Advisers back Long Mott permit, Navy picks Radiant for Crane microreactor

Nuclear news from October 16 to 21, 2026 ran from safety advisers backing a Texas reactor permit to the aftermath of a drone strike in the UAE. In between, the Navy named the vendor for a base reactor it announced in September, Deep Fission signed a buyer that need not buy, and Westinghouse announced an approximately $1 billion investment in higher-enrichment fuel.

Safety advisers back the Long Mott construction permit

Long Mott Generating Station, the four-reactor Xe-100 plant Dow subsidiary Long Mott Energy plans beside Dow's Seadrift Operations in Texas, has its safety advisers' backing. The NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards told NRC Chairman Ho Nieh in an October 16 letter that its review "supports issuance of the construction permit." Each module is a 200 MWt (80 MWe) helium-cooled, graphite-moderated pebble-bed reactor burning uranium oxycarbide (UCO) TRISO fuel, per the letter.

The endorsement comes with homework for the operating license. Fuel and structural materials "are challenged by the peak temperatures predicted under limiting accident conditions," the committee writes, so fuel performance, mechanistic source term, functional containment, and graphite and metallic component performance "require significant additional development." Predicted fuel temperatures exceed both the historic 1600°C TRISO UO2 fuel qualification benchmark and the 1800°C used in the Department of Energy's Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) tests, and expected peak burnup is above what that program reached for the Xe-100 particle design.

One of the committee's critiques runs in the applicant's favor. Long Mott's source-term model is derived from uranium dioxide correlations, but the fuel is UCO. In AGR's 300-hour heating tests at 1600°C, UCO released about 300 times less cesium than comparable TRISO uranium dioxide fuel did in its own testing, and about 10,000 times less at 1800°C, so the committee calls the application's calculated doses "likely conservative and not representative of expected UCO performance." The NRC's project page targets the final safety evaluation for November 2026 and lists the permit decision as TBD. A permit would be the first for any Xe-100, the design in the 12-reactor Indiana study AEP and X-energy announced on October 19.

The Navy names Radiant for Crane

The Department of the Navy selected Radiant Industries on October 20 to design, build and deliver a prototype microreactor power plant at Naval Weapons Station Crane, Indiana, using Radiant's Kaleidos design, the Navy said. When the Department of War announced the Crane reactor on September 9, it named no vendor but set installation for no later than September 2028.

The Navy is buying through the Army's Janus Program, and says the selection "is not a new or additional effort within the existing Janus Program": the Crane unit is accounted for within the Army's August 26 award announcement, which expects more than 20 microreactors on military installations. That award picked five vendors for five bases, Radiant at Fort Benning among them. Final environmental reviews, site design and regulatory coordination come next, the Navy says.

Radiant describes Kaleidos as a factory-built, 1-megawatt microreactor that provides up to five years of power before refueling across a twenty-year life, and says it is the only nuclear company partnered with all three of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Neither release gives a cost or a deployment date.

Deep Fission signs a buyer, with no minimum

Deep Fission signed a binding 25-year master energy purchase agreement with the Great Plains Development Authority, the quasi-municipal owner of the Great Plains Industrial Park in Parsons, Kansas, the company said on October 20. The contract replaces a December 2025 letter of intent and covers a commercial project at the site of Deep Fission's DOE pilot reactor. The initial phase is anticipated to be 150 MW, with a target commercial operation date of September 30, 2028, growing through later phases to a total of 2,000 MW "pending further demand growth."

Binding cuts mostly one way. The agreement binds Deep Fission to pursue the project and to supply power once licensed and operating; the authority buys electricity for park tenants' needs, up to the contracted capacity, "with no minimum purchase obligation," and may assign its purchase obligations to qualifying tenants. The company's Form 8-K puts it plainly: electricity purchases "will depend on actual tenant demand, with no minimum purchase obligation." Deep Fission's Gravity reactor is a pressurized water reactor placed about a mile underground in a borehole; in September the company lowered a full-size, non-nuclear canister replica 100 feet into one.

Westinghouse plans an approximately $1 billion LEU+ fuel factory

Westinghouse announced on October 21 an approximately $1 billion LEU+ fuel factory at its Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility in Hopkins, South Carolina, which it calls the first fleet-scale nuclear fuel factory built in the United States in more than 50 years. Construction is underway, and the company says the factory is on track to begin operations in 2030.

The fuel is aimed first at reactors already running, and then at new ones: Westinghouse expects LEU+ manufacturing at Columbia to enable the long-term operation of today's fleet and to support the industrialization of AP1000 reactors worldwide. LEU+ has a higher uranium enrichment, 5% to 8%, and the company expects it to unlock uprates at operating plants, in line with the federal UPRISE program, and to let operators extend operating cycles. Chief executive Dan Sumner says the factory is Westinghouse's largest single manufacturing investment in support of the operating fleet, and thanks the Department of Energy's tax credit program. The existing plant, built in 1968, employs over 1,200 people.

IAEA reviews the Barakah drone strike response

An IAEA mission concluded on October 20 that UAE authorities and the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant "had appropriately responded to the loss of off-site power event at BNPP Unit 3 due to a drone strike on 17 May 2026," the agency said. The six-member team worked from October 12 to 20 at the UAE government's request, focusing on the plant's response actions, national emergency preparedness and response arrangements, lessons learned from the event, and the operator's arrangements to ensure safety.

Off-site power was restored within a short period after the May 17 strike, the team acknowledged, and it found that effective action was taken to maintain safety during the event, from prompt national and international notification to the use of established emergency response procedures. Its recommendations include strengthening emergency preparedness and response arrangements and the reliability and resilience of critical infrastructure, and reinforcing coordination among stakeholders so that nuclear safety and security measures are integrated. Barakah's four APR1400 reactors produce 40 TWh a year, around 25% of the UAE's electricity needs, according to the IAEA. The release does not say who launched the drone.