⚛️ Trump Media Invests in Fusion

I did not have this on the bingo card for 2025.

Trump Media, the company behind Truth Social and majority owned by U.S. President Donald Trump, just announced a merger deal with TAE Technologies, a private fusion company that’s been grinding away at plasma physics for decades.

It’s an all-stock deal valued at more than $6 billion, where TAE and Trump Media shareholders each end up with about 50% of the combined company. Trump Media also agreed to put up to $300 million in cash.

TAE has previously raised more than $1.3 billion in private capital and has had big names like Google in the investor list.

The combined company says it plans to site and begin construction in 2026 on a 50 MWe utility scale fusion plant, with later plants targeted at 350 to 500 MWe.

TAE’s design is a field reversed configuration (FRC), a compact plasma ring where the magnetic field inside the ring flips direction compared to its external field. That lets you confine the plasma in a tighter, simpler geometry than big tokamaks (at least in theory).

To keep that plasma stable and hot, they fire neutral hydrogen atoms into it. Because the particles are neutral, they can punch through the magnetic fields and deposit energy directly into the plasma. The beams heat the plasma, add momentum (rotation), and help stabilize and sustain the FRC so it does not kink, wobble, or fall apart.

Fusion hype is fun, but fission is the only nuclear tech that actually ships today, at scale, with bankable timelines, and with fuel markets that already exist. If fusion gets there someday, awesome. Until then, the world still needs reactors you can license, build, and refuel.

Also, if the sitting U.S. President’s company is willing to put real capital behind nuclear tech, it’s a signal the energy conversation has shifted. If you want to see how we’re positioned for that theme, check out the Nuclear Update Premium Portfolio.

And if you want the nerdy part, here’s a good explainer from TAE on how their design works:

🎉3 U.S. Reactors Get 20 More Years

No, this is not a leftover from last week. Life extensions really are coming in fast now.

The NRC granted Constellation a 20 year license renewal for Clinton Unit 1, plus 20 year renewals for Dresden Units 2 and 3.

Clinton is now cleared to run until April 2047, and Dresden’s two units can run until December 2049 and January 2051.

This is the U.S. choosing “keep what works” as a strategy.

Clinton is a 1,062 MWe boiling water reactor (BWR) that first synced to the grid in 1987, Dresden’s units are older 900 MWe BWRs from 1970 and 1971.

One caveat though, and it’s very 2025: approvals are one thing, economics are another. Constellation explicitly says continued operation depends on financial viability.

For Clinton, the company frames that risk as largely handled thanks to its 20-year deal with Meta, which helps support the plant as Illinois’ Zero Emission Credit program expires in 2027.

Big Tech is not just buying clean energy vibes anymore, it’s signing contracts that keep reactors alive.

Question for you: what moves the needle more right now, another flashy SMR headline, or keeping three proven reactors running into the 2050s?

🇬🇧 UK Starts Locking Away Plutonium

If you’ve ever discussed nuclear with someone, you already know how it ends (“What about the waste?”). This is what the UK did about it this week:

The UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority says it has processed a can of plutonium residue into a stable waste form for the first time.

It’s the first step in a program at Sellafield to process around 400 cans of this tricky legacy material, with the end goal of preparing it for eventual disposal in a future Geological Disposal Facility.

Context: the UK has a civil plutonium stockpile of about 140 tonnes, built up over decades of used fuel reprocessing. Earlier this year the government chose a clear path, dispose of it, rather than trying to turn it into MOX fuel.

They are using an existing Sellafield plant that has operated since the mid 1980s, adapting it instead of building a brand new facility, which usually means faster delivery (and less taxpayer pain).

This is a decades long mission. The hard part is immobilizing the bulk of the material into a form that is stable enough for permanent disposal.

The NDA group has been allocated about $200 million over 5 years to develop the specialized capabilities, including new laboratories at Sellafield to prove out the immobilization tech.

Two routes are being explored: Disposal MOX (DMOX) and Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP).

DMOX: Disposal MOX is basically “MOX fuel, but for the graveyard,” you turn plutonium into ceramic pellets engineered for long term disposal, often with built in neutron absorbers so it stays safely subcritical underground.

HIP: Hot Isostatic Pressing is the “make a synthetic rock” route, you seal plutonium bearing material in a container, then squeeze and heat it under high pressure until it densifies into a tough glass ceramic or ceramic block that is designed to be brutally durable for geological disposal.

You know that one drawer you avoid because it’s full of loose batteries and sharp surprises? This is the nuclear version, unglamorous work that makes the whole system credible.

Waste and cleanup is not fast, but it is how you earn public trust, and that trust is what gives the industry permission to scale.

This week in Premium we’re publishing a 21 page deep dive into Cameco, the blue chip heavyweight of the uranium sector and one of the clearest ways to get exposure to the nuclear renaissance.

We break down how Cameco makes money across the fuel cycle, what the Westinghouse angle really adds, how contracting, supply discipline, and enrichment bottlenecks feed into their pricing power, and what to watch in the next 6 to 18 months.

You’ll get a full business overview, key risks, valuation framework, catalysts, and the “what would make us change our mind” section, because every bull case needs a stop loss in the brain.

If you want the full read, plus our live portfolio, allocation updates, and the weekly uranium and macro sentiment signals, join Premium so you don’t miss it.

 🤯Scientists Captured Light Reflecting Off a Mirror at 1 Trillion FPS!

Researchers at EPFL just filmed light bouncing off a mirror using a camera running at 1 trillion frames per second.

Yes, trillion.

It slows the fastest thing in the universe down enough that you can watch reflection happen frame by frame.

In just 2.736 nanoseconds, light travels nearly a meter, and this experiment captures it scattering and reflecting in real time. Not sci fi, just absurdly good physics.

Watch this:

☢️5 Radioactive Products We Use Every Day

Welcome back to Atomic Alternatives, where we explore the strange, clever, and occasionally mind bending ways nuclear science shows up in your life when you are not even looking for it.

Nuclear tech is already in your house, your office, and probably in your pocket.

The U.S. Department of Energy put together a simple list of 5 common products that use radioactive materials. One of the cleanest “normal people” explainers I’ve seen. Enjoy:

😂Meme of The Week

Merry Christmas!🎅

Hope your holidays are merry, your grid is stable, and your dinner debates stay below criticality.

See you next week.

-Fredrik

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