We’ve crossed the nuclear tipping point

[Marlin]

We've crossed the nuclear tipping point

https://www.ans.org/news/2026-09-16/article-8317/weve-crossed-the-nuclear-tipping-point/

[Core Content]

Antares Nuclear achieved zero-power fueled criticality for a privately funded advanced reactor design. This milestone coincides with broad alignment among commercial power demand, federal regulatory reforms, and private capital. Multiple advanced reactor concepts plan to reach criticality over the coming months.

Surging electricity needs from data centers, industrial operations, and defense facilities are driving the renewed push for round-the-clock generation. Federal initiatives are concurrently addressing domestic uranium supply and waste management while deploying artificial intelligence to accelerate reactor design and construction. The sector now faces the operational challenge of executing these build schedules.

Demand, government, and capital have finally aligned. All that's left is to deliver.

Twenty years ago, I walked across a graduation stage with a nuclear engineering degree and a promise that the nuclear renaissance was coming. It never came. The hard part was not the physics. Fermi demonstrated the technical viability of fission as an energy source in 1942, achieving the first man-made criticality with a pile of uranium and graphite bricks under a Chicago stadium. The hard part was everything wrapped around the physics, and that's the part that has just changed, with three...

Read the full article at ans.org:
https://www.ans.org/news/2026-09-16/article-8317/weve-crossed-the-nuclear-tipping-point/