the first time in 2017, NATO members have spent an additional $1,000 bn on the military. Last year, alone, they forked out $140 bn. The Europeans and Canadians have committed to raising military expenditure from 2-3 per cent of GDP to 5 per cent by 2035. This involves trillions of dollars, all up for grabs by American corporations.

The relief expressed by European leaders at the end of the NATO summit betrays what happened and their vassal status. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and others were ecstatic that Trump had renewed his commitment to the transatlantic alliance. “NATO is stronger than ever,” declared Merz, who also announced that Germany would be buying Tomahawk missiles from the U.S. Germany makes its own, more modern cruise missiles, the Taurus, so why is it buying from the U.S.? Of course, it’s part of the European effort to bribe Trump.

The European leaders are more acutely Russophobic than Trump. For them, there was a mortal danger that the mercurial American was going to wreck the NATO summit with divisions and acrimony, which would undermine the proxy war agenda in Ukraine against Russia. Trump had been rebuking the Europeans for not supporting his war effort against Iran.

With Russia making significant advances on the battlefield, taking a major Ukrainian stronghold at Konstantinovka earlier this week ahead of the NATO conference, there was deep concern that Trump was going to abandon the Europeans.

To the amazement of many observers, Trump did a last-minute U-turn in Ankara, declaring unity and commitment to NATO and support for Ukraine “against the long-term threat of Russia.”

The key to understanding the giant flip-flop is that the European and Canadian vassals got down on their knees and begged Trump to stay with them. Trump’s megalomania could not resist the pleasure. And he got a hefty fee of $160 bn to take home. Usually, the prostitutes get paid for their services. In Europe’s case, the client walks away with the money.

Of course, the Euro leaders and their pimp, Mark Rutte, will not feel any damage personally. It is the generations of European citizens who are being screwed for the American-NATO gangbang.

July 13, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, EUROPE, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Trump Sweetens the Nuclear Energy Pot, But Will Anyone Play?

By Thomas A. Firey, July 6, 2026, https://www.cato.org/blog/trump-sweetens-nuclear-energy-pot-will-anyone-play

Last week, the Trump administration announced it is offering $17.5 billion in financing to build five new two-reactor nuclear power plants featuring Westinghouse Electric’s AP1000 large reactor. The offer comes on the heels of last November’s Trump announcement of an $80 billion deal with Westinghouse intended to jump-start a fleet of new US reactors.

Government doling out money (and other breaks) to nuclear power is old hat. But the two announcements, taken together, put a new spin on the practice of politicians picking winners and losers in the marketplace: Under the November deal, Uncle Sam could get a 20 percent equity stake in Westinghouse if its nuclear business booms in the coming years. Writing at the time, I predicted that it probably won’t happen: Nuke makes lousy business sense, as energy economist Steve Thomas recently detailed in Cato’s policy magazine Regulation, and it’s doubtful energy companies would take on such risk. Apparently, my prediction’s been right so far, so the Trump administration is offering a sweetener to get things going.

The announced financing envisions $3.5 billion in federal loan money per plant, with Westinghouse and the recipient energy companies contributing a billion dollars of their own money to each project, giving them some “skin in the game.” According to US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, there is “tremendous interest” in the initiative.

But interest is one thing, and completed nuclear plants are something else entirely.

The last time Uncle Sam meddled in nuke was back in the early 2000s under George W. Bush’s Nuclear Power 2010 Program. Enticed by government loan guarantees and rate subsidies, energy companies quickly proposed some 30 reactors. But interest faded after those companies crunched the financial numbers and found they didn’t add up. Only four reactors went into construction, and just two—Units 3 and 4 at the A.W. Vogtle power station in Georgia—ultimately entered service.

Vogtle shows why the other energy companies backed off: Construction of those two units—featuring Westinghouse AP1000s, it bears noting—began in 2013 (though site work started in 2009). Completion was expected in 2016/2017 at a cost of a little over $14 billion. But the reactors didn’t come online until 2023/2024, at a cost of $30 billion. That’s a common pattern with nuke: Expect it to take twice as long and cost twice as much as projected.

When asked about Vogtle’s $30 billion plant cost compared to the $4.5 billion envisioned by the Trump financing initiative, Wright averred that things will be different this time. Building “at fleet scale” will let the industry avoid Vogtle’s cost burden, which he attributed to bad planning, supply-chain snags, and the pandemic (which happened 3–4 years after Vogtle was to be completed). In his mind, nuclear plants are like cars on an assembly line: The more units you build, the lower the total cost per unit. But as Thomas explains in his Regulation article, nuclear plants are bespoke and offer minimal economies of scale.

