Week 35 of 2024

Three nuclear energy innovation news!

🤑 Last Energy (US) raises a $40m Series B led by Gigafund. The startup is developping a 20 MWe pressurised water reactor, hoping for a first deployment by 2026. It alledgedly already has 80 commerial agreement, with the UK being the most likely first partner. This is quite surprising as Last Energy's reactor is not part of the current assessments of the UK’s Office for Nuclear Regulation.

🕳 Deep Fission (US) emerges from stealth mode with a $4m pre-seed round led by 8VC. The idea is simple: placing traditional pressurized water reactors a mile underground (yes, this new venture is launched by part of the team that was behind Deep Isolation). This eliminates the need for large pressure vessels and containment structures, which are costly items. The question remains of the overall impact on construction, operation & maintenance, etc. However, the idea is seducing.

✈ Another startup emerges from stealth with a $250k pre-seed round, AeroFuse (US). Buckle up, this is cool: aviation fusion propulsion systems. The key item is visibly a direct fusion heat exchanger, compatible with any third party open magnetic field compact fusion reactor. Dream big!

👨‍🎓 Paper of the week: "The Orbitron: A crossed-field device for co-confinement of high energy ions and electrons", AIP Advances (2024)

👉 Some light shed on the fusion device developped by Avalanche Energy.

👇 Did you spot anything else? Let me me know!