Insights
Technical writing from the Applied Atomics team on compact fission, reactor control, NRC licensing, and the power infrastructure requirements of AI data centers.
Making a Fission Plant Behave Like a Dispatchable Asset
Standard nuclear plants are not designed to follow load curves minute by minute. We are building the AI control layer that changes that constraint.
Dr. Sofia Marchetti
The Economics of Skipping the Grid
Transmission losses, interconnection queues, and volatile spot markets add cost and uncertainty to every MWh a data center buys from the grid. Direct connection changes the math.
Paul Keutelian
Compact Fission vs. Gigawatt Nuclear: Different Problems, Different Tools
Utility-scale nuclear is designed to serve regional grids. Compact fission plants are designed to serve specific facilities. These are not competing products.
Dr. Sofia Marchetti
How Advanced Reactors Get Licensed: A Practical Overview
The NRC Part 53 rulemaking created a technology-inclusive licensing pathway for non-light-water reactor designs. Here is what the process actually looks like from where we sit.
Dr. Rebecca Cho
Siting a Compact Fission Plant: What the Footprint Actually Looks Like
Exclusion zones, setback requirements, and cooling infrastructure determine how close a fission plant can realistically sit to the data center it serves.
Dr. Sofia Marchetti
AI Inference Clusters and the 24/7 Power Requirement
Training runs can pause. Inference cannot. The shift from batch ML training to always-on AI products fundamentally changes what power reliability means for data center operators.
Jamal Osei
Total Cost of Ownership: Compact Fission vs. Natural Gas Turbine
Fuel cost volatility, carbon exposure, and 20-year levelized energy cost projections favor different choices depending on your timeline and location. We lay out the framework.
Paul Keutelian
From Concept to First Power: What the Timeline Looks Like
A compact fission plant is a long project. Licensing, construction, and commissioning take years. Operators who need dedicated power in 2030 to 2032 need to be in early conversations now.
Dr. Rebecca Cho
Process Heat as a Secondary Revenue Stream for On-Site Fission
A fission plant generates more thermal energy than a turbine converts to electricity. High-temperature process heat opens secondary revenue possibilities for certain industrial operators.
Dr. Sofia Marchetti
Spent Fuel from Compact Fission Units: Volume, Handling, and Interim Storage
A compact fission unit producing 8 MW generates a fraction of the spent fuel that a utility-scale reactor does. We address the waste question directly, with real numbers for the design targets we are pursuing.
Dr. Sofia Marchetti
Why Oakland: Nuclear Engineering and the Bay Area Talent Ecosystem
National lab proximity, university research pipelines, and a dense concentration of engineering and software talent make the Bay Area an underappreciated home for nuclear systems development.
Paul Keutelian