Holtec filed its safety analysis with the NRC, completing the permit application for two SMR-300 reactors totalling 680 MW at Palisades. Reviews of individual design pieces have NRC dates, but the public record shows no date yet for the permit decision that would let construction start.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption12
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives
- Insufficient
- Confidence45
Investors have put more than $6 billion into nuclear fission and fusion startups in 2026, a record by Crunchbase's count. The IPO market those investors would one day sell into has marked most recent nuclear listings far below their peaks.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption15
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives35
- Confidence55
A modelling study in Progress in Energy takes electricity, hydrogen and desalinated water off one 200 MW-thermal module, and its hydrogen cost drops about 17 per cent once the freshwater is sold externally. Nothing has been built.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption4
- Hype gap+22
- Incentives55
- Confidence40
The four-way agreement signed in New York splits design, engineering, licensing and construction of a 300-megawatt reactor. The pipeline behind it runs to 40 units, against one under construction in Canada.
Reality
- Evidence48
- Adoption27
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives70
- Confidence56
The Ulsan memorandum splits more than 1 trillion won between a HiMSEN power engine plant sized at 3 gigawatts and a line for small modular reactor components. The city's contribution is faster permits.
Reality
- Evidence38
- Adoption12
- Hype gap+32
- Incentives72
- Confidence45
The Korean builder's engineering arm signs in New York on Sept. 23, taking a design review role on the Hermes demonstration reactor in Tennessee and priority rights to the commercial work that follows.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption22
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives72
- Confidence45
Japan pledged the $550 billion in response to American tariff measures. Six months on it is what Takaichi brings to a summit whose agenda also includes the cost of US bases, with four of the five decided projects in oil and power.
Reality
- Evidence42
- Adoption26
- Hype gap+32
- Incentives74
- Confidence45
Natura Resources says it now holds the coolant for its MSR-1 demonstration reactor, shipped from Oak Ridge through Idaho National Laboratory to the Abilene Christian University site on September 18. It won the material in a DOE competition.
Reality
- Evidence34
- Adoption22
- Hype gap+33
- Incentives72
- Confidence44
Oak Ridge's detector straps onto a ventilation duct and samples once a minute on battery, or once a second when it is wired over Power over Ethernet. The crystal that makes it cheap costs a dollar or two.
Reality
- Evidence34
- Adoption11
- Hype gap+36
- Incentives62
- Confidence41
Centrica and X-energy have the Xe-100 in the UK Generic Design Assessment, a three-regulator review running about three years. Planners get an 80 MWe unit, plant sizes of 320 to 960 MW, and a schedule that stops short of site licensing.
Reality
- Evidence42
- Adoption24
- Hype gap+40
- Incentives68
- Confidence45
The company plans to announce its first data centre plant this year, with ground broken in 2027. The design point is that heat storage decouples reactor output from plant output.
Reality
- Evidence42
- Adoption22
- Hype gap+34
- Incentives66
- Confidence41
ONE Nuclear has site control at all three Louisiana sites and a binding letter of intent at the largest of them. It has not yet named a reactor technology for the nuclear campus, or an in-service date for any of the three.
Reality
- Evidence26
- Adoption8
- Hype gap+46
- Incentives78
- Confidence54
A Department of Energy design approval and two boreholes outside Parsons, Kansas, begin the test, but the cost line this design is meant to delete has never been quantified in public, and the demonstration is targeted for 2027.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption18
- Hype gap+28
- Incentives62
- Confidence55
Washington is now treating quayside power as supply-chain policy. The scope it has put in front of two ports reaches beyond megawatts, into insurance, port acceptance and mariner training.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption15
- Hype gap+38
- Incentives72
- Confidence45
The only small modular reactor design the NRC has ever certified now says the binding constraint is paperwork. The remedy it has bought is a nuclear-trained retrieval tool measured once, in a proof of concept, at 80% faster.
Reality
- Evidence30
- Adoption14
- Hype gap+45
- Incentives72
- Confidence42
Operating profit rose 53% to 316.8 billion won while revenue shrank, so the entire gain is margin. The 1.2 trillion won of net cash it leaves behind is what pays for the plant and data centre work DL E&C has not yet won.
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption54
- Hype gap+24
- Incentives78
- Confidence58
Bluecore has a berth at Long Beach, a 185-foot barge and a federal memorandum that obliges nobody, which is a cheaper entry to the nuclear business than a licence and a much harder thing to value.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption14
- Hype gap+35
- Incentives72
- Confidence55
On Rosatom's own numbers the RITM-200 is the closest thing to a serial small reactor anyone has. It is also marine propulsion, rated in thermal megawatts, with its civilian versions still being built.
Reality
- Evidence38
- Adoption47
- Hype gap+30
- Incentives74
- Confidence44
Applied Atomics now holds exclusive US and Canada rights to BWXT's mPower SMR. The engineering has sat dormant nine years; the economics that shelved it have not improved.
Reality
- Evidence26
- Adoption9
- Hype gap+42
- Incentives63
- Confidence31
The MIT spinoff keeps pressurised-water physics and redesigns the steam generator, claiming a reactor about 40 times smaller. The bet is that a licensing operator beats a physicist to a permit.
Reality
- Evidence32
- Adoption16
- Hype gap+46
- Incentives72
- Confidence38