Texas drilling permit issued for Deep Isolation's borehole disposal pilot

A Texas drilling permit lets Deep Isolation's full-scale, non-radioactive borehole disposal pilot near Cameron, Texas move from engineering and design toward construction and field activities, the company said on October 1, 2026. The Texas Railroad Commission issued the permit for the Commercialization Pilot, the release says, which calls it another step toward demonstrating how proven drilling practices can be adapted for deep borehole disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

Halliburton will drill a new well for the effort, Steve Haden, its senior vice president for project management, said in the release, and will apply its subsurface, drilling and well construction experience to deploying Deep Isolation's technology. Deep Isolation said the project team plans to advance site and construction activities in preparation for subsequent drilling and subsurface testing, working with the Deep Borehole Demonstration Center, Halliburton, Amentum, NAC International and Occlusion Nuclear Solutions. Jesse Sloane, Deep Isolation's executive vice president of engineering, said the pilot is designed to demonstrate "at full scale and at depth" the integrated technologies and operations behind the company's disposal approach.

The well has been on the record since February. Under a master services agreement dated January 28, 2026, disclosed in a Form 8-K filed February 3, 2026, Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. will provide services for the construction of a full-scale-at-depth demonstration test well at Halliburton's site in Cameron, Texas, and Deep Isolation US LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary, gets rights of access to and use of the well. The agreement itself, filed with portions redacted, says title to the test well stays with Halliburton. The same 8-K carries a timeline the October release does not repeat: the company expects construction, preparation and initial demonstration to take approximately three years. The October 1 release gives no depth, well diameter, drilling date, cost or permit number, and does not name the permit holder; the February 8-K and the filed agreement give no depth, diameter or drilling date either.

The October release says Deep Isolation launched the pilot at Cameron in January 2026, and its February 17, 2026 release says the full-scale demonstration program had launched at the Deep Borehole Demonstration Center near Cameron. The patent count has moved between the two: 91 issued in February's About paragraph, over 100 in October's.

Deep Fission, whose design puts a reactor rather than waste about a mile underground, lowered a full-size replica canister 100 feet into a borehole on September 3, 2026. One more move sits in the filing: the October 2, 2026 Form 8-K carrying the release lists Plano, Texas as the principal executive office and Berkeley, California as the former address, while the release itself is still datelined Berkeley.