This push for nuke is perplexing not just because the economics are grim, but also because of other Trump policies. If the administration really is interested in increasing America’s electricity supply (in part to power new data centers), then why is it spending billions of taxpayer dollars to get wind companies to not build generation? Moreover, why is the administration so keen on nuclear, given its hostility to climate change concerns (though even a reasonable carbon tax wouldn’t make nuclear competitive with other low- and no-emission power sources).

Perhaps the answer is nuclear socialism: Trump wants to boost an industry in which Uncle Sam could have an equity stake. This is part of the broader pattern of Trump corporate socialism, with government stakes in Intel, US Steel, MP Materials, Lithium Americas, Trilogy Metals, Vulcan Elements, ReElement Technologies, Korea Zinc, USA Rare Earth, L3Harris Technologies, Anduril, xLight, and others.

Circling back to nuclear power specifically, is there no way the technology will ever make economic sense? Never say never, but the odds are long. That goes not just for large reactors like the AP1000, but also the “small modular reactors” (SMRs) now lionized by some politicians and parts of the industry. As Thomas explains in his article, SMRs face the same problems and are bespoke like their bigger brothers, but with much less output. Again, never say never, but it’s bad policy for politicians to be pushing this mature technology—whether large reactor or small—on taxpayers and ratepayers.

My Cato colleague Travis Fisher said it best when he questioned the executive branch’s becoming so deeply embedded in the electricity business, especially when some future administration could offer sweeteners to different technologies entirely. Removing barriers to entry and letting energy companies build generation that passes a market test remains a much better policy than government picking winners and losers—especially when it’s acting as owner, banker, and regulator of those competitors.

July 12, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics, USA | Leave a comment

Great British Energy – Nuclear offers £1bn contract for SMR partner

The company is seeking aid in delivering its programme of building a power plant by the 2030s.

Energy Voice July 7th 2026,

Great British Energy – Nuclear is seeking a delivery partner for its small modular reactor (SMR) programme in a £1.08 billion procurement contract.

The successful applicant will support the state-backed company deliver its programme by providing expertise across programme management, infrastructure delivery, commercial management, engineering support, and risk management.

Working alongside GB Energy – Nuclear, the company will help drive collaboration across suppliers, support effective programme delivery, and ensure value for money over the lifetime of the programme

The procurement process will include an initial selection stage, followed by tender. evaluation, dialogue, due diligence and a final selection stage before the appointment of a preferred bidder. Tenders must be submitted by 6 August 2026.

The long-term deal has the possibility of running until 2046.

Great British Energy – Nuclear interim chief commercial officer Beverley Grey said. “The appointment of a delivery partner will help ensure we have the capability, expertise and capacity needed to support the successful development and delivery of our Small Modular Reactor programme.

“This is a significant long-term procurement which will bring together technical, commercial and project delivery expertise to help us achieve our objectives and support the delivery of new nuclear capacity in the UK.”

GB Energy – Nuclear has £2.6bn to spend on its SMR programme and previously brought in Rolls‑Royce to provide the design the reactors………………………..

The government-run scheme aims to deliver a new nuclear power plant using SMRs by the mid-2030s, helping the UK seize part of a market estimated to be worth £500bn by 2050. https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/nuclear/600336/gb-energy-nuclear-smr-partner/

July 12, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, UK | Leave a comment

AtkinsRéalis (formerly SNC Lavalin) signs Sizewell civil works agreement

7 July 26. The Construction Index

AtkinsRéalis has signed a new five-year framework agreement to continue its civil works role at Sizewell C.

AtkinsRéalis will act as design partner for the permanent civil works, providing multidisciplinary design and engineering services across the permanent plant design at Sizewell C, including the conventional island, balance of plant, heat sink buildings and ancillary works.

“AtkinsRéalis has played a significant role in design and engineering management at Sizewell C since 2019 ……………….. https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/news/view/atkinsralis-signs-sizewell-civil-works-agreement

July 12, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Nuclear Commercial Shipping Still Fails The Business Case

Nuclear merchant ships keep returning as a concept, but the commercial case still fails.

Michael Barnard, Michael Barnard’s TFIE Strategy Briefing 26th June 2026

A while ago, I published a sexy-versus-practical quadrant chart for maritime shipping decarbonization. Sharp-eyed readers pointed out that nuclear propulsion for commercial shipping was missing. I make no claim that every chart I produce is encyclopedic, but I do try to be reasonably thorough, and the omission was not because I was trying to dodge the subject. It did not occur to me to include it because nuclear commercial shipping is so far outside the useful center of the transition that it sits closer to historical recurrence than to a likely commercial pathway.

