⚛️University of Illinois Gets a Microreactor

NANO Nuclear Energy just signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Illinois to collaborate on the development, construction, and operation of NANO’s KRONOS microreactor on university land.

This would be the first KRONOS MMR energy system, positioned as an advanced research reactor, meaning a real machine that students and researchers can learn from.

The near-term milestone is licensing. The University’s nuclear team says the plan is to submit a Construction Permit Application in Q1 2026. That is the real checkpoint (everything is just talk until the NRC paperwork hits the desk).

The KRONOS MMR is a high temperature, helium cooled microreactor using TRISO fuel. The design output is up to about 15 MWe (roughly 45 MW thermal).

This is real progress for advanced nuclear. The MOU anchors KRONOS to a specific site and a credible partner, and it puts licensing front and center.

It is not commercial rollout yet. But it is a step closer to the only thing that counts in this industry: a reactor that actually runs.

Here’s NANO’s own quick walkthrough of KRONOS and why TRISO is the whole point:

🤔NRC Reflects on 2025 Successes

The NRC just dropped its 2025 highlight reel (sadly not named NRC wrapped): more approvals, faster timelines, same safety bar.

Operating Reactors

This is where the really powerful (but boring) stuff happened. The NRC approved 20-year license renewals for 13 reactors, each for 20 more years, keeping 12,000 MW on the grid. The cheapest clean electrons are the ones you already built.

They also authorized the Palisades restart, which is a U.S. first: a reactor getting regulatory approval to come back after entering decommissioning. And they are applying that playbook to two more restart projects, Crane Clean Energy Center and Duane Arnold.

New and Advanced Reactors

The NRC finished the technical review for TerraPower’s Kemmerer Unit 1 in 18 months, calling it their first approval of a non-light-water reactor in 50 years, and the first next-gen advanced reactor.

They also completed the NuScale US460 standard design approval review, and issued a construction permit for Kairos Hermes 2.

Fuel Facilities

Fuel cycle nerds, you get your own wins too.

The NRC approved 6 fuel facility requests in 2025, including continued HALEU related work at the American Centrifuge Plant in Ohio, and approval for Urenco USA to produce higher enriched U-235 for advanced reactor and accident tolerant fuel.

Going into 2026

The NRC says it’s actively working with Fermi America on a combined license application and an applicant led environmental impact statement pilot for a 4 unit AP1000 project in Texas.

They’re also preparing for the anticipated wave of 10 new applications from the U.S. Government.

Plus, they’re staying engaged with a long list of advanced players, including X-Energy, NuScale, University of Illinois, and TerraPower.

2026 is where we find out if this becomes a repeatable system, or just the best year-end slide deck in Washington.

📝Duke Energy Submits Site Application

Duke Energy, one of the largest U.S. utilities, just submitted an Early Site Permit application to the NRC for potential SMRs in North Carolina.

An Early Site Permit is the equivalent of reserving the table at the restaurant, before ordering your food.

What’s interesting is that Duke is keeping it technology neutral. Their application includes 6 possible reactor technologies, with 4 SMR designs and 2 non-light-water designs, and it specifically does not include big conventional light-water reactors.

While not official, prior planning docs have included familiar names like NuScale VOYGR, GE Hitachi BWRX-300, Holtec SMR-160, Westinghouse AP300 on the SMR side, and non-light-water options TerraPower Natrium and X-energy Xe-100.

Duke’s stated goal is to add about 600 MW of advanced nuclear by 2037.

That is not tomorrow morning, but it is an actual schedule, not a concept deck.

The location choice is very much on purpose. Belews Creek is an existing power station site. The plant has 2 units totaling about 2,200 MWe, coal and natural gas fueled, and it is currently scheduled to retire in the late 2030s.

Repurposing an existing site is one of the few ways to make the economics less painful (the infrastructure and grid connections are already there!)

Also worth noting, this wasn’t a “riding the hype” moment. Duke says this application is the result of 2 years of work, and the NRC completed a pre-application readiness assessment before the submission.

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 🎥True Scale of Atoms

Atoms are tiny. Everyone knows that.

But I don’t think most people feel how tiny they are. This video does the impossible, it makes atomic scale actually make sense, using the same kind of trick scientists use to “see” atoms in the first place.

Fair warning, you might never look at a penny the same way again.

☢️ Nuclear Barcodes

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.

This week’s cameo sounds like a German rock band, but it’s actually one of the coolest lab tools on Earth (and Mars).

Mössbauer spectroscopy.

Spectroscopy is how scientists ‘read’ a material. You shine a very specific kind of energy at it, then you look at what gets absorbed or what comes back. The pattern is a “barcode” that tells you what it’s made of and what state the atoms are in.

Mössbauer spectroscopy is the ultra precise version for certain nuclei, most famously iron. It works by firing gamma radiation at a sample and watching how iron atoms absorb it. Different iron minerals absorb it slightly differently, so you can tell if the iron is sitting in a rusty oxide, a sulfide, or something else entirely.

Once you can “read” iron that cleanly, a lot of doors open.

Materials science uses it to check what phases are in an alloy and whether heat treatment actually did what the engineer claims it did. Battery researchers use it to understand how iron based cathode materials change as they charge and discharge. Geologists use it to read the story of rocks, especially when the important clues are hiding in microscopic mineral grains.

And, it has literally been on Mars.

NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers carried a mini-Mössbauer spectrometer on their robotic arms to identify iron bearing minerals in Martian rocks and soil.

There’s an entire corner of physics dedicated to listening to nuclei whisper, and it helps us build better materials, understand our planet, and decode rocks from other planets too.

😂Meme of The Week

Thanks for reading, see you next week, same time, same nuclear theme.

-Fredrik

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