NANO progresses North American projects

NANO completed its acquisition of Global First Power on 22 October. This followed NANO's acquisition in January of intellectual property and other rights in the USA and Canada of Ultra Safe Nuclear Coroporation's (USNC) nuclear technology, which it renamed as the KRONOS MMR.

In 2019, Global First Power had submittted a licence application to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for a proposed USNC micromodular reacactor (MMR) at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories' Chalk River Laboratories site in Ontario.

Prior to filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2024, USNC had been developing the MMR - a 45 MW thermal, 15 MW electrical, high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, using TRISO fuel in prismatic graphite blocks - and was working on deployment projects at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the USA as well as at Chalk River.

With its strategic acquisition of Global First Power, NANO Nuclear now directly owns the regulatory licensing application with the CNSC, NANO Nuclear said. This allows it to "continue its advance towards submission of the License to Prepare Site (LTPS) step of the CNSC's licensing process". Global First Power had previously completed several key pre-licensing steps in Canada, including successful completion of the regulator's Vendor Design Review and early submission of the first part of the LTPS, it added: "NANO Nuclear will continue this project from a strong foundation, enabling it to benefit from several years of regulatory engagement and progresses … and allowing it to move directly into the LTPS phase."

The company has rebranded its Canadian business as True North Nuclear Inc.

Pre-construction milestones

In parallel with the Canadian announcements NANO Nuclear has marked the start of pre-construction drilling work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which the company described as "the start of real world site-characterisation drilling" for its KRONOS MMR Energy System prototype project.

The company also said that "potential customer" BaRupOn LLC is pursuing a feasibility study to explore a future deployment of up to 15 KRONOS MMR reactors at its 700-acre advanced manufacturing and AI data centre project, in development near Houston, Texas. BaRupOn broke ground on the Liberty American Manufacturing Park, which it describes as a "master-planned manufacturing and energy campus", in January.