That changed briefly when I found myself on a panel at Stena Sphere’s technical summit in Glasgow with Giulio Gennaro, CTO of Core Power, a firm promoting nuclear propulsion for commercial shipping. That was a useful forcing function. It made me think through the argument in a more structured way, not as a generic anti-nuclear reaction but as a shipping business case, route case, vessel case, port case and technology-readiness case.

The starting point is the maritime denominator. My current Briefing maritime shipping projection is not built around replacing today’s fuel demand one-for-one with alternative molecules. It starts by shrinking the fuel pool. Fossil-fuel cargoes are a very large part of bulk shipping, and coal, oil and gas volumes decline in a serious transition. Iron ore volumes are also exposed as more scrap is used, more processing moves closer to mines and more clean electricity is used in industrial production. Container shipping grows, but not enough to offset the decline in the bulk categories that were built around moving fossil fuels and raw materials through the 20th-century industrial system.

That matters for nuclear because the strongest pitch for nuclear merchant ships depends on a subset of very large vessels on very long routes with high, steady energy demand and known endpoints. That points first toward the biggest bulk carriers and crude carriers. But those are precisely the ship classes most exposed to decline in a decarbonizing world. Building expensive nuclear-powered ships for a shrinking segment is not an obvious commercial strategy. It is especially weak when the vessels most naturally suited to nuclear propulsion are linked to cargo categories that are likely to contract.

The Briefing maritime shipping projection and graphics make this clearer than a fuel-comparison table does. The transition is not “today’s ship fuel, but green.” It is a changing freight system. Inland shipping and much of short-sea shipping are increasingly battery candidates. Some ships will become hybrid, and every battery replacement cycle will tend to extend electric range and reduce liquid-fuel burn. Operational changes, efficiency and route-specific electrification reduce the amount of fuel the sector needs before the residual molecule question is even asked. The hard blue-water segments remain, but they are a smaller and more filtered problem than the usual alternative-fuels debate implies.

That is the context in which nuclear has to compete. It is not competing against every tonne of today’s bunker fuel. It is competing against a future in which a lot of shipping demand disappears with fossil cargoes, a lot of shorter shipping electrifies, and the remaining fuel pool is served by cheaper, simpler and less institutionally awkward options. Nuclear has to win after the denominator changes, not before.

Core Power’s argument, as I understood it, was that the biggest ships on the longest routes are where the emissions problem is largest. That is true in the narrow sense. I am not proposing that ultra-large crude carriers or very large ore carriers should cross oceans on batteries. The question is not whether the largest ships use a lot of energy. They do. The question is whether nuclear is the practical commercial answer for those ships, their routes, their owners, their ports, their insurers, their regulators and their replacement cycles………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. For ordinary merchant fleets, nuclear remains outside that useful set. Batteries, hybrid systems, shore power, port electrification, operational efficiency, wind assistance in some cases, constrained biofuels and a smaller residual fuel pool are less dramatic. They are also much closer to the actual structure of the shipping transition. https://briefing.tfie.io/p/nuclear-commercial-shipping-business-case

July 12, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

Trilateral cooperation agreement on SMR deployment

WNN, 8 July 2026

The USA, Japan and South Korea have signed a memorandum of cooperation to support trilateral cooperation on accelerating small modular reactor deployments in third countries, with an initial focus on the Indo-Pacific region.

The memorandum was signed on Tuesday on the margins of the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Japan’s Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu, and South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun……………………………………………………..

Under the memorandum, the three countries will identify third-party countries that are interested in small modular reactors (SMRs) in the Indo-Pacific region and will support the construction of multiple SMRs through a standard fleet and simplified contracting procedures. For that purpose, the partners will encourage the formation of consortiums by their respective nuclear industries and foster project development through mobilising financing and investment.

In support of this initiative, the USA is committing more than USD10 million in new funding for the Department of State’s Foundational Infrastructure for Responsible Use of Small Modular Reactor Technology (FIRST) programme to provide technical support to countries in the Indo-Pacific region for the deployment of safe, secure, and reliable nuclear energy. It said the funds would advance SMR project development activities and establish an SMR Regional Training Hub for workforce development.

The USA also announced an industry initiative agreed upon by GE Vernova of the USA, Japan’s Hitachi, Samsung C&T of South Korea, and Poland’s SGE to advance deployment of the BWRX-300 SMR design across Europe. “This initiative will help achieve the ambitions set forth in the memorandum signed today and deepen government-industry partnerships to strengthen global energy security,” the Department of State said.

The BWRX-300 is a 300 MWe water-cooled, natural circulation SMR with passive safety systems that leverages the design and licensing basis of GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy’s (GVH’s) US Nuclear Regulatory Commission-certified ESBWR boiling water reactor design and its existing, licensed GNF2 fuel design. GVH’s first BWRX-300 is under construction at Ontario Power Generation’s Darlington site in Canada, with completion expected by the end of the decade.

SGE – part of the MS Galleon Group – is a co-investor in the standard design for the BWRX-300 and is in the process of establishing SMR partnerships and projects in a number of Central and Eastern European countries, including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. Its flagship project is being implemented in Poland in collaboration with Orlen, with work under way at three sites and the first unit expected to be commissioned in 2032.

Last week, SGE and a deployment team including Samsung C&T, Laing O’Rourke, Aecon Group and Google Cloud outlined plans for the privately financed deployment of 14 BWRX-300 SMRs across three sites in the UK. SGE submitted the application under the UK’s Advanced Nuclear Framework for reactors which could provide 4.2 GW of capacity, equivalent to 11% of current UK power demand.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/trilateral-cooperation-agreement-on-smr-deployment

July 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | marketing | Leave a comment

Consultation to strengthen UK nuclear manufacturing

HVM Catapult says more than £100bn of nuclear investment presents a major opportunity for UK manufacturing and supply chains

08/07/2026 , https://www.energylivenews.com/2026/07/08/consultation-to-strengthen-uk-nuclear-manufacturing/

The High Value Manufacturing (HVM) Catapult has launched a national consultation, to help UK industry capture the economic and industrial benefits of more than £100bn of expected investment in the country’s civil and defence nuclear programmes over the next decade.

The organisation is developing a ten-year Nuclear Manufacturing Strategy, arguing that the planned investment represents a “once in a generation” opportunity to strengthen the UK’s manufacturing base, improve energy security and create long-term economic growth.

The consultation will gather views from industry, government, academia and regional partners to identify how HVM Catapult can help accelerate industrial capability, strengthen supply chains and support businesses competing in future nuclear markets.

HVM Catapult Chief Executive Katherine Bennett said countries that succeed in the coming decade will be those that build advanced manufacturing ecosystems alongside new nuclear power stations.

She said: “Nuclear is both fundamental to the UK’s future energy security and one of the biggest industrial opportunities this country has seen in decades.

“It is a once in a generation moment to build a globally competitive manufacturing ecosystem that supports clean energy, strengthens defence, creates high-value jobs and delivers long-term economic prosperity across the country.

“Much of the capability needed to support the next generation of nuclear technologies already exists within UK manufacturing. The challenge is identifying it, connecting it to opportunity and giving businesses the confidence to invest.”

The consultation begins at the National Nuclear Manufacturing Conference on 9 July before continuing through a series of regional engagement events across the UK.

Feedback will inform HVM Catapult’s long-term strategy and wider discussions on strengthening domestic manufacturing capability, accelerating industrial growth and maximising the value of future nuclear investment.

July 11, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK | Leave a comment

Last Energy nabs $40M to realize vision of super-small nuclear reactors

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/nuclear/last-energy-nabs-40m-to-realize-vision-of-super-small-nuclear-reactors

These investors are joining the wave in public and private financing of nuclear energy that has swelled to $14 billion so far this year — double last year’s total, according to Axios. Investment in new fission technologies, such as microreactors, has increased tenfold from 2023.

The startup wants to mass-manufacture 20MW nuclear reactors that can be built and shipped within 24 months. It’s looking to get its first reactor online in Europe.

By Eric Wesoff, 29 August 2024

A startup looking to build really small nuclear reactors just announced a big new funding round.

Last Energy, a Washington, D.C.–based next-generation nuclear company, announced that it closed a $40 million Series B funding round, a move that will add more financial and human capital to the reinvigorated nuclear sector.

The startup aims to eventually deploy thousands of its modular microreactors, though to date it has not brought any online. The first reactor might appear in Europe as soon as 2026, assuming Last Energy manages to meet its extremely aggressive construction, financial, and regulatory timelines — not a common occurrence in the nuclear industry. Venture capital heavyweight Gigafund led the round, which closed early this year but was revealed only today. The startup has raised a total of $64 million since its 2019 founding.

Last Energy is part of a cohort of companies betting that small, replicable, and mass-produced reactors will overcome the economic challenges associated with building emissions-free baseload nuclear power — and restore the moribund U.S. nuclear industry to its former glory. But the microreactor dream has yet to be realized; few of these small modular reactors (SMRs) have been built worldwide. None have been completed in the U.S., though one design from long-in-the-tooth startup NuScale Power has gotten regulatory approval.

The 20-megawatt size of Last Energy’s microreactor stands in stark contrast to that of a conventional nuclear reactor like the recently commissioned Vogtle units in Georgia, which each generate about 1,100 megawatts. A Last Energy microreactor, the size of about 75 shipping containers, might power a small factory, while a Vogtle unit can power a city.

Instead of the cathedral-style stick-built construction of modern large reactors, SMRs and microreactors are meant to be manufactured at scale in factories, transported to the site, and assembled on location. Rather than develop an advanced reactor design with exotic fuels — an approach taken by other SMR hopefuls, including the Bill Gates–backed TerraPower — Last Energy chose to scale down the well-established light-water reactor technology that powers America’s 94 existing nuclear reactors.

“We came to the conclusion that using the existing, off-the-shelf technology was the way to scale,” CEO Bret Kugelmass said in a 2022 interview with Canary Media. “We don’t innovate at all when it comes to the nuclear process or components — we do systems integration and business-model innovation.”

The startup claims that its microreactor is designed to be fabricated, transported, and built within 24 months, and is the right size to serve industrial clients. Under its business model, Last Energy aims to build, own, and operate its power plant at the customer’s site, avoiding the yearslong wait times to plug a new generation project into the power grid.

Like an independent power producer, Last Energy doesn’t sell power plants; instead, it sells electricity to customers through long-term power-purchase contracts.

“Data centers and heavy industry are trying to grapple with a very complex set of energy challenges, and Last Energy has seen them realize that micro-nuclear is the only capable solution,” said Kugelmass, who claims in today’s press release that the startup has inked commercial agreements for 80 units — with 39 of those units destined to serve power-hungry data center customers.

Last Energy isn’t the only microreactor company attracting venture funding. There are several other examples from this month alone: Aalo Atomics raised $27 million from 50Y, Valor Equity Partners, Harpoon Ventures, Crosscut, SNR, Alumni Ventures, Preston Werner, Earth Venture, Garage Capital, Wayfinder, Jeff Dean, and Nucleation Capital to scale up a 85-kilowatt design from the U.S. Department of Energy’s MARVEL program. While Deep Fission, a startup aiming to bury arrays of microreactors 1 mile underground, just raised $4 million led by 8VC, a venture firm founded by Joe Lonsdale.

Investors happen to be backing startups in a heavily subsidized market. Tens of billions of dollars from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the U.S. DOE’s Loan Programs Office, and the Inflation Reduction Act support the development of a non-Russian supply of enriched uranium; the IRA also introduced a ridiculously generous $15-per-megawatt-hour production tax credit, meant to keep today’s existing nuclear fleet competitive with gas and renewables, as well as a similarly charitable investment tax credit to incentivize new plant construction.

The flood of funding comes as nuclear power enjoys the most public support it has had in years. Nuclear now has a favorable public opinion, with the majority of Americans supporting atomic energy and its record of safety and performance. And nuclear energy is one of the few topics that Democrat and Republican politicians have been able to agree on in recent memory.

Still, despite the rising financial, political, and public support, the U.S. nuclear industry remains frozen, plagued by a legacy of cost and timeline overruns for conventional reactors and regulatory challenges around new designs. It’s unclear when the country will get another nuclear reactor online — as of last year, the leading contender was an SMR project from NuScale, but that fell apart due to cost. In all likelihood, the next reactor to plug into the grid will be the mothballed Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, which won government support for an unprecedented effort to recommission the plant by the end of next year.

For its part, Last Energy is not banking on the U.S. to lead the charge; it’s targeting industrial customers in Poland, Romania, and the U.K. for its initial sites, in the hopes that it will find a more favorable regulatory and financial environment.

Ryan McEntush of investment firm a16z suggests in an essay that “the success of nuclear power is much more about project management, financing, and policy than it is cutting-edge engineering or safety.”

That’s Last Energy’s philosophy too — and it’s going to need more money and more years to prove it’s the right one.

July 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | marketing, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

Local protests derail US data centre ‘monstrosity’ backed by Wall Street giant

Local protesters have hailed victory after a US investment giant abandoned
plans for a data centre “monstrosity” that would have been built on the
edge of a historic battlefield in Virginia. QTS, which is owned by Wall
Street investor Blackstone, dropped a proposal for what would have been the
world’s largest data centre after a wave of protests and local lawsuits.
The termination represents a landmark win for local activism as protesters
across the US attempt to turn the tide against AI data-centre construction
projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Telegraph 3rd July 2026,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/07/03/local-protests-derail-us-data-centre-monstrosity/

July 9, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs | Leave a comment